Loose Canon

[soru]

Alternatively, like buying a highly configurable and tweakable kit car but complaining that it comes pre-assembled into something that's drivable.

True, for someone who wants to do all the tweaking, there's going to be some wasted effort in taking it apart it before doing the tweaking, but really that's nothing compared to building the whole thing from scratch. And some people will want to just buy and drive.

I'd rather have a scenario that said 'in Sea season 1622, the Colymar tribe revolted against the Lunars, massing a warband 3000 strong against the 5000 Lunar troops of the Beryl Phalanx. Here is what happens, here is how your heros can get involved, what are they going to do?' than one that said 'in Sea season 1622 (or some other time appropriate to your campaign) the Colymar tribe (or some other tribe or clan appropriate to your campaign) rebelled (or stayed peaceful), massing a warband (or performing a great ritual)... (rest cut for space).

For the way I think, the first would be far more immediately useful. Taking a concrete example that hangs together, and changing it, is far easier to me than adding in a full set of details to a generic or flexible skeleton.

Admittedly, I know other people think differently, and I don't have any statistics as to how many people think one way or the other.

soru

[simon_hibbs]

My possition is that criticising a scenario for being linear, boring, badly plotted, with poor characters and such that's fine.

Criticising it for containing established characters, fixed events and defined locations then you're essentialy criticising it for being a scenario.

Perhaps some people think Issaries Inc shouldn't publish epic scenarios in which major events ocur, but since this is exactly the kind of thing HeroQuest is supposed to be used for, and there have been widespread calls for published examples of how to play HeroQuest, this is moot.


Simon Hibbs

[Tim Ellis]

From what Steve Martin (of Issaries) was saying at Continuum this weekend, they see this as more of a problem of presentation than the type of scenario.

In other words, as Simon points out above, these scenarios are designed to tell the epic events of the Hero Wars, so the events themselves are "a given".  However the involement of your PC's, and what they do in the course of the events described, and what effect that has on the campaign going forwards is far more open to the individual campaign.  So the Dragon will rise occur and destroy the temple in the Dragonrise scenario (Obviously GM's can choose for this not to happen, but will have to work out "future history" for themselves), but the effect this has on the PC's, their friends & followers, their clans, and how their actions are viewed by the onlookers (both sartarite and lunar) are all things that can be dealt with in individual campaigns.

[Mike Holmes]

Criticising it for containing established characters, fixed events and defined locations then you're essentialy criticising it for being a scenario.

Is anybody making this criticism? Not that I've seen. It's precisely how to present such material that we've been discussing. Not whether or not to have the material, but just the presentation. How to make it not suck.  

Mike

[Invain]

Criticizing it for containing established characters, fixed events and defined locations then you're essentially criticizing it for being a scenario.

Is anybody making this criticism? Not that I've seen. It's precisely how to present such material that we've been discussing. Not whether or not to have the material, but just the presentation. How to make it not suck.

Although you did say:

In fact, one reason I don't play in Glorantha, is so that I can avoid the pitfalls of the metaplot.

From which I infer that the mere existence of a metaplot in HeroQuest was one of the factors influencing you to avoid Glorantha as an RPG setting. If it were simply a matter of not using a few of the scenarios in the published adventure books, then I don't think it would have been that big an issue.

Anyway, to be clear, I think we can all agree that an adventure where the players are not allowed to make any substantial decisions is poorly written. Also, a campaign level metaplot that is so detailed that it ceases to be an aid to narrators, and instead becomes a restrictive burden, is also a Bad Thing (tm).

While the former has arguably been a problem in recent adventure supplements, the later has not - at least so far. Although ideally you should not have to make major changes to a scenario to make it playable, this is not a big problem if you have the time/energy/creativity to adapt it to your game. If not, then you just don't play it. It isn't such a loss, since there are several other adventures in any given book to choose from.

Personally, I have found the campaign level metaplot to be a great deal of help in plotting out my Carmania game. If I were running a game in Dragon Pass things might be different, but I don't think so. Individual adventures are another issue entirely. Most are fine, some are problematic - particularly the one that sparked this discussion. I really don't see that as a metaplot issue, though. It just comes down to the good old fashioned art of adventure writing.

