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Worlds of Design: The Core of the Adventure
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<blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7782649" data-attributes="member: 6873517"><p>I'm pretty sure I use all of those to some degree. </p><p></p><p>Usually I use Story to motivate the connection between specific adventures or locations, with other aspects showing up more in terms of specific encounter or location design. For example I once riffed on some elements of a train station near my apartment for a combat location and I've taken things from buildings of all sorts: Things at college, family members' houses, random people I've met in the street, things I've read about or seen pictures of, etc. I often get inspired by things in novels, for instance once using a good bit of the ideas from Guy Gabriel Kay's <em>Sailing to Sarantium</em>/<em>Lord of Emperors</em>, which is in turn based on Justinian I-era Constantinople, including chariot racing, factions, and massive urban riots, although I removed the emperor and replaced him with a Lankhmar-worthy Overlord who was batspit crazy. I stole much of the plot of <em>Casino Royale</em> for a <em>Fading Suns</em> game. </p><p></p><p>I also find that I tend to throw in some interstitial sessions such as one that involves travel, so I may have a sequence in mind. One thing I've taken to doing is making an abstract "dungeon" of locations that are connected, much like the way subway stops are, allowing the players ways to choose the path they take even if it ultimately leads to the same location in the end. Video game designers do this a lot to make the path through a story less linear. I often map these out as nodes and edges in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_graph" target="_blank">directed graph</a>. Using a directed graph works well to design a power structure in an urban environment, too, something that White Wolf did way back in the day with the early <em>V:tM</em> releases. I used this heavily in the pseudo-Constantinople setting.</p><p></p><p>Finally I want to highlight how important it is to listen to your players---lots of times they'll drop ideas about what their characters fear or want, which you can weave into the game later on! A villain from the pseudo-Constantinople was evidently so memorable the players remembered him long afterwards... so, of course, I made sure he kept showing up somehow, often a bit.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jay Verkuilen, post: 7782649, member: 6873517"] I'm pretty sure I use all of those to some degree. Usually I use Story to motivate the connection between specific adventures or locations, with other aspects showing up more in terms of specific encounter or location design. For example I once riffed on some elements of a train station near my apartment for a combat location and I've taken things from buildings of all sorts: Things at college, family members' houses, random people I've met in the street, things I've read about or seen pictures of, etc. I often get inspired by things in novels, for instance once using a good bit of the ideas from Guy Gabriel Kay's [I]Sailing to Sarantium[/I]/[I]Lord of Emperors[/I], which is in turn based on Justinian I-era Constantinople, including chariot racing, factions, and massive urban riots, although I removed the emperor and replaced him with a Lankhmar-worthy Overlord who was batspit crazy. I stole much of the plot of [I]Casino Royale[/I] for a [I]Fading Suns[/I] game. I also find that I tend to throw in some interstitial sessions such as one that involves travel, so I may have a sequence in mind. One thing I've taken to doing is making an abstract "dungeon" of locations that are connected, much like the way subway stops are, allowing the players ways to choose the path they take even if it ultimately leads to the same location in the end. Video game designers do this a lot to make the path through a story less linear. I often map these out as nodes and edges in a [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_graph"]directed graph[/URL]. Using a directed graph works well to design a power structure in an urban environment, too, something that White Wolf did way back in the day with the early [I]V:tM[/I] releases. I used this heavily in the pseudo-Constantinople setting. Finally I want to highlight how important it is to listen to your players---lots of times they'll drop ideas about what their characters fear or want, which you can weave into the game later on! A villain from the pseudo-Constantinople was evidently so memorable the players remembered him long afterwards... so, of course, I made sure he kept showing up somehow, often a bit. [/QUOTE]
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