Writting adventures for Heroquest

[Sydney Freedberg]

I think you're getting somewhere, now. A few suggestions:

- I'd make Bosswin almost mad with grief over his wife's death, and have him argue persuasively that if the deaths of a few innocents now is what it takes to overthrow Pyram, that will save many more innocents later.
- I'd play up Father Martelli's absolutely sincere faith in God, his absolutely sincere desire to help his people, and his absolutely sincere loyalty to the authority set over him by Almighty God, namely Lord Villanova -- why would anyone think these are contradictions? (He probably doesn't think of himself as a "spy" at all, just as someone who is necessarily discreet about the coded letters he passes on to his superior. This is especially true if Avalon is generally repressive of Catholics, as I think the setting implies).
- I'd make Giovanni Villanova really, really cool. Darth Vader cool. Patrician Vetinari of Ankh-Morpok cool. The Godfather cool. Make him the kind of villain your players look at and think, "man, he's evil. But part of me wants to be like him when I grow up.... and hey, we could make a deal with him this one time..."
- I'd make Santino Villanova a scumbag. And annoying. And smug. (Think Christopher -- the Michael Imperioli character -- from The Sopranos, if you've seen it). Make your players feel, "Ugh! It's only because this guy's such a slimeball that we can bribe him to let us get away -- but it's almost worth staying and fighting against overwhelming odds just to wipe that smirk off his face."
- I'd give King Pyram a motive. Think Cardinal Richelieu in Three Musketeers: Sure, he's an evil, manipulative, merciless, self-serving bastard, but he's also the only thing holding France together. He's not just "throwing the Triple Kingdoms into chaos"; that's just one step in his long-term plan to make the world a better place, you betcha, and he has such withering contempt for anyone who can't see that a little evil is the price of the greater good, and that swashbuckling heroism ultimately hurts more people than it ever helps, that the players begin to doubt themselves, just for a moment -- which makes them all the more on fire to prove him wrong.

While any genre can present the characters with moral conundrums, I beleive that the swashbuckling genre should use these sparingly

Dude: Man in the Iron Mask. For Aramis: Should you be loyal to the rightful king, even if he's a bastard, or try to put a better king on the throne, even if it risks throwing the kingdom into chaos? Do you bring your friends in on what you're doing, leave them out it altogether, or try to use their help without letting them know what it's really for? For d'Artagnan: Do you hunt down your friends because it's your sworn duty, or let them go and break your oath?

[Barna]

Thanks for the comments! Onto them:

-That´s exactly how I´d thought up Bosswin; willing to risk some innocents in order to bring Pyram down.

-Good call on Martelli. I think that´ll suit my story. A bit of moral ambiguity (from the PC´s POV at least)

-Giovanni is a "canon" caracter of the setting (appears in books and all) and indeed VERY cool. Darth Vader cool, as you put it.
THE master planner, with power, cunning and swordsmanship to back it up.

-Regarding Santino, I think you are right. He needs to be depicable.

-Pyram has a motive: he wants to rule the Triple Kingdom. All his machinations have one objective: to bring Queen Elaine down. He was the most powerful Avalon lord until Elaine appeared with the Grail and everyone swore allegiance to her.

Regarding the Man In the Iron Mask thing, that is a cool moral conundrum, but I do not think the swasbuckling genre has as many of this situations as other genres. After all, Richelieu is Evil. I think that HQ´s Glorantha is largely about cultural POVs and religious differences, while Theah has a much clearer view on good and evil, even if moral dilemmas appear frequently.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Yeah, the original Three Musketeers is pretty black-and-white, as I recall -- though there's a certain chillingly gleeful amorality captured in the amazing 1973 movie version (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072281/ -- Raquel Welch as Constantine! Faye Dunaway as DeWinter! Charlton friggin' Heston as Richelieu!). Iron Mask is much later in the series. Count of Monte Cristo does actually have some interesting moral dilemmas in it, as the protagonist struggles with how far to pursue his revenge. Heck, even Pirates of the Carribean has the "bust one pirate out of jail to rescue my love interest from another pirate" moral dilemma, as well as a touch of the ever-popular "my friends or the treasure"?

