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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 5188029" data-attributes="member: 23240">The main and most important building blocks of my games are NPCs. It is their relations and goals, but also their specific abilities or powers and quirks of their personality and looks. These do not, usually, require long descriptions: up to 3 paragraphs for the important ones, one or two sentences for extras. The interactions between PCs and NPCs, the choices taken by players and their consequences is what shapes my game sessions. My notes often consist of a list of NPCs with their fluff and crunch, half a page or less detailing initial situation and nothing more. The whole storyline is created by my players through their PCs and by my NPCs pursuing their agendas.There are also other building blocks, that are not present in every game I run, but show up quite often. They are, in order of importance:History and religionI love to tie my scenarios strongly to the setting background - or create my own pieces of background to detail it. Sometimes, the characters explore an exotic culture and must learn its ways to reach their goals. Sometimes, a historical or mythical event is a key to understanding current situation and changing it. Sometimes, relations between gods or a structure of religious hierarchy may be used by PCs for their own ends. Sometimes, learning a piece of history creates a surprising plot twist, showing the situation in different light.VisualsI often have some images stuck in my head that I try to work into a game. They are not whole scenes - this would be impossible to include without heavy railroading. It may be an item, a face, a weather phenomenon, a room. Sometimes they are taken from a book or a movie, sometimes something seen in real life, sometimes just a creation of my imagination. In rare cases, the thing I want to include is not visual - like a line of text or a musical motive.Mechanical conceptSometimes, I find a monster, a spell or ability so interesting that I judge the mechanics alone as a good reason to include it in a game. I build a situation or a challenge based on it, and then find an in-game reason for it to exist. A few of the sessions I ran have been born from such mechanical ideas that the whole story arose around.</blockquote>

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