Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Problem #13: The Railroad Paradox image

Problem #13: The Railroad Paradox

S1 E13 · Designing Problems
Avatar
163 Plays17 days ago

This week Kristian and Tracy are joined by Chris Hussey, a prolific RPG podcaster, writer, and media producer to discuss the balance between the freedom of sandbox play, and the satisfaction of completing a more guided story. This problem is a deceptively challenging one from the designer's perspective, and we explore it from different angles while citing some of the ways different game systems, settings, and adventures handle it.

Join our discord!: https://discord.gg/Bc9dvuzZYJ
The Han Cluster® Role Playing Game Website: https://hancluster.com
Immaterial Plane: https://immaterialplane.com/
Bite Sized Tales Podcast:
https://sites.libsyn.com/436095/site
Adventures of Young and Holt AP:
http://ap.feartheboot.com/index.php/archives/76

Transcript

Introduction and Topic Overview

00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Designing Problems RPG podcast, where we explore RPG development and all the intentional and unintentional problems we create along the way. I'm Christian Serrano. And I'm Tracey Sizemore. We're your hosts for this new win scenario. And this week, we're going to talk about problem number 13, the railroad paradox.
00:00:42
Speaker
And our experts for this topic, because we're all experts, right?

Guest Introduction: Chris Hussey

00:00:47
Speaker
Sure. We have the wonderful, amazing, y'all love them, y'all know them, Chris Hussey, member of the Bite Size Tales podcast, producer of the Adventures of Young and Hold, as well as Gun for Hire, actual play podcast, RPG writer, sought after convention GM, and just awesome, lovable guy.
00:01:05
Speaker
Welcome, Chris. Well, thank you. That is an extremely warm and and and lovely introduction. I appreciate that immensely. Chris was also a regular and kind of like host most most of gaming with Gage, right?
00:01:21
Speaker
i was ah yes i was well i was When it changed to gaming with Gage and friends, i was i would I was considered one of the friends. So yes, I was ah a regular on there with a bunch of other fantastic people. Cool. Very cool. Very cool.

Defining Railroading vs. Sandboxing

00:01:36
Speaker
So what are we talking about today, Christian?
00:01:38
Speaker
well So it's, it's the age old dilemma, right? Of, uh, you know, trying to write something that's a, a sort of, uh, a guided story. And, but so also trying to write something that is a little bit open and we have two, two ends of the spectrum, right? The two extreme ends are like fully guided. This is lockstep. This is what happens then this, then this, then this, right? Very scripted. And then the other extreme is like, you're in this world. What do you do? You can do anything. Right. Yeah. So, railroading and sandboxing are the ah so the the words we're going to throw around here now.

Challenges in RPG Adventure Writing

00:02:19
Speaker
Everybody has different meanings and interpretations of those words, so we're not we're not going to get into that. We're just kind of using those generic labels you know for this podcast. ah we've We've gotten a little bit of
00:02:31
Speaker
We've had some misunderstandings from listeners with words we've used before in other topics. So we just want to be clear that we're not being very prescriptive as to the meanings of these words. So we're just kind of, you know, using it as a placeholders for, for the purpose of conversation.
00:02:47
Speaker
But what we mean, I suppose, we can we can a little bit like the guided story versus the open sandbox, right? and And in the context of this podcast, and I think this is important distinction here, is this is an age old debate and it's it's it's covered on almost every RPG podcast one time or another, right?
00:03:09
Speaker
And we'll we'll hash over the regular arguments just because that's that's what you do. But we are we there's a difference between when you're running for your own home group and you're a GM and you're making your own adventures and you've got player feedback that's direct and all this stuff and you're not trying to write this stuff down for somebody else to be able to run it.

Game Design: Freedom vs. Story Cohesion

00:03:34
Speaker
When you are trying to do that, this debate becomes a different topic, a different discussion, because there are certainly games out there that embrace this philosophy of of sandbox versus railroad, meaning The more freedom of games like, ah well, let's I suppose the perceived freedom of games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark, where they give you tools, they give you little playthings, blocks you can play with, and they put a lot of pressure on the GM to put stories together using those tools.
00:04:15
Speaker
Then there's the other side of it, which I would, which I would consider in the Savage Worlds camp, which is we want to tell a cohesive story with a beginning and a middle and an end. We want to have a climax that's satisfying for everybody. We want to be able to create some sort of world, some sort of adventure in which your characters can interact as characters and, and react to what's happening and influence what's happening. But we want to kind of finish it.

