Posts Tagged by plot
| October 5, 2012 | Posted by Guest Author |
Today’s guest article is by Gnome Stew reader Rickard Elimää, and it details a fantastic technique for GMs: the “fish tank” model for creating a mystery adventure. Thanks, Rickard! Why is a mystery like a fish tank? Imagine a fish tank with some piranhas in it. The tank and the water are the environment of the latent mystery waiting to be disturbed. The fish represent the people and their relationships with each other. Now imagine the GM throws the PCs into the tank, sits back…
| April 13, 2012 | Posted by Patrick Benson |
Sometimes you have to wing it, but the secret to improvising is that you have a set of plans and formulas that you can follow whenever you need to do so. This is a trick that I have used when a plot is not capturing my players’ attention, or if I am asked to run a game on short notice. It came from my wife’s following of the television show Glee, and her favorite musical numbers from the show which are the mashups where two…
| December 10, 2010 | Posted by John Arcadian |
One of the big GMing theory questions that constantly goes through my head is how to make important things stand out to the players. I’ve done a few articles in the past about how to do this. Still, I keep coming back to the concept and ways to do it better. While thinking about this the other day, one key concept keeps sticking in my head: If you want it to be remembered, it has to stick out. Put it in a red dress. Ok,…
| September 10, 2010 | Posted by John Arcadian |
A little while ago a buddy of mine decided to run an impromptu game. It was his second attempt and he did pretty well. There were only a few newbie GM mistakes and the game went over pretty well for the limited time we had to play. The biggest thing that I saw, and that sparked a thought in my head, was that the game was overpacked with details and sub-plots. There were too many plot lines going on at once, too many things for…
| February 9, 2010 | Posted by John Arcadian |
Stew reader LesInk threw an interesting morsel into the suggestion pot the other day. It is about the concept of railroading and how you force an event to happen when the plot absolutely calls for it. The concept is an interesting one, and LesInk put forth a great solution along with the question and story. Dear Gnomies, I believe I have been a victim of the suddenly-appearing-railroad scenario. There I was GMing my last gaming session when I found myself in a scenario where…
| February 3, 2010 | Posted by John Arcadian |
While I was watching old movies and cleaning out my basement a few weeks ago, I watched a movie that made me go “Wow! That was totally someone’s role-playing game!”. It wasn’t the first time that happened to me, and this isn’t the first time that the idea has been discussed here on the stew ( 1 | 2 ). There are a lot of movies and TV shows that have the feeling of a roleplaying game in one way or another. There are some…
| October 27, 2008 | Posted by Troy E. Taylor |
In the D&D Supplement Heroes of Horror (2005, Wizards of the Coast), authors James Wyatt, Ari Marmell and C.A. Suleiman recommend constructing a horror-themed adventure with four components. They are: mood, setting, plot and villain. So, it seemed natural to try and pair that approach with some of the other D&D supplements I had at hand and see what horror-inspired adventure hooks we could devise. Oriental Adventures “A Seed of Evil” Mood: The pervasive — even oppressive — feeling of corruption fills you with dread.…
