Aliens are Coming!
One of the things that interests me is seeing how other GMs create their notes and where their inspiration comes from. It turns out that I’ll be running a couple of games at our roleplaying mini-con on Free RPG Day, so… I generated some notes.
(I’ve actually done this before; back in 2010 I wrote an article creatively titled Adventure Notes, where I shared some notes from my first 4e game and a Spirit of the Century. You’ll see some commonalities and differences in the following notes.)
The notes I’m sharing are from much earlier in the process and cover the first few days of getting the raw ideas down. In fact, let’s begin at the beginning…
Wherein our Hero Realizes He Has To List His Game
At the last minicons, I committed myself to helping run the event, and prepared a backup game, to deploy if the event successfully drew in new roleplayers. (It was also for old hands who hadn’t signed up early for one reason or another.) I haven’t run those games; there hasn’t been a last minute rush demanding them. When players showed up seeking games, I sent them to join prepared games that still had space.
This year, I wanted to run a game and decided that it would happen only if I made them available for sign up, like everyone else’s games. I had a number of good game choices and narrowed it down to five or so. Since I was only running two slots… I had to make a final decision. I remained undecided until the night I created the game listing post.
My short list was Fate Core, Dresden Files, Fiasco, Fate Accelerated, A Penny for My Thoughts, and Psi*Run. I thought about a 4e scenario too.
I decided that prepping two full con games in only a few weeks would be too intense, so that clinched Psi*Run for the long slot. (Well, that and a couple of successful runs earlier this year.) Fiasco was tempting, but I’ve enjoyed reading the Fate Core and Fate Accelerated PDFs, and wanted to run one of those. The idea of Accelerated meshed with my thought about providing a game for new players… and so my decision was made.
Except that Fate Accelerated is a toolkit game, with no setting implied. Selecting Fate Accelerated hadn’t really moved me toward a game blurb, unlike, say Fiasco or Diaspora would have. When I mentioned my dilemma to Jennifer, she handed me Eureka. I decided to run a science fiction game and flipped to the matching section. I read several plots, but settled on #218, Troy’s Dot-Dash-Dot.
With that decided, I whipped up my game description, and hit post.
Set in the very near future, astronomical listening posts around the world start receiving radio signals from the direction of Saturn. The message doesn’t appear to be a language, but is clearly the product of intelligent life. It will take a year to reach Saturn with even the fastest unmanned probes. Until the PCs are recruited by an agency that doesn’t exist…
This short scenario features simple rules and is intended for people new to roleplaying.
Now Committed, Our Hero Worries That His Plot Doesn’t Match His System
Now that I’d hit “post,” doubt set in. The Fate Accelerated examples seemed perfect for bold, broad brush heroics… while I was imagining something more investigative and less flashy from the description. Would it work? Should it? Or should I play fast and loose with the “agency that doesn’t exist” and drift the game to something with more action?
I took my notebook and a pen to lunch the next day. I planned on writing down projected scenes, then breaking those one-line scene descriptions out and expanding them into an adventure framework. As I started writing I realized that I didn’t have a firm progression, because there was a lot of the core concept still indeterminate in my mind.
I began:
FAE: Aliens are Coming!
Scenes: Meet your ship- Exposition
Create it, “manifested personality hybrid”?
M
You’ll notice that I didn’t get very far before I skipped down the page. I decided to follow the questions that kept haunting the edges of my proto-scenario.
When I read Never Unprepared, I realized how quickly I engage my practical filtering–squashing the very useful brainstorming stage in its tracks. When I noticed that I was trying to write down the scenario framework out without engaging some of the competing ideas, I knew I was making that mistake. So I skipped down the page and explicitly brainstormed.
Ships: Problem- Great weight of reaction mass makes limited maneuverability, speed.
Story solution- make the ship very light, mostly protected by psi-shields over skeletal struts
Make the ship as a character? A strange brain-matrix of powerful scientist? The scientist can manifest their image, and engage in limited interaction?Alt 2: Bliss stage; most world is dreaming. Or [the aliens] psychically can make themselves unnoticed in our midst…
Alt 3: PCs are mecha pilots, flying through space.
Alt 4: A time rift, with the PCs Champions of Earth from throughout history, summoned to help stop the invasion?