[Valamir]

I'm going to push back a little on the swashbuckling / moral quandry issue.  Not to turn this into a literary debate but just to highlight some opportunities that might be overlooked.  I think its true that the characters in a swashbuckling story don't spend alot of screen time agonizing over moral decisions...but I think they're making them ALL the time.  I think Three Musketeers is one never ending series of Moral Quandry Bangs that while much of the time the characters take an "act first, worry about it later" approach #1 that doesn't mean the players do and #2 that approach is, itself, a thematically interesting choice.

Take Three Musketeers.

Is Buckingham a villain?  He's clearly an enemy of the state.  He's also presented as a pretty all around good guy and certainly to an extent the musketeers are helping him.

Is the Queen the damsel in distress?  She's cuckulding her husband the KING with an enemy of the state...this is pretty much treason by any definition.  The musketeers know that Cardinal R. is out to get them.  The only the personal patronage and protection of the King keeps them from being disbanded...and they choose to help the QUEEN?

Is the Cardinal a villain?  The movies typically portray him as such, but the book isn't nearly so negative.  He's responsible for running France while the king bankrupts the state on futile wars and frivolity.  France is besot by enemies on all sides and here's the QUEEN for God's sake consorting with the enemy?  Is really a villain for trying to root out a traitor to the nation?

One could go on about how the Musketeers essentially become fugitives from the law in their pursuit of DeWinter and probably would have gotten themselves executed as traitors if they'd failed.  Or how the execution of DeWinter was essentially a lynching.  Or how dueling with the Cardinal's guard is not only illegal and against the direct order of the king (whom the ostensibly serve) but also creates great hardship for their captain to deal with the messes they create.

IMO one could make a compelling case for and against each of the above.  The whole story is a mine field of moral choices...loyalty to the band vs. loyalty to the king.  Loyalty to France vs. personal honor...etc.etc.etc from first page till last.  Negotiating these choices at every turn is, to me, what makes the story so compelling.  Far more than descriptions of flashing blades and moonlit horse chases.

YMMV, of course, but don't think moral choice has to involve some earth shattering angst.  There's a moral choice in every decision a swashbuckler makes.

[Barna]

That's an interesting viewpoint indeed. Perhaps the "moral choices" aspect is indeed a part of the Swashbuckling genre, but it's own rather quick pace & rhytm tend to keep out angsty moral discourses and debates. All the moral questions the PC's face have to be solved now. As you say, perhaps this is what makes the genre attractive.

As a matter of fact, I do want to include this sort of moral issues in my game. Keep the angst out but include more choices (& consecuences) in each situation. I now see that this alternative way of creating adventures is much more friendly for this purpose.

Now, the last batch of NPC's...

Friendly NPCs

Michael Benning is an old friend of the PCs, a member of the Explorer's Society (thing archeologists with a twist). They have been on many adventures together; it was during a sea trip when he blew up Villanova's ship after they killed many of his men in the prior battle. He is devoted to his job as an archeologist and a faithful friend, although his temper sometimes gets the best of him.

Yup, not a lot of friendly people in this adventure...

[Mike Holmes]

(Note, cross-posted with Arturo)

What Ralph said.

Quite often, even with a villain who is obviously there to hate, however - yes these do exist at times in swashbuckling and elsewhere. In my HQ game, I have a classic dark villain: he's a sorcerer who lives in an evil woods, who is actually a disembodied head on a mass of tentacles, who keeps people to torture eternally, and who worships an even more loathsome Cthulhuesque god. There's nothing morally questionable about this character. But the key is that the quandries in the game aren't "should we kill him?" He's unassailable in his fortress of madness in a dark dimension deep in his demon infested woods. The game isn't about whether or not he can be killed, it's about what you may have to do to survive him.

The moment where Vader tells Luke that he's his father and asks him to join him is the most classic bang ever, yes. In my IRC game, I had the sorcerer send a demonic emmisary to ask one of the leaders out of the PCs if she would like to rule in his name, making all of the threat go away. It was also a bit like Frodo offering the One Ring to Galadriel, another classic bang. I think it's key to note that we never, ever see Sauron even once. We just feel the projection of his badness through his all-seeing eye, and that alone sets the stage for the moral quandries to form. 

The villain is the villain because he forces moral quandries on the main characters. I think the clearest example of a dilemma bang that I can think of is in the movie Batman Forever, where Jim Carey's Riddler has batman's girlfriend and sidekick in two, side-by-side deathtraps, and actually explicitly asks the moral question. Who do you choose?

Note, however, that there are actually three choices here, and Batman takes the unstated third one. Note also that this is not cheating, because in order to save both, he has to risk all three of them to do so. Batman's answer? I don't have to choose as long as I'm willing to take the risks of having both lives.

