"I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse."
Lets just say when the Painters & Dockers come looking for an extra Gratuity the Purser can say No with this person around.
what makes an adventure interesting?
- Thread starter flykiller
- Start date
Lets just say when the Painters & Dockers come looking for an extra Gratuity the Purser can say No with this person around.
The story I mean is the backdrop or scenario, the players' fun come from having an impact in that universe and the "final" story is the one they tell. Which, admittedly, often involves blowing up the backdrop. There's no railroading.
Of Course there are Exceptions
I endeavour to be a great Referee. I take courses, follow advice, and have 38 years of role playing experience, primarily as Ref.
What have my players been requesting recently?
More Combat. More Railroading.
The sandbox is just too intimidating for these 16 year olds. I have run 6 sessions in my new T5 campaign, letting them loose on the Zhodani Consulate as Imperial agents. Currently, they are sheriff deputies in a small Vargr city on Farreach/SPIN. They are straining themselves looking for adventure when it is all around them.
After all the training I have in sandboxing and open role-play, I am having a very difficult time writing a railroad scenario. I believe I am constrained by all the options open to me to decide on just one path of adventure.
I have until this Friday to get it done. Maybe the first combat will be a TPK... then my conundrum will be solved.:rofl:
I endeavour to be a great Referee. I take courses, follow advice, and have 38 years of role playing experience, primarily as Ref.
What have my players been requesting recently?
More Combat. More Railroading.
The sandbox is just too intimidating for these 16 year olds. I have run 6 sessions in my new T5 campaign, letting them loose on the Zhodani Consulate as Imperial agents. Currently, they are sheriff deputies in a small Vargr city on Farreach/SPIN. They are straining themselves looking for adventure when it is all around them.
After all the training I have in sandboxing and open role-play, I am having a very difficult time writing a railroad scenario. I believe I am constrained by all the options open to me to decide on just one path of adventure.
I have until this Friday to get it done. Maybe the first combat will be a TPK... then my conundrum will be solved.:rofl:
Get one of the old D&D modules and run it. I used "Village of Hommelet" for 10 years in 11 different game systems. The funny part is that time continued on, so later groups had to deal with issues caused by earlier groups.
in the old days if we wanted entertainment we had to make much of it ourselves. today entertainment is presented whole and in overwhelming vision and in ever-increasing completeness and complexity. one need only sit and watch. one can only sit and watch. the intent is to make the viewer a passive consumer of the vision.
perhaps your young players are not intimidated but simply never have learned how to ... to play, to act for themselves, to envision for themselves, to explore.
(blink) ... there are courses?
Simply, few things can drag down a group than having too many options or not have a clear path to go next.
First, it just gives them focus to work on. But second, it also help constrain the differing personalities in the group, and the arguments over "what to do next".
You don't want to give them no choices, but if it's too free ranging, it's easy for the group to splinter because "Bob" wants to do X while "Fred" wants to do Y.
It's one thing when X or Y is some particular sub-plot off the main plot, because those plots can be self contained mini-adventures (or mini-spurs using the railroading analogy). But if they're even broader, then it just gets messier and messier.
Few things I hate worse than massive arguments in the group during play. Just sours the entire thing (especially if they're not rule related).
On a mild tangent, at times we'd have scenarios where the Ref basically says "At 10pm, the space station blows up. What do you do."
And by "10 pm" he means wall time, the clock on the wall in the dining room, not the ships chronometer in game.
Things like that can really focus the players, and make combats quite brief.
A mystery to hook players in.
The best adventures are the ones that surprise players, not just by having an enemy leap out at them but throwing something in the players weren't expecting.
For example, they get a patron who wants them to do a small job. They go along, deliver a parcel to someone and think they're going to make an easy Cr10,000. Then when they get the parcel to the client, they find him dead from a gunshot wound, the police are just arriving and the murder weapon is in the parcel.
Go....
I have a solution to the mystery mapped out, I have the NPCs, the real guilty party and the locations already done but how the players get out of this situation is down to them. As a referee, I can do so much to make the adventure interesting but having good players really helps. You can come up with an interesting story, good NPCs, plan some good encounters but if the players just want to shoot things then the exciting adventure isn't going to happen your way. The best players become involved in the story, not just sit around waiting for prompts and gunfight situations.
