Chapbooks

THE KRAKEN
Adventure
Crucible
BUILDING STRONGER SCENARIOS
FOR ANY RPG

ROBIN D. LAWS
 AUTHOR
Robin D. Laws

EDITING
Andrew Kenrick
Fabian Küchler
Guy Milner

DESIGN & LAYOUT

Claudia Schille

GRAPHIC SUPPORT
Johanna Schiegnitz

FONT
Vollkorn by Friedrich Althausen
(vollkorn-typeface.com)

–
This Chapbook PDF is a fundraiser for THE KRAKEN,
published by Tentacles Press August 2023.

Adventure Crucible Copyright © Tentacles Press 2023

Adventure
Crucible
BUILDING STRONGER SCENARIOS
FOR ANY RPG

ROBIN D. LAWS

3
 THIS TIME IT’S THE GM WHO RECEIVES THE MISSION

An intimate, play-focused roleplaying game event like THE KRAKEN

runs on several fuels: food, beer, camaraderie, and scenarios. I can
tell you a little about all of these, but a lot about the last one. Whether
you’re prepping an adventure for an event, writing for publication, or
improvising your way through the latest session with your long-run-
ning group, this Chapbook will help you to identify and replicate the
essential elements that make games rewarding and memorable.

This book follows up on a previous KRAKEN Chapbook, Sharper Ad-

ventures in HeroQuest Glorantha. It tackled the specific challenges of
taking the rich and disparate elements of Greg Stafford’s brilliantly
imagined world and weaving them into a satisfying narrative that
works at the game table. Sharper Adventures in HeroQuest Glorantha
dealt with the downside of Glorantha’s breadth: it offers no single
explicit Core Activity to spin adventures from. As I’ll address in more
detail shortly, an RPG’s Core Activity identifies the sorts of player
characters who appear in a game and what they usually do in it.

Covering adventure creation for all trad-style roleplaying games

requires a zooming out of our vantage point. Some games require
you to supply a Core Activity; others bake it right in. Whichever way
they land on that, different Core Activities imply, or fully demand,
adventures that use various structures. After a closer look at Core
Activities, we’ll move on to the five staple structures: the Dungeon,
the Mystery, the Chain of Fights, Survival, and Intrigue.

We’ll also briefly touch on a couple of less common structures:

Picaresque and Drama.

Looking at each structure in turn, we’ll examine the tools you

can use to build an adventure that will play into its strengths and
steer around its pitfalls. These include encouraging premise ac-
ceptance, establishing emotional stakes, building key obstacles,
and shaping events so that the overall narrative escalates and re-
solves. Some of these techniques come to the fore more in some

4
structures than in others. Certain structures use elements that
others don’t.

As alluded to already, Adventure Crucible focuses on traditional

RPGs. They make broadly similar calls on GMs to create or run ad-
ventures. A story game generally gives you a customized structure
and tool set to create a bespoke experience that runs itself, or at least
doesn’t require the advice this Chapbook concerns itself with. Trad
and story exist on a spectrum, but let’s not get into a definitional mo-
rass. The more the general tips given here can be applied to a game,
the more trad it is.

Also, as previously stated, adventure creation happens in various

ways. You might be doing it as the game unfolds, after starting with
a few basic ideas. You might prepare extensively, with pages of maps,
stats, and player handouts. Or you could be writing with enough de-
tail for other GMs to take your materials and run games, either at
a convention or for publication. GMs working in any of these man-
ners can benefit from the techniques described here. To keep the text
as free from qualifiers and asides as possible, it primarily assumes
that you are preparing a moderately detailed scenario to run at, oh
I don’t know, let’s say a relaxing, grownup gaming retreat at a Prus-
sian Schloss in a four hour slot right before the German Beer Tasting.

But before we break out the Doppelbock, let’s look in further de-
tail at the engine that drives all trad roleplaying, and will inform
the structure we choose to build the scenario that will send fellow
con-goers scrambling to sign up for your game.

5
 CORE ACTIVITY

When determining what the player characters will do in your sce-

nario, you start with what the rulebook tells you they usually do in
the game. This is the Core Activity. You might find it explicitly de-
scribed, often in the first line of the ad copy on the book’s back cover.
This will be the case for most games produced these days.

(If the cover copy or designer says, “What do you do in this game? You
can do anything!”, back away slowly and politely.)

