Act structure in adventure design

[Janx]

There's some good points in Raven Crowking's thread about campaign/game design:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/252585-some-thoughts-campaign-game-design.html

He makes some valid points about hating moving 4e treasure parcels the party missed, to the next encounter. This can be viewed as opposition to my "all roads lead to rome" advice.

I view it as the GM is the director, trying to create a good narrative experience for the players, based on the players choices. In play, if the party misses an opportunity for some extra treasure, I'm disinclined to move it, just to they get it. But I am inclined to make sure that whatever clue the party follows, it leads to the bad guy who lives in the mansion at the top of the hill. Basically, if it keeps the game moving, then I rearrange things (sensically I hope) so the party "made the right choice".

It's certainly a way to fix the GM mistake of penalizing them for thinking of a new idea, by making them get stuck.


Now, on the other side-topic of interpreting "punish" them. I think there's been a bit of miscommunication going on (albeit humorously).

Let's assume, that for the sake of completing the story, you try to give plot protection to the PCs. Therefore, if an encounter is turning fatal, you need to prevent that. This is where the phrase "find another way to punish them" came up, I believe. The real point, is to transform a fatality or TPK into a setback.

A setback is something that changes the protagonists situation, for the worse, and often in a new direction. The plot-points in the OP's outline could be done as setbacks.

When a PC dies, or is about to die if you announce the results of the attack, you've got a problem growing. It will become increasingly easier to kill more members (less PCs to spread damage, less to fight back). You'll want to figure out if you really want to kill that PC. A good question would be, is it dramatic. A death early in the session, or later in the session could set that up. However, it also takes a player out of the game, which is not fun.

In any event, you've also got to figure out how to de-escalate the killing, so you don't get a TPK. The hostile force could use this opportunity to capture a prisoner (the PC gets knocked out, not killed, and taken). They could simply fall back, figuring the PCs will rally to their fallen foe, buying them escape time. Or a new force could arrive, making them unable to finish the job (for example, the police show up, or a t-rex).

Taking a PC out of play for a little bit, as left for dead, unconcious, or captured, is preferable to losing the PC outright. Though raise dead is also an option (costing time and money as a setback). In any case, the price for "dying" is changed from loss of PC to time not in play.

As with all writing tricks, you can't use them all the time in your game. You don't want PCs acting stupidly because they've got plot protection, nor do you want to end a campaign, because PCs died meaninglessly. The goal is to find a balance.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I do something somewhat similar. I run my games like mysteries. As such there is various clues that branch off into new clues and places of focus. I have a fair majority of these clues mapped out and divided up into Acts.

The Acts generally are there to say, "okay lets place more of this into the tone", so to give an example... They are racing to uncover a mysterious artefact that will halt a city-ending flood, so as they work their way through the mystery each Act may see the water rising, the rain growing heavier, more people running away, etc.

I also have along the way, "set-pieces" they are scenes that can be tripped by the PCs as they uncover the story. Usually there are some manner of building up and these serve as minor climaxes for each Act. Along the way of course to the final Act and the climax of the story.

So while there is no definite path the PCs will take, I add a story/novel flow and narrative using these devices.

 

[Janx]

I'd also recommend, that to support a planned adventure of any kind, you need to have players/PCs with goals/interests that are compatible with the hook.

If you have a party of evil doers, a "save the princess" mission isn't going to interest them, and they will not want to do it, and not likely hit any scenes you can expect.

Whereas, a part of do-gooders who regularly volunteer to help out, will be likely to bite the save the princess hook.

In the same vein, the do-gooders are likely to do predictable things like talk to NPCs, examine clues, follow most of the laws, and then find and kill the bad guy. To an extent, you can script their planned path, and they will sort of follow it. And if they don't you can probably adjust it.

With an evil party, all bets are off. They will stop and do random evil, just because they're evil. They'll kill or not kill whomever. It's much harder to predict, unless you make everything a threat to fight. And then, they may run away, because they don't care about anything themselves.


The point then, is write and customize your adventure for the PCs and players. Make the plot hook something they would go for. And not just monetary reward, as that gets old (don't use the same trick over and over again).


This is why I don't use canned adventures. I write each one myself, and make it fit the PCs and style of game that works for my players.

As a result, I'm able to sculpt a story that the player wants and enjoys. It's a surprise, because I invent the elements, but I use elements I think the player will like.

One thing I don't like to see, is a player dictating the terms of the adventure. I don't want them telling me that they want to have an adventure where Princess Daphne gets kidnapped by red orcs, who use khopesh swords, and they have to travel across the desert of mud, and so on. That's my job. I want to hear ideas from my players like:
I want to do as many good deeds as I can
I want to raise in rank in the guild
I want to get more power
I want to increase my political power
I want to grow my wealth and business
I want to learn more about that thing we saw last adventure
I want to avenge my dog's death, I look for clues to his killer
I want to take-over that NPC's empire


Stuff like that. It's either broad goals, or specific responses to what's already happened in game.

 

[Kzach]

No, not sandbox, but also not really railroading. I simply saw this as a way to structure a campaign. To me it was no different than running a Dungeon module or the Scales of War adventure path. Not as strict rules.

 

[EP]

Yeah, I've thought about it, in a much simplified form, but the problem is this odd little bit of random junk that's thrown into the mix...and I don't mean dice. The players. They have a way of making quick introductions long, long combats quick, exciting events mundane, and the opening of a simple door an elaborate, complex, multi-person and multi-hour event.