The best adventures are the ones that surprise players, not just by having an enemy leap out at them but throwing something in the players weren't expecting.
For example, they get a patron who wants them to do a small job. They go along, deliver a parcel to someone and think they're going to make an easy Cr10,000. Then when they get the parcel to the client, they find him dead from a gunshot wound, the police are just arriving and the murder weapon is in the parcel.
Go....
I have a solution to the mystery mapped out, I have the NPCs, the real guilty party and the locations already done but how the players get out of this situation is down to them. As a referee, I can do so much to make the adventure interesting but having good players really helps. You can come up with an interesting story, good NPCs, plan some good encounters but if the players just want to shoot things then the exciting adventure isn't going to happen your way. The best players become involved in the story, not just sit around waiting for prompts and gunfight situations.
never had any players who expressed any interested in mysteries. they always wanted to get in and get the job done, see some interesting sights and do some interesting things along the way.
imtu vargr are hated and seldom interact positively with humanity, but the player group had an npc vargr who was a medic highly skilled at treating humans. I thought for sure that eventually they'd become curious and ask about this, but in two years only one player remarked upon it, and only in passing.
actually, there's not much mysterious about that ....
tha's good.
I had a mad hook (saved from a site somewhere), but I can't find it now. Well, not the exact wording but it went something like this:
(said the the players)
"You are travelling down the road at 90 mph in a stolen cadillac, the police are chasing you, one of you has been shot. There is a nuclear warhead in the trunk. You ask yourself 'what was I thinking??'".
I might actually do that, but in space with less caddy and more speed.
(said the the players)
"You are travelling down the road at 90 mph in a stolen cadillac, the police are chasing you, one of you has been shot. There is a nuclear warhead in the trunk. You ask yourself 'what was I thinking??'".
I might actually do that, but in space with less caddy and more speed.
My current ATU game is just starting up still: they're the operations crew of a lab ship being tasked to do a detailed survey of a backwater system. The tiny population of the system is on the verge of a power struggle. Between the extended presence of the lab ship (potentially the most powerful vessel in the system) and the discoveries the scientific team is likely to make will to bring the whole thing to a head.
In spite of the hints I'm planting, the players probably won't even notice it happening until the other parties make their moves. "They're shooting at each other? Why are they shooting at each other... at US? They're shooting at US? Why are they shooting at US?"
I'm hoping that in the course of the adventure the players hit upon some intrinsic motivations, so I don't have to railroad them quite so much. But in the meantime, if they're going to be Unwitting Pawns in a Bigger But Still Pretty Small game, the least I can do is give them some fireworks.
In spite of the hints I'm planting, the players probably won't even notice it happening until the other parties make their moves. "They're shooting at each other? Why are they shooting at each other... at US? They're shooting at US? Why are they shooting at US?"
I'm hoping that in the course of the adventure the players hit upon some intrinsic motivations, so I don't have to railroad them quite so much. But in the meantime, if they're going to be Unwitting Pawns in a Bigger But Still Pretty Small game, the least I can do is give them some fireworks.
I've noticed you're quite negative about how other people play and run Traveller. You have your way, everyone else has theirs. You don't have to be critical all the time.
surprised, oh yeah. was running a fairly railroad adventure, when one player did something I never would have expected, ever, and blew the whole thing out of the water and left me stuttering and not knowing what to do. that experience started me on the road to my advice for referees thread, linked below in my sig.
as for frustrated - if you're frustrated, you're probably not looking at it the right way (not to be critical. well, not to be excessively critical. oh all right, it's critical. geez.). the story is not just the referee's, it belongs to the players too. what they do becomes the story, and sometimes it's better than what you had in mind. the group to which I referred was fantastic. I set the stage, they made it happen.
You can't see how your comment can be construed as negative? I describe a mystery, just an example, and you come back with "I don't see what's mysterious about that". It's a negative criticism! My players thought it was a mystery, it ran as a mystery. If your game is completely different in tone, fine. But your style of games aren't universal.