Some of the all-time classic games from the second wave of RPG
design imply the Core Activity without spelling it out. A notable
handful of these, including Traveller and RuneQuest and their heirs,
provide a smorgasbord of possible Core Activities to choose from.
Without necessarily warning you that this is happening.

Whether the core rules highlight it or leave you to figure it out for
yourself, the Core Activity can be expressed as a formulaic sentence:
you are X, who do Y.

The first part of the sentence describes the sorts of characters you
play. The second, what those characters do in a typical scenario.

Together, the X and the Y establish a conflict, from which the ex-
citement and tension of scenarios arise.

• You are paranormal investigators who confront the horrors of the

Cthulhu Mythos.
• You are members of a spaceship crew who fight off pirates and alien
predators while establishing new trade routes on the interstellar frontier.
• You are a league of superheroes who protect Wonder City from the
mutant villains intent on plundering and destroying it.
• You are a werewolf pack that protects the environment from the forces,
human and uncanny, that have brought it to the brink of destruction.
• You are the young heroes of a wind-worshiping cattle herding clan pro-
tecting their lands from imperial occupiers in thrall to the Red Moon.

6
 A Core Activity does a lot of things. It acts as blurb that convinces
you to buy a game. As the pitch you will use it to convince your play-
ers to let you run the game for them.

For our purposes here, it lays out the template, or implied struc-
ture, for the scenarios you will create for it.

A scenario is the vehicle that delivers the promise of the Core Ac-
tivity to the players.

The nature of that activity determines the structure you will use to
hang your scenario on — or which of several possible structures you
will choose between.

SCENARIO STRUCTURES

Players depend on the familiarity of structure to get them to the fun

fast, and to help them make choices and solve the problems an adven-
ture throws at them. The big five structures are:

The Dungeon, in which the characters explore a

discrete physical space, encountering dangers and
obstacles.

The Mystery, in which the characters move from

scene to scene over the course of an investigation,
encountering dangers and obstacles along the way.

The Chain of Fights, in which the characters con-

front a series of enemies, with plot elements that
connect the action sequences into a simple, mo-
mentum-driven narrative.

Survival, in which the characters encounter dan-

gers and obstacles while defending a place, person,
or resource.

7
 Intrigue, in which the characters vie for influence and
power in a dynamic political environment fraught
with rivals, dangers and obstacles along the way.

Less common but nonetheless familiar structures include:

Picaresque, in which the characters amble around

poking things in the world, flirting with low-stakes
trouble before meting out or receiving wry comeup-
pance.

Drama, in which the central conflict expresses itself

through dialogue, as the characters vie to achieve
emotional goals.

Hybrid scenarios mix and match structural elements. The final

battles in a Chain of Fights might take place in a Dungeon. A casi-
no heist starts as Mystery, investigating the weakness of the target,
then turns into a dungeon-like incursion in its final stretch. Drama
can break out as the characters hunker down for survival, or when
the solution to a mystery leads them to a moral dilemma.

Treat the breakdowns as practical tools rather than Aristotelian

attempts to describe every possible scenario that has been or can be
written within one of the categories. The more complex the struc-
ture, the more variations in construction you’ll find when you comb
through your game shelves. Mysteries in particular can be put to-
gether in a number of ways. Though not the sole possible way of do-
ing things, keeping these structures in mind gives your scenario de-
sign a solid, proven foundation.

To refine a scenario idea, look at the techniques its structure

calls for.

8
 INCITING ACTIVITIES

Some games present one or more pursuits for the player characters that
feed into the action of scenarios. They typically motivate the heroes to
take part in the action of scenarios. For this reason I’ll call them Inciting
Activities, after the Inciting Incidents that kick off the action in fiction
and screenplays.

Though they almost always assist in motivating the characters to take

part in scenarios, they may have other functions in the game narrative
too. Inciting Activities may deepen the players’ investment in the char-
acters or engagement with the world. Often, they permit the heroes to
build something over the course of a campaign. Character advancement
that takes place onstage, or is interactive in some manner, also works this
way, increasing the player’s ability to act during scenarios.

• King Arthur and his knights strengthen Camelot.

• Wizards research more powerful spells while their underlings ven-
ture into a dungeon.
• Clan heroes serve on the council, helping to manage the construction
of a temple or the expansion of its barley fields.
• Superheroes build their headquarters.
• Mech pilots design and test new humanoid combat vehicles.

