D&D General The Alexandrian’s Insights In a Nutshell [+]

[mamba]

Sure he does. He has a section on using the three clue rule in his “Don’t Prep Plots” essay.

yes, he says to have several clues. I said he does not give advice to set up a situation in a way that has only one solution

Any adventure has clues that point towards other situations, even an open sandbox does that

 

[cbwjm]

I think it was lazy dungeon master that I first came across the 3 clues idea.

I don't really read the alexandrian, he has had some good articles (it'd where I first saw the idea of jaquaysing a dungeon written down) but most of what he writes doesn't really seem that useful for me. Easier to read than the Angry GM though.

 

[kenada]

I’m going to offer one: Adversary Rosters (see also: his design notes on them in Infinity RPG). I prefer how OSR games put the monsters on the map instead, but the decoupling monsters form the key makes it easier to use them dynamically in response to what the PCs are doing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I get this in concept, but are hung up thinking if I do this or what the difference is with situations and encounters and plots. I might have a tribe or orcs planning to attack the village. I plan out an encounter where they attack and their size and tactics. I plan on the PCs fighting, but guess it depends on them. I also plan on the orcs taking some prisoners and going back to a cave. I plan on the PCs going to save the villagers.

The plot of the adventure is to survive the attack and rescue the villagers before they are sacrificed. I have a few situations that the PCs walk into but they could also just not want to do any of it.

I guess I'm thinking that all of these words might just be the same.

I would consider what you are talking about here is exactly plot, and probably what he's telling people not to do. Don't set goals, let the players do that. Don't construct 'webs of causality' projecting into the future, let things fall where they may naturally at the point of contact with play. I mean, I don't know what The Alexandrian would say, he and I think very differently about these things. In this case though I think there's some parallel thinking going on. I think he's basically saying what DW says, which is "Prep stuff, but don't try to construct a through plot which directs play." The prep is there to give the GM something to say when the players have chewed through what already got said, and maybe to spark some things when the action gets thin. Situations do that without necessarily implying what has to follow from what.

So, if I construct an 'Orc Front', it can manifest in play as "Orcs attack the village." Whether there are prisoners, whether the PCs try to save them, etc. is all going to depend on a mixture of what actually happens in play and maybe the evinced interests of the characters, etc.

 

[kenada]

yes, he says to have several clues. I said he does not give advice to set up a situation in a way that has only one solution

But the clues point to one conclusion. One may allow different solutions, but the PCs end up at the same place. That’s the point of the structure. When you have multiple of these happening at the same time with clues intertwined and pointing to different nodes, Justin calls that advanced node-based design.

I’ve written adventures using this structure. I think it’s fine for what it does, and I suspect I’m less down on it than @pemerton, but what you have is not a situation when the PCs need to take a certain action or reach a certain conclusion. It’s a blind spot for Justin. According to his definition of railroad, it’s not a railroad if you get to make choices along the way. It doesn’t matter that all stops lead to the same destination. The GM has to act overtly.

Any adventure has clues that point towards other situations, even an open sandbox does that

Not when you only prep the explosive situations and stop there. For example, in the session I described today in post #294, I prepped quite a bit of information on the raiders. There are some potential conflicts, but I don’t leave clues to make them happen. The purpose of this prep is to give me things to say when the raiders come into focus. None of what actually happened in the session was prepped. I just responded to what the PCs were doing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Infinity RPG contains a lot of Justin’s advice in the GMing section (which makes sense because he was the line developer for that game). The ideas behind “Don’t Prep Plots” are in the section on revelation lists.

How do they compare with DW's presentation of fronts?
VB is pretty detailed. The major themes of a game are presented as Fronts. Each front has several 'dangers', which are groups, effects, processes, whatever that will manifest during play in some fashion, possibly as encounters, or even as more long-lived elements of the world which appear repeatedly or keep having an effect. Dangers have 'impulses' but not 'plans'. An 'Elemental Lord' has the impulse to tear creation down to its components. GM moves are suggested for these dangers as well, an Elemental Lord might 'Lay a Curse on a foe' for example. So now we have a potential scene! Additionally there are 'grim portents' that will be associated with this, so perhaps the PCs find a book which explains that the Elemental Lord is a bad-ass with curses, what they might entail, etc. Again, there's no PLOT here, but there is this through line for play.

Thus we could imagine an Elemental Lord, the PCs learn about her from an ancient crumbling tome, and then when they need to either confront this danger or disengage from it, they end up in a confrontation. The Lord curses the Barbarian, every time he attempts to Sate his Herculean Appetite for Riches and Property everything he obtains is consumed and destroyed in an elemental maelstrom! (maybe this is a result of a cursed weapon he's stuck with). The impulse is in effect, the danger has struck, and the action will be driven onwards in some direction! Maybe the Barbarian will go mad and change his Herculean Appetite to "Pure destruction"!

 

[the Jester]

I’m going to offer one: Adversary Rosters (see also: his design notes on them in Infinity RPG). I prefer how OSR games put the monsters on the map instead, but the decoupling monsters form the key makes it easier to use them dynamically in response to what the PCs are doing.

I'm running L1: The Secret of Bone Hill in about 45 minutes, and it uses rosters rather than specific placements of adversaries in the titular ruin. I often design adventures with a mix- a roster at the start of a level and then rooms with, for example, "1d6+2 goblins" in them.

 

[kenada]

How do they compare with DW's presentation of fronts?

I wrote inaccurately about revelation lists. They’re about supporting the three clue rule and node-based design, which are both mentioned by name in the book (as are adversary rosters). The resulting adventure structure will be fairly traditional, but my point was that he has actually put his ideas into a game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I’m going to offer one: Adversary Rosters (see also: his design notes on them in Infinity RPG). I prefer how OSR games put the monsters on the map instead, but the decoupling monsters form the key makes it easier to use them dynamically in response to what the PCs are doing.

Skimming through his notes I would say his concept is pretty tactical, which would be fairly in line with DW's Adventure Front concept. There's not so well-developed an idea of 'impulse' or 'portent', but it is kind of latent in there. Given the PbtA architecture of DW there's little need for the text to explicitly talk about dynamism, the idea of moves which precipitate the appearance or at least effects of dangers in play kind of takes care of that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I wrote inaccurately about revelation lists. They’re about supporting the three clue rule and node-based design, which are both mentioned by name in the book (as are adversary rosters). The resulting adventure structure will be fairly traditional, but my point was that he has actually put his ideas into a game.

Right, it's interesting. Definitely seems like a more 'trad' approach, especially given the idea that everything is mapped out in terms of the locations in a fairly thorough way.