Designing for Personal vs. Public Play

00:04:44
Speaker
I'm definitely more on that side, right? And there are a lot of people who are on the other side. And I totally respect that. And we're going to try to cover that and sort of ah explore that as we go. But I did want to ah did want to sort of ah explain that we're looking at it through a lens of how do we make these games so that other people can do this.
00:05:05
Speaker
rather than you're a player and do you prefer a guided story or you prefer a sandbox. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about how do you make these things so that other people can use them.
00:05:18
Speaker
without putting too much pressure on them, you know, without without asking too much of them because otherwise there's no point in you writing it at all. That's what I mean. And they can do it themselves. Keeping in mind too that you're not going to be there, you know, to hold their hand and guide

Anticipating Player Actions

00:05:34
Speaker
them, right? yeah So the words have to do the work for you. So, yeah. It's the words. And I think, I think added to that too, it's the anticipation of You know what those things might be encountered and the i mean the realization of the inability to cover all of the ah appropriate places like you could you it's something you can't do cuz players are unpredictable as it is and you can only build off of your own frame of reference for that and so how do you how do you.
00:06:08
Speaker
get yourself to go outside of that level of experience to try and anticipate more. But again, with the realization that you can't anticipate all. Yes, yeah exactly. right and And boy, anybody who's written an adventure for publication knows what this is like, because you're just like, okay, so I'm writing this, I'm writing this. and and and if you're if you're And if you're new to it, if you're like if you're like a novice to it,
00:06:33
Speaker
you'll write and you'll think oh it's gonna it's it it goes like this it goes like this and then the first time you put it in front of players everything blows up and it doesn't work at all like you thought it would And then you start to realize, oh, okay, so I have to think differently. I have to kind of anticipate differently. And when you get more experience, you start to understand, well, player groups are gonna do this, this, this generally. If they don't do that, and of course they won't, how do I either sort of gently guide them back or how do I react to it in a way that doesn't completely wreck everything else I write?

Evolving Writing Styles for Flexibility

00:07:11
Speaker
That's really tough.
00:07:13
Speaker
And when you start writing these things for yourself and watching other people run them, that's when you start to learn like this is a, this is sort of a whole different animal than what you're used to. I think too, with some of that, it some of that comes in, at least it has, as it's been my experience in a change of tone and approach when it comes to the writing. And I think what what I mean by that is in certain adventures, you write, these certain events will happen and these NPCs or this opposition is going to do this.
00:07:53
Speaker
Once you do encounter these things, whether it's through playtest or just through gained experience in writing these, but for me, the tone has changed to something along the lines of bad guy X wants to accomplish this particular task or or faction Y, their goals are this. And what that allows you to do as ah as the the reader and then the game the game master for that is to
00:08:24
Speaker
um realize that there's there's some finesse, there's some play area in there as to how might yeah either bad guy X or faction Y go and accomplish these particular tasks as opposed to they're going to immediately do this, which you may have written maybe in your first adventure or may have thought to do the first time around. Now you have you've changed the way in which you write that into being some sort of almost um guidelines in a certain way.
00:08:51
Speaker
um which can then, it it just for me, it changes a perception as to how it is read it and and digested by by that Game Master reader.

Benefits of Flexible Adventure Structures

00:09:01
Speaker
Yeah, i think some of my I think some of my favorite Savage Tales have been the ones where it's more of, um here's the setup, you know the scenario, here's the objective, and here are the parameters, parameters being like, you know this is this NPC, there you know they have this ability, or there's this many number of these creatures, whatever. And it's kind of like, go, right? And in in and in that sense, it's a little bit open-ended because it gives the GM flexibility
00:09:31
Speaker
to be able to adjust and you know finagle ah whatever they need to happen to make sure that the objective is achieved without it being like overly scripted to where it's like, this happens, then this happens, then this happens, then this happens. And and also just what I appreciate about that writing approach is as a GM, it's also just easier to prep in a lot of ways.
00:09:56
Speaker
So you're kind of doing you know the the GM a favor in that regard.

Guiding vs. Freedom for New GMs

00:10:01
Speaker
When I go through some adventures where it's like very lockstep or it's this long series of scripted events, it's exhausting trying to get through it to figure out, okay, what's the point? like where Where is this going? you know And it's like you have to follow this weird trail before you get to, oh, that's going to be the outcome. Okay. So.
00:10:20
Speaker
Is there with that though? I guess you're not you're not wrong because I agree with you, especially when it comes to Savage Tales. And for me, having GM'd for you know quite a while, I like having that loose structure because it does. It allows me to... you know it's ah It's akin to taking a recipe but adjusting it you know as you as you as you make it to your own taste, you know season to taste sort of thing.
00:10:44
Speaker
So this is why we have you on here. But but my question is, and I've often wondered this with with newer GMs, i would find I would imagine that that sort of approach can become a little bit intimidating um because there isn't necessarily this laid out structure for those those high high notes GMs Like there's almost, there's almost too much. Like, well, what am I actually supposed to do here? You know, what is step one? What is step two? Like I understand the idea, but what am I supposed to do? Like they those GMs who maybe haven't understood, they don't have, they haven't realized that they have that authority to make it how they want it. You know? and And so where, how do you strike that balance?
00:11:32
Speaker
Right, where where you have the GM who is wanting to like guide the players in a direction versus just simply respond to whatever the players are doing, right? That's that's a very different approach. And I think, yeah, I think you're right. It is intimidating. Absolutely. and i And I don't want to turn this into a GMing style discussion because we're really talking about creating. That's part of it, right? How do we convey to the GM what this is? How do we convey to the GM how to run this game? And there's multiple solutions. There's not one, right? And that's the important thing I think here is that we're not prescribing the one true way.