You may remember a game for its particularly innovative or compel-

ling Inciting Activity, even though its actual scenarios still follow the
standard structures outlined here.

In an ongoing campaign that encourages players to pursue their own

subplots, they may generate their own custom Inciting Activities. If
Toumy decides that his character will assemble a library of rare books,
you can then weave tome hunting into scenario premises, or feature it in
interlude scenes. When everyone does this, you may find yourself adopt-
ing a threaded structure where scenarios and their objectives sometimes
fade back to make room for player-created Inciting Activities. They
might take play entirely, turning it into a Sandbox game, as discussed
further on p. 47.

9
 SCENARIO BUILDING BLOCKS

Though each structure makes its own demands on the designer,

certain elements remain key to any scenario.

PREMISE ACCEPTANCE

As much as I would argue that it is a player’s job to motivate their

character and engage with the narrative hook, we have yet to success-
fully train everyone to do this. Some still demand extensive wooing
before agreeing to head toward the fun. This kills momentum when
you most need it, at the beginning, likely to the annoyance of other
players who want to get moving.

Though not strictly speaking a matter of scenario design, GMs can

always deal with premise rejection by turning the question around.
When asked, “Why would my character do this?” explain that their job
as one of the creators of this story is to supply a motivated character.
“What is it about your character that would inspire them to do this?”

EMOTIONAL STAKES

Like real people, fictional characters undertake difficult actions

for emotional gain. Each structure offers its own emotional payoff,
which the details of the plot can then intensify. Attention to emo-
tional stakes can bring in premise rejecters and make your scenario
more memorable for premise accepters.

You also want to be careful not to inadvertently dampen the struc-

ture’s inherent emotional reward. If some of the satisfaction in a
Dungeon scenario lies in the progress made toward the goal of clear-
ing an area, the designer should think carefully before creating a
Dungeon that constantly refills itself.

10
 CUTTING TO THE FUN

Whatever the structure, you can build a scenario to move the play-
ers into the key action with a minimum of preamble.

OBSTACLES

Each structure favors a particular sort of problem for the PCs to

confront and overcome. We’ll look at ways to sharpen each sort of
obstacle.

Obstacles can be broken down into four parts:

Dilemma: The expression of the problem.

Choices: An element that requires the players to

make a decision. Choices enable the players to feel
that they are participants in an interactive narra-
tive.

Consequences: What happens when the players

succeed, or if they fail. Successes are pretty easy to
envision. Failures that feel like setbacks without
stopping the story in its tracks can require more
head-scratching.

Rooting Interest: Why the players care about this

obstacle, almost invariably because it hooks into the
overall mission objective or the emotional payoff.

Every obstacle is by definition a dilemma.

A strongly engaging obstacle scores high on all three of the ele-

ments that proceed from that.

Surprisingly, some classic obstacles don’t offer the players much

11
evident choice in the moment. The Scare Obstacle (p. 29) loses its fun
if the players can choose to avoid it. Letting them do that misses the
point of the genres that use it.

Keep in mind that any obstacle that requires a roll or the use of
another capability listed on a character sheet does refer to a choice
made by the player. When they created the character, or added an
ability or increased a game statistic during play, they chose to favor
or neglect the skill or attribute they must now pit against the obsta-
cle. The obstacle brings a past choice into play. This may not seem as
strong as a choice that presents itself during the action, but players
want and expect their character building choices to feature heavily
in outcomes.

You might want to analyze every obstacle in any adventure by

looking at this four-point structure. More likely you will prefer to
think about the components of an obstacle, internalize those les-
sons, and learn to apply them without going through the step-by-
step checklist every time. When a particular obstacle isn’t working,
you can then recall these elements and diagnose the issue. Watch
out for:

• Unclear dilemmas.
• Missing choices, or choices that are present but not readily apparent
to the players.
• Failures that kill momentum.
• Successes with disappointing rewards, either because they don’t move
the story ahead, or don’t compensate for the cost or risk.
• Obstacles that lack relevance to the scenario objective and/or emotional
payoff.

It is often hard to predict how other GMs and their players will re-
act to a scenario’s obstacles, which is why even a seasoned designer
depends on playtest feedback. When writing for others in a situation
where playtesting is impractical, read the text with an outsider’s eye,
spotting common pitfalls by looking for conceptual flaws in the Di-
lemma, Choices, Consequences and Rooting Interest.