Something to keep in mind is that dilemmas are just one form of bang. And all bangs tend to morph in action into other things than you expect. Even if you set up a dilemma, you may get a different sort of revelation about the character than you expect. So it's not merely about having morally ambiguous situations. Even how the character handles a situation says something about his values.

What Ralph et al are saying is that it's just as effective to have a villain emerge as to select one before hand as the "real" villain. Let it come out in play. As the players hate a character more and more, have that character behave to their expectations. That is, if they've made the moral decision to go against character X, then you can drop having him be at all sympathetic, and move him to classic villain at that point. But only do so after the players have decided that this guy is the one that they're going to love to hate.

This is an advantage that RPGs have over literature, in that you don't have to craft the villain to be hatable to start. You can let him evolve in to hateableness.

If you have a Richlieu in your game, then he must remain unassailable, and distant. There are always too many palace guards just around the corner to take him on. He's a MacGuffin. The action isn't about defeating him, it's about doing the right things when people like him are in control. He's backdrop, context. No more a character for these purposes than an erupting volcano that sets things up so that the characters must act.

And, yeah, sure, in the end the PCs may get to kill him. But, even then, the drama won't be about whether or not they get him, but why they're fighting him right then. It'll be because he's threatening something that the PCs care about, and it's that potential loss that we worry about. Not about whether the villain lives or dies.

The story's not about the villain. It's about the PCs. The villain exists only so that he can be what he needs to be to make it so that the PCs have something to fight for that we, the players, care about. We've been taught to think of NPCs as characters in their own rights, with their own goals, motives, etc. And they should have those things. But the reason that they have some particular motive is not to suit some particular vision of that NPC, but to hightlight something about the PC.

This is the reverse of what we're normally taught: make a world, stick the PCs in, and see what happens. Instead, do the reverse, look at the PCs, make the world such that it draws them out, and see what happens.

Mike

[Barna]

OK, status update. Right now I've got a handful of NPC's divided into three categories (opponents, neutral, allies) and with their goals & objectives fleshed out. I also have a VERY sketchy list of "scenes & conflicts". It's basically stuff like the following

Duel between Diego and the noble from Lamolle, Martin Bissete du Gloyure. The noble may be enraged is Diego wins and may try to duel "to the death". See how Diego handles the risk of being killed if he does not use lethal force.

I beleive I got the gist of the whole "scene framing" thing, but I still feel a bit unprepared to actually run the adventure. What other gimmicks can I plan out in advance while continuing with the conflict-based approach to adventure design?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Waitasec. You just made a wrong turn here, I think.

1) This conflict seems to come out of nowhere. Where'd this Martin Bissete guy come from? Why's he duelling Diego? Is this a character from earlier in the campaign that's showing up again? If so, fine, you just need to tie him in -- assuming Diego's player really does care about this guy (as an enemy, presumably) and enjoy roleplaying scenes with him (beating him up, presumably). If not, then how does this Martin character tie into anything else you're setting up? More importantly, how do you get the players interested in him?

2) This conflict is still just a fight. I mean, there's a bit of a moral decision, "do I kill him dead or run a slightly greater risk of harm trying to put him down nonlethally," but it's not a big Bang, especially not if the NPC in question has no history (real-play history, now, not backstory) to make the player care. Now, if Diego had some obnoxious petty noble trying to pick a fight with him while Diego was about some other urgent business -- saving the village, escaping Villanova, whatever -- then there's a bit of a Bang: do you let this guy insult you and walk away, or do you teach him a lesson at the risk of delaying everything else you're doing? But even so, it's not much of a Bang until we know why Martin Bissete is after Diego -- hey, maybe Martin is in the right, maybe Diego slept with his wife or something, which ups the options to "fight, run, or apologize."

3) Finally, here's the big thing I want to emphasize:

....I've got a handful of NPC's divided into three categories (opponents, neutral, allies) and with their goals & objectives fleshed out.....

Goals & objectives, excellent. "Opponents, neutral, allies" -- NO. The players decide who they're going ally with and who they're going to fight. Even a character that the PCs fought last session should be a possible ally this time, if the PCs decide to join forces against some even more dangerous enemy, or to let bygone be bygones, or to help the guy out because, yeah, he's a jerk, but now he's really down on his luck, and they don't kick a man when he's down; even a character that the PCs helped last session should be a possible enemy this time, if the PCs decide that their former friend is really getting too big for his britches, or asking too much of them, or taking revenge on someone in a really dishonorable way and abusing the PCs' protection to do it, or just lied to them.

