Event Driven Adventure Design

[Kedamono]

One of the main complaints about commercial adventure modules for RPGs is that they either follow a linear design, or they are a list of encounters, where each encounter must be "checked off" by the Players so that they can solve the scenario. These tend to guide or railroad the players to a set resolution or group of resolutions. Encounters tend to be static, the NPCs waiting on the arrival of the PCs before anything happens.

There is the other kind of adventure design and that is the "adventure seed". The adventure seed is not a full fledge scenario, just the basic plot for one, with the occasional NPC list tacked on. Usually they have multiple endings allowing the GM to pick one that best suits his group and style of play.

Adventure seeds allow the GM to customize the scenario more than the more traditional linear designs, but still, these are more suited for generic settings and "Home campaigns" and do not further the official published campaign for the RPG.

What is needed is a scenario design that allows more freedom for the GM to improvise as he can with an adventure seeds, but provides more background and structure for the official campaign.

What I'm proposing is what I call "Event Driven Adventures". Instead of a collection of encounters, the adventure is driven by a series of events arranged in a timeline and these events can diverge from the main plot line.

Physically there would be too books: the Events book and the Settings book. The Events book contains the series of the primary events and alternative events that take place within the environs of the Settings book.

The Settings book can be as big as a world book, or it can be small as a regional book. The beauty of the Settings book is that it is independent of the Events book. You as a game designer can then produce more Events books that take place in the same setting, or across multiple settings. The GM benefits in that he now has a setting to run adventures in, along with the one that was packaged in the set.

Events are not "encounters" renamed. Encounters are typically PC driven, where Events are NPC driven. Also, as an event, the PCs can interact with the event anywhere along its occurrence. This lets the PCs to show up when the Event is halfway done. The Event happens whether the PCs show up or not, and will trigger another event that the PCs may or may not know about ahead of time.

Events are arranged in timelines with branches that can be triggered by the PCs' actions. There is the primary timeline: A series of events that will occur if the PCs do nothing at all. Then there are the branch timelines that can occur if the PCs do interact and change the outcome of the primary event.

The branch events are the crux of this design, as well as the bane of the design. If not limited, they can quickly get out of hand. So my advice is to limit the branches based on the goals of the NPCs, and if at all possible, reunite a branch back into the primary timeline. Of course the NPCs will not have the same capabilities that they would have had if they had succeeded earlier.

At least two of the events, typically in the early events, that are what I call "hook events". The goal of these events is to "hook" the players and get them involved with the plot line. You need two, because the first one may not work, but the second one will.

Next: A sample set of Events.

[LordSmerf]

Hey John, and welcome to the Forge.

I'm curious.  What happens to your Event tree if the players do something totally unexpected?  Say that the adventure is about the assassination of a political leader.  What happens if the players say, "Screw this assassination stuff, I want to run a flower shop!"?

That example is off the wall, but it could be something equally valid that isn't covered by your listed events.  For example, perhaps you provide event trees for players to take if they side with the assassins or if they side with the guys protecting the target.  What if they want to play both sides against the middle?

If the answer is, "The events happen anyway, no matter what the players do," then you run into some problems with your players being unable to influence the world in any major way.  If they are able to influence the world in major ways, then event trees will likely be far too restrictive to cover for the insane activities they will attempt to undertake...

Thomas

[Kedamono]

Thanks Tom!

Well, if the players want to run their flower shop, they run their flower shop and the events occur. If they choose not to get involve, then that is their choice. And in any case, the fault lies not with me as the designer, but with the GM for picking up an adventure that didn't suit his players.

As the designer, it behooves me to state in the advertising and on the box that this adventure is aimed at Law Enforcement, Espionage, or similar characters. Also, the assassination plot would be part of a larger series of events, that would have plenty of hooks for the players to get involved in.

A big hurdle in Event driven scenarios is finding good examples. One good example is the movie "Black Sunday", where several of the events by the "NPCs" occur in the absence of the of the "PCs". In fact the protagonists are playing catch up almost all through the movie.

But is must be noted that the protagonists are well suited to the adventure, they are Mossad and FBI agents. I can't see running something like Black Sunday with flower shop owners... :-)

But you do raise another good point: What do you do about Players who go off on a tangent in an Event Driven Adventure?

Let me answer that with another question: What do you about players who go off on a tangent in a Linear Adventure?

In terms of the Linear Adventure, not a dang thing.

In terms of an Event Driven Adventure, well, you can do a lot, especially if you as the designer carefully detail out the motivations and goals of the NPCs, the average GM will be able to improvise a new timeline, and more than likely adapt the existing ones to the new reality being forged. Obviously if the PCs are going to play both sides against each other, the NPC events may in fact still happen, just slightly altered.

I hope that answers your question...

[M. J. Young]

I'm a tad unclear as to where the line is between "event-driven scenarios" and "published metaplot".

Again, if the event-driven scenario says that Senator Shuffley is assassinated, but the players manage to foil the assassination, what do you do in the next book when Senator Shuffley's replacement proves to be involved in a conspiracy?

