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This weekend we ran another phase of testing for Desecration. This time it definitely feels like the adventure is coming together. The players felt much more involved based on their general reaction to each encounter and challenge. Furthermore, some plot devices I was questioning have revealed themselves to be good choices in the long run. This was largely due to the fact that my current testing group is not playing a “standard” adventuring party. This makes the testing a little more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding.

In all of the adventures that we develop for Sagas I like to adhere to a single philosophy: adventures should be adaptable to the player’s and their characters. This is easily reflected in Prophecy, where we had three different paths for the story that revolved around combat, political intrigue, mysticism. This let groups that want to focus on 3 of the key adventure types to basically play the adventure they wanted to play, whether it be a combat heavy romp or a battle of wits and wills against a dark cult and its leaders. In desecration we don;t necessarily have the range of divergent paths. The story really only lends itself to taking side. At some key points the characters may find little clues or bits relating to a greater overall plot, or simply continue on towards the obvious plot. This has an added plot device by actually choosing the villains based on the paths they choose. This isn’t a matter of characters reacting to choices and becoming villains. Instead, the characters will choose a story track and a character manifests as a villain simply because the character is on that story path.

As I mentioned, our player characters are not your typical adventuring group. We don’t have the fighter, thief, wizard, and cleric party. Instead we have an elemental mage focusing entirely on water magic, a spy, and archer/fighter, and a psychic. None of the characters are ideally focused, which makes a typical dungeon romp a bit hard for them. So the standard and original story wasn’t going to work too well for them. Besides, as I wrote the original story I could see where some players would see potential in different areas of the story. These became developed into a larger overall story arch.

It turns out, without any real attempt on their own part, the player characters have stumbled into this larger arch. This arch is more in keeping with this group’s interest. They play strange and divergent characters because they like those types of games. So while they liked some of the events as we played through them, some players were ready to move on with the story. Now, what appears as an utter failure on their part is actually an open door. It is a plot device I borrowed from Robert Howard.

Robert E. Howard was the creator of the Conan and Kull stories, among many others (check out Solomon Kane for some good stories as well). In many of Conan and the like stories Robert Howard has some doom or other bad thing happen to Conan in the middle of his quest. He is often captured or injured beyond any real ability to continue on his own. Then the story turns as either through some device of the other characters, or our heroes own ability, a darker plot is revealed. It is a way of keeping characters going into the story, while also giving a decent segue into the overall plot. This is often how Conan learns of the mysterious cult or dark wizard, or some other beastly plot involved in a story that was. initially for him, simply a kill the monster and get the girl or loot and escape.

Granted, Robert E. Howard’s plot devices are often transparent. Often enough this may seem transparent in RPGs as well. My concern now is that the next phase is developed well enough to make it look real enough, instead of some deus ex machina save for the characters. I hate using the GM hand, and I don’t want to use it here. I’m not really, as the story and path of what’s happening is not designed to save the characters or to force a plot. It is there, because it seems realistic to me that it should be there. I just have to present it properly so that the characters can see it for what it is.

I’ll let you know how it works out in the next entry on the subject. Until then,

Happy Gaming!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 9:05 am and is filed under Descration, Developer Blog, Writing Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.