NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 6123562" data-attributes="member: 27160">I haven't read all of this humungous thread (sorry), but from the last few pages, if you want more insight into this sort of thing there is a book I can recommend. It's called "Story", is by Robert McKee and relates most obviously to scriptwriting, but it contains an account of how a story is built that I find useful for roleplaying games, regardless. It distils down roughly like this:Take a character - any character - and give them a goal. More than a goal, really - a "dramatic need". It could be anything - we have generated pretty good stories starting with the need "have a cigarette".The character - if they are rational - will start out acting to meet their need by the simplest and most straightforward route possible (e.g. look in her handbag for a packet of cigs). The storyteller just needs to make fulfilment by this means impossible (all she finds is an empty packet). Then the character will try the next simplest way to fulfill their need (she checks the cupboards). Make that one unsuccessful, too (in the sense that there are no cigarettes there, not that the character fails to check the cupboard - although having it sealed shut might be fun, too!). Keep doing this until either the character fulfills the need or a Story (capital 'S') happens (the character goes to the corner shop, finds it shut despite it being after lunch, checks round the back to find the back door open and the shopkeeper lying dead in the storeroom...).In an RPG sense this consists of the characters being given a dramatic need (this is the players' job) and there being reasons why the ways they try to sate that need won't work (this is the GM's job). Eventually, either the PCs get what they need or Story happens.Relating this to the nomads mentioned earlier: I wouldn't expect the players/characters to be interested in the nomads - the nomads don't represent the most simple and straightforward way to get what they need. But make it so that, for some reason, getting in past the siege is beyond the characters' powers (maybe they were relying on simply flying in, but it turns out the besiegers have lots of ridden wyverns circling the city) - NOW they might well want to go looking for those nomad guys, because maybe they have some other way to break through the siege!</blockquote>

Verification