Guided Adventures: Ensuring Player Understanding

00:12:11
Speaker
We're just trying to explore the options because everybody's got a different sort of perspective on this and yeah and and and where they fall in that continuum. right and i feel for me
00:12:27
Speaker
I like guided and i'm I'm good at guided. I'm good at at taking my sort of design choices and translating them into my GMing practice. It's congruent to me. It's ah it's ah it's a good fit for me, right? I don't as much, I struggle with Let's say the the more open, um you know, like this bad guy wants to do this thing and he may do it in a variety of ways. The the players may find variety of ways to stop him and that's all fine.
00:13:04
Speaker
But I want to at least a few examples of the variety of ways in which that villain is going to approach this problem yeah and at the end and variety of ways that the heroes can approach the problem. Because if I know how the heroes can solve this problem,
00:13:21
Speaker
then I have the authority and power to suggest or hint to them how they can solve this problem.

Designing for Crucial Milestones

00:13:28
Speaker
Because the worst thing ever at a gaming table, especially at a convention gaming table, when I've got people I don't know there, is when they're looking at each other and don't know what to do.
00:13:40
Speaker
Right. Paralysis. Now, there's there's a reason to sit and wait for a little while to give it space to let them try to figure out what to do because that's fun too. But after a certain point, if they're completely lost and I as the GM don't know what they can do, boy, are we all in trouble. Yeah. That's a good point. It's the worst feeling ever for me. So I don't want that. I don't want to do that to another GM when I'm writing stuff for them. I don't want that to happen to me.
00:14:07
Speaker
I don't want my players to have to deal with it. So I may go a little bit overboard in making sure that that doesn't happen. That's a good point. Yeah. and i And I think that speaks to sort of that spectrum we were talking about earlier, right? You have the extremes where it's like really open and then the GM's like, what? Right. And then you have something in between where you do give some, you know, some ah signposts, yeah you know, as far as which way they can go ah to get to the to to the objective.
00:14:35
Speaker
So what, what is, where do you guys fall on this continuum? but Um, that's a good question. I, um,
00:14:47
Speaker
i've I, I, I, I think I find myself more on a bit of a more open-end thing. I do know generally what the goal is. And I guess this is more my GMing style than my writing style. So I'll try and, I'll try and cover both in as brief a amount of time as possible. Um,
00:15:06
Speaker
I think my particular strength as ah as a GM is in my quick ability to respond to the unexpected. um and And I think part of the reason why that is, is because I still know what

Rewarding Failure Creatively

00:15:20
Speaker
the goal of that particular scene is in mind, or i' I've created enough of a motivation with the NPC with which you're interacting with, I know how that NPC might interpret things.
00:15:30
Speaker
so There's the the the guardrails, you know this is rather than being a single lane highway, this is more like ah you know a five or six lane expressway. There's there's a lot of room for the for the cars of the players to kind of go back and forth and change lanes without going completely ah you know off the highway. yeah um And yet then still feel like they are in control as opposed to, and I guess this gets into a little bit of railroading, but they feel like they're still in control of the destiny of things, but yet I still know the direction that they're heading down the road because they're still on that road that I'm laying out in front of them. um Writing style,
00:16:12
Speaker
For me, it's honestly, it's it's evolved a lot over the years. I have gone from being very, for lack of a better term, very dictatorial and here is step A, here is step B, here is step C as far as how this adventure could go. But then realizing just through general experience, it doesn't doesn't work out that way. So for me, I think the way that writing-wise I've adapted to those types of things is I've tried to put in um, general guidelines, like here's, here's an ideal course for the adventure. Um, and then throw in, you know, quote unquote sidebars, um, to cover some of, some of those anticipated alternate responses. yes Um, and I think that that, well, I shouldn't say I think I hope that that has worked. I don't really fully know. I've like, I really made use of that kind of thing when I wrote, um,
00:17:10
Speaker
ah My one swag product, the ah Wolverines take the highway to the danger zone. There's all kinds of things they can do in the middle. The beginning and the ending encounters are are are locked in. But even within that those encounters in the middle, there's still a few other sidebars as to how other areas can be handled.
00:17:30
Speaker
Um, if the players want to do certain types of things, but again, it doesn't cover all of them. But my hope is that at least gives enough structure for the world that they might be able to anticipate how to respond to such things. Christian.
00:17:48
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, we, we've done a rough, very rough, um, you know, version of our plot point campaign for Explorer. And early on, one of my fears was what if they don't accomplish this