Writing for a generic audience is very difficult, though. This is why I haven't submitted any of the twenty or so Hero Wars/Quest adventures from my game to Issaries or a fan mag. Each adventure is lovingly tailored to the needs/desires of my gaming group. The adventures usually consist of a page or two of general plot outline, involved groups and major NPCs, and potential challenges. The metaplot helps determine what the NPCs are up to, but the players are entirely free to act. This is why a loose book of plots and major NPCs suits me more than official "it happens this way" adventures. But that's just me.

~Kevin McD

[simon_hibbs]

Is anybody making this criticism? Not that I've seen. It's precisely how to present such material that we've been discussing. Not whether or not to have the material, but just the presentation. How to make it not suck.  

It seemed to me that the first post was criticizing the scenarios for containing major events that are beyond the player's controll. I do agree that presentation is an important factor, but ferankly no scenario of this kind is going to please everyone. There will always be some poeple who see a fixed event in a scenario and want to change it, or allow it to be changed in their game.

What I'm sayin is that:

1) These are scenarios. All scenarios present events like this, to some degree or other, some better than others.
2) The traditional approach in roleplaying has always been that if you don't like something in a scenario (or anywhere else) for your game, change it.
3) HeroQuest and it's supplements go out of their way to suggest and approve this.

It is true that scenarios can be written in a more toolkit-like fashion, but that works best for stand-alone scenarios. A campaign series of linked scenarios by it's nature has to maintain more consistency and determinacy in the outcomes of events from one supplement to another however that's mainly a constraint on presentation and the authors, it's not necesserily a constraint on the GM or players.


Simon Hibbs

[Valamir]

A campaign series of linked scenarios by it's nature has to maintain more consistency and determinacy in the outcomes of events from one supplement to another however that's mainly a constraint on presentation and the authors, it's not necesserily a constraint on the GM or players

Except that's making the assumption that a campaign series of linked scenarios is a good and desireable idea.

IMO if you have 1 book that describes who all the key persons are (great and small), what they want (epic and mundane), and their network of interrelatedness (families, friends, enemies, and professional acquaintences) and then have the player characters all have things that they want that overlap with this...

Then you get your entire campaign all in one book.  Load a small corner of the world with lots of situation, wind it up, and just watch the players efforts write their own campaign story line.

I've never seen a series of linked scenarios that didn't disappoint.  I think that's an old school holdover and exemplifies the sort of linear thinking that really doesn't belong in Hero Quest.

[simon_hibbs]

I've never seen a series of linked scenarios that didn't disappoint.  I think that's an old school holdover and exemplifies the sort of linear thinking that really doesn't belong in Hero Quest.

As it happens, I actualy agree. I don't yet own any of the campaign sourcebooks, and don't imagine I'd ever want to run them. I'd much prefer supplements like the ones you suggest.

In the end, what kinds of books they choose to publish is a commercial call that is up to Issaries Inc to make. I'm not realy that interested in the campaign series, so don't buy it. Therefore whatever events and such are in there aren't a problem for me. On the other hand, they don't get my money. Well, yet anyway. At some point I'm sure I'll pick them all up, perhaps when I have more time on hand for roleplaying. Or if I'm fantasticaly lucky, maybe I'll end up playing them (fat chance!).


Simon Hibbs

[Mike Holmes]

Simon, correct. That is, my entire content on this thread has been to clarify the problem from that which the poster presented in the first post.

To oversimplify:
1. Orignal Poster: Scenarios are bad.
2. Mike: not scenarios, just certain presentations that force endings.
3. Simon: but it's only scenarios that force certain endings that are bad, not all scenarios.

So here's me nodding, and wondering why the need to reiterate what I took several posts to make clear. If you're just here to agree with me, then yay, we all agree.

Now you're agreeing with Ralph who was just reiterating what I'd said. Yay, more agreement.


Invain, my problems with the metaplot are larger and more personal than the subject of this thread. See this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9417

But, generally, if the metaplot is completely known from the start, then avoiding these problems by playing using the methods that I like is much, much easier. That is, even more of a consternation than metaplot itself is metaplot which is "coming" from the designers. Again, as I've said previously in the thread, I like "history" and "events" just not "metaplot" if that means the sort of scenarios that we're talking about.

But, again, that's almost an entirely different problem than the one of how to design scenarios that this thread is about.

Mike

[Invain]

Invain, my problems with the metaplot are larger and more personal than the subject of this thread. See this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9417

Wow. I had forgotten about that thread. Brand had some really interesting posts there, which were well worth re-reading. Thanks for the pointer!

