Scenarios & the “General Idea”

 “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”

— Seneca

Everyone holds an opinion about roleplaying game adventure design, some quite vehemently, some quite inflexibly, some by ease of writing or preference for play outcomes at their own tables. Certain games encourage a particular format to which, understandably, writers try to adhere whether writing for the publisher or simply creating something familiar for fans. In the 50-year history of roleplaying games many adventure formats have emerged and evolved, sometimes tied to the ever-changing style of such games. Designing adventures can offer a somewhat displaced challenge; one essentially writes a kind of instruction manual for someone else to run themed action at the game table, a kind of toolkit to enabling a gamemaster to evoke a particular experience with players and their characters. Some prefer a step-by-step approach through encounters, others like a more free-form “sandbox” arrangement. Adventures require some degree of preparation from a gamemaster, even if it’s simply familiarizing themselves with a published game world...or jotting down notes of their own. I’ve done my share of designing and writing adventures, some for publication, others just for friends; lately I’ve been toying with different techniques, as I’ve mentioned before. Sometimes for games — as in other aspects of life — it helps to look at history, to see how others approached challenges, for insight on issues we face. I looked to roleplaying games’ pre-history, back in the days when wargaming slowly emerged from a Europe ravaged by Napoleon’s armies. And the idea of the scenario tied to a “General idea” seems core to designing an adventure serving as gamemaster resource for greater player agency.

Readers probably have some familiarity with the von Reisswitzes, father and son, who, in the face of Napoleon’s campaigns of conquest raging across the various kingdoms of Germany in the early 19th century, devised and developed a game simulating war, the Kriegsspiel. Jon Peterson’s epic work examining the synthesis of various elements into the birth of roleplaying games focuses on wargames and hence Kriegsspielen as early influences. In Playing at the World he talks about the emergence of a “referee” to run the wargame and their duty to create a starting situation for the players to game out:

“The responsibilities of the umpire are many, but commence with the development and description of the ‘general idea’ (General-Idee): ‘The umpire has the task of providing a natural and interesting scenario which will allow for either side to gain its objective’…. Since the umpire decides the size and composition of the two forces, they can be as dissimilar as necessary to serve the general idea.”

(Playing at the World, Jon Peterson, p. 229)

The general idea, or scenario, describes the set-up: the composition and sometimes disposition of two military forces and the terrain over which they fight. Once the games starts from this point, the players’ actions describe the course of the game, often with the referee adjudicating outcomes of various contests. In a sense the general idea provides kernels of an open adventure design, presenting to the gamemaster the essentials of the setting and scenario — the playing pieces, so to speak, and motivations and situations they pursue in seeking their objectives — and let the characters run with it.

Jumping ahead two centuries we find another concise, clear definition of scenario elements relevant for roleplaying game adventure design; this time from NATO’s Bi-SC Collective Training and Exercise Directive (CT&ED) 75-3 (2013) as quoted in Successful Professional Wargames, Graham Longley-Brown (p. 319):

“A setting is ‘a geographic and strategic situation designed to provide the conditions required to support the achievement of high-level exercise aims and objectives. The setting, which can be real world, fictionalised or synthetic, is the framework on which the scenario can be developed.’

“The scenario is ‘the background story that describes the historical, political, military, economic, cultural, humanitarian and legal events and circumstances that have led to the specific current exercise crisis or conflict.’”

Granted, these descriptions come from the world of wargames. Given wargames’ influence on nascent roleplaying games, they seem appropriate to apply to the latter form in designing adventures. These ultimately include both a setting and scenario to foreground the subsequent action as pursued by the characters and adjudicated by the referee/gamemaster. A good scenario sets the stage, presents all the pieces and the playing field, then lets the characters make choices to achieve their goals.

My own history creating adventures follows my changing interests in roleplaying games. At first, starting with B/X Dungeons & Dragons way back in high school, my efforts clumsily emulated the early modules TSR produced supporting the game. These early “modules” provided information — setting and adversaries — one could drop into their own games or game worlds. (TSR later adopted the term “adventure” and the form gradually became more narrative in nature.) Many provided sandbox environments characters could explore and interact with, including varying degrees of story arcs and adversary motivations. I created my own adventures modeled on those TSR published, with a few diversions, looking to published Traveller adventures for format and design inspiration. And while these efforts entertained the neighborhood gamers and friends, I’ll admit they weren’t terribly great. My gaming transformed with my exposure to more cinematic fare, first the James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty's Secret Service game and West End Games’ Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. These film-based adventures consisted of a set-up and a series of staged episodes dealing with encounters that ultimately advanced an overall plot (or modified it) toward an epic climax.

I’m not one to run a massive comparative study examining adventures across the years and the vast spectrum of roleplaying game styles. But I do still, occasionally, develop a roleplaying game adventure, more often for convention games supporting my pulp-themed game supplements. I have tried various styles, each with different personal objectives. I’m finding adventures serve as themed, motivated tool boxes: we outline a setting and scenario (and all the bits contributing to those), then set the characters loose with objectives and conflicts intersecting. The adventure materials serve as a resource gamemasters use to help characters navigate the geographical and interpersonal space. In a sense we have an environment filled with “toys” with which we can play, and, hopefully, work together to create a fulfilling roleplaying game experience

Right now I’m trying to revise a Pulp Egypt scenario I designed and ran last year for a convention audience; and I’m developing another one for that con using a similar format. Both use a more sourcebook-style approach: present some locations, adversaries, encounters, and resources, with general guidance regarding the villains’ intentions within this framework; enough interconnected elements gamemasters can gain a familiarity with components and be prepared wherever characters’ actions take them.

“Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.”

— Octavia E. Butler