Keeping Objectives Flexible

00:18:03
Speaker
thing? Like, how do they get to the next thing? Right. And and so i I tried to keep that in mind. I tried, you know, Jen and I would often touch base on this with the different plot points we were working on. Um,
00:18:17
Speaker
you know the really it's it's it's not For us, it's not about um how they achieve the objective. it's it's just you know The objective is the path. that's like To use your analogy, Chris, which I thought was great, you know when they're on the highway, they're going to stay on that highway, right and there's a direction they're going to go, there's a destination they're going to reach, how they drive.
00:18:40
Speaker
on that highway yes is is what we want to give flexibility to. right And so that's that's kind of why I personally like the approach of, here's the setup. you know How do you overcome this? right And then that leaves the players some agency to um you know to be able to get creative in how they problem solve. um i i I think you're right, though, Tracy, that there is an intimidation factor for new GMs.
00:19:10
Speaker
um And I wonder and wonder if there's some degree of, I don't know, like like author notes or something that can be inserted. That's what sidebars are for. Right, exactly. Like a sidebar to kind of help steer. Because I think also the intimidation factor is really, it's the first time when you do that that you have that fear. Once you do it though, you kind of, I feel like it's liberating.
00:19:35
Speaker
Cause you're like, Oh yeah, this is kind of, this is kind of easier. Cause I don't have to worry about, I don't have to stress about that, that strict linear path. Yeah. i the The sweet spot for me is when I read an adventure, I know what to do.
00:19:54
Speaker
If I'm reading the adventure and I go, oh, I'm so excited to run this because I know what to do. I know i know what the problem is. I know what possible solutions to the problem is. I know ah possible ways the players might zig and zag out of the way. And I know what to do if they do. If I can read an adventure and feel that, great. Then I'm excited to run it. I i feel liberated to do it.
00:20:21
Speaker
if I feel like I'm reading it and the designer has decided that the players are going to do something and they have to do something this way. And I, as the experienced GM, know that my players are not going to do that.
00:20:35
Speaker
Then I'm in trouble. Then it becomes way more work for me to figure out how to run this adventure. yeah And same way, if it's too loose, if it's like, well, here's a problem, whatever, here's this, you'll figure it out. you know and And I'm like, no, I won't. if i If I could figure it out, I'm a smart person and I can design adventures, but I paid you to design this adventure. right I paid for this adventure so that I wouldn't have to do that.
00:21:02
Speaker
yeah no And so that's why I'm so careful. And Darryl calls it the work. He calls it, quote unquote, the work. Like if you're goingnna if if you're going to write an adventure, you have to do the work for the GM. yeah At least ah a good chunk of it, because that's why they're paying you.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah. No, that's that's fair. Yeah.

Feedback on Essential Event Assurance

00:21:25
Speaker
And that means anticipating a lot of these things and trying to work through how how to duck and weave based on what players do. Right. I mean, that's that's just my, that's my philosophy. It's the a way I handle it, but I know that there's others, you know, I know others, people feel differently than that.
00:21:43
Speaker
so So two things on that. One, as long as we're in a Darryl appreciation moment. Sure, sure. Drink, everybody. No, that was because one of the things that I found when I wrote something for Pinnacle and got some of his feedback, he pointed out a couple of things um that sort of opened up my mind a little bit in regards to like some of those linchpin events that happen in adventures. Like if the the the characters are encountering this one particular thing, and they have to have that success to go on to the next thing. And his if I'm remembering his basic guidance, essentially, it was
00:22:30
Speaker
they there should they should ah be allowed to accomplish it through either minimal or almost no um important efforts on their part. like in Skill roles, like the option to fail shouldn't be there. If they have to accomplish this thing, they absolutely have to do it, yeah then they should be allowed to do it without any sort of dice rolling or anything. It should just be an event that occurs because so what happens if they fail?
00:23:00
Speaker
Which seems kind of like a, well, duh, but what an obvious thing. But I think a lot of times when you're designing things, you don't think about that, at least at first. You start to think about it later. You start to think the more experience you get, you start to think about it. Yeah, exactly. And it becomes a situation of like, oh crap, I never even thought about what they would do if they failed. It was just, oh my gosh, they have to succeed here. Why am I making it possible for them to fail? I shouldn't be doing that. Right. Yeah, that's definitely a newer... I don't know. I think it certainly happens with newer designers that do that. It happens to all of us. We all do it at one time or another, even experienced ones. Somebody will point out to me like, Tracy, what happens if they fail here? I'm like, I don't know. You're probably right. I should probably not have a role there. But at the same time, there's ways to have rules
00:23:56
Speaker
that are both interesting and yet not important for success. Yeah. so I think degrees of success is a possible solution to that. Absolutely. So you're going to succeed, but maybe you succeed and you gain an advantage over the situation.
00:24:17
Speaker
Yep. Right. Um, or maybe it's not a, maybe it it isn't a thing of

