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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Dallman" data-source="post: 9538992" data-attributes="member: 6999616">I've never run school club games (I didn't discover roleplaying until I went to college) but for the other three categories, what I aim to manage is the level of tension the players are experiencing. Fights that look dangerous are the easiest way to raise tension, but they tend to soak up playing time, so I'm quite sparing about using them.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">For one-shots, you need a fight early on so that the characters can learn what to expect from each other, but you don't necessarily need any ,more than that.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If the scenario is about finding something out, solving a mystery that isn't a murder, or calming down a social problem, then I frequently dispense with fights entirely.  </li> </ul>Without fights, tension can be built with strangeness, specifically breaking what seem like rules of the setting. Here's an example, described in terms of the plot structure, rather than the events:Earlier this year, the Occult WWII in India party were up in a tiny mountain kingdom, trying to find out what was really going on. They actually had accurate information, but did not entirely believe it because it seemed implausible. It was also socially and religiously unacceptable to the majority group in the area, although a minority group - where the unacceptable thing had happened - were fine with it. Nobody wanted to start a pogrom, because everyone was behaving like adults, but an acceptable public explanation had to be created.As outsiders, not dominated by any one viewpoint, the PCs were acceptable investigators to all the locals. They went about it methodically, and found the shaman who'd created the situation. He was willing to confide in them, reckoning they would find out everything for themselves fairly quickly if he didn't - he'd had some foreknowledge of them. That was a means of keeping the scenario to one session.The problem I had was how to manage the transition to the place where the unacceptability was concealed. The story took over from my thinking, and the shaman led the PCs to a spirit realm, quite close to reality, but apparently occupying the space of a large mountain between two valleys. That was new: physical reality had been quite solid in the campaign up to that point. The players understood, and acted accordingly; the truth became obvious, and the whole problem was dealt with to everyone's satisfaction.That is, apart for one PC who agreed that this seemed like a case of ethically acceptable spirit possession, but was having trouble with his religious doctrine on the subject. That's a further plot thread, to be dealt with when a few other PCs have progressed their individual threads.</blockquote>

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