#RPGaDay2021 - 1 - Scenario

Here we go again.

So RPGaDay is back and for a moment I considered being curmudgeonly about it, but then discounted it.

Today's word is SCENARIO. It's funny how we aren't consistent in the terms that we use; modules, scenarios, adventures, campaign books, adventure paths. I guess a scenario is meant to be a shorter, perhaps two to four hour session length challenge for your players. My approach to them differs depending on what I'm running and who I'm running it for. For convention games, I usually focus on making sure the characters have hooks to each other and to the plot (if there is one) or alternatively, I'll make sure that there are some beats that drive choices if I'm running a more sandbox based game.

For the Curse of Strahd campaign, I tend to think in terms of sessions or episodes. It's a sandbox, but the way that the plot is constructed, there are usually one or two routes forward. When we complete a section I'll usually ask to miss an evening and also ask for a steer from the players where they may want to go and what they may want to do. It's starting to be a challenge to keep the threads together; for the session last week I ended up re-reading all 28 write-ups that I'd done to try and draw some hooks back and forward and also to make sure I hadn't misremembered something. I'm using the 5e book, with three other takes on the campaign as references and sometimes it means I think that the players have done something when the may not have.

Anyway, scenarios. They're the heart of what a GM presents to the players, but they're only a framework. They rarely survive contact with the players to remain in the state and path that you had expected. And that is a good thing, because it's how the GM gets to explore the setting they present.

1 August 2021

PS - Roll a D8 and halve it? Come on Autocratik, have you never heard of the Caltrop Pyramid of Doom, aka the D4? What kind of heresy is this?