~Kevin McD

[Ian Cooper]

We definitely had some problems with one of the 'big event' episodes in play - Orlanth is Dead. I played in the presentation of it we had at our group and did not run it. The narrator's decision was to walk us through the events in the scenario, as the situation becomes increasingly dire, step-by-step. In hind sight this was a mistake, because player choices became unimportant: we could not affect events. So in one episode we we rounded up clan folk and cattle in the dead of winter for a huge sacrifice, struggled through the snow and trolls, and discovered that our effort was for nothing and made no difference to the failure of the ceremony.

Of course you could say we were experiencing a feeling similar to our characters, but there is a 'whiff' factor here. Our heroes may have been  powerless, but the players don't want to feel powerless.

The sweetspot here is, I think to treat the write up presented as descriptions of the 'big event' but create actions within them that are meaningful to the heroes. So for Orlanth is Dead the sweetspot for me is how does your clan survive the darkness. It's a disaster movie for Orlanthi. Think 'The Day After Tomorrow'. What you get in OiD is the special effects budget, but you need to add a story. So adopt 'Story Now' treat most of OiD as a handout and begin in media res where it makes sense for your group.

The Shiprise is harder because it is the proverbial 'train ride' by its very form. Again I think the response is to focus on creating a maningful involvement for your heroes, Kallyr's big event is the backdrop, the special effects budget. Amidst that huge event there must be room for smaller events glossed by the text but meaningful to your heroes.

But as Tim points out Stephen Martin of Issaries made it pretty clear at Continuum that they were aware of the issue and would watch for deprotagonizing players in the Dragonrise.

[Invain]

The sweetspot here is, I think to treat the write up presented as descriptions of the 'big event' but create actions within them that are meaningful to the heroes. So for Orlanth is Dead the sweetspot for me is how does your clan survive the darkness.

Exactly! The Narrator should begin by describing the horrors of Fimbulwinter (which I had no idea was an actual Norse term, BTW), and that nothing your characters tried was successful in stopping it. You don't play this out, since it isn't a pivotal, and thus dramatic, moment. The adventure actually starts when there is something that they can accomplish.

It's a disaster movie for Orlanthi. Think 'The Day After Tomorrow'.

God, I hope not! I hear that movie was lame... ;)

The Shiprise is harder because it is the proverbial 'train ride' by its very form. Again I think the response is to focus on creating a meaningful involvement for your heroes, Kallyr's big event is the backdrop, the special effects budget. Amidst that huge event there must be room for smaller events glossed by the text but meaningful to your heroes.

Agreed, although at some point in the campaign the PC heroes should be involved in the Big Events. Keeping the PCs involved with side events is not a solution that will last forever unless the "big events" turn out to be a dazzling side effect of the real big events that the PCs were responsible for.

But as Tim points out Stephen Martin of Issaries made it pretty clear at Continuum that they were aware of the issue and would watch for deprotagonizing players in the Dragonrise.

This is good news indeed. :)

~Kevin McD

[Hobbitboy]

Agreed, although at some point in the campaign the PC heroes should be involved in the Big Events. Keeping the PCs involved with side events is not a solution that will last forever unless the "big events" turn out to be a dazzling side effect of the real big events that the PCs were responsible for.

Isn't that the big promise of a good system and/or a good GM?

I've heard of several D&D campaigns based in Greyhawk which followed the accepted timeline up to the point where the characters were powerful enough to influence events whereapon the GM's 'allowed' the character's actions to steer it off in different (and often unexpected) directions. And if its possible in D&D it must certainly be possible in HQ!

As long as the presence of a metaplot doesn't either

[*] prevent the GM from allowing character actions to influence the game world (possibly even rewriting metaplot events).
[*] prevent the players from believing that their characters could influence the world.
[/list:u]
I don't see it as an inherently bad thing.

As an aside- I have only a passing familiarity with Norse mythology but couldn't you say that though Odin 'Knew' where the metaplot was headed (Ragnarok, his personal demise, etc.) it didn't stop him from trying to change it?

Thanks,

  - HB

[simon_hibbs]

So here's me nodding, and wondering why the need to reiterate what I took several posts to make clear. If you're just here to agree with me, then yay, we all agree.

You're right, I see it now. How dare I agree with you. Shame on me!


Simon