Enhancing Storytelling through Success Degrees

00:24:22
Speaker
success or failure. Maybe it's a thing of this happened. Period. Right. If it's trying to get the quote unquote MacGuffin, I know people are going to cringe at that word for whatever reasons. And the the important thing that's integrated within the adventure.
00:24:37
Speaker
Yeah, like you know we know, for example, Lord of the Rings, Frodo just starts with the MacGuffin. There's no risk of failure to ah you know obtain it. Okay, so if they just need to have it for the sake of story, let them have it, right? Maybe it falls into their lap. I think that's fine. I think that's that's just as value ah valuable of a story as anything else. um But like I said, like you could have then, you know based on on things maybe they did before, necessary evil does this, I think.
00:25:05
Speaker
where based on outcomes of previous plot points, then there might be advantages in later plot points. Yeah. And and that's that's the way to do it, right? yeah You still want them to be like Chris says on the highway, right? But if they fail at at a role or not just a role, but a social encounter or a dramatic task or whatever,
00:25:27
Speaker
you have to have a way for them to move on, even if they can fail that dramatic task. They they have to, you you have to. right Now, it's not going to be pretty. you know things could Things could be bad. They could go in with big disadvantages going forward, yeah or they they could alienate a certain group of people or cause all kinds of like issues. right yeah But you're still being able to move forward. and Part of the fun of that design process is to figure out If we're going to have a dramatic task or if we're going to have a social conflict, if we're going to have these series of roles that are going to cost me bennies and all this stuff in order to succeed, you better have a, what happens if they fail. Yeah. Because you know, 90% of the people are going to succeed.
00:26:15
Speaker
but 10% are gonna roll critical failure after critical failure or just screws things up. We have we have to think about the Jodis in the world. We do, we do. And HON cluster has all that stuff built in, right? yeah And it it doesn't take you away from the trajectory that you're on.
00:26:33
Speaker
What it does is in various, there's various ways it can screw you up. It can alienate a certain group that won't be helpful to you later. It can add complications later. It can like in Holler, the end of Holler, like with if you fail the um the mass combat at the end of Holler.
00:26:54
Speaker
You still move on to the final confrontation with the big boys, but you're at a severe disadvantage. And that's fun, right? yeah You still can win, but but now we have the story and the story is what makes it meaningful. And I'm glad you brought up the example of a dramatic task because dramatic tasks are intended to be grave situations. right Like if things go bad, they go bad.
00:27:20
Speaker
Right. It shouldn't be, oh well well, you didn't get to do it. It should be like, oh crap. like There's consequences. There's consequences here, right? And I think that can make a story even more compelling. Yes. Because then they can, they have the potential to succeed despite that setback. Yes, you do it right. And it becomes, this is, this is our triumph is even greater now. Yeah. At at the end. Right. Because of, because of our setback back then, you know,
00:27:52
Speaker
and And we felt like it was the end of the world back then. And Darryl is great at this. Darryl will make these adventures and he'll say, all right, so you failed that. you know And he'll he'll make it possible for you to fail. And yet, yeah and you'll feel defeated. You'll feel like, oh, we didn't succeed. We just outright failed that encounter. We lost. We lost the fight. And now you've got double the motivation.
00:28:18
Speaker
to get them back or or, you know, like circle the wagons and make it make it more meaningful a climax later. yeah And boy, is that way more satisfying because you failed before. Have either of you done a thing where, you know, perhaps in the in the in an adventure, you might even suggest to the GM, award a Benny if they fail or something to that effect. You can. Or award a point of conviction.
00:28:43
Speaker
Conviction is a good one. Yeah, yeah, there there there is um I can't I can't think of a specific example, but I know that um I have it within certain con events that I wrote

Unexpected Benefits for Failure

00:28:57
Speaker
is you know, if the player fails, yeah, they're going to they'll get this instead.
00:29:02
Speaker
um yeah which can be used yeah down the line. um yeah Because because there is there is an advantage, I think, to creating a fun moment at a table when you can provide a strange benefit ah from a failure as opposed to saying, this is the disastrous consequences of your failure or this you know the degree of disaster. But if there's a certain benefit to that, because it creates this sort of weird confusion like,
00:29:30
Speaker
why am I getting something for failing? yeah you know where How is this going to hurt me later? you know and it it It can help to ratchet up some tension, but writing those things in there, um and i think I think especially when it comes to writing something that someone else is going to read and use, it's making sure you explain the why this is.
00:29:55
Speaker
you know So if you're going to, like you said, Christian, if you're going to have them award have the GM award them a Benny for it, maybe give some of the reasoning as to why that is happening so it helps to empower that GM to think down the line when other certain you know when certain things happen. It's sort of that whole opening up that mind sort of experience yeah on the the reader's end.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good point. It's a really good point because you want to you want to qualify it, right? Not just it be a mechanical thing, but a ah that's too bad here. have a bit exactly yeah yeah well and the And the reason why I thought of that is is because I think of, um,
00:30:36
Speaker
you know, like and in my, one of my Savage ever on con games. Um, and I wrote it for me to run it, but if, you know, I could massage it more to make it so that somebody else could run it. But, um, you know, i I lean into the principle of, of noir where things don't always end well. Right.
00:30:53
Speaker
And so in the opening encounter, there there's a there's a lecture from a professor, Emerald Claw soldiers show up. They either try to kidnap the professor or the journal of notes that he has. right And the way I set it up was so that the the Emerald Claw is going to go get away with one of those two.
00:31:16
Speaker
But then the players still have the other as a resource to continue on. And then I award a point of conviction because, you know, they didn't succeed in stopping the Emerald Claw on that encounter, right?
00:31:29
Speaker
Now it's, it's hard to, I think it's going to be hard to write that because there's always the chance that something's going to happen where the players just blow up the Emerald Claw altogether. And now they have both and there's no story. This is, this is tricky yeah because like part of the thing is that we all know, for example, that it almost every player group in, especially a Savage Worlds game, but I think almost all RPGs, will absolutely fight to the death in order to avoid being captured. right right Right. They will not be captured. It will not happen. And if you say they're captured, if if they're captured, that if they're captured, it's never going to happen. So why even bother putting it in there?
00:32:18
Speaker
They're either going to run away or they're going to die. one of the if you're If you want them to be captured, then make it like Daryl says, just make it happen. yeah Make it happen. it And make sure that they understand like, okay, you get you're guy I'm going to give you this conviction because we're going to capture you. that's that you just You don't have any choice here. You're overwhelmed. There's a hundred guys with that you know guns around you, blah, blah, blah. Give up your capture. That's what I was going to say. I've actually written elements like that where it's like, you're surrounded.