And, yes, people changing sides all the time is totall in-genre with swashbucklers. Think of all the times you've seen two characters duelling fiercely and then the Even Worse Pirates or the King's Soldiers or the Cardinal's Guard or something shows up, and they look at each other, and one says, "Truce?" and the other says "For now!" and in a second they're back-to-back, holding off the new enemy together.

[Barna]

Martin Bissete du Gloyure once duelled Diego in the town of Lamolle after the PC's exposed him as a corrupt gobernor. The duel was interrupted by a noble of higher station and Martin and Diego agreed to finish their quarrel someday. It's mainly a matter of honor, which is quite important to these sort of characters.

Regarding allies & opponents, I mainly want to categorize their initial stance towards the PC's. The adventure starts with a number of set relationships between the NPC's and the PC's, which as you say can change depending on the PC's choices.

I've just read the "Well of Souls" adventure and I think I understand the idea a bit more, but it's still a bit foggy. I feel I haven't yet written all the stuff I need for the adventure.

[Mike Holmes]

OK, status update. Right now I've got a handful of NPC's divided into three categories (opponents, neutral, allies) and with their goals & objectives fleshed out.

This sounds good, but, again, I think that the "opponents, neutral, allies" thing is not a good idea. As I was saying above, it's pre-setting the role of the character. Instead simply keep your goals and objectives, and let these characters become villains if they do, or whatever. What's very important, however, is that you have to start thinking of these characters as tools to highlight the PCs stories. Very importantly, this means that "allies" and such should be providing as much conflict as "opponents."

I mean, even if they're goals are the same as the PCs, and if they're sympathetic to the PCs, NPC "allies" should still be used to produce conflict for PCs. For instance, the PC intends to wait one more day before attacking, but the NPC "ally" has an agenda that calls for the attack to be made today. So they come and plead with the PC to attack earlier than they wanted to, perhaps in a tactically unsound way. See the conflict created? Does the PC help his supposed ally, or does he turn them down?

"Conflict" does not mean competition really. Conflict means that the situation is such that the PC has to decide between at least two (and hopefully more) routs to take. He's in a situation where he can't have his cake and eat it too, and has to decide which way to go. Friendly NPCs are, if anything, superior to enemy NPCs at producing such conflicts. With enemies, often the only thing to do is to kill them - no conflict there at all, the character has only one reasonable choice. Enemy conflicts are like "Do I kill him, or let him run off and save the girl instead?"

I also have a VERY sketchy list of "scenes & conflicts".

Again, you're heading in the right direction, but just make that "conflicts." Don't think in terms of scenes at all. Because then you can get the conflict into play in many circumstances. If it's a "scene" at all, then, by definition, you have certain pre-requisites of people or locations, etc.

For instance:

Duel between Diego and the noble from Lamolle, Martin Bissete du Gloyure. The noble may be enraged is Diego wins and may try to duel "to the death". See how Diego handles the risk of being killed if he does not use lethal force.

The conflcit here is the latter sentence. The "scene" part is the first sentence for the most part. That is, as long as the duel occurs for a reasonable in-game cause, it doesn't matter if it's Martin or somebody else. So you could state the first line more like:

"Diego ends up with a duel with somebody impetuous who will ("may" is no good here) try to duel to the death if he loses preliminarily."

This way, this bang can be applied at any time that it seems fun to do so. You don't have to wait for a time to frame Martin in, you can have it occur with any uppity noble who the PC happens to get into any conflict with.

Now, all that said, because of the history, it may in fact be best to try to make it Martin who ends up dueling Diego. What I say above should be taken as a general rule, and it might not apply specifically here. If this is the case here, if it's really cool to have it be Martin, then what you want to do is to say, "Martin shows up looking for Diego, and demanding a duel." This is probably what you meant, but do you see my point? The events you list should give you a direct idea of how you're going to use your GM authority to create a situation that the player has to respond to. For instance, don't frame Martin in saying, "You spy Martin across the market" unless you want the possibility of the player avoiding the conflict (actually that could be a fine bang iteself, depending on the player). Simply say, "As you go through the market, you hear a voice behind you telling you to stand En Guard, and turning you see that it's Martin."

