N&R for dummies

[Hobbitboy]

Does anyone know where I can find examples of scenarios/adventures designed/written with narrativism in mind? Especially ones aimed at introducing the narrative style to players who have not encountered it before.

Also what do relationship-maps look like and how do you go about constructing one (i.e. what factors detemine whether it is too cluttered or too sparse)?

Thanks,

- John

[Brand_Robins]

The Well of Souls, a HeroQuest scenario written to be an intro to Nar play, can be found here: http://w1.311.comhem.se/~u31140632/WellofSouls.pdf

[Bankuei]

Hi John,

You should also check out Ron's Final Days at Skullpoint, which is (IMO) more accessible to the "New to Nar" folks and probably easier to digest.  Well of Souls is pretty heavy, and requires a good deal of customization to your group and its play, but definitely has lots of good examples of nasty nested conflicts that are fun to work with.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

First, to be proprietary about it, Relationship Maps, per se were defined by Ron Edwards in a supplement for Sorcerer. Point being that he has a definition that includes certain features. The term, however, is often used more loosely to mean any association of NPCs that the GM wants the PCs to run into. In any case, no matter what version of the idea you're using, they're all pretty flexible, so "What they look like" is going to vary a lot.

Anyhow, check out the Adept Press forum here for some examples, including the oft refered to, "Art Deco Melodrama" threads. But even there, the examples have some significant variations.

For example, to give the tightest of examples, a relationship map might have just two NPCs, a husband and wife for instance. The characters have a relationship with each other which can come into play. On the outside limit, you have games like my current Hero Quest game where I use what I recently coined as the NPC aresenal, where the relationships may be pretty tenuous, and I end up with over 50 NPCs. I could imagine games with many, many more, too, in theory.

The map itself has the names of NPCs in boxes with lines connecting them, and possibly something explaining what the lines mean - what relationships the characters have with each other. Figure out a schematic that you like to work with, and use that. Might be different depending on the sort of map, or how large it is. But just find something that works for you.

The point of the lines is to make you remember to have the NPCs behave appropriately. That is, in the husband/wife map, if I hit on the wife, then the husband will probably have some reaction. To give a simple example. Some examples are not so clear, and, as such this is why it's important to have the lines on the map.

Whether it's "too cluttered" or "too sparse" is very much an aesthetic choice, but there are some considerations. First, only list the most important relationships. Smaller ones will often be implied by the lesser ones. For example, if I'm a friend of Husband X, then I'll probably be aquainted with his wife. But it's probably not so important to draw that line - more important to have the friend line and the husband/wife line. How many you want to enumerate will depend on how cluttered things are on the actual diagram, and how important the relationships are, and how one tends to imply another.

Second, if you can't see a reason for the character being on the map, if they've just been included because somebody "should" be there, consider eliminating them. This doesn't mean that they don't exist, simply that you can't put the whole world on the map. It should only contain the characters that are going to make a difference in terms of the interactions caused by the action of the game in terms of the map. Create other characters as need be, when needed. Or even have them enumerated, and ready to go. Just don't have them on the map.

Of the fifty I had going, I'd have put less than half of those on the map, and considered it very large at that.

In terms of what makes sense as far as how much "material" to have the map represent, think in terms of how long you want play to go, and how many PCs you're going to have. Generally, the longer you want play to go, and the more PCs, the larger a map that makes sense. This is just a generality, however, and could be easily contradicted by the specifics of the game.

Consider how many characters are in plots that you've read. Keep that in mind as a guideline in terms of how many characters make sense in a map. Generally, authors have a good sense for this. Going with the method that steals maps from literature, I'd say that maps with 5 to 8 characters are about the average.

If the players make up characters as part of chargen (which is an explicit part of HQ, for instance, as followers and relationships), be sure to consider putting these characters into the map somehow. Don't always do this - it can stretch plausibility, for one - but many times these characters are very cool as part of the map.

Does that help at all?

Mike

[Hobbitboy]

Does that help at all?

Yes, it does. Thank you very much, it was most illuminating.

- John