[D&D 3.5] Scene framing goodness

[Andrew Cooper]

My group and I have been playing a D&D 3.5 campaign for the last several months and have been enjoying ourselves.  The group is pretty Gamist by and large and there's not much CA conflict in our games.  The group consists of myself, a mostly Gamist by habit GM (who really wants to try out some Narrativist games but has no one to try them out with), an old hand role-player friend of mine, and two guys who have only been playing for 6 months or so.  We're all friends outside of our gaming and get along well.  Interpersonal relations are always friendly and gaming disputes are always settle amiably.

As I was saying, the campaign was going well but I was noticing that pacing was really becoming a problem for me.  The party was currently making a long, over land journey and much of the time playing seemed to be taken up with going day by day travel, rolling a few random encounters, making camp, setting guard shifts... lots of mundane and as far as I was concerned pretty boring shit.

Then before our session last night I remembered all those cool Forge scene-framing threads and in particular the adage that got bandied about of "skip all the boring stuff".  So, this session that's exactly what I did.

Scene 1: I skipped a lot of silly travel and went straight to an encounter with a large group of Uthgart Barbarians who were intent on attack the group and retrieving one of the party's NPCs who happened to have been the daughter of their tribal chieftain.  A challenge to single combat with the Barbarian leader was accepted and the party's Priest of Tempest accepted.  Very cool scene with other players covertly helping the priest with special abilities and spells.

Scene 2:  Skipped more travel.  Next, an encounter with a dragonriding wizard who kidnapped the previously mentioned chieftain's daughter.  Lots of excellent gnashing of teeth (the good kind) and vows to track that damn wizard down and retrieve their friend.  There's good story reasons about why the wizard was there and why he kidnapped the girl.  It just seems a bit much to post unless people just want to know.  If so, I'll post the whole story of the campaign up to the present for folks.

Scene 3:  Went straight to an attack on the party by Dragon Cultists.  This was a huge climatic battle that really engaged my tactically minded players.  Ended up being a fight between 3 opposing sides rather than just 2.  Everyone had a blast.

I know this doesn't seem like a major deal to most but just the simple technique of good scene framing and skipping all the filler crap really injected a lot of life into this campaign.  I know we never would have gotten nearly as much accomplished if I had continured the way we normally handled things.  Pacing was much faster and kept everyone's attention riveted on the game.  There wasn't nearly as much extraneous non-game related conversation being bantered about the table.  Thanks  Forgers for discussing this stuff and really helping our game out.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I agree with you - it really does matter. Given your description of the actual, played encounters, it sounds like the group is both very good at proactive tactics and also very eager to use them. So once one steps back a little, the question is, "Well, then, why aren't we doing this pretty much all the time? And if we are going to spend time on something else, why shouldn't it play directly into the next instance of getting down to business?"

A perfectly good question. It's also an ongoing, shocking, and rather painful insight for me to consider how many people joined up in a role-playing endeavor out of genuine interest in colorful, imaginative, and exciting stuff ... and then quickly turned their backs, forever, based on this single and basic issue.

A couple of questions about the game itself:

1. What range of levels are current in your game, across the player-characters? Were the current levels all gained in play, or were the characters started above first level?

2. Do you have any in-party NPCs?

3. How much use do you make of maps, both large-scale and miniatures-combat scale, during play?

Best,
Ron

[Andrew Cooper]

Hi Ron,

Now that I've done it once, I have to agree.  Just get to the good stuff.  Whatever the "good stuff" is for the group.  I hadn't ever really considered it because... well, we'd always just done it the other way.  It's the way I learned when I started the hobby and nobody ever really bucked tradition.  As for your questions:

1.)  The party is all 1st and 2nd level at the moment but that is a little deceptive.  Something odd happened when they began making characters for this game.  They all decided to go with the non-human, non-traditional character races and sorta play a group of societal outsiders.  So, we have characters ranging from a Wemic to Aasimar.  This makes them all a bit more powerful than the average party of 1st and 2nd level characters and everyone has between 1 and 3 extra Effective Levels.  Sure makes getting to the next level slower.