Very simply, whatever your intended bang, frame to the bang.

What other gimmicks can I plan out in advance while continuing with the conflict-based approach to adventure design?

This is going to be the hard part for a while. That is, the feeling that you're playing without a net. But what you're adjusting to is the fact that you're counting on your players to respond in play, to drive play. The bangs are, in fact, your safety net. You may not need them once you start letting the players drive play.

Yeah, you may feel almost guilty, it's so easy compared to the work you may have done in previous games. Like you're not doing enough to ensure that the game will go. But it will go. Truth be told, your first attempt at playing this way may end up less than brilliant. I doubt it'll be a distaster, but it might not be great. Know what? That's part of learning new techniques.

But I will say that I think you'll pick it up pretty quickly, and by the second session, you'll be doing very well. And I also think that you'll find that problems in play come from old GMing habits that slip their way in. Just remember, trust the players. They're smart, too, they can figure out fun things to have happen. It's just so much easier when you have all your players making plot along with you, than it is trying to do it all alone, and having to fight the players to get it done.

BTW, I mostly agree with Sydney, but then again, I throw out a lot of rather subtle bangs that often get washed under. I like it when they do catch however. So I don't think it's bad that you have some subtle ones like this. Just be sure that you have some whoppers ready. Think "life-altering event" sort of stuff.

Mike

[Barna]

Glad you posted Mike, I was starting to think you were leaving me all alone with this Narrative monster breathing on my back ;).

I think I now understand what Sidney and you mention. True to tell, it´s hard for me to think in terms of conflict only, without attaching it to a scene. However, I´ll give it a try. I´ll stock up on bangs so that I can throw those at my players if things get dull, and see how it goes. Also, I think I´m gonna add half a dozen other NPC´s since many of the original ones I wrote about are actually "powers behind the scenes" and will not be interacting directly with the characters in this adventure (Villanova and King Pyram for example). I´ll try to flesh out the ship´s crew a bit more (since they had already decided to go by ship to the Highland Marches) and flesh out both a few folks from Escavalon and other inhabitants of the area, just in case the characters decide not to stay in town.

So, in order to recap: NPC´s (lots of those), Bangs (again, lotsa) and generic reminders and suggestions on how to tie the former to the later. That pretty much sums the writting I need to do, right?

My exams at college are killing me, but as soon as I get a chance I intend to test this new approach. I am really excited to see how it can change the way me and my group roleplay. Besides, writting adventures is definetly much more interesting for me in this format. It gets SO dull sometimes having to weave plots and locations one after the other.

[Sydney Freedberg]

I just want to echo Mike on one key point:

even if their goals are the same as the PCs, and if they're sympathetic to the PCs, NPC "allies" should still be used to produce conflict for PCs....

Absolutely. If the PCs save a damsel in distress, she should immediately insist on marrying one of them, or have them escort her home to her father right now, or help her take a terrible revenge on all the people the PCs saved her from but let get away. If the PCs bring food to a village full of starving people, the village elders should immediately demand that they stay on to protect the town from bandits, or oversee the food distribution so that riots don't break out, or punish the local merchant who's been hoarding food. If the PCs bring a secret message to the King, he should immediately give them another message to take back, or offer them command of an army, or ask them to assassinate a traitor the King can't legally execute for some reason. Escalate, escalate, escalate. "That's great, you decided that helping this particular person was your priority? Well, how about now that they need you to do this? Or now? Even now? Even now?"

[Mike Holmes]

Well said, Sydney. I've been reiterating a lot lately that failure is best if it means more conflict, but, as you're pointing out, success should mean more conflict, too. Conflict is what drives play, after all, and gives us things to play to.

As far as what to write, you've got the idea. Just keep in mind that NPCs are important only such that they can create a bang, or are likely to be affected or prodded into action by the result of a player's character responding to a bang. If you can't see how they are either the source of a bang, or will get involved after play begins because of player decisions, then they're superfluous.

Only write in NPCs such that you can see how they'll get entangled in the action. That's why the "relationship maps" and such - these show how if NPC A is affected, NPC B will do something about it.

Mike

[Barna]

How exactly does one write a relationship map? I made a few experimental tries following the general directions of one of the pags linked on this thread, but I suppose there´s more than one way to go at it. This page suggested linking characters with a line having a figure in the middle; circles were shared goals, triangles were opposing goals and blocks were relationships of authority or the like.

