The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Are we talking about Justin’s technique or clues abstractly? Even if the latter, just going by the dictionary definition suggests a clue is more than just information. It has a purpose —to lead one to solve a problem (or mystery).
I would distinguish between responding when the game requires the GM to say something about the state of the world or to provide information on an impending, dangerous situation (as my homebrew system required in those situations) and designing a scenario with something to guide the PCs to a particular conclusion.
To put it another way, I know where the bandits are are (because I did prep that the hex had bandits at the tramway station), but I reveal information related to the bandits when the system requires me to do that. It could involve an event check. It could be the result of a skill check. What I don’t have is a prep saying, “there is a bandit trail here,” or, “there are bandits on horses over there,” or, “Roy knows about the bandits because he’s been watching them.” Roy didn’t even exist until an event check required a roll on the wilderness encounter table (which I’m still using from OSE), which resulted in “Lycanthrope, Weretiger”.
A plot is this: The adventurers come to the town, they decide to investigate a missing child, they find the kidnapper, the kidnapper monologues and runs away. End of adventure.
What you should be preparing is the following: In this town, a girl has been kidnapped by (kidnapper name). (Notice here nothing requires action on the part of the PCs) The "three clue" process would be ensuring the PCs can work out who the kidnapper is and where the girl is being hidden by leaving at least 3 clues that will give you the answer.
None of that requires the DM to assume any action on the part of the PCs. The clues are clues to the setting, not to the plot.
The Alexandrian blog and JA himself come in for a lot of flack partly because of the style but I do feel he says some pretty smart things even if you have to sift through fair bit to get to it. For instance one of the distilled pieces of wisdom he shared in his post about Avernus was…
Design situations not plots because then you don’t actually care what the PCs actually do; you just want to expose them to the situation so that they can begin interacting with it.
I find it very hard to argue with this really useful piece of advice as a DM. It makes me reflect on my own encounter design in a constructive way and that can’t be bad!
Though, if we're being honest, Dungeon World and its predecessors beat him to the punch by literal years. "Fill the characters' lives with adventure." "Play to find out what happens." "Draw maps, leave blanks." Or, if you prefer it less pithy:
Never presume player actions. Instead, always expose them to situations which call for action, and let them decide how to respond.
Embrace the joy of discovery. Instead of planning what the characters will do, have the world respond to what the characters do do.
When filling the world with detail, it's great to have guidelines--maps, timelines, lore. But leave space for the aforementioned joy of discovery.
Fundamentally, it's just "frame scenes." Having to filter through a lot of other stuff before you get to the nuggets of sense is not ideal, but I suppose it's better to have more advocates for good ideas rather than fewer.
So long as that also means filtering away the decidedly un-positive things Mr. Alexander says from time to time, I have no issue with abiding by this request.
I would rephrase this as, "For any prepared information you want the PCs to discover." The phrasing used here implies the contradiction others have mentioned: making the PCs conclude something.
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.
This sounds to me like a plot, where you will need the players to go through particular events in order for that plot to conclude. Try this on for size.
Adventure Front: The Roving Orc-Clan Dangers
Orc Raiders (Wandering Barbarians; impulse: to grow strong, to drive their enemies before them)
Impending Doom: Destruction (the village is damaged beyond repair, its inhabitants scattered to the wind)
The Brotherhood of the Sword (Cabal; impulse: to absorb those in power, to gobble up territory)
Impending Doom: Tyranny (the village is "saved" by the Brotherhood...then exploited mercilessly)
Grim Portents
The orc scouting party escapes
The Brotherhood sends a squad
Mayor Branno gets betrayed
The Church recalls the town priest
Raiders set the common pasture ablaze
The Brotherhood calls for reinforcements
Final battle is joined...one way or another
Stakes
Will our Paladin, Barzinn, learn that his mother is the Brotherhood's secret leader?
Can the orcs persuade our Barbarian, Barbariccia, to help them?
How will our Cleric, Justitia, respond to the Church's cowardice?
This is an example Dungeon World front I just made up now. "Impending dooms" are things that, if the danger is allowed to come to pass, will be the inevitable result. Grim Portents are situations that slowly make the Front worse; in this case, they all follow a logical order, but other situations might have some with no special logical connection or necessary ordering. None of them are set in stone; if the story has evolved in a direction that prevents #5 (for example, perhaps Barbariccia turns the situation around, and persuades the orcs to help the town against the Brotherhood's tyranny), then that Grim Portent is out and something else takes its place (for example, "the Brotherhood attacks the village for being 'collaborators'"). None of these things are plotted events, though they do have a logical progression. They are scenes, which could play out in many different ways--we play to find out what happens.
