Insufficient Steps

[PencilBoy99]

I'm still struggling with, as a GM, turning an idea or a goal into an activity with challenging, multiple steps. This is a problem for me REGARDLESS of whether the goal/activity is generated by me or the players, and REGARDLESS of whether or not I'm pre-planning OR improving (based on a "Situation"). Both my players and I find this unsatisfying.


EXAMPLE:


we have the goal "rescue the people kidnapped from the tavern by Orcs" turns into "follow the Orks trail, then deal with them to get the hostages" which isn't even two scenes of activity.


TRIED:


Creating Antagonists w/ Goals (in the above example, Orc doesn't wants to keep his captives as slaves, but that doesn't turn into anything for the players to do besides rescue them).


Creating steps for the Antagonists a la Fronts/Dangers (Orc kidnaps people and takes them back to lair).

 

[Celebrim]

Under what theory of scenario development are you working?

I don't see anything inherently wrong with rescuing hostages by tracking their captors and then killing them. That's fine as far as it goes, and I would oppose the idea of introducing artificial complications purely to thwart the player's from implementing a plan.

What seems to be lacking in your concept is a grand design. A tribe of bandits taking slaves for themselves lacks a grand purpose or design. So naturally, you shouldn't be surprised that the petty designs of the petty foes are thwarted by a fairly trivial application of heroic force. What you have here is a suitable random encounter, and not a 'front'. Potentially, the machinations of some slavers could be a hook leading to a front, but its not generally a grand enough of a foe to serve as a villainous front in an epic fantasy.

1) Unless it is regional flavor or color, a scenario what you describe is a door and not an end to itself. It's meant to do one of two things. Either introduce the PC's to an important NPC by way of the service they render: "You rescued me. My hero.", "You have rescued my daughter. I owe you a debt of gratitude", or else to put the NPC's on the trail to some larger problem, "Someone paid these orcs for this work, look, here are their instructions..."

2) One problem that your description seems to have is that the NPCs involved are pretty faceless. Detailed NPCs help create drama. They have connections and motives of their own. Becoming involved in their lives potentially entangles you in problems. The more work you have in creating meaningful NPCs, the more stories proceed from them.

3) Equally bad, is that the pursuit seems to have gone across largely meaningless space and time. You didn't cross rivers, canyons, or through a bog with quicksand to either side. You encountered no prisoners, injured or murdered trying to escape along the way. You passed through no lairs or territories. It was an empty road you were following on.

Regardless of whether you address this by filling in the sandbox with preparation, or improvising on the spot, you need granularity to make scenes cool. There is a fine line between too little detail and too much, but you seem to be on the 'too little' side of it from what I can tell.

You also need BBEG's with bigger long term goals manipulating things behind the scenes. Maybe the orcs were planning to meet up with human slavers. So when the PC's catch up, they find the captives being loaded onto wagons by numerous heavily armed men. Maybe the orcs needed captives because their clan has summoned up some blood god or fiend that needs 100 human sacrifices by the winter solstice, or else he'll start eating them and so stopping this force is only a temporary reprieve. Maybe someone in the town cooperated with the orcs and even arranged the events as part of an elaborate revenge plot against a rival. Maybe one of the captives is the young betrothed of a powerful noble by arranged marriage, but as result of the PC's rescuing her and her own romantic illusions, she (or he) has now got a crush on one of her (or his) rescuers and now the PC's find themselves entangled unwillingly(?) in a love triangle where both noble houses are going, "A pox on thee." And so on and so forth. Or better yet, ALL of that at once.

 

[LordEntrails]

Read this post; Node Based Scenario Design

Then read parts 2 & 3 of that series. Then read some of the links.

Then if you are still stumped, checkout the resources listed here; http://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?36014-GM-Advice

 

[aramis erak]

The missing elements seem to be that you're considering it with only objective based scenes.

You need unrelated scenes and journey scenes.

Random encounters are a good part of journeys.
Terrain & weather interactions also make for interesting non-combat encounters.

Mouse Guard has a formula for its adventures which may be of use: MAWW

• Mouse (in MG, you all play mice, so this is NPC's)
• Animals (other than rodents and weasels)
• Weather
• Wilderness

Swap Mice for "hominids"...

Each session, you do one of each, plus maybe an extra of choice...

While MG is particularly quick, making a journey be multiple discrete segments, each with 2 or 3 different elements makes for a better "Journey montage."

If you look at The One Ring, or it's 5E compatible variant, Adventures in Middle Earth, it provides a good bit more "flavor" to the montage process...

Regions should have encounter themes... one area might be farmers, herds, and raiding parties; weather encounters might be blistering sun, or sudden rain, requiring some kind of action. Wilderness might be a patch of irritant plants, or a cliff face, or a rock fall, or even minor vermin...

And mix up local color theme encounters with occasional progress encounters, so they know they're on the right track.

And while Jump Cuts can work well, especially in action movies, they don't work so well in textual.

 

[PencilBoy99]

Thanks! Here's my summary from the postings here and other sites.

Make the given immediate problem part of a larger, more subtle problem (i.e., Front). Ideally, add multiple, conflicting problems.
Make the NPCs and opposition more complex, with motives that can entangle the players. NPC's always want something, and may require concessions or leverage to motivate them. Add complexity to the opposition's goals (they did this bad thing because of some larger issue). In every scene, each individual wants something, and they will attempt to move the scene in a way that gets them what they want
Make the journey towards achieving the goal interesting and challenging. Are the players really passing through an "empty space" w/out people, creatures, or terrain? Journeys should include hazards (terrain, weather, encounters).
The objective / the antagonist's plans occur in a place, and are affecting and affected by it (e.g., unrelated parties that may want to cover things up or take advantage of the situation)
Use Murphy's Law (sparingly), make things go wrong (food spoilage, hit w/ poisoned arrows requiring healing)
Make the objective difficult to deal with head on, so that the players need to obtain resources or plan (e.g., antagonists outnumber them, potential allies have been set against them, allies cannot be harmed by physical weapons).
Build the problem in layers
Come up with the basic problematic situation
Add detail, asking questions and answering them. Why did the antagonists do this thing? Why were they in that situation? Who else is affected by this situation? Which antagonists have competing or secondary agendas.
Increase the difficulty. Add resources to the antagonists. What could the antagonists possibly do to protect themselves and ensure their success. Play the opposition intelligently
Conceal the necessary information (as it would be in the real world). They will need to learn, and go down other paths, as they find the real opposition. Have them encounter other issues as they do this.

EN World, Google+, TheRPGSite