Concept of Plot Point Captures

00:32:50
Speaker
There is no way out of this. like yeah yeah This is one of those... Because if you let them fight,
00:32:56
Speaker
right I'm telling you. it's It's Indiana Jones tumbling out of that temple with the golden idol and being surrounded by these indigenous peoples with Belloc standing there. Yes. And he's like, you know what am I going to do here? This is this is the plot point capture. Yeah. you know I mean, and it and and there's other elements like that, but that's a perfect example. yeah If you give them a chance, if you say, well, let's have a fight here. Well, okay. As soon as dice roll. it's yeah yeah yeah It's either a TPK or we win. yeah you know I mean, unless you unless you really are like meta about it and say, okay,
00:33:40
Speaker
Trust me. right you're not going to You're not going to get out of this. there's There's adventure to come. I'm going to give you this conviction and you're going to be captured. and so So Tracy, how do you write? Because you were talking about how you need you know those little signposts, right? what What are some ways that you've written an adventure that offers that? Or like, for example, for a Hahn cluster.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah. So for like, I do it many, many ways, but like I say, it's reinventing the wheel every time you're in an adventure because it's like, well, it's depending on this particular adventure and that circumstance. But one of the common things I do is set up the problem.
00:34:19
Speaker
And then I give, and then the next section of the adventure is here are the various ways they might investigate this problem or deal with this problem. The various ways that what they might do. right They might not do all of them, but if they do these things, awesome. Here's a list of clues that you could give them based on anything that they do here.
00:34:41
Speaker
Right. So I'm not prescribing when to give them the clues or where to give them the clues. I'm saying they're going to try to do lots of things. Here are the clues to give them when they do something that's related to it. Yeah. Right. But best fits for it. That's one way to do it.
00:34:59
Speaker
The other thing that I wanted to mention is is consequences. like I learned this lesson when I wrote Gran Atomica, the disaster at Gran Atomica, which is a s suede adventure that came out with the suede Kickstarter. It's using the gifted arcane

Defining Failure Conditions

00:35:15
Speaker
background. I love the adventure. I'm very proud of it.
00:35:19
Speaker
But Jess Rogers edited it, and she asked, so what happens if they don't defeat the Lightbringer at the end of the adventure? Because I hadn't said it. this is This is rookie mistake number one, right? Yeah. Like if they don't defeat the Lightbringer, what happens? And I'm like, that's an excellent question, Jess. And so I wrote in, it's bad. You lose. Right. You lose.
00:35:49
Speaker
Like, yeah here's what the nuclear power plant explodes, a dimensional rift opens, there's an invasion from another dimension. Good luck. You know, like I don't shy away from the fact that that at the end of this encounter, if you lose, you lose. Yeah, this is earth shattering. And I think even though 90% of the people are going to win,
00:36:17
Speaker
Having that lose condition in there raises the stakes. If the GM knows what happens when you lose, you know like they can they can raise the stakes confidently, right and HAN cluster has that. It has lose conditions at the end of the campaign that are devastating.
00:36:38
Speaker
devastating. yeah And yet there's still a move there's a way to move forward in in the game. Like it's the end of the campaign, but but but there's a way to continue living and to continue to deal with with what you're dealing with, but it's a devastating loss. And it's it's very, very unlikely you're going to get there. And I give you lots of ways to make sure you don't get there. Like I've got a sidebar that says if somebody wants to sacrifice themselves, if things are looking really bad, if they want to sacrifice themselves, awesome. They sacrifice themselves, help them tell the story and they reach at least this level of success. You know, you're going to succeed.
00:37:20
Speaker
but you have to you have to sacrifice yourself to do it. And if somebody's willing to do that, and the thing is, if if the 1% fail and accept the failure and are willing to accept the failure, there's, in in my opinion, a beautiful fail condition that is devastating and yet perfectly in line with what should happen.
00:37:47
Speaker
yeah Yeah. If that were an adventure that we're starting a campaign, I would say that's bad. that's bad that's yeah But if it's like a one shot or a con game, that can be just as exciting. Like, you know, or, or just as much of a, at the end of that game, everybody's sitting there leaning back and just like,
00:38:09
Speaker
Wow. you know and And I think that works. The jumpstart for Hunk cluster has those failed conditions too. Yeah. Like it's bad. I can't see, you know, setting rules.