When I skipped down, I figured that I’d come back and fill in the blank so near the top… but instead I kept writing in order, getting ideas on paper, quickly. The ships: problem is a short hand reference to “real world physics” considerations, as noted in Diaspora and other hard science fiction. From there, my brainstorming led me in much less physics constrained directions.
Wavering Between Two Attractive Structures, Details Pour Out
? Briefing Room Scene
John Perry → Alien Diplomacy scenes like Scalzi?
The first line is to see whether I want to start the game off with a good briefing scene. The idea was in my head because I got to play in a good Top Secret/SI game recently, and it seemed like something that might borrow well.
The second line relates to the book I had just finished, John Scalzi’s Human Division, the most recent Old Man’s War universe book. I’d enjoyed it quite a bit, and wondered if it was influencing me–and if it should.
Defector bug providing psi-amplification formula? Made out of other bugs?
Heroes: Cool female scientist. She has trouble manifesting her mech?
So, this is quite a transition, right? Between those two sentences, I’d decided that I should explore both of the main idea paths. One of the major factors that would influence my selection of setting was the heroes that emerged. If FAE’s strength is playing boldly written heroes, and only one path made heroes that sounded fun, then that fact alone would decide my setting.
At this point, I was leaning toward a vaguely anime-styled group of heroes who as a result of psychic experimentation could manifest mecha-shells of psychic energy. Yeah, that was quite a journey from what I was thinking during the original write-up. It all transpired during lunch (a chili dog at Peninsula Creamery).
? Power: vines creep and twine.
Random powers. Write each on an index card, shuffle them and deal them out during the session.
The engineer manifests the ship.
Bugs as “riders”, or internally attached, parasites.
Maybe the ship is common to all players; it manifests/is created when the players are all injected together. Perhaps it takes a minimum threshold to create the ship, so previous experiments, one-by-one never resulted in a ship. And the mutagen is so rare that this is the only one that can be made…
So, we’re still brainstorming; some big changes are popping into my head (and getting written down). The first line is a power, which sparked the thought that “powers” could be independent of characters, written on index cards. That would be an interesting way to show in play that the experimental drug was unpredictable–and encourage people to pick their character based on personality independent of powers.
“The engineer manifests the ship” was a return to the psi-ship idea, but now re-centered on the idea of a PC creating the ship, alone or as a group effort. Maybe each PC would contribute elements of the ship–so the athlete could contribute the ship’s reflexes and speed. Between the two ship ideas is sandwiched a bug/alien invasion idea. Hmm… a very different direction, Following that could lead to an earth based, paranoid, Invasion of the Body Snatchers style game. Which is where the next line comes from:
Key Diversion: Space Investigation or Alien Invasion Discovery?
Brainstorming had created two good scenarios, both inspired by Troy’s plot, but with a very different feel to each game. They weren’t very compatible, since the action would be very different in scale and setting depending on the direction chosen.
In the few minutes left of lunch, I jotted down the following:
All About Space:
Meet the ship (blending?)
Journey to Saturn
Strange Signals
Mimas is the source?
Cool space battle/negotiation/investigation
Landing
Meet the hive mind/repeater
I’d come around, almost full circle to where I’d begun, with an attempt to sketch out a possible series of scenes. This was for the version of the scenario without mechs and grand psi-powers… was there enough to be an interesting game session? Only more development, and eventual play will answer for sure.
A Gentleman Bares His Brain: Is Your Interest Prurient?
Do your brain storming sessions go anything like this? Do one idea swiftly establish dominance, or do you also follow multiple paths for a while before selecting one to “really develop”?
Does this look into the writing of game notes interest you? I thought it might be interesting to see a game emerge from the “rough sketch” stage, since we so often just see the end result–a module that’s written for others to use, after editing and art. Neither exists in the attached notebook scans.
A scan of the three handwritten pages in PDF Let me repeat the warning: the PDF is handwritten chicken scratch. Your sanity is at risk!
That was interesting. My methodology is a bit less organized and more scatterbrained than what you have written here. But I tend to go in full circles as well. I have found that if you keep coming back to something often enough in the brainstorming sequence, it is probably the best direction to try and take things. Kind of like a confirmation that your thought process is on the right track.
