Brian Engard, who writes Gamecrafter’s Guild, responded to Do You Prep NPC Dialogue? by writing a nifty post about playing out potential dialogue scenes as part of his game prep.
I asked Brian if he’d be willing to flesh that concept out a bit and turn it into a TT guest post, and he was kind enough to do just that.
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When I design an adventure, I usually start with a single scene that’s been stuck in my head for a while.
You see, I have that sort of obsessive nature that is specific to geeks, and when a particular game is in my head, I often find myself playing hypothetical scenes in my head that are related in some way to that game.
At first one of these scenes is vague, sketchy; it consists of a few lines of dialog, some faceless characters, maybe some hastily crossed swords. After a couple of replays it starts to solidify, though. The faces come into focus, the dialog becomes more defined, more realized, more…verbose.
Often the scene becomes a sort of set-piece encounter, something either very climactic or very memorable (potentially, at least). For example, I once built an entire Eberron adventure around the idea of a dramatic fight with an Emerald Claw necromancer atop the lightning rail.
As time went by I added the concept of this necromancer being an escaped prisoner of war, and eventually the encounter was between the PCs and the necromancer — who, along with a slew of Emerald Claw soldiers, was using a mercenary airship piloted by an illegitimate Lyrandar heir in an attempt to get a powerful artifact back to the Claw and out of the hands of the Aereni elves. It started with a train-top battle, and became an entire adventure.
My NPCs come about in much the same way. They are created specifically for the focal scene in my head, or as a means to get the PCs to that scene. As these NPCs start appearing in my mind, however, more scenes start to play out in my head.
Oftentimes, I focus on a particular verbal exchange between one of my NPCs and one of the PCs, imagining the conversation from both sides. I usually do this multiple times, with different permutations; I find that this mental exercise allows me to avoid dialog that doesn’t work and find dialog that does. It also helps me to imagine what my PCs might say or ask, which prepares me for multiple branches of the conversation.
As a side effect, almost, my NPCs tend to become very defined in my head during this process. While the PCs might see a particular NPC only once during the adventure, and might only have a brief exchange with that NPC, I’ve imagined multiple hypothetical conversations with that NPC, and he/she has become akin to a real person in my mind.
I find that this helps me to play my NPCs in a more convincing way, and it also helps me to remember NPCs for later adventures, rather than always inventing new ones.
I don’t know for certain how this technique will work for other people. It’s not something that I came up with after trial and error, or something that I specifically designed; it just grew out of my mind, a natural extension of my personality and way of thinking.
It certainly works for me, though, and if anyone else uses a similar method, I’d like to hear about it. There are a number of ways that you can create adventures and characters for your games, and no single one of them is “right.” This is just my way.
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Thanks, Brian!
Brian’s approach sounds like it would mesh well with one of my favorite prep techniques: using your mental back burners to develop gaming material. And it could easily be extended to include playing out scenes to get an idea of what your players might do in advance. (I wrote a little bit about this tip in Robert’s Rules of GMing.)
What do you think of Brian’s approach?
Good lord, this is how I write EVERYTHING, let alone gaming sessions, haha. As long as you know the main directions the party is likely to take, you’re completely prepared for when they leap off the beaten path, leaving your planning in shambles. Don’t let that stop you, though, I never do. I just never write any of it down :).
Seriously, though, it’s a good exercise in imagination if nothing else. I wholeheartedly support it.
I very much like that approach, because I too handle most of my adventures and NPCs almost the same way. I wouldn’t have been able to explain it so well, however. The only with that approach that I’ve found in my case is that I usually spend so much time playing the encounters and NPCs out in my head, that I leave very little time for actually written prep.
Well, my earlier post had a couple of typo errors, but i hope everyone understood. I wanted to add, however, that this approach can probably be good for others who might have stronger time management skills than myself. Its probably alot to do with the fact that I have so little time to prepare each week
I’ve definitely used this approach, not only to NPCs but to entire encounters and adventures. I usually phrase them to myself as, “Wouldn’t it be cool if X happened” and then figure out how to get there from here.
Sometimes it works out as planned. Sometimes my thinking about it leads to even cooler stuff. And sometimes it’s a disaster. (But now I’m a lot better at recognizing those from a distance.)
Being so non-visually imaginative makes it difficult to see how I’d adapt this– but it does sound like a fascinating way to prepare.
How do you avoid railroading to the scene you’ve imagined? Do you place it early in the adventure, scene frame strongly, just use it as a spark (so you may never reach your cool scene), or something else?
This is what I do as well. Not much more to add than that. I (wrongly) assumed this is how most GMs do things.
I wish I could do this! It sounds an awesome opportunity to have planned climactic encounters, with thought out NPCs to structure the approach and cool dialogue strands but I’m an obsessive kinda person too but with a twist: I’m obsessed with improv.
I create an adventure/ session by erecting an underlying plot 1)beginning, whats going on 2)ending, what will happen IF NOTHING IS DONE ABOUT IT.
NPCs have backgrounds, personalities, motivations/goals… then I let the PCs get stuck in and literally create their own ending utilising locations and NPCs they like.
Only reason I can get away with this is that I have a good instinct for tempo so can throw in mystery/chase, revelation/combat by the way the PCs are acting.
Downside: the length of my sessions never work out as plan; if I think it should take the PCs 3 sessions, it’ll take em 5… any advice on how to better structure the improv?
ScottM: I avoid railroading in a couple of different ways.
1. I typically imagine various scenes multiple times, with different outcomes each time. It helps me to be prepared for what the PCs might do and adapt to it accordingly which, in turn, allows them more freedom.
2. I usually use a sort of “adventure grab bag” approach when I design an adventure (I may post about this on my website in the future). Basically, one of my ready-to-go adventures comprises a number of disjointed scenes that I can assemble in multiple different ways, rather than a specific path or branching path. I design a bunch of middles, in effect, with no beginnings and ends, so that I can ad-lib the beginning and the end when I need to and drop in a scene when it’s dramatically appropriate.
I’ve done this kind of adventure design a couple times. The first was an idea I had for an epic ending for a session and the second was an idea a player had for the ending of a different session.
The simplest way not to railroad is to tell the players about the scene. Get all the players on board with the idea of working towards that scene and then it isn’t railroading at all.
–Victor
I use this approach often, and in many campaigns no matter what world or game, you can use this method quite easily actual. Its seems to have run well so far for me, at least. Almost every game session has some sort of structure that follows a somewhat defined path.
Here is an example. I just recently ran a game a murder, sort of detective game with two players. I used this method to better visualize the murder and how it occured. It gave the players more information and clues. I also tried to visualize and understand the villain, and it allowed me to have a much more prepared final encounter with the villian when he is apprehended.
One of the things I find fascinating about GMing (and gaming in general) is that there are so many ways to approach things — each of which feels natural and intuitive for some folks, and might never occur to others.
Brian’s post really highlights this, and it’s definitely one of my favorite aspects of the hobby.