On the other hand, I´m still a bit shy on the whole Bangs thing, so I´ll post a few of them, just to see if they are indeed what you suggested.

Diego duels to the first blood with an opponent who, if beaten, will try to fight to the death.

Fiorella finds out that the study she wrote and an opponent stole has bene published with great intellectual acclaim by her opponent. However, the Inquisition has deemed it heretic work and wants to punish it´s creator. Will she try to claim ownership?

One of Michael Benning´s men is severely wounded. Michael snaps and tries to execute the enemy who wounded the man, even though he has surrendered.

Vassily & Remy must decide if they help the town of Escavalon, sacrificing any chance to catch up with Diego & Fiorella.

Vassily & Remy find out that Father Martelli is a spy for Prince Villanova and has been informing him on the whereabouts of their friend Michael Benning

More to come later, if inspiration strikes.

[Mike Holmes]

The term Relationship Map was formalized by Ron Edwards for Sorcerer (in, IIRC, Sword & Sorcerer, though maybe it's Sorcerer's Soul). Those are very specific in some ways, and most other techniques have some similarities. For Ron's method, you take a set of characters, write their names on a piece of paper (or equivalent), and then draw solid lines between the ones who have relationships of blood or sex. That is, only the characters who a character is closely related to (mother, father, brother, sister, son, daughter, etc) or with whom the character has had sexual relations, get a solid line between them. The actual relationship is usually listed along the line or otherwise indicated. Other characters are listed around this core, and you can connect these with dotted lines, or otherwise indicate any connections they may have. But very specifically, the term "relationship" here refers to the specific relationships of blood and sex because these are inalterable facts about a character. A father can decide that he no longer likes his son, but he's still his son's father. You can't take back the fact that you've had sex with somebody.

And that's really about all there is to the physical process. To come up with the characters and their relationships in a way that's potentially problematic, a technique that Ron suggests is stealing such maps from books, movies, whatever media. The classic example is Romeo & Juliet. You have the two star-crossed lovers in the middle of the map, and then their familes each radiating off of them.

In play, it's simple to see at a glance the line between Juliet and her father who we know wants her to marry the Prince, and who we know will be outraged if/when he finds out about her being involved with Romeo. That is, if something happens to threaten Juliet, we know that her father will step in to do what he thinks is right for her.

So, in play, when a PC does something to threaten the Juliet character, father will step in, right? The map simply serves as a reminder of those links. Oh, there's Tybalt over there, we should put him into action as well after he hears about Romeo.

Now, here's the tricky part, setting it up at the start, and not playing out the plot. That is, one time I used Twelvth Night to set up my relationship map, and it's a good one. But then I proceeded to have all of the bangs just be events from the play. Big mistake. You don't want the plot to revolve around the NPCs. So how does a R-Map not end up driving the plot?

First, give everyone "Hamlet Syndrome." That is they're all hesitating about whatever the current conflict is about. As such, instead of dealing with things directly, they latch onto the PCs as a means to try to move forward. It's this grabbing the PCs that attaches the PCs onto the relationship map.

The example that Ron gives that I recall is that he often uses detective novels, because these almost always have this sort of set-up. The detective runs into somebody on the R-Map who needs them to do something, and once they've impacted the map, the entanglements have them off and running, getting more and more involved with the NPCs on the map.

Now, there's another technique out there called "Storymapping." It's probably too late in your game to use this, but it'll illustrate a point. This method was invented by the estimable Seth Ben-Ezra for the game Alyria. In that game, before play starts, all the players brainstorm some set of characters that have a central conflict going on. In some ways it's like they create something like a relationship map. But then the players decide on which of these characters they want to play. So instead of having to "grab" the PCs, the PCs are already intertwined on the map by default. They shouldn't have "Hamlet Syndrome" because they are the PCs, and therefore the center of the story.

The Story Mapping method doesn't emphasize the "blood and sex" relationships so much (though these are often used, of course), but instead relies on the characters being related to each other through all having an interest in a common conflict between them.

A similar method is what Chris Chinn advises people to use in creating scenarios, especially ones where you don't know who the characters are going to be to start. He and Peter Nordstrand used this method in creating the Well of Souls scenario, and I refer to it as the "Centralizing Conflict" method. Basically you have something like an R-Map in that it has a number of NPCs on it, but like the Story Map method, they're related to each other by being involved in some central conflict. Everybody on the map has an interest either directly in the central conflict, or an interest in somebody else who has an interest in the central conflict. These people then, like the R-Map method, need the PCs to move forward with achieving their goals in terms of the central conflict.