12
 TURNING POINTS

Some but not all structures resemble fictional or cinematic narra-

tives. You can reinforce the sense of an arc that develops over a sce-
nario by building in:

An Escalation that sharpens the crisis, deepening

the characters’ desire to succeed, or their fear that
they might not.

A satisfying Resolution that leaves everyone with a

sense of triumph — or, in the case of genres that spi-
ral toward disaster, gleeful collective carnage.

DUNGEONS

People who tire of the Dungeon format can tire of it hard. When
we move on to other, more complex structures, particularly those
that offer more room for theme, world interaction and characteri-
zation, we may come to dismiss the Dungeon as old hat. Or maybe
we burned ourselves out on it with obsessive weekend-long grinding
play marathons as teenagers.

Whatever our individual associations, the Dungeon remains by

far the most commonly played structure for a number of compelling
reasons. The market dominance and first-mover advantage Dungeons
& Dragons still enjoys, as our hobby enters its second half-century,
tells only part of the story. Even if you never make Dungeon adven-
tures, the structure is worth studying for the lessons we can apply to
other structures. Its focus, efficiency and clarity have much to tell us
about scenario design.

Also, many of the other superficially more sophisticated struc-

tures can at any moment turn into a what looks an awful lot like a
Dungeon.

13
 For the purpose of studying its structure, let’s define a Dungeon as
any adventure in which scenes mostly connect through geography.
A Dungeon can then be an underground environment in which cor-
ridors or tunnels connect up a series of rooms, with the door to any
room potentially leading to a scene of conflict, danger, exploration,
and reward.

Regardless of the outward trappings, any scenario premised

around a space the characters systematically explore, with scenes
triggered by movement from one area into another, follows the Dun-
geon structure. That environment might be a building, a wilderness,
a spaceship, or the ruins of a post-apocalyptic city. On the structural
level, it’s still a Dungeon.

Dungeons work because they offer a simple, readily intuitive situa-

tion for players to envision and to pit their characters against. When
they run out of actions to perform in one area/room, they move to
another area/room. Literal movement between spaces and forward
story momentum are one and the same. Players never have to stop
and figure out what to do next. If there’s another area to enter, they
have another action to undertake. As long as there’s more than one
area to enter, the players feel that they have a choice of actions. Never
mind that they might eventually open every door, or that they are
choosing between doors without much distinguishing information
to help them make tactically superior choices. They feel that they are
in control of the pacing. The scant distinction between choices offers
another upside: players have little to argue about, and thus little rea-
son to stop the action as they attempt to reconcile radically different
plans or priorities. Metal-shod door with occult sigils on the west
side of the corridor or worm-eaten wooden door on the east side?
Corridor to the left, or corridor to the right?

Though players in a Dungeon scenario may enjoy a conventional

narrative structure with escalation and resolution, they do not nec-
essarily expect it. Systematic exploration follows its own, compul-
sively rewarding pattern of activity, where repetitive accomplish-
ment becomes a virtue.

14
 The simplicity of Dungeon design works for the GM as well. You
start with a place, imbuing it with enough logic to make sense to the
players. Then you populate its areas with obstacles and you’re done.
The labor lies in the crunch of the game system, rather than in craft-
ing narrative threads.

Its formulaic nature makes the Dungeon easy to design and easy
to play.

That formula becomes its chief drawback for those who tire of it.
GMs tend to burn out on Dungeons faster than players. Running one
requires a high technical mastery of a typically detailed game with
many moving parts. Much of the narration centers on descriptions
of locations. Most of the character interaction takes place between
players, with GMs left to pick up the scraps of the occasional friendly
inhabitant in a setup that emphasizes hostile physical encounters.

PREMISE ACCEPTANCE

In F20 games — meaning D&D and all of its descendants, either

in rules structure or in the use of the generic fantasy trappings it es-
tablished as basic to the genre — the Core Activity is the scenario
premise. F20 characters explore hostile environments, battle their
inhabitants, and claim their treasures. An entirely solid F20 premise
is “Hey, you hear about a dungeon entrance?”

You can absolutely play any of the other scenario structures with
F20 rules sets, taking on their respective strengths and challenges.
Conversely, you’re not necessarily playing F20 when the characters
move through an environment, finding trouble along the way.

But with a Dungeon structure, all you need for a premise is a group
of players whose Core Activity is exploring and fighting, and a place
for them to explore and fight in.

The place is the premise.