Achieving Missions Despite Losses

00:38:21
Speaker
uh, where, you know, you could set up where somebody could do that kind of a sacrifice, a self sacrifice to the six, you know, like everybody gets a Benny or something like that, or, you know, whatever. Um, that could be kind of a fun way to, to support that story wise as well as, as a writer ways yeah to write these things and to, to, to incorporate failure without completely derailing things. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Chris, do you have a way that you've done that?
00:38:50
Speaker
incorporate failure in in that capacity. um i You know, i I was thinking when I was listening when i was listening to to your example, I think structure wise, I think you and I write very similarly. um But you are right, like every time, it seems like every time you do write an adventure, you are sort of reinventing things. there's You may have ah an existing framework that you try and follow, but there's each one, you know,
00:39:15
Speaker
uh each little baby is special in its own right and so there's there's always those those eccentricities but i don't think that i think really it's it's for me it's how it's always been sort of um an unspoken failure i think the the you know if you if if you If you lose that final fight, that final conflict, um that's it. you know I think when I last train out, um that it is very possible that all of the characters can die at the end, um and certainly some of them have, but yet they still accomplish the mission.
00:39:53
Speaker
of, you know, ah of sealing all these Nosferatu back and in in their cave complex. They're you're stuck there. Characters died in the process, so its they they win by losing in a certain sense. Yes, exactly. um and And I think the only other one that's that's ah very and unusual in the sense is Warrior, where the... The end is really, there isn't really no victory or loss. it It's all, yeah, it's a dilemma and it's what the players decide to do with the dilemma and it's how you as the GM interpret it um that can be determined as either a victory or a defeat, but yet it's not either.
00:40:37
Speaker
you know It's just how they solve that particular instance.

Dilemmas with No Clear Solutions

00:40:42
Speaker
And it's a tough dilemma to solve because there is not a clear-cut solution as to what to do yeah um in in that in that particular adventure. And how the players go and solve it is, is in essence, you know that how that really for me as a GM,
00:41:02
Speaker
um and and And what I wanted to accomplish in writing it was how um that's the beauty of that encounter, is that there is no clear-cut decision and and and it's all how it's all played out in the end, I guess. I still put i still put dilemmas with dice rolls. So even though the the heroes might be on one side of the dilemma, they still have to prove it. They still have to make it happen, right? So in in the sense of Hong Cluster with bringing in a new species or whatever. or what you know bringing in whether to Whether to help somebody introduce themselves to the Hong cluster human space or not is up to them, but they still have to actually do it. They still have to do the social conflict to make it happen. Or saving a whole city of 200,000 people. um they want They may want to do it, but they're going to have to
00:41:55
Speaker
Actually do it by doing the social conflict to make it happen. Yeah, you know and so that gives extra oomph to it And but also it's it's a dilemma in a way, but it's also ah We have to do this it it allows our characters to be to To play to their strengths while also allowing the players to play the dilemma you know what I mean? So if your character is a super persuasive person, you're going to be really good at that social conflict. Fantastic, right? And you may not be a good talker as a player, but your character is, so you can still have a say in how this goes. And is that an example when you when you do the dilemma thing where they have to role play it on roll the dice? Is that an example where
00:42:43
Speaker
you know, you use degrees of success or like you you fail by- Every time, every time there's degrees. But it's not like flat out failure necessarily. um like i'm guess I mean, there's is there's a failure there's a flat out failure condition if you don't get if you get like zero to one tokens or whatever in your social conflict, then the flat out failure. Otherwise it's levels of failure and success, right? I ah usually have at least three. have The failure, the partial success or the success or something like that.
00:43:13
Speaker
Tell me if I'm oversimplifying, but I feel like from, from what we're talking about here, that what we're really talking about is writing what happens versus writing how it happens. I think so. Or what, or at the very, at the very least what the goal, what the intended goal is, here's what you want to strive for. Here's what you want to happen. Right. And then giving options for the how.

Helping Players with Dramatic Tasks

00:43:40
Speaker
The flexibility comes in the how.
00:43:43
Speaker
I, for my, the way I write, that's how, that's how it works. The flexibility comes in into how you do it. Right. Right. But I also want to have ideas. I want the GM to have ideas. I want the players to have ideas. Cause otherwise the scariest moment in gaming happens when we're all at the table and we don't know what to do.
00:44:03
Speaker
Oof, yeah. That gives me chills right now. Beads of sweat. yeah yeah that So actually at that point, because because you brought that up earlier and you were in in discussion of dramatic casts, and one of the things that I have done And even, even though this is for events that were just for me, um, but I still had to write this in there to remind myself, because a lot of times at my, at my tables, I'll get new players or relatively new players, uh, especially for savage worlds. so And they won't necessarily have a lot of familiarity with dramatic tasks. Maybe they haven't done it or, um, it's just, they haven't done it at all. You know, so they don't even know what this is. I mean, beyond saying it's a skill challenge.
00:44:50
Speaker
I always ah try to write in examples of here is what they could do in this particular task and listing out various traits, uh, uh, and describing how they could use that in, in, in an instance, you know, or in their, and on their turn, because I think that that goes to that particular point and you get the players who sit on there and they all of a sudden,
00:45:14
Speaker
have gone from this structured thing, say like of a combat. I know how a combat works because we do this, and then we do this, and then we do this.

