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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8104049" data-attributes="member: 42582">This "plot hook" discussion seems to have mostly run its course, but I'll just add: I wouldn't normally use plot hook as a synonym for framing a scene and/or establishing a situation that is a provocative opportunity.The more trivial, pedantic reason is that there's no plot, and no hook, so it would look like a misnomer. The more serious reason is similar to what I said upthread about "the adventure" - I think that recycling terms to describe different techniques tends to cause confusion and flattens out the discussion of GMing techniques.When I read "The GM can now design the opening scene and possible adventure" (from the OP) and "The GM still has control of the content of the game and plot hooks are needed" (from [USER=17927]@Charles Dunwoody[/USER] not far upthread) it doesn't read to me anything like AW or Burning Wheel.Upthread you (hawkeyefan) said a bit about Alien scenarios. Which to me seemed a bit like Prince Valiant episodes. But Prince Valiant episodes don't really have "plot hooks" either. You come to a glade and a knight is waiting there, mounted, beside his tent. He insists that you joust with him before he will let you pass through! isn't a plot hook. It's not leading into anything - it's the main event!There is one real exception in the main Prince Valiant rulebook (which is authored by Greg Stafford), and a couple of exceptions in the Episode Book (which has multiple authors) - these are the exceptions in the sense that they lay out subsequent scenes/events that follow the initial ones, and will only make sense if the players make certain choices. The Greg Stafford exception, and the Jerry Grayson scenario in the Episode Book, handle this well - because the assumed choices are not ones that in themselves presuppose a resolution of stakes one way rather than another. Eg in Jerry Grayson's The Crimson Bull, they are events on a journey, and going on a journey is not itself a matter of protagonism in Prince Valiant, given its default genre assumption of knights errant.The Mark Rein*Hagen scenario in the Episode Book does presuppose particular resolution to matters of stakes and protagonism, which is why, when I used it, I had to ignore his presupposed structure and sequence of events and rather just drew on his NPCs, his starting situation and his general vibe.Which brings me back to GM advice. I think advising a GM to design an adventure with plot hooks is, at best, a roundabout way of getting to the result of play to find out what happens. Why prepare a Rein*Hagen-esque series of events and resolutions if you're only going to have to disregard them in play? <a href="https://playsorcerer.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/the-interactive-toolkit-part-four-running-story-entertainments/" target="_blank">Here's an example of prep</a> that Christopher Kubasik gave way back in his "Interactive Toolkit" essays (sblocked for length):[spoiler]Let’s say your group has decided to make up stories set in Arthurian Britain. Furthermore, it’s decided that the stories will focus on Knights alone, like the stories in Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur (and Greg Stafford’s excellent roleplaying game Pendragon). But we don’t want a bunch of knights who simply bump into each other one day and sally forth. We want narrative ties, as discussed last issue.Someone suggests that the four knights are all brothers; a kind of Arthurian Bonanza. An excellent idea, for the ties of family are vitally important in Arthurian literature. Now the characters are linked, are going help each other out in a variety of jams, but can still dearly pursue their own interests. This idea is broadened out after a bit of discussion to make sure the characters are different: some of the Lead characters will be squires who want to become knights (a fine Goal for such a campaign). Perhaps the knights are not all brothers, but and descend from the same grandfather, giving a greater range of family background, but still tying them together.Excellent. But what is Fifth Business supposed to do now?Well, I can tell you what I did last week. I arrived at my first session of my Pendragon campaign with nothing but the outline I’ve given above and the ready use of Saxons as punching bags if I couldn’t think of anything better for the characters to do for the hours of game time we’d scheduled. Let me make this clear: I really didn’t have any idea what was going to happen, but I trusted that the players would provide what was needed and everything would work out fine.I helped the two players make their characters. I had decided that neither character would begin the game as a knight, this was too sweet an Objective for the characters nor one I wanted to give away easily. They’d have to get knighted during game play. After giving the briefest of a cultural and political background for the campaign I asked the Leads what Goal their characters had.Mike said he wanted land. That’s a good Objective for someone in this sort of setting. But not specific enough. “Whose land?” I asked. ‘Do you want to get it from some Saxons, or conquer a fertile manor from a noble knight?”“From a knight,” Mike replied.“Excellent, that’ll be hard. Are you gunning for the Earl, or just a knight.”He said his character wasn’t ready to take on an Earl, so he’d go after a knight.“Why are you doing this? Is there something about the land, or do you hate the knight?”After discussing this back and forth a bit, Mike decided both. He said, “The land is especially valuable, and I hate the family. The knight has a son, and the son and I have a rivalry. We fight constantly.”“Now, your father, does he hate them too?”Mike smiled, getting into the groove of being a problem magnet. “No. My folks and this family are really good friends. They get along great.”“Anything else?”“Yes. Is there some woman I could be courting, to marry her and get her father’s land as well …?”We set this up as well. By the time we were done we were able to define the knight’s Goal: he wanted to be a major political and military power in Britain. My job was simply to give him opportunities to attain this, and obstacles that thwarted these efforts or prevented him from advancing.The younger brother of this knight was played by Chris. He began somewhat vague as a character, but Chris eventually provided a terrific Goal.“I show off for the women. You know.”“That’s an activity, but what’s your goal?” As Fifth Business, part of my job is to make the suggestions of the players concrete and useable.“To impress them.”“For any particular reason? Sometimes when a person shows off his or her sexuality to a group, he or she does it actually to engage the attention of one person. Is there one person you’re trying to get the attention of?”“Yeah. How about the wife of the knight my brother wants to kill?”I smiled. Of course. “All right. Now, how strongly do you want her? Christopher Kubasik’s rule of thumb is always make the strongest choice possible.”“I love her more than I love my own family.”“All-Righty!”But what about the session? All I had was Saxons, and neither Mike nor Chris had shown much interest in them. I put just blind faith in everyone and went to work.I sent the Lead characters, Arakien and Galan out on patrol for Saxons.Traveling with them were two knights: Sir Graid, whose daughter Arakien was wooing, and Sir Merin, Arakien’s nemesis and son of the woman Galan loved more than he loved his own family. I still had no idea what was going to happen, but I followed the Fifth Business’s first rule of thumb, put volatile characters and objects together in the same scene.[/spoiler]This makes more sense to me: the focus of prep is on situation and relationships, rather than a possible series of events.It also highlights another aspect of playing to find out what happens: what Vincent Baker, in AW, calls "no status quo!" My view, based on reading modules and reading posts about play and GMing, is that one obstacle to playing to find out is a reluctance to let the players have big impacts on the fiction; a fear of the players going "out of control". Vincent Baker's advice for setting and situation design in AW seems to be deliberately intended to push back against this sort of reluctance. Whereas advice to "design a possible adventure" and "prepare plot hooks" seems to encourage it.</blockquote>

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