15
 EMOTIONAL STAKES

The emotional stakes of a Dungeon scenario likewise act as a sim-

ple tautology. For a great many players, exploration and fighting
are inherently entertaining, core parts of the tabletop experience.
A Dungeon will be fun because it has Dungeon stuff in it.

In long-running group games for F20 and games that follow the
F20 tradition of heavy focus on earning character advancement, a
Dungeon becomes even more self-justifying. It’s a place to grind and
accumulate experience points, becoming more powerful in order to
become more powerful.

If this seems like weak motivation to you, look at all the people who
dedicate their actual lives to this goal.

Video games have proven that grinding for advancement carries

such a high emotional reward that people will do it even when mul-
tiple hours of early missions are stupid and boring.

Traditionally the narration describes an old school Dungeon as a

source of encroaching danger that must be tamed to protect the in-
nocent. This wraps the cloak of justice around whatever mayhem the
characters proceed to commit.

Though the Dungeon is often its own reward, with or without that
fig leaf of morality, it can support additional emotional stakes.

Put a MacGuffin in the Dungeon, and its acquisition can be linked

to nearly any worthwhile goal. A MacGuffin, you probably recall,
refers in old-timey screenwriting jargon to an item whose pursuit
drives the plot.

This can be an important or sympathetic person in need of rescue,

the magical artifact that ends a famine, the documents that can be
used to stop a war, or the gate that must be destroyed to stop demons
from flooding the mortal realm.

16
 Ironically, adding emotional stakes to an old school Dungeon can
introduce the premise rejection which grinding for its own sake
sidesteps. The player of the gloryhound knight might want a war to
polish his list of deeds. The rogue might wonder why he would both-
er to save a hoity-toity dauphin.

CUTTING TO THE FUN

F20 classicists may want to nod to tradition by starting with the

party meeting in a tavern, where a man in a funny hat tells them
where the Dungeon is.

In your opener you can skip the preamble and cut to the fun by set-
ting the scene with the PCs on the brink of their first obstacle. You
can explain why they decided to come here, with or without a Mac-
Guffin, by following your description of the initial encounter area
with a quick explanation of the party’s presence here.

When your plot requirements call for an opener in some other lo-
cation, insert an obstacle into that scene, ideally one with a possible
consequence on the rest of the mission.

OBSTACLES

The bread-and-butter obstacle of the area-based scenario is the

fight with its inhabitants.

Dilemma: The inhabitants are displeased to find

the PCs in their area and are ready to defend it with
force.

Choices: The players decide which tactics and pow-

ers they’ll use, often having to worry whether lim-
ited-use powers should be spent now, or saved for a
more important fight later on.

17
 Consequences: Victory whittles down the opposi-
tion, clears an area of the map, and accrues future
character advancement resources, usually some
combination of gear, currency, and experience
points. This occurs at some cost of short-term re-
sources, typically hit points and often the expendi-
ture of limited-use powers like magic spells. Defeat
also costs these resources, without gaining any of
the advantages of victory.

Rooting Interest: Players always love to defeat en-

emies, and hate hate hate having to run away from
them. Sometimes more than they hate losing their
characters entirely.

All bog-standard stuff here. But when broken down like this, we
see why these staple elements work so reliably.

Encounters with traps and other impersonal hazards of the envi-

ronment appear as a distant second on the list of compelling Dun-
geon obstacles.

Dilemma: If not overcome, this threat will exact a

physical toll on the party.

Choices: The players must decide how to disarm or

avoid the hazard, or at least how to reduce the harm
it does to them.

Consequences: On a success, they avoid loss. On a

failure, they suffer it.

Rooting Interest: Disarming a threat lets the group

feel clever and competent. Getting ground down is
dispiriting.

18
 Breaking down traps and hazards in this format reminds us to al-
ways include some element of choice in any physical toll the charac-
ters face. We might for example think that a scene of travel across a
frozen tundra ought to include some hit point loss for frostbite. Sim-
ply rolling to see how much damage each PC takes fails to bring in a
choice element. Even a roll of Health or Constitution or an equivalent
stat to avoid damage brings in a modest choice element. The play-
ers who invested more in that stat or ability enjoy a higher chance of
success, and keeping their precious hit points. Even better than a roll
that invokes a decision during character creation is a choice that oc-
curs in the present of the adventure. Do the adventurers reduce the
harm they suffer from a storm by building a snow fort? That might
be worth it, or not, depending on whether polar bears show up. Giv-
ing players this choice transforms a passive moment of dues-paying
to a tactical question, perhaps one that reveals something about the
characters.