When so much of the pacing is set by the players, it will make it difficult.

All of this sounds like the expectation is to have each act covered in one session and that doesn't have to be the case. Our campaign is built on this very same priniciple (we're actually on "season 2" of the campaign), but each act takes as long as it takes. When it's all said and done, if the players find the pace too slow, they are in control to speed it up. So long as they have everything they need to keep things moving forward, they are in control. The purpose of each act is controlled by the NPCs. So long as the big bad guy is still trying to take over the kingdom, steal the treasure, or sacrifice the princess, the plot points continue.

Whenever I write an "episode," I only count on the actions of the NPCs as they are the only constant for a DM. Even then, it's more of the motivations of the NPCs. If the players are nefariously twisting the plot around on its ear, a good villain will have a back-up plan. If anything, having players who take too long on simple tasks is a benefit because that gives me time to come up with a good counter to their latest twist on my original plans. And when I need them to take too long, I just place a magical aura on a door and watch them spend five minutes ensuring the door is safe.

Pacing is the responsibility of the players so long as the GM has given them everything they need to pursue their goals. And a quick Intelligence roll in case they forgot.

 

[Ariosto]

Robin D. Laws has what may be a relevant take in the Gumshoe System.

The big idea here is that rolling dice to find clues isn’t conducive to good investigative roleplaying. It results in players missing clues due to bad dice rolls, which makes it more difficult for them to put the whole mystery together. Instead, The Esoterrorists makes it very easy to acquire clues and allows points from relevant Investigative Abilities to be used to acquire more information. All a character needs to do is to have the relevant Ability and to be generally close to discovering a clue.

In that game, the character generation process is set up to give a group (not necessarily a particular character) most, if not all, all investigative Abilities. In 4E, each character has the full set of basic skills, but different characters have different ratings (and there's an assumed "skill challenge" process involving multiple dice-rolls).

The basic idea might still be worth adapting. Maybe players always get some clues, but how many (i.e., how much information in a given instance) depends on game-mechanical factors?

Personally, I don't think investigation should depend on "character skills" if player skill can pick up clues -- but that seems to run counter to current RPG design trends.

 

[LostSoul]

I wonder what a dungeon (or location-based) adventure would look like if you used this structure.

As far as I can tell:

-Allow the PCs opportunity to gather information on the dungeon (above-ground encounter areas?, the town)
-Give the PCs some reason to go into the dungeon (threat or reward)
-Make the real threat different from the obvious one (eg. goblins are pouring forth because undead are harassing them)
-Block off access into the deeper levels of the dungeon (eg. locked door, secret doors, magical entrance, puzzles, massive monster activity, dangerous monster)
-Create one room/encounter where the dungeon is "resolved" (PCs end the threat or gather the reward, eg. a treasure vault or a portal to the Abyss is closed)

 

[defendi]

The Echoes of Heaven uses the Teaser+Three Act Structure for all adventures. No need to railroad. Three act structure, at it's basics is:

Act One:
Inciting incident.
Hero leaves and enters a new world.

Act Two:
Complication.
Stuff happens.
Act Two Twist.
Stuff Happens.
End of Act Reveal.

Act Three:
All about the climax, baby.

No need to railroad. The players accept or reject the adventure in act one. If they reject it, throw another three acts in front of them and see if they like that hook better. If they screw stuff up, so be it. In the first playtest of The Throne of God one of the players shot an NPC he was supposed to save and almost killed him. The GM fudged it enough so that the NPC survived, but instead of chasing the guy through the adventure and getting the act two twist at the middle of the act, they got it at the beginning. Eh. Only the GM noticed. The players still LOVE that adventure.

In adventure terms:

Act One:
Get the adventure hook.
Accept/Decline
Travel to adventure locale.

Act Two:
Something unexpected happens when they get there making matters worse.
They do stuff.
They find out this isn't about what they thought this was about.
They do more stuff.
Their plans fall apart as they realize they've been wrong all along.

Act Three:
Bag guy mania.

You can expand this easily over an entire campaign. I did for The Moving Shadow (The Throne of God is part one in that adventure path.)

I'd be remiss if I didn't add purchase linkage for you to research:

EN World PDF Store - Final Redoubt Press - The Echoes of Heaven/The Throne of God (OGL Version)

 

[I'm A Banana]

FFZ <3's Act Structure.

 

[Badjak]

I liked both the the three-act structure of the OP and the "Chekov's Gun" idea. I think the major asset of Chekov's gun is that it makes lvl 1-5 play feel much more relevance. Usually when I DM a game from lvl 1-5, I have a hard time tying it in to whatever large world-ending plot I have just because creating a scenario that's large enough to be epic, but also small enough that lvl 1 characters can be relevant is incredibly difficult. Generally, I end up using the first few level as 1-shots before I hit the real adventure path I have planned so that the characters bond and everyone figures out what everyone else does. But Chekov's gun is really cool because it means that characters can eventually find that the small regional adventures they were having at 1rst level eventually tie in to something much grander. The problem is, I think, the same problem in movies with Chekov's gun. Canny players recognizing that something your pretending is insignificant, isn't, and then they mess with it. Like "I'll just grab that strange painting you spent five minutes describing in the inn above the mantle piece, because I'm five levels from now, it will suddenly become very important to the plot. It's a good thing there were no Dungeon and Dragon's characters in "The Hunt for Red October". In the first five minutes of the movie, they would have killed the cook because "you know he just seemed kind of suspicious."