I'm not attempting to undermine your idea. I'm looking to understand how it escapes the problems of what seem to be similar ideas launched in the past.

--M. J. Young

[Vaxalon]

Alright, how about a situation where a major NPC, around which the events often turn, gets killed early on?

I'm not saying that what you're talking about isn't possible (I'm writing one) but you have to be very, very careful to consider as many possibilities as you can... and you end up writing far, far more material than the PC's will end up encountering.

[Kedamono]

Thanks for your synchronisitic replies M.J. and Vaxalon!

What do you do when the players get that lucky shot and take out Mr. Big?

What do you do if Senator Shuffley doesn't bite the big one?

Both good questions, and both have their counter questions:

What happens if the players do not take out Mr. Big?

&

What happens if Senator Shuffley does bite the big one?

All of these are the same question: What happens if the fate decreed for the NPC does not happen?

My first answer is that is linear design thinking. In event driven design, there really isn't one answer or resolution. There can be several.

Let's take Senator Shuffley for instance. He has three probably fates: Alive, Dead, Alive but not in office.

Also, the assumption is that the assassination attempt on Senator Shuffley is the climax of the adventure. More than likely it is the event before the climax. As M.J. pointed out, the real climax is finding out that the Senator's replacement, the Honorable Horace Pedantry is neck deep in the conspiracy. And hopefully enough information has been given during the adventure that the players figure out that Pedantry is the mastermind behind the attempt that they get to him just before he tries to kill Shuffley with his own hands...

As for Mr. Big snuffing it in the first event, well, that's a good one.

OK, I have an answer: If someone is present in an event, he's fair game and therefore is expendable.

If Mr. Big appears in the first event, then he can be offed, arrested, sequestered, or otherwise taken out of the picture. Why? Because Mr. Big is the frontman for Mr. Bigger, a well heeled, pillar of the community, who has the police commissioner in his back pocket, and the mayor is his puppet.

Or Mr. Big was the main man in charge of Event #1, but now that he's dead, in Event #2b the rest of the gang picks a new boss and go off on a different crime spree.

But the real problem is that you can't really design a game that is proof against Kamikaze Beserker PCs, who blow through events designed for guile and intrigue like bread through a seagull.

Event Driven Adventures are not for players who think with their swords/guns, but for players who think.

The last question about how do you follow up in the next adventure? Well, you can't. The Event Driven Adventure must be complete, in that it ends in a resolution of sorts, with most of the plot lines tied up.

Now remember, the Setting doesn't change, or it shouldn't change much, so you can set a different adventure in the same Setting.

But as Vaxalon points out, this can lead to big event trees, so it's behooves me as the designer to keep the branches to a minimum and make sure that any plot holes are throughly plastered over or at least accounted for.

To be honest, I'm still in the stages of designing my first one, but I decided to share my concept now, before I get all the bugs worked out and perhaps gain some wisdom from the rest of you!

Thanks in advance!

[Callan S.]

In terms of the flower shop, I don't think it's unfair for a product to say 'X, Y and Z are our focuses with this product, not A, B, or C. You'll get best results if your group agree's to pursue this area.' I mean, panadol designers don't need to accomidate users shoving the capsule up their nose, in order to take it. :)

In terms of the time line and such, I think what you really need is a collection of resources which help you form something interesting extending from player actions.

Instead of: Important person X is going to get assasinated and here's a bunch of things you can do to stop it.

Instead its: If your players start laying into a significant evil organisation, this organisation, as it's pushed into a corner, will make moves to assasinate X.

As a GM, I'd prefer to be helped to respond in interesting ways to the players.

[shlo]

Hello,

I discovered a similar Event Driven design in Unknown Armies' "Pinfeathers" scenario (*). I had to test it with some players to realise that it actually works. It works BUT players don't understand the whole story, because of behind the scene events, and the GM has to explain some facts after the game or let the players wondering what happened.

Odds are a "NPC driven" plot will have players skirting the story and being frustrated about it.

Shlo.

(*) This scenario is available for free on Atlas Games' website : http://www.atlas-games.com/unknownarmies/index.php

[daMoose_Neo]

I get what he's saying, and for published, company supported material its not a half bad way to go.
Its kind of like Butterfly Effect. You have say 5 guideposts, or 5 dots on the page. You can draw ANYWHERE on the page, so long as they dots connect.

- You decide instead of joining the security detail for the upcoming senatorial ball that you want to open a flower shop. So, you're minding your own business taking care of your new, small flowershop when a young woman bristkly walks in and asks your rates and how long it would take you do a dozen fresh floral arrangements using Yellow and Black flowers, ribbons ec. These just so happen to be the colors for the Seneator's family and you can tell by the badge just under her tunic she's a coordnator for the ball. As you're talking to her, you notice a gentleman standing outside the shop, across the street. He notices you looking at him and bolts around the corner and into the alley.

Construct a basic timeline of things that WILL happen and things that COULD happen, or WAYS things that WILL happen COULD happen. The movie Time Machine, how many ways could his fiance have been killed? Several, we saw two: the mugging and the buggy. You can go anywhere, do anything, but those actions will somehow be intertwined with these actions.

