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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8228178" data-attributes="member: 42582">What is very clever in the design of the Crimson Bull is that the initial setup is straightforward - an old man who is leading a bull to a wise woman asks the PCs for help - and that the downstream scenes are really just elaborations on the set-up, with one exception that I mentioned.As they lead the bull, the PCs are attacked by falling branches, by wild dogs, by wild men, and by fire sprites from their camp fire. But none of these require any protagonistic decision-making. They just serve as elaborations on the basic premise - this old man needs help taking this bull from A to B. And they allow the backstory to the bull (ie it has had a demon bound in it, and hence is a locus for misfortune and supernatural occurrences) to emerge gradually (I would say, at our table, probably over an hour or so) rather than in a single plot-dump. It's very nicely done. The only D&D module I can think of with anything like this sort of design is the early part of Night's Dark Terror.The exception that arises prior to the climax of the journey with the bull is when "In the voice of a small boy, the bull whispers to the hero with the lowest Presence (if there is a tie, the hero with the lowest Fame). It says that it is the victim and that the old man is the evil one and begs for release of his corded thrall. The bull says that is why the old man cannot speak about his true intent." There is more advice about how to  handle this, including that "During this encounter, it is recommended the Storyteller play up the uncertainty and make the Bull sound as sincere as possible." This obviously does require protagonistic decision-making, and has the potential to be the climax of the scenario. At my table it wasn't, though - it served as rising action which then supported the pay-off at the climax.One element of the scenario that was prominent at our table but isn't really addressed by Grayson as he presents it was Christianity vs paganism. The PCs in my Prince Valiant game incline to religiosity, and at the climax one of them used his silver dagger blessed by the waters of St Sigobert to dispel the demon - and then followed up on this miracle with an insistence that the Wise Woman convert. Which she did. (The resolution for these checks was Brawn and Presence respectively.)I don't regard it as railroading to frame a scene. A well-framed scene will speak to the premise of the game and the dramatic needs of the PCs: part of the design of Prince Valiant is to make this relatively easy, by having the game foreground at every point the non-gritty aspects of romantic fantasy, Arthurian legend, Robin Hood, etc.That's not what I regard as clever in Grayson's scenario design. What I think is clever is leaning into the system features (eg that travel is just free narration, and hence can be built into framing rather than demanding resolution) and using the conflicts I described to build colour and allow backstory to emerge in the course of that framing, so that when the climax comes (either the pre-climax or the assumed climax) there is some heft to it. I don't know if Grayson has ever written Cthulhu Scenarios, but I think he shows how this can be done in a way that (with the right system) can avoid railroading, build the atmosphere, and rest on one big pay-off.</blockquote>

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