A plot is this: The adventurers come to the town, they decide to investigate a missing child, they find the kidnapper, the kidnapper monologues and runs away. End of adventure.
What you should be preparing is the following: In this town, a girl has been kidnapped by (kidnapper name). (Notice here nothing requires action on the part of the PCs) The "three clue" process would be ensuring the PCs can work out who the kidnapper is and where the girl is being hidden by leaving at least 3 clues that will give you the answer.
None of that requires the DM to assume any action on the part of the PCs. The clues are clues to the setting, not to the plot.
I agree with the initial framing of the second example, but once the PCs choose to investigate it, it ends up effectively being turned into the plot. That’s the whole point! Justin makes this clear in his essay. Adventures risk stalling out when there is only one way to reach the conclusion. He refers to this as a chokepoint. If there is only one way to find the kidnapper, then either the PCs have to get lucky, or the GM has to act overtly to make sure they can’t miss it. When you use multiple, then it avoids having that happen due to redundancy. It’s nice if the PCs can find every path to the conclusion, but it’s not required.
I think our disagreement (and I assume also @mamba’s) is one of feel. For most people, these feel different. While both lead to the same conclusion (finding the kidnapper), the play is not the same. In the first, the GM will probably need to act overtly to influence play. If not, then there’s always the possibility. While I think that’s fine if you signed up for it, I’m probably unusual in having that view. I know it tends to be wildly unpopular with a lot of people. In the second, the GM remains hands off after designing (or choosing) the scenario. That tends to feel better, and people like it more, because the GM can sit back and run the scenario without having to act overtly.
Note that I say most people. When one doesn’t want to play through a GM-authored scenario at all, then either approach can seem like the same thing regardless of any differences between the processes used to play it. From that perspective, you’re solving a problem the GM provided either way. The sort of play where that’s not desired is when the GM tends to function more as a facilitator in support of what the PCs need from the game.
No. Because he has repeatedly, for years, behaved poorly to his peers. He's been banned from just about every single RPG discussion board there is, including those that ban almost nobody. He's said inexcusable things and when confronted with them he usually doubles down on them. It took him AN ENTIRE YEAR, and only after he published and was confronted by her widow, before he admitted maybe he shouldn't swiped Jannell Jaquays' concept with his own friggen name. The guy is toxic and frankly I am really tired of people dismissing his antics as just his "style." It's not his "style" he's just plain a jerk too often in his online communications.
To be honest I want it to be a plus thread precisely to avoid all this. I’ve been a fierce critic in other threads. I’m not interested in the guy. Just the ideas. Which seem to be very sensible. I’d like to get the gist without having to read all the stuff I don’t like.
Just seen Umbran’s note so updated it. So please don’t anyone make this a pile on JA thread, it’s really annoying and there are plenty out there already.
@TheSword Is critical discussion in scope (e.g., the discussion regarding a contradiction between “Don’t Prep Plots” and the “Three Clue Rule”)? I missed that this thread was meant to be a [+], but I don’t want to contribute to further derailment if it’s not.
Basically "clues" refer to players working out the state of the world (ie, who killed the king, who stole the pies, etc) rather than what you want them to do (investigate the murder of the king, investigate the theft of the pies).
But if you want them to discover something… if you include three ways for them to discover something precisely so that they don’t fail to discover it… then you want them to find it. Which means you want that for a reason… presumably so that they can engage in the next step of the scenario.
It isn’t bad advice, in and of itself. But I think it’s much more relevant to adventures that do have a plot. Mysteries or investigations. Call of Cthulhu and similar games benefit from this advice.
JA has connected these two ideas when he really shouldn’t have.
@TheSword Is critical discussion in scope (e.g., the discussion regarding a contradiction between “Don’t Prep Plots” and the “Three Clue Rule”)? I missed that this thread was meant to be a [+], but I don’t want to contribute to further derailment if it’s not.
so updated it. So please don’t anyone make this a pile on JA thread, it’s really annoying and there are plenty out there already.
