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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ExploderWizard" data-source="post: 5178556" data-attributes="member: 66434">A non-scripted scenario can never be based entirely on likely actions the PC's might take. I have to base plans of actionfor NPC's based on what they know. Depending on the situation the outlined scenario might featurethe NPC's anticipating and setting up counters for specific types of interference to being completely ignorant of the PC's at all.  I am using a module in my current game [2E Return to the Keep on the Borderlands converted to 4e]. The scenario outlines actions that NPC's plan to take and how these actions may differ if the PC's become involved.     It was not a misinterpretation, it was one possible definition. How does keying a map= writing a scene? If I say that Area 5 on the map is the lair of a hungry owlbear, what makes that fact alone a scene? Area 5 only becomes a scene or setting if the players interact with it. The players may give area 5 the old right hand wave and never explore it. Area 5 contains what it contains. It is not random.     Yes. NPC's have goals, tactics and resources used to acheive these goals, and sometimes these goals are time sensitive. A plot and a timeline do not equal a story arc. The missing component is the players and their actions. Baron Von Badass attempting to seizethe throne is a plot being hatched by the Baron. A story arc by definition spans something and assumes activity and involvement by the PC's. The purpose of a story arc is to move characters from one state to another. If the players are responsible for that movement then it cannotbe written into a pre-defined arc.   The end product of play does not have to equal the purpose of it.   It certainly is. Does a game session have to equal a chapter? Last session we ended in the middle of tense action during a brief pause. Next session we will pick up right there. Given the various definitions of scene, then  yes in the sense of a locale.  A story arc has a targeted end point. The DM cannot predict or write the players part and the players cannot predict or write the DM's part. The whole point of a story arc is to map the flow of the story to it's desired conclusion. A game does not have a known desired conclusion and thus the arc has no endpoint. This is a device useful forfiction, not gameplay.</blockquote>

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