The third hallmark obstacle of Dungeon scenario revolves around

finding things in the environment.

Dilemma: There’s something of use here if you find it,

but you might not.

Choices: A basic Search or Detect Hidden roll to find

the thing at least pays off the past choice made during
character generation. More interestingly, the group
might weigh the benefits of a longer search against
the risk or cost of spending additional time. For this
to work the scenario has to specify what that risk or
cost might be. The party loses time as the clock ticks
toward a deadline, or has to engage in an additional,
comparatively low-benefit fight.

Consequences: Success feels like a win. Failure feels

like nothing, because the PCs don’t find the thing. Or
maybe it feels actively bad, because they lost time or
fought an additional opponent and still found nothing.

19
 Rooting Interest: Players love it when their charac-
ters find cool stuff. They grow bored when they try
something and get only a null result.

In a specialized thief or stealth mode game, characters may enter a

complex in pursuit of a goal while trying never to come into contact
with an enemy. Here the core moment is the obstacle that threatens
to reveal the heroes’ presence.

Dilemma: The characters reach a spot on the map

where they are likely to give themselves away.

Choices: Which method best neutralizes this possi-

ble alert?

Consequences: Success allows continued advance.

Failure either increases the chances of discovery,
or fully rouses the opposition, facing the characters
with additional obstacles as they try to either hide
and ride out the alarm, or flee entirely, blowing the
mission.

Rooting Interest: The fear of getting caught reliably

generates suspense.

ESCALATION

The old school default Dungeon escalates in intensity by marking

the areas of the map that take longer to reach as tougher and more
challenging. In the classic version the Dungeon divides into sever-
al levels, each more dangerous than the last. This interacts with the
F20 reward mechanism in which you grind to boost your character
so it can cope with the higher difficulty encounters down below.

In any area-driven game you can devise the map so that obstacle
difficulty increases as the party moves through it.

20
 RESOLUTION

An area exploration game typically resolves by reserving the

biggest and most consequential encounter for a spot deep into the
map.

Plenty of adventure movies and stories feature extended se-

quences of action and suspense set in dungeon-like confined envi-
ronments. For variety of rhythm and action, and to make room for
the character evolution that keeps us engaged with narrative, they
very rarely occupy an entire film or novel.

(Aliens might be the exception that tests the rule, but even that is
a Survival/Pursuit narrative that takes place in a confined space.)

As a game environment the Dungeon bakes in premise accep-

tance, emotional stakes, heaping helpings of choice, strong obsta-
cles, plus escalation and resolution.

When we step out of the Dungeon to allow for the wider variety of
scenes found in adventure storytelling, we take on the challenge to
consciously bring those factors into our scenarios.

MYSTERY

The Mystery stands as the most complicated trad RPG structure.

It’s also the second-most popular which is why I’m tackling it next.

In a Mystery, the PCs move through a series of scenes pursuing

the answer to a question. In some cases the question exactly par-
allels the literary mystery genre, requiring the heroes to identify
a killer. At the gaming table the killer might be a monster of some
kind, given that the groundbreaking Mystery RPG was Sandy Pe-
tersen’s Call of Cthulhu. It created a pairing of the Mystery structure
and the horror genre that persists in our expectations today.

21
 Aside from learning who (or what) dunnit, PCs in Mysteries can
seek answers to a variety of other questions:

• “We know who committed the crime, but where are they hiding now?”
• “Where do we find the item we need to accomplish our greater goal?”
• “How do we end this emergency?”
• “Where are they hiding the hostage?”
• “How do we get out of here?”

Most often though a mystery concerns a series of past events that

the PCs do not at first fully comprehend. They reconstruct these
events by moving from scene to scene, gathering information. Clues
gained in the scene include pieces of the overall puzzle, plus more
immediate leads suggesting where they might go next to get the next
piece.

DOUBLE STRUCTURE

This gives the Mystery a double structure. When devising one you
are creating two sequences of events:

The Antecedent Action, the story that the PCs are

attempting to uncover and reconstruct as they gath-
er information.

The Investigative Action, the story of their actions

as they gather the information.

The antecedent action starts in the past and moves toward the
present. The investigative action happens in the present and exposes
the past.

When the investigators work out what has happened, the anteced-
ent and investigative action converge. The investigative action con-
tinues as the heroes decide what to do with the knowledge they have
gained.