I started off knowing what I wanted to write, let doubt and creativity run wild, and developed a number of ideas that didn’t make it. Simplistically, it seems like I could have just bulled through and forced my initial scenario through, but by letting the alternates step forward and shine, I was able to consider them fully and borrow the best parts. Plus, I have a second pretty cool scenario half built…
I wish I could have been there for the game. Perhaps you’ll be able to use the material at a future point with the irregulars. I agree completely. It is almost always a good idea to consider those alternate ideas found in brainstorming. You never know what little bits will enhance the central idea that is used.
My method of brainstorming tends to yield similar results. I start with a relatively clear vision of what I want to do then think my way out of it, only to circle right back to a place very close to my original concept. The problem was that I never really wrote any of it down until I came full circle. Lots of those interesting little side-steps got lost along the way.
I always kind of railed against “brainstorming” as a forced & graded step during primary, middle, and high school. I didn’t see why they would just let the brainstorming stay in my damn brain. I’d typically turn in two copies of a completed outline: one was labeled “Brainstorming” the other “Outline”. My English teachers were not amused.
Anyhoozle, until I started rocking creative projects on a regular basis, I never saw the utility in writing/typing the creative process. Now, I’ve pretty much always got Google docs and/or One Note somewhere at hand. I’ve got several documents/notebooks filled with haphazard typings. Mostly these are in the form of bulleted lists or a _Subject Line_ with a block of text underneath.
Doing that’s helped quite a bit, in keeping those loose ideas available to me. To further aid the capture process, I’ve taken to carrying a folded-in-half, stapled booklet made up of 5 x 8 index cards in my back pocket to jot brief, random notes. I’ve heard tell that handwriting engages different parts of the brain than typing. I try and do a bit of handwritten notes for any major project (my rpg system rewrite, campaigns, etc.).
If it’s a very long project I always make an outline before diving in headlong. I love outlines. That format really connects to the ol’ brain-box.
I.Thing
A. Sub Thing
1. Sub Sub Thing
a.Sub Sub Sub Thing
i. Very Particular Thing
ii. Other Very Particular Thing
b. Other Sub Sub Sub Thing
2. Other Sub Sub Thing
B. Another Sub Thing
II. Etc.
It’s always interesting (to me at least) to see how somebody else does the same thing.
There was some spacing that got lost in my example outline…
c’est la vie.
You’ll notice that once I got past the “which way”, things largely fell into line. I’ll talk about the characters next time– I basically skipped down 10-12 lines and built each independently, similar to an outline style.
I take two points
A) who/what/where are the PC’s
B) who/what/where are the antagonists
then I close my eyes and imagine the coolest way that A reaches B with as much gumshoe/gunplay/samurai sword fights/explosions in between as the suspenders of disbelief with bear the load of.
and then I realise that Players will go and bugger up my beautifully crafted world and scenario by doing something entirely random! .. bastards!
So then, armed with this knowledge, I take pertinent NPC’s, locations and encounters onto a list of COOL ideas and throw it in my bag 5 minutes before game time.
what constantly surprises me is that in most sessions I get to use about 70% of that list and the Players give me three times as many ideas for next time.
I say again… bastards the lot of them
That style of prep does often work for me. In this case, though, my preparation was for a con game, where I had to prepare the characters as pregens instead of working from player input.
That’s often the problem with con and module play–you don’t have a start from the players to respond to.
Little bit negative feedback, nothing serious.
To me whole article was very confusing, i am not even sure what it is about. Perhaps it is the presentation, or perhaps it is me.
If someone else feels the same, let the author know. To me at least negative feedback is as (if not more) important as positive one.
Hi Piikki,
Here’s a quick sketch: my intent was to discuss the initial stages of scenario preparation, from initial concept through brainstorming. Did that idea not come across clearly? Did you expect the process to continue past the brainstorming stage? Where did the disconnect in my presentation manifest?
I can see the idea now that you mention it. I think the way you have presented this is somehow very difficult to me. I lost the purpose about the time when you start mentioning diffrent games. It feels to me that some parts are missing, so I feel that I need to push myself to understand what you mean.
English is not my native language, but I am quite fluent in it and use it daily at my work. This might of course still cause some problems as I have noticed that people with diffrent native languages tend to see some words in third common language in diffrent ways.
Like I said before, if no one else thinks the same, I think fault is in me 🙂