You'll note that these three methods all overlap and have strong similarities to each other. I have my own similar method that involves creating rather huge maps of characters, not unlike Verheaghe's set of characters above. What these amount to are conglomerate maps composed of multiple Relationship Maps, and Centralizing Conflict sets of NPCs. This is good for more serial long term play, whereas R-Maps and Story Maps are better for more episodic play. R-Maps, to be clear, are designed pretty much to go one "story arc" if you will, or, rather in Sorcerer mechanical terms, until the character reaches (or decisively fails to reach) his goal. Something like 5 sessions, perhaps.

Using the conglomerate mapping idea, I've managed to get more than 50 sessions out of one map. That includes having entirely new segments arrive on the map at times. Generally this is what you do with all of these techniques if you want to extend play, you introduce new NPCs that introduce new problems for the PCs.

And, again, this is what's critical. These NPCs are created solely for the purpose of finding a way to put focus on the PCs. Grabbing PCs onto the map is only the first part of this. As play progresses, bangs are typically formed by some NPC presenting the PC with some decision to make.

We like to make Jargo out of the term "Grab" to make it opposed to "Hook." This is important to understand. In typical scenario design, there will be a list of ways to Hook the character into play. The most common one is to simply have somebody offer the character money. And it makes sense, too...would the character turn down a chance to make money? Probably not.

But, let's look at Ron's detective novel example again. It's a cliche for the main character PI to say, "I knew she was trouble, and the money wasn't going to cover the danger I was getting into. But I also knew I'd do it anyway. I'd always had a soft spot for a blonde dame in high heels."

But I'm not saying here that one needs to make the appeal personal. That's often the solution, but it may occur that for some particular player with the right character, that, in fact, money is the right way to "Grab" the player.

And that's the key: notice above I say "grab the player." Not "hook" the character. Often, in fact, players abhor their characters being hooked. In fact, players so used to being jerked around by hooks often tend to file their characters down so that there are no rough edges to hook. As I always say, this explains the high rate of PC orphans in RPGs. If you don't have a family, the GM can't hook you with, "You return to find out that your sister has been kidnapped."

Grabbing means looking at what interests the player about the character. Fortunately in HQ, there are some straightforward indicators set down right there on the character sheet. Why did the player select "Sympathy for Commoners?" Well, likely because he wants that to come up in play.

Money is often used to hook because everybody wants money. But if a player didn't put "Greedy" on his character sheet, then his character is only as greedy as everyone else, and the player probably won't be grabbed by an offer of money. If he does have Greedy, then money is where it's at.

But don't simply offer money if they have Greedy, that's still a hook. All "Grabs" to get a character in contact with a R-map should have one of two other qualities to them:
1) The situation should just throw them into things without the player able to decide anything about whether or not to participate. This sounds like railroading, but that's a term with problematic definition. Without going into that, the point is that as long as you as GM are leading a player to something interesting, then they'll appreciate this use of GM authority. So, with the Greedy example, simply start out saying, "Your character accepted this large payment from this guy and is now checking into something for him." As long as you then move immediately on to some action he likes (probably a bang for narrativism), the player will appreciate this.
2) The "Grab" should be a bang itself. By definition this means more than one player option. But it also means in this case, to be a grab, that no matter what the player decides, he's still stuck to the map. Just stuck in different ways. A classic example for the Greedy character would be for both sides of a conflict to offer him essentially the same job working against the other side. Even if he says no to both, then each side suspects him of colluding with the other side. Call this the Yojimbo bang. The player here has several ways to go: he can decide to take side A's money, he can decide to take side B's money, he can decide to try to stay neutral...but it doesn't matter, because no matter which he chooses, he's now intertwined.

Now, sans knowing the players and their characters, it's not easy to come up with grabs. Well of Souls, as a scenario written for any characters who come along, has this problem to some extent (though in part solves it pretty elegantly, too). So the suggestion we give is to do all this prep only after you have the characters. You do in this case, so you should be able to get the full impact of the techniques. In fact, you have a bonus that most don't have in this sort of prep at the start of a game which is that you have seen the players playing these characters for a while already. Just looking at the character sheet is only the beginning of trying to find out what players like about playing their characters. Knowing the players helps a lot, too. But the most information comes from watching the players respond to play. When you see what they're enthusiastic about with regards to the characters, this all becomes much simpler.