2.)  We had 2 in-party NPCs.  One has been kidnapped, that was Soggrin a human female Rogue of 3rd level (the only human).  The remaining one is an Aasimar Priest of Tyr (2nd Level).

3.)  Yes, we make extensive use of maps, both on a large and small scale.  We are playing in the Forgotten Realms and maps are easy to come by for that setting.  Combat always includes miniatures and a battle mat.  The group is really into teamwork and good tactics.  The newer players have really gotten into it.  The group likes to examine and talk about their antics and possibilities in battle and they also really get hyped about planning out their future advancement.  Hearing this kind of thing is pretty common, "Yeah, I'm going to 6th level as Fighter and then multi-classing over to Weapon Master.  That'll put me on track to get a lower Threat Range and larger Critical Results."

So, next game session, I'm not worrying about all the miscellaneous crap.  I'm just writing up three or four key scenes and jumping from scene to scene... unless the group throws something at me that is interesting and then I'll change my scenes.

[James_Nostack]

Andrew, now that you have learned this technique well, I ask to become a pupil, for lo! scene-Framing is something I'm trying to figure out these days.

Is there any particular trick to it?  Or is it simply saying, "Jeez, I suppose for documentary purposes it's necessary to describe the journey to Fantasy City #3, but dang, it wouldn't serve any purpose--let's skip it!" ?

I guess my reservation is that some of these otherwise dull moments serve as an excuse to include some atmospheric details about the setting, or sub-plots, or whatever.  Things that are (at best) mildly interesting and may be important much later, but would most likely get drowned out during the chaos of a Rock'em Sock'em Showstopper Scene.

So:
(1) How does one do scene-framing? and
(2) How does one do minor exposition without doing a bit of "downtime RP'ing"?

[TonyLB]

#2:  You make sure that your minor exposition has an important part in the current scene.

For example, if you want to establish a huge range of snow-capped mountains, you explain that the icey wind rushing down from them is blowing out torches and spooking the animals during a hard night-crossing of a rope bridge.  You repeatedly apply the "Screeching icey wind from the Montmort Range" penalty.  The players will remember Montmort better, because it will be linked with a story-important situation.

#1:  Once you are confident doing #2, above, you limit yourself to only doing that.  You ruthlessly skip absolutely any scene that is not the most interesting scene you could possibly go to next.

For example, say your group decides to charter a ship to the Isle of the Damned, a citadel of evil ghosts.

[*]Most aggressive scene framing:  "The sailors land the dinghy and hurry you out.  The stare with superstitious dread as they row back out toward their ship, cursing the captain foolish enough to take your money.  You are now on the Isle of the Damned."
[*]If you aren't going to frame straight to there then you need an important conflict to justify any intermediate scene.  So you can NOT do "You're at the harbor.  There are lots of boats.  Do you try to charter one?"
[*]You CAN do:  "The harbormaster said that only one captain would be crazy and desperate enough to take such a charter... and when you show up at Blind Sven's boat you can tell, from the blood and the screaming, that at least some part of his crew is actively mutinying, right here in the harbor!"[/list:u]The notion that you tell a story by documenting the protagonists is a recipe for boredom.  Skip it, says I.

[Andrew Cooper]

James,

Well, I wouldn't call myself an expert yet but what I did last night was pretty simple.  I knew I wanted at least 3 major encounters.  1 with the Barbarians.  1 with the wizard.  1 with the Dragon Cultist.  I simply decided where along their journey these would happen (barring any really odd decisions by the players... like NOT going on the journey).  Then I simply skipped all the filler crap and go to when and where the good stuff happened.

I edited the minor exposition into the actual scenes.  For example, they were traveling through hill country and I did want them to know this.  So, the first scene I introduced something like this, "You've been traveling through rolling country, the road winding through and over hills.  Visibility ranges from 100 yards to several miles depending on whether you are cresting a hill or in a valley.  Suddenly...."