22
 Typically they must overcome the threat their investigations have
identified.

It is this double structure that makes the Mystery the most chal-
lenging structure to design for. The antecedent action must make
sense to the players as they advance the investigative action. With-
out story logic they’ll struggle to assemble the puzzle. When they do
put it together, they’ll protest whatever plot holes might be lurking
in your backstory. What they consider illogical might surprise you.

The investigative action, the way the possible scenes connect up

to allow the investigators to gather the information, must also make
sense to the players. Without that logic they won’t know where to
go or what to do next. Unable to see a path forward, they grow frus-
trated. Often they become confused about the backstory, sometimes
discarding correct inferences about the narrative they have recon-
structed so far.

I wish there was a formulaic method for constructing the anteced-

ent and investigative action of a mystery story. The darn things re-
quire careful, original thought, with lots of brow-furrowing along
the way. Unlike other narratives, they can be wrong, just as the
solution of a math problem can be wrong. This intrinsic difficulty
explains why published Mystery scenarios tend to sell better than
other sorts of adventures: they’re harder to make.

A few tips do ease the process, though.

Though the antecedent action can vary depending on the question

the investigators will be trying to answer, most of the time you have
a villain or antagonist who has set a chain of events in motion by
pursuing a goal. These events include a Precipitating Incident, which
comes to the attention of the PCs and causes them to launch their
investigation.

23
 STARTING WITH THE ANTAGONIST GOAL

You can start the process of scenario creation at the beginning

of the antecedent action, by determining what the villain seeks
to accomplish, or at the beginning of the investigative action, by
identifying the precipitating incident.

Sample villain goals:

• Flatten Tokyo.
• Conquer Jotunheim.
• Summon an Elder God.
• Commit a robbery.
• Murder an enemy.
• Crush the rebellion.
• Instigate a rebellion.
• Cover up a previous crime.
• Hunt people as prey.

STARTING FROM THE PRECIPITATING INCIDENT

Or you can start with the sort of urgent incident that will interest
the investigators.

• Someone has been found dead.

• Someone has disappeared.
• Something has been stolen.
• A place has been sabotaged.
• Omens or a prophetic vision spell looming disaster.
• Menacing figures stalk a community.
• A witness in an important criminal case has improbably
recanted his testimony.
• The gargoyles a PC sees in her dreams have been sighted
flying over Montmartre.

24
 COMPLETING THE CIRCUIT

If you started with the villain goal, think of what they would do to
achieve it, and what incident it would most dramatically precipitate.

If you started with the incident, think who would do such a thing,
and in pursuit of what goal.

From there you can work backward to figure out who would be be-
hind such a thing, and for what purpose.

THE ANTAGONIST PLAN

Now that you have starting points for both antecedent and investi-
gative action, work on the former by laying out the steps the antago-
nist took to realize the plan.

Sometimes the goal is simply to bring about the precipitating inci-

dent. Milla set out to poison Gary, because he sent her father to pris-
on. The investigators try to figure out who did it, uncovering Milla’s
motivation and the steps she took to acquire the poison.

For a more dynamic scenario that keeps the antagonist taking fur-
ther actions as the PCs close in, the precipitating incident achieves
just one step of a still-ongoing plan. The shoggoth was hungry, so
it ate Sandy. It will get hungry again, and hunt someone else in the
neighborhood next.

Even when the precipitating incident culminates the villains’

scheme, they can take further actions to stop the investigators from
identifying or apprehending them.

Next, break down the antagonist’s past action into the series of
steps, in chronological order, they would have had to take to cause
the precipitating incident. Then note any steps they took since that
incident. Where applicable, separately note what steps they still in-

25
tend to take. When writing for others you may find that a chronology
of past events written for the GMs helps them in keeping the story
straight as the PCs uncover it.

A plan with many steps will extend the investigative action, giving the
PCs more information to gather and more places to gather it from.

A small number of steps makes the investigation easier and clear-

er. You can complicate the scenario with actions the antagonist or
other opposing forces take in response to the investigation.

It is much more common when running a Mystery scenario for

the players to become confused and not know how to fit the pieces
together than it is for them to solve the mystery too quickly. In the
ideal case they will put it together a little before the big reveal scene,
feeling clever for having solved the puzzle.

In passive entertainment, the author’s goal is to surprise the audi-

ence with the answer to the mystery — one they could have figured
out from the supplied clues, but didn’t.

