everyone should do this meme and report back I wanna see what pokes y'all are into rn!!

Valiente Samurái Sengoku, para ricardo :)

I think it's a shame that "Oedipus complex" refers to fucking your mom instead of the actual point of his story, fulfilling your destiny through your attempts to avoid it. It just so happens his destiny was to fuck his mom

How to write a TTRPG scenario ?

As a TTRPG campaign author, I’ve struggled for years to write scenarios that were coherent, that would not be derailed by players nor would force them onto rails, and that would allow escapism while keeping them hooked. I fumbled a lot until I found a method that I found quite efficient. So I thought I’d share. Of course, what works for one might not for another, but if you’re a beginner in TTRPG scenario writing and you don’t know where to start, well, you never know, this might help you.

The first phase is of course to make a rough draft. Just pour in a text document every single idea you have, without any filter : characters, cool scenes, story twists, gameplay elements… take your time, let your mind work in the background. Then organize every item, see what works with what, what would make sense in a chronological way… and fill the holes between the elements. This would give you a first draft of your scenario, something that should fill about two pages (regardless of whether your scenario is a one-shot or a full campaign).

At this point, the most adventurous GM would have enough material to start an improvised game. This requires a very specific skillset and a lot of memory. You do you, but at this point, I’ve only just started my preparations.

If you want to keep enriching your scenario, you’ll find yourself facing two issues : first, the more structure you have, the less freedom you’ll leave your players, because you have your “canon” on what should happen in your story ; and second you might miss holes in your scenario that your player will certainly have a lot of joy (or confusion) pointing out in the middle of a game. So here’s the trick. Find who is the main antagonist in your story (whether it’s a Dark Lord or your rival in the Most Beautiful Garden Contest, if your RPG is not a sandbox you will have an antagonistic force, else your players won’t have much to do…). Now re-write your scenario, from A to Z, but FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE ANTAGONIST, as if the players were not here, or were naive enough to fall into every single trap. Why ? To deal with both your issues at the same time of course ! On the one hand you can’t control your players’ decisions, but you can do it for your NPCs, so you CAN place your antagonist on rails and compensate every time they go astray without impeding on your players’ freedom. On the other hand, by writing out the details of your antagonist’s dastardly plan, you increase your chances to see a blatant error or omission and correct it.

Once this is done, you’ll want to identify the key elements of this plan, those that your villain absolutely need, else their objectives crumble. Those will be your “fixed points”. Your mission as a GM is to ensure that these fixed points happen no matter what your players do, in order to guide them along your main scenario. The remainder of the plan will be your “mobile points”, which your players will have way more control over. This will create a structure for your story, and you can complete the scenario with the mobile points, leaving as much freedom to your PCs as you want in them.

There’s one last task before you finish your story. Now that you have every step of your scenario, maybe even a division into chapters using the fixed points, you can do three lists : 

• the places your players will visit
• the NPCs they will meet
• the lore elements they’ll have to learn

Using these three lists, you’ll be able to re-write one last time your whole scenario. Now you’ll have a rich story, with a way more formidable antagonistic force, and more freedom for your players.

You can totally start your campaign using these documents, using the three lists as reminders

Of course, if you’re like me and you like to Plan Out Everything in advance, you’re only at the beginning of your work : every place, every NPC, every fixed and mobile point will need their own detailed page ; and some more elements will need detailing. But we’ll talk more about it in a future article, so stay tuned !

this manga panel speaks to my soul

If your plot feels flat, STUDY it! Your story might be lacking...

Stakes - What would happen if the protagonist failed? Would it really be such a bad thing if it happened?

Thematic relevance - Do the events of the story speak to a greater emotional or moral message? Is the conflict resolved in a way that befits the theme?

Urgency - How much time does the protagonist have to complete their goal? Are there multiple factors complicating the situation?

Drive - What motivates the protagonist? Are they an active player in the story, or are they repeatedly getting pushed around by external forces? Could you swap them out for a different character with no impact on the plot? On the flip side, do the other characters have sensible motivations of their own?

Yield - Is there foreshadowing? Do the protagonist's choices have unforeseen consequences down the road? Do they use knowledge or clues from the beginning, to help them in the end? Do they learn things about the other characters that weren't immediately obvious?

If you think about it, technically an airplane can only fly when there is human blood inside of it

If you think about it, technically an airplane can only fly when there is human blood inside of it