This way they did get a feel for where they were.  My plan is next time to make sure there are encounters at locations I think are important to set the mood of the game and give a feel for the world.

I still had downtime RPing, by the way.  There was a town where they stopped and did some resupply.  Also, there were several important scenes where they met NPCs in the town.  These weren't overly long or drawn out but they did add a good bit of color to the session.

[ADGBoss]

The RPGA Living campaigns use a great deal of scene framing (some might call it railroading but...) when you write and construct a module. Part of the reason for this is that you have to get this module done in 4 to 4.5 hours.  Playing at home is not such a bad thing but playing at a sanctioned Convention does limit your time greatly.

Almost every encounter opens or contains an element of "Box Text". These are descriptions of locations, actions, and exposition which tend to be inviolate. Meaning no one can interrupt the actions going on in the Box text.  This can be frustrating but the pacing of the encoounters, if done well, allows for plenty of RP and getting the module done on time.

WoTC / RPGA is doing something new with the Eberron, Mark of Heroes campaign. They essentially put out a monthly ( I think... it has not started yet) set of Plot Points, and instead of running a pre-wrtten module, the DM downloads the Plot points and creates their own scenario around them. I do not believe the system is in effect yet but I have no doubt they will offer "Advice" on writing / running these modules. If so it might be at least a little useful with learning some Scene Framing.

*Note: I am not trying to sell the RPGA to anyone :) I know I do mention the Living games from time to time, but I think there is some interesting stuff to look at in the way the campaigns are constructed.


Sean

[Callan S.]

Ah, the journey. How do you give that impression of a world?

I think the grand theft auto computer game series has an interesting spin on it. Basically your in a large city...but do you scene frame to the next location? No...you drive there.

The thing is, it is boooooring to drive safely to the next location. You don't, you tend to floor it. When you floor it, it makes navigating the environment a challenge.

The thing with players is that they'll use the real time/game time difference to advantage and just say their PC's travel along slowly and safely. Then the GM has to force in encounters or other crap, rather than it being an interesting consequence of dangerous choices.

Basically you need some sort of 'advantage paid for by risk' mechanic. In GTA, the advantage is that your not bored, the risk is that you'll flip your car, smash it up, or annoy the cops. Actually, they need to start with a penalty that you can negate with risk, and even profit from if your clever about it.

The trick is that the reward should not outweigh the rewards of the destination they are headed to, and the real life time it takes to negotiate each problem should be far shorter than it takes to negotiate any problem at the destination. Otherwise they are going to wonder why the hell they just don't journey endlessly, as there are more rewards there and more of a real life time focus there anyway.

Okay, that was from a gamist perspective...and the journey thing is usually more of a sim pleasure. Ah well.

[Andrew Cooper]

Noon,

That's a really good suggestion.  I just have no idea on how to implement it.  I think there's only a limited number of times that you can use the "You can take the long, safe road or the quicker, dangerous road." option before it becomes old hat.  Of course, there's always the situation where you NEED to get to the location fast.  Are there any other concrete ways to juggle risk/reward that you can think of?  I'd love to have some of those tools in my GMing toolbox to handle these journey segments.

[Valamir]

Tony gives some great advice above.

The key takeaway from the Isle example is that scene framing doesn't require you skip all the way the end.  You can have intermediate stages.  Its just that those intermediate stages (like the mutiny scene) have to be interesting in themselves or they're just wasting time.

You also don't have to have a programmed adventure with preplotted scenes like Gaerik did with his 3 scenes or like RPGA modules do with their box text.  Scene framing works even better (and becomes even less like rail roading) when the GM is rolling with where the players want to go and what they want to do and just frames them there, as opposed to framing them where the GM or the module wants to go).

This then ties into the concept of bangs of which much has been written here.  As noted above, you can have intermediate scenes that you frame to as long as they themselves are interesting.  But if you're not preplotting the module...how do you have those scenes handy?  That's where the 'ole bandolier of bangs comes in.  You might have the "Mutiny Scene" already sketched out on a piece of paper complete with stats for the crew and a map of the ship.  Alls you need to know about it is that at some point (maybe...if you need/want to use it) the characters are going to find themselves in the midst of a Mutiny.