Here though the PCs are taking the role of the detective. They’re
Holmes, or Miss Marple, or Phryne Fisher. They’re supposed to get it.
The plodding police inspector NPC should be the one who is fooled.

Constructing a clear, explicable set of steps from the villain’s goal

to the current state of their plan is tougher than it looks.

Players will expect the plan to always make sense. This actually
flies in the face of both real life and fictional mysteries. Bad guys
ranging from Palpatine to Ted Bundy generally get caught when
they make mistakes, which their opponents then capitalize on. It’s
the ones who never get caught, or die old and rich in their comfort-
able beds, whose plans unfold without error. As much as you might
want to argue players out of this expectation, avoid building the plan
around antagonists’ misjudgments or obvious follies.

26
 An antagonist plan with a greater number of steps allows you to
create various people and places involved with it. The people might
be witting accomplices, and thus secondary antagonists. Or they can
have advanced the plan without knowing what was happening, or mere-
ly witnessed events that will help the investigators put the story together.

INVESTIGATIVE ACTION

The antagonist plan gives you the pieces of the puzzle. Now, work-
ing backwards from the precipitating incident, create a number of
scenes in which the PCs can find those pieces. The precipitating inci-
dent almost always implies a starting point.

An opening scene in which the heroes learn about this incident

often precedes the investigation itself. The team meets with Profes-
sor Armitage to receive their mission, finds a blood-spattered letter
in the mailbox, or is asked by a reporter to comment on a UFO flap.
Ideally this implies more than one possible place to go or person to
talk to as they move from recipients of the initial briefing to active
uncoverers of needed information. These early potential scenes flow
logically from the nature of the precipitating incident.

INCIDENT EARLY SCENE

A murder or mysterious death → Examine the body; scour the

place where the body was found

Stolen item → Examine the crime scene

Sabotage or vandalism → Examine the scene

Omens, prophecy, bad feelings → Speak to an expert on the uncanny

Missing person → Speak to subject’s friends and

family; canvass their usual haunts

Weird sightings → Speak to witnesses

Incident with an accessible

victim or witness → Quiz the victim or witness

27
 Think of each of these possible scenes as offering multiple other
places, people, or topics of research that can shed additional light on
the antagonist plan.

Eventually you’ll want these scenes to converge on a likely penulti-

mate or final scene. Before that point though, the central choice of an
investigative scenario is what scene to head toward next. That’s what
players talk about when they complain about a linear scenario: they
don’t get to pick what to do next. So give them choices in the early
going. By the time the scenario converges, another choice will come
into view: what to do about the antagonist and the plan now that they
have revealed them.

For example, a survey of the crime scene might turn up signs of

an anomalous fungus, and a discarded vape cartridge with the Elder
Sign on it. This suggests two possible places to head next: to the my-
cology lab, to study the fungus; or to area vape shops to see which one
sells R’lyeh-brand cartridges.

PREMISE ACCEPTANCE

The horror genre, the predominant category of investigative game,

unfortunately breeds premise rejection. Fox Mulder might look into
a matter on the slightest of pretexts, but players often expect to be
talked into accepting a mission that doesn’t start with a Deep One
clambering through the window to point a gun at them. Dealing
with this mostly comes down to GMing technique. As a scenario de-
signer you can still ask yourself what the player who loves to play his
reluctance to engage with the supernatural will most likely say, and
build a rejoinder into the text to help any other GM who has to get
your scenario rolling.

EMOTIONAL STAKES

Emotional stakes arise from the precipitating incident. Make

28
this something heroic investigators will most naturally care about.
Recovering stolen goods for a struggling indie band may attract them
in a way that helping out an insurance company will not.

CUTTING TO THE FUN

Introduce the precipitating incident as quickly as possible, wheth-

er that happens in a traditional briefing or with the heroes already at
the scene of the crime.

OBSTACLES

The key obstacle in any investigative scenario is the barrier to

information.

Dilemma: There’s a key puzzle piece, and/or a point-

er to another place or person to acquire one, some-
where in the scene.

Choices: The investigators decide how to look for it.

In the case of witnesses, they choose what approach
to take to overcome their reluctance. Add needed va-
riety to the scenario by finding different reasons for
the various people they interview to not immediate-
ly volunteer information.

Consequences: Failing to get information should

never be a consequence of failure in an investiga-
tive scene. It stops the scenario from proