What makes a good Kicker?

[Ron Edwards]

Petter,

I'm a big fan of The Whispering Vault. I suggest that the "structure" of the hunt is a lot more flexible than it looks, so the role of Kickers probably isn't going to be as constrained as it might seem.

I suggest that the Keys are, essentially, 90% Kickers, in a broad sense. Think of them as "finished" (in their role as Kickers, not yet resolved though) in terms of the Call. Provide the details of the Call as the Stalker perceives it in his little pocket realm - and then and there, have the player say, in very few words, just what about the Call is compelling to the Stalker. How does it match one or more of the Keys?

You can do this in a fairly traditional way, in which you provide the Call and the player simply makes up a reaction to "fit" what you provide, or you can do in a more radical way, in which you have each player state what Key or Keys are provoked by the Call, and you then retrofit the scenario to that.

The whole point of my post is this: Stalkers take things personally. If you do the boring Vault run, in which they appear, the person issuing the Call gives up one feeble clue and then dies, and they swing into monster-hunt mode ... well, as I say, that's boring. But if you provide many, many opportunities for the player to involve his or her character as a person (blighted, blasted, and soul-burned as a Stalker is), with the NPCs as people, with lots of interaction and commitment, then the game reveals a ton of excellent support and tools in reward for this effort.

Best,
Ron

[Blake Hutchins]

Going back to Ian's point about The Mummy and nailing windows shut from the inside....

That's waaay cool.  I'd have LOVED to see that scene in The Mummy.  Were I running it, I'd take that and run with it, even if it meant dropping some of my original behind-the-scenes preconceptions.

If you see your plot as an inflexible component of your game, seems to me you're going to throw away a lot of player contributions because they don't seem to chime with what you already have in mind.  As a writer, I can say plot evolves as you write the story.  I typically start with an idea in mind, and as the work progresses, the idea changes and twists away from the direction of my original thought.  Part of that is because I'm more of a Dionysian writer than an Apollonian one, but the important lesson I learned is that any story is a balance between structure and inspiration.  My best stuff comes when I marry the foundational components -- the structure of character, setting, and problem -- to unheralded lightning strikes out of the left field of the right brain.  Kickers serve two purposes: (1) player empowerment, and (2) wild-ass inspiration.  If you have the structure of your story in place, the Kicker adds that extra touch of too-crazy-not-to-be-real zing that lifts an RP story into an outstanding collaboration.

Best,

Blake