marty
March 9th, 2007, 02:08 AM
what in your opinion is a reasonable time to prepare an adventure?
I like to keep it at a little over 8 hours spread over 3 days, or 6 hours over two days if I'm okay with cutting it close.
Write down notes on the planned storyline (broad for the most part except for a few key action scenes and plot points)
Prepare for possible alternative actions by the PCs (I still try to be as open ended as possible, even when I'm trying to put order and structure in a game)
Coming up with NPCs (Every single person, no matter how obscure must have a name and a decent description)
Set up maps and props
This all would be for 3 hours of gameplay.
I ask is because I want outside opinions for the direction of my game. This whole time I've been going on the premise that I'm conventional, that people do it like I do. I need to flesh out the GM Section of my core rulebook.
1. Write down notes on the planned storyline
I tell experienced GMs to ignore this section.
I give begining GMs a random plot generator. They generate 3 main acts (begining, middle, end). For each act, they generate 3 sub-acts (beginning of begining, middle of begining, etc). Then I teach them how to flesh these out and how to incorporate their big ideas (a cool antagonist, a certain setting, etc).
2. Prepare for possible alternative actions by the PCs
I teach begining GMs that sticking arbitrarily to your written storyline and trying to stuff it down player's throats is a bad idea. Then I tell them how to get around it.
3. Coming up with NPCs
I tell begining GMs what is important about getting NPCs right and how to create interesting ones.
Then I give them some computer tools to randomly generate NPCs. And lessons on how to flesh them out from there.
I've already finished:
Name Generator. My current database has 540 male first names, 540 female first names, and 1080 last names to give 1,166,400 possible combinations. I could get more easily, since I just copy/pasted them from a US census statistic page on names.
Personality Generator. It writes a randomized paragraph on 8 personality aspects (honesty, kindness to strangers, politeness, etc). It also writes differently everytime so that it sounds like a person who knew the NPC was describing it, and not a robot reading a file.
Appearance Generator. This also write a randomized paragraph on the typical crap: eye color, hair color, hairstyle, height, weight, and muscle tone/fat. But not every single one -- it tries to determine if the appearance is distinctive, so it might describe them all, or half, or none at all ("the NPC is completely nondescript"), but the first and last are very rare. It also adds embelishments, like "large chin," "hook nose," or "scar across the buttocks"
Crowd Generator. My game is set in the modern times and the players are supposed to be mercenaries. Civilian crowds are a must, but making so many NPCs is a bitch. The name, personality, and appearance generators are combined with age, gender, job, "brief paragraph of my life story", "what was i doing here", and "what is on me" generators.
I haven't used it for a game yet, but I bet it will add a lot of atmosphere -- It makes the NPCs so quickly that you can afford to have this kind of anal detail. I actually made this for fun but decided I should package it with the game. My reasoning is that if the players kill a civilian NPC (again), and they decide to loot his corpse, they'll feel more like the monsters they are when they find out they killed a mother of 3 on her way to tell her kids their dad is in the hospital dying of cancer.
Military Unit/Terrorist Cell Generator. I took the Crowd Generator to the next level. It's not yet finished, but I've made a lot of progress with it (I can make civilian and most navy ship's crews and now I'm trying to get land and air units done before going to gangs, terrorists, freedom fighters, and the like). It does what the Crowd Generator does and also adds rank, age appropriate to rank, and position in the unit.
I think by now you can tell that my philosophy is "Auto-generate a whole lot of anal details and useless facts, then add a couple of important details to make them unique and your own". I myself discard more than half of what the auto-generators give me, but they give me a very good rolling start -- I want to teach that to beginner GMs.
4. Set up maps and props
Since it's set in modern times, getting maps is easy. One thing I tell them is to print out google maps or use those old street maps people used to have for road trips (before the internet) to use in a pinch.
But for more detailed stuff, miniatures. I'm planning on including really basic miniatures and a few 8.5x11" sheet floorplans to lay out under them.
By miniatures, I really mean plastic wedges... with 1" square faces and a 1/3" base.
^
/ \
/___\
Something like that.
I'll include stickers that you can wrap around the wedges that show different people in action poses (generic civilians, generic military, generic police, generic terrorists, etc).
You can also go online and use a web app to design your own sticker to print out on mailing labels to put on the wedges. You can choose exactly what goes on the "miniature", like the specific kind of clothing, armor, weapons, and pose.
At least that's what I plan. I don't know how people will react to the plastic wedge "miniatures", and I'm still having trouble finding someone to make them for me cheaply. If I can't do it, that's fine, but I'd be terribly disappointed.
I do have some prototypes (hah) made out of cardboard. I think they look cool :(. They're roughly equivalent to 15 or 20mm figures. I know a lot of purists who would puke at the sight of them, but they look great to me.
Using those suggestions and with the help of the tools I'm including, I hope a beginning GM can plan a decent 3-hour adventure in a short time. Maybe even 4 hours over two days.