In actual play you COULD have the PCs away at sea and Bam a mutiny hits because the crew doesn't want to go to the island.  Pull out the mutiny bang and run it.

OR, you could have the captain be a vile evil bastard and some of the crew approaches the PCs to ask for their help in a mutiny.  Pull out the mutiny bang and run it.

OR, you can do it like in Tony's example and have them stumble on it in mid stream at the docks.  Pull out the mutiny bang and run it.


The key to a bang is that it doesn't matter how the players respond to it, or whether they win or lose...any way out of it is equally interesting.  In the mutiny at the docks example, the players might overcome the mutineers and win a trip to the island from a grateful captain.  Or they may help the mutineers and force the captain to navigate to the island in exchange for his life.  Or they may sit and wait and if the mutineers win they can charter another boat and take the shipless captain along as a guide.

Any way you do it, its a cool scene.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

For times when I simply want to get PCs from A to B without drawing the journey out with encounters or whatnot, yet need to convey a sense of travel, I've borrowed an old film makers' trick:  showing a succession of brief flashes of the characters in transit.  Remember the journey in The 13th Warrior?  Enough time passess for Antonio Banderas's character to pick up the others' language, yet the whole passage is mostly a succession of shots of the band travelling, resting around campfires etc.

This isn't a risk/reward thing so much as the briefest change of pace.  It need not take more than a couple minutes.  I throw out images that I'd like to see on a wide screen and I invite my players in on the fun, too.  Say I want to get the PCs through your rolling hills without bogging the game down with random encounters...  

"Let's have some shots of your characters travelling.  I see a long shot first, rocky green hills in the morning mist rather like Scottish Highlands, the camera passes over and dips over a craggy edge.  Along the flank of the next hill, a line of riders picks its way among the rocks.  Lucy?  Want a close-up of Katrin here? What's it look like?" Lucy narrates a brief shot, say, of Katrin looking sternly ahead as she presses the pace. "Ok.  Afternoon.  Sun beating down through the leafless branches of a dead copse of trees.  What's a good shot for Apari?"  And Apari's player may tell me we don't see Apari at all until the camera closes in all the way on a cluster of thorns and zooms in right through the spiky branches until we find the familiar, tattooed profile of the immobile elf scout.  "You cross a high ridge in thick grey fog - clouds.  The path dips under a horse's hoofs, a gust of wind tears the cloud cover open to reveal wide, sloping plains beneath.  Four days have passed.  You have safely crossed the Rolling Hills.  Although, speaking of safely, just as your group starts moving down the path... who's your best spotter?  Apari? Cool, make a Spot roll."  

And we go right into an encounter with a hunting band of just the tribe of plains barbarians the PCs are here to meet.  

If you want to try it, the trick is to use brief snapshot-like images and to place PCs into the shots you describe to give the players a chance to become involved.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Here are a couple of old threads you might find interesting, Andrew:

Scene framing
Is 'railroading' a useful term

Best,
Ron

[Callan S.]

Noon,

That's a really good suggestion.  I just have no idea on how to implement it.  I think there's only a limited number of times that you can use the "You can take the long, safe road or the quicker, dangerous road." option before it becomes old hat.

Well, it's not about which road you take, it's about how you navigate it. So say the players take the dangerous road...you think pitch them a situation "A log across the road...shadows in the tree's around" and then ask for their responce in a minute or less. The time here is critical...you let them have more time and they will take it and make the game center around what should be a quick bit of drama.

I'd recommend there being some roll, with either the players quickly thought up plan adding a siginificant bonus (if it warrants), or by their trickyness they might be able to apply a different skill which they have a better rank in. Anyway, just one roll and move on.

For the quiet road, just apply some penalty to taking it and that's that (like it takes longer to get to the war, so fewer supplies are available to the PC's when they get there). The penalty, much like in Tony's example, conveys the journey has happened.