[shlo]

(...)You have say 5 guideposts, or 5 dots on the page. You can draw ANYWHERE on the page, so long as they dots connect.  (...) Construct a basic timeline of things that WILL happen and things that COULD happen, or WAYS things that WILL happen COULD happen.(...)

I think this kind of design is story driven or PC driven rather than NPC driven, since the NPC agenda is reshaped to fit the player actions and deliver the story.
Don't get me wrong, I admire your description of events design and totally agree with this kind of design, but IMO this is different from Kedamono's Event Driven Adventure design proposition, which doesn't convince me for the moment.

[Marco]

I recently read a Star Cluster module (Flyingmice LLC) La Famiglia Amalfi which is presented as pure situation. The starting conditions are specified, the NPC's goals and probable courses of actions are specified.

There is a (rough) time line of events but there isn't a tree-structure or flow-chart.

Additionally, since you brought up the problems of Mr. Big being killed in scene one, here is an essay on our site about how to construct a game that may resolve some of those problems.

Fault Tolerant Game Design

-Marco

[Kedamono]

Don't get me wrong, I admire your description of events design and totally agree with this kind of design, but IMO this is different from Kedamono's Event Driven Adventure design proposition, which doesn't convince me for the moment.

Hi Shlo, I'm curious, what is it about my proposal that you don't care for? I really want to know, as it is still in the design stage, and I rather find out that flaws there are before I really invest a ton of time in it than to find out later that I didn't see a potential problem.

[shlo]

Hi Shlo, I'm curious, what is it about my proposal that you don't care for? I really want to know, as it is still in the design stage, and I rather find out that flaws there are before I really invest a ton of time in it than to find out later that I didn't see a potential problem.

Hi!
First let me apologize if I said something like "I don't care with your proposal", I'm not fluent in english which isn't my native language and I didn't mean anything like that.  =)

One thing that puzzled me was the following sentences : "Also, as an event, the PCs can interact with the event anywhere along its occurrence. This lets the PCs to show up when the Event is halfway done. The Event happens whether the PCs show up or not (...)". I think it is preferable for the players and for the story to alter the timing and whatever in order to have the PC see exactly what you want them to see. IMO if something crucial happens during an event, players HAVE to see it unless the scenario says the contrary. With the Event Driven design, in the worst case scenario, the designer works on events the players will never see: his work is wasted and players have no fun.

Something else: "Events are arranged in timelines with branches that can be triggered by the PCs' actions." I think it's too much work, and again a waste of good ideas: what if a branche with excellent adventure elements is skipped? I prefer daMoose_Neo's "draw a line anywhere as long the dots connect." Those dots are the excellent and/or crucial parts, the rest doesn't need to be more than some very short suggestions on how to draw this line. I read a very similar approach in Robin D. Laws' "Good Game Mastering" book.

But maybe I don't have the same idea about what the PC's challenge is. For me the PC almost automatically follow the story and the chalenge is to go through as well as possible.

[Kedamono]

Thanks Shlo for your reply. I've taken it to heart and agree that are problems in my basic assumptions. This is why I shared my initial ideas with this group.

However, looking at the various comments, I'm modifying the way to create an Event Driven Adventure.

At its heart, it is a situational adventure, where the NPCs all have set goals and reasons and the means to pursue those goals. But as folks have pointed out, a pure situational adventure may not engage the players or have them skirt the edges of the adventure.

That is where Events come in. Events represent the NPC attempt at achieving their goal. And Events can occur without the PCs being present, but the effects of the Event can affect the PCs afterwards. This means that some Events are NPC only, and others may or may not involve the players. Some Events may not involve anyone at all, such as a rain storm or earthquake.
Events can be local to portion of a Setting, or affect the Setting in its entirety. Multiple Events from the same timeline branch can occur at the same time or overlapping. Events can occur inside of larger Events (The biggest snowstorm in weeks occurs, and at the same time, Beaver Bob and his evil henchmen rob the bank.)

So what is an Event? An Event is any set of actions or occurrences that advance the Plot. Isn't an Event just another name for an encounter? Yes and no. A standard encounter is a subset of what makes up an Event.

What else is in an Event?

Well, I'm working on that...

[daMoose_Neo]

Shlo-

Maybe I am mistaken, but even taking the concept Ked provides to an extreme, its still quite similar to real life- a LOT goes on that affects us that never see or have any input on.
What I was seeing wasn't so much the NPC's altering themselves to the PC's action, it was the GM thinking ahead enough that the NPC mechanitions could be far reaching enough to encompass even PCs who almost go out of their way to be included. I mean, a flower shop!  Whats more harmless than that? Well, if an NPC assassin or conspirator was smart enough, they'd think ahead enough to have multiple, but subtle, situations set up by which to take out the mark. The GM need not explicitly detail everything: instead of going to extreme detail with the flower shop when the PCs decide to go ahead with the plot hook as-is, the GM can drop a clue or something about "a fellow down at the flower shop...". Had the PCs been there, that would have played out instead.