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<blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 6877495" data-attributes="member: 63"><p>By 'use' test do you mean 'ease of use' for the GM? </p><p></p><p>Maybe I prep differently, but I generally assume that my job is to give the GM things that are non-obvious. I'm not writing an adventure that's meant to be run as you read the book. I figure the GM will read the whole book, get a sense of how all the pieces fit together, and then refresh his or her memory for individual scenes the day of the game. </p><p></p><p>Here's a sample from the first scene of ZEITGEIST. As background, by this point the players should have read at least part of the Player's Guide, made their characters, and come up with some basic idea of how they've worked together in this same unit as a group of sort of FBI-esque constables in a city named Flint, where an industrial revolution has recently begun.</p><p></p><p>I don't often use boxed text, but for the first scene I wanted to clearly set the tone. </p><p></p><p> </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> </p><p></p><p>This opening ties into two of the 'character themes' of the setting -- Dockers and Yerasol Veterans. A PC with another theme, Skyseer, gets told about a vague vision he had the night before of "a crowd, a purple ribbon, the Beran city Seobriga, an empty bed, a broken tin whistle, and a girl with a lisp singing the Risuri royal anthem." </p><p></p><p>Then we explain some possible ways the party could locate the men, and include skill checks the PCs can roll to get hints. Like:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> </p><p>It's certainly more involved than simply describing a dungeon room and having a monster or trap, but I was trying to accomplish a lot in one scene - set the mood to be investigatory where you're in civilization so just killing people you don't like isn't kosher; provide a lot of details of the setting without it being an infodump; and laying the first threads of conflicts and themes that run through the whole adventure path.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 6877495, member: 63"] By 'use' test do you mean 'ease of use' for the GM? Maybe I prep differently, but I generally assume that my job is to give the GM things that are non-obvious. I'm not writing an adventure that's meant to be run as you read the book. I figure the GM will read the whole book, get a sense of how all the pieces fit together, and then refresh his or her memory for individual scenes the day of the game. Here's a sample from the first scene of ZEITGEIST. As background, by this point the players should have read at least part of the Player's Guide, made their characters, and come up with some basic idea of how they've worked together in this same unit as a group of sort of FBI-esque constables in a city named Flint, where an industrial revolution has recently begun. I don't often use boxed text, but for the first scene I wanted to clearly set the tone. This opening ties into two of the 'character themes' of the setting -- Dockers and Yerasol Veterans. A PC with another theme, Skyseer, gets told about a vague vision he had the night before of "a crowd, a purple ribbon, the Beran city Seobriga, an empty bed, a broken tin whistle, and a girl with a lisp singing the Risuri royal anthem." Then we explain some possible ways the party could locate the men, and include skill checks the PCs can roll to get hints. Like: It's certainly more involved than simply describing a dungeon room and having a monster or trap, but I was trying to accomplish a lot in one scene - set the mood to be investigatory where you're in civilization so just killing people you don't like isn't kosher; provide a lot of details of the setting without it being an infodump; and laying the first threads of conflicts and themes that run through the whole adventure path. [/QUOTE]
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