That would be quite a surprise if I found out people typically take longer or shorter.
I like to keep it at a little over 8 hours spread over 3 days, or 6 hours over two days if I'm okay with cutting it close.
Write down notes on the planned storyline (broad for the most part except for a few key action scenes and plot points)
Prepare for possible alternative actions by the PCs (I still try to be as open ended as possible, even when I'm trying to put order and structure in a game)
Coming up with NPCs (Every single person, no matter how obscure must have a name and a decent description)
Set up maps and props
This all would be for 3 hours of gameplay.
I ask is because I want outside opinions for the direction of my game. This whole time I've been going on the premise that I'm conventional, that people do it like I do. I need to flesh out the GM Section of my core rulebook.
1. Write down notes on the planned storyline
I tell experienced GMs to ignore this section.
I give begining GMs a random plot generator. They generate 3 main acts (begining, middle, end). For each act, they generate 3 sub-acts (beginning of begining, middle of begining, etc). Then I teach them how to flesh these out and how to incorporate their big ideas (a cool antagonist, a certain setting, etc).
2. Prepare for possible alternative actions by the PCs
I teach begining GMs that sticking arbitrarily to your written storyline and trying to stuff it down player's throats is a bad idea. Then I tell them how to get around it.
3. Coming up with NPCs
I tell begining GMs what is important about getting NPCs right and how to create interesting ones.
Then I give them some computer tools to randomly generate NPCs. And lessons on how to flesh them out from there.
I've already finished:
Name Generator. My current database has 540 male first names, 540 female first names, and 1080 last names to give 1,166,400 possible combinations. I could get more easily, since I just copy/pasted them from a US census statistic page on names.
Personality Generator. It writes a randomized paragraph on 8 personality aspects (honesty, kindness to strangers, politeness, etc). It also writes differently everytime so that it sounds like a person who knew the NPC was describing it, and not a robot reading a file.
Appearance Generator. This also write a randomized paragraph on the typical crap: eye color, hair color, hairstyle, height, weight, and muscle tone/fat. But not every single one -- it tries to determine if the appearance is distinctive, so it might describe them all, or half, or none at all ("the NPC is completely nondescript"), but the first and last are very rare. It also adds embelishments, like "large chin," "hook nose," or "scar across the buttocks"
Crowd Generator. My game is set in the modern times and the players are supposed to be mercenaries. Civilian crowds are a must, but making so many NPCs is a bitch. The name, personality, and appearance generators are combined with age, gender, job, "brief paragraph of my life story", "what was i doing here", and "what is on me" generators.
I haven't used it for a game yet, but I bet it will add a lot of atmosphere -- It makes the NPCs so quickly that you can afford to have this kind of anal detail. I actually made this for fun but decided I should package it with the game. My reasoning is that if the players kill a civilian NPC (again), and they decide to loot his corpse, they'll feel more like the monsters they are when they find out they killed a mother of 3 on her way to tell her kids their dad is in the hospital dying of cancer.
Military Unit/Terrorist Cell Generator. I took the Crowd Generator to the next level. It's not yet finished, but I've made a lot of progress with it (I can make civilian and most navy ship's crews and now I'm trying to get land and air units done before going to gangs, terrorists, freedom fighters, and the like). It does what the Crowd Generator does and also adds rank, age appropriate to rank, and position in the unit.
I think by now you can tell that my philosophy is "Auto-generate a whole lot of anal details and useless facts, then add a couple of important details to make them unique and your own". I myself discard more than half of what the auto-generators give me, but they give me a very good rolling start -- I want to teach that to beginner GMs.
4. Set up maps and props
Since it's set in modern times, getting maps is easy. One thing I tell them is to print out google maps or use those old street maps people used to have for road trips (before the internet) to use in a pinch.
But for more detailed stuff, miniatures. I'm planning on including really basic miniatures and a few 8.5x11" sheet floorplans to lay out under them.
By miniatures, I really mean plastic wedges... with 1" square faces and a 1/3" base.
^
/ \
/___\
Something like that.
I'll include stickers that you can wrap around the wedges that show different people in action poses (generic civilians, generic military, generic police, generic terrorists, etc).
You can also go online and use a web app to design your own sticker to print out on mailing labels to put on the wedges. You can choose exactly what goes on the "miniature", like the specific kind of clothing, armor, weapons, and pose.
At least that's what I plan. I don't know how people will react to the plastic wedge "miniatures", and I'm still having trouble finding someone to make them for me cheaply. If I can't do it, that's fine, but I'd be terribly disappointed.
I do have some prototypes (hah) made out of cardboard. I think they look cool :(. They're roughly equivalent to 15 or 20mm figures. I know a lot of purists who would puke at the sight of them, but they look great to me.
Using those suggestions and with the help of the tools I'm including, I hope a beginning GM can plan a decent 3-hour adventure in a short time. Maybe even 4 hours over two days.
That would be quite a surprise if I found out people typically take longer or shorter.