Storytelling Techniques with Movie Examples

00:45:23
Speaker
With the dramatic task, you know time becomes a bit more loosey goosey, and how the the narrative really takes over, they're still a mechanical thing. But sometimes players can't make that shift, or they don't know how to make that shift.
00:45:37
Speaker
um In that regard, you know, what do you mean? How do I describe what I want to do? I don't I don't understand what you're talking about, even though it seems very simple when you talk about it. Yeah, but it's it's making sure to include that in what you write so that you have those examples right there because then that starts those wheel. It's enough grease.
00:46:00
Speaker
to get those wheels in their mind turning your planting the seeds so exactly the inspiration points yeah and then if there is if you're lucky enough to have at the table at least one player who has done this before especially if it's someone who who's been at your particular table and knows how this goes.
00:46:18
Speaker
they know they know, they kind of know what they can do with those reigns that you've given them. And then that can help to hopefully inspire the other players or, you know, add some of that additional, um you know, mental lubrication, I guess. yes Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think of, I use, I always use Raiders of the Lost Ark as as a real direct inspiration for ah writing. Cause I love things like the Nazis got the Ark.

Guiding Narrative Through Antagonist Insights

00:46:45
Speaker
And in Indiana Jones and Marion are trapped in that tomb. And now what? Right? um you know and that's And that's a good example of like, yeah, you failed. And now they're at an advantage. And what are you going to do? Right? um Yeah. and And I think the other thing too is if you write like Because because ah often when we're writing adventures, there's also a setting set up to it, whether it's a full campaign setting or just the setting for that adventure, right? But you're going to have things like, here are the antagonists. Here are their motivations. Like you mentioned this earlier, right? Here are their motivations. Here are the resources at their disposal.
00:47:26
Speaker
So now you have ways that you can think of, oh, how do we pivot? you know how do we How do we react to the events that are that are occurring? Things are going to keep moving forward. If the players decide that they're not going to do acts and they're going to go off the rails, right those events can still keep happening. we And so then that can then bring them back in. they can The villains can come back and and cause problems for them in the you know very near future.
00:47:51
Speaker
right So there's there's tools like that. yeah fun The funnest part is is, as a GM who's running running my own design adventure, is is when players do the crazy thing, which I expect them to do. I expect them to do whatever. you know if You don't have ideas. i can I can help you with ideas. If you do have ideas, fantastic. Tell me what they are. I'm going to be able to react and pivot, right?
00:48:14
Speaker
is is watching my NPCs pivot to what yeah PCs do. Because in some cases it's surprisingly awesome. yeah yeah it's like oh you're gonna that at <unk>t You don't know my NPC well enough to know what they're gonna do, but I do.
00:48:32
Speaker
right And that's gonna be super fun. right And I think that that that speaks to making sure to when you are writing this for someone else for someone else to consume, making sure that you those those motivations, those goals, how this NPC thinks, those are important elements to include. um you know Because once that adventure is in somebody else's hands,
00:48:59
Speaker
there, your mental knowledge of that NPC is gone. If if you didn't put it on that on that page, that that new GM is going to have no idea yeah but that's that you really meant this. you know And so it's taking those times. And i've I've found that with a number of things that I've written is that the notes that I have on the paper versus the mental notes that I have, you know, associated with that and making sure that if this is something I'm going to give to somebody else, I've got to take this out of my head and put that on there. Right. So that so it can be properly play tested.

Importance of Detailed Writing for New GMs

00:49:39
Speaker
Yes. yeah Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's it's easy to get stuck. You know, it's like familiarity can breed blind spots. Yes.
00:49:49
Speaker
right? And so it's really easy to forget those little things that you need to put in writing. know So there's lots of other things we could have talked about that a lot of other people do talk about like quantum ogres and islands of adventure and tentpole plot points versus interspersed with savage tales. We do in clocks and factions. We didn't get into all that because again, we wanted to concentrate on the writing aspect of this and how it translates because It's hard. and it's it's it's ah It's a continuum and everybody has their as their preference of where they land there. And I think it's okay to go with what's good for you, but know what the range is and where you're going to be outside of that range. yeah you know Well, Chris, thank you. Really, honestly, that was great insight. Thank you, here. Really, really appreciate it. You're very welcome. Thanks for inviting me. This is, this is great. It's been a while since I've been ah on a podcast where I'm not reading one of my stories or something like that. So being able to just kind of talk freely is great. Nice. Very nice. Yeah. And I think we, uh, I think we we covered it and, um, yeah. and And as you said, it's hard. It's hard. That's, that's our, uh, it is hard. That's our slogan. It's not sexy. No, that's, that's the truth. Yeah.

Conclusion and Community Invitation

00:51:09
Speaker
Well, thank you for listening to the Designing Problems podcast. We want this to be more than a podcast. We want it to be a community. So if you'd like to engage directly with us, share your creative triumphs, your roadblocks, or simply interact with a cool group of supportive people, we have our own Discord server. Please come by, join the discussion, and share some inspiration. Until next time, keep designing your problems, because you're bound to solve a few along the way.