So look back at your previous play. What do the players like most about their characters and their issues? What's dramatic to them? Take this sort of value or issue, figure out bangs that hit that, and then figure out NPCs and whole maps of them that will tend to provide these things. Again, that's the reverse of normal prep.

Normal
1. Design Plot.
2. Design NPCs
3. Figure out how to hook the character to the plot.

NPC Mapping
1. Figure out what the player is interested in, in terms of the character.
2. Figure out how to grab the players interest situationally in play.
3. Design NPCs that can create these grabby situations, including maps of them that will create more reactions once play begins.

I can't honestly say that I create every NPC thinking only of them in terms of how they can grab the PC...really you only have to think of how one will. So I often take maps wholesale (I find Operas work well for some reason), and then once I have them mapped out, I alter at least one NPC until he is able to grab the player's interest well.

Now, this all said, I think you've followed these rules fairly well not even having heard them. These are not new ideas, really, simply a formalization of them that you seem to have already picked up on pretty well. Let's look at the bangs individually:

Diego duels to the first blood with an opponent who, if beaten, will try to fight to the death.

This can be quite grabby. That is, if the player is interested in things like justice, revenge, etc, or avoiding them once he's killed or refused to kill some individual, that may put him firmly on the map. Is there some NPC who, if he is the duelist in question, fits this description? Somebody who's relatives would come after him if the character kills him? And who other people might, say, try to convince him to kill should he hesitate?

Fiorella finds out that the study she wrote and an opponent stole has bene published with great intellectual acclaim by her opponent. However, the Inquisition has deemed it heretic work and wants to punish it´s creator. Will she try to claim ownership?

Oh, excellent bang. Can this be engineered to put the character firmly on the NPC map? Do all of the potential decisions that the player might make mean that other NPCs will move to take action?

One of Michael Benning´s men is severely wounded. Michael snaps and tries to execute the enemy who wounded the man, even though he has surrendered.

I see you took to heart the advice about friends causing complications. Very nice. Is there some way you can make Benning hooked into the other NPCs? Such that no matter what the PCs do, their decision impacts some other NPCs? Perhaps some other NPC wants revenge on Benning, and will either reward/punish the PC depending on how they react to Benning's act?

Vassily & Remy must decide if they help the town of Escavalon, sacrificing any chance to catch up with Diego & Fiorella.

This is a good bang, technically, but it's a bad grab. In that one of the decisions is, essentially, to walk away from the map. Ah, but wait, if the village has some reason to feel vengeant against the PCs if they don't help, or something like that, then maybe things can be entangled. Actually, the "Roads to Rome" solution here is for them to discover, should they decide to persue Diego and Fiorella that the pair haven't left. That's dangerous, however. If you do enough of this sort of shenanegin, players tend to get the idea that you're manipulating their decisions through plotting. What you don't want is for the player to feel, "OK, I get it, you want us to help the village first."

Better is if you can get it such that Diego and Fiorella are somehow related into something that's happening in the village, so that no matter which decision the player's make that it'll mean more trouble.

Vassily & Remy find out that Father Martelli is a spy for Prince Villanova and has been informing him on the whereabouts of their friend Michael Benning

This sounds like a good grab, but only if it's a good bang first. That is, once they find out that he's a spy, what choices do they have? Is there any reason that they wouldn't try to remove him? Or is it simply a question of how they remove him? If, in fact, there was some reason that the PCs would not want to harm Father Martelli, then this is a bang.

In any case, make sure that things are such that no matter what they PCs do, that NPCs will take some action. In this case, it's obvious that if Martelli is removed, that the prince may make some move to either replace him, or to exact revenge, etc. What's not as clear is what any NPC will do if he's not removed (or if he's removed in a specific way). Maybe Benning has an axe to grind with Martelli. Or make up some new NPC who does want him out of the way, perhaps by murder which the PCs may not want to commit.

In all the above, I keep saying, "Make sure that the NPCs have a reason to respond." That's not always 100% true, but the more you can make it likely, the better. Tweak your map to make it so (often using Ron's rule about relationships can help - perhaps Martelli is Benning's half-brother). But then also be looking to what sorts of bangs that these responses might be. Simply saying "He attacks you because he doesn't like what you did" is not always a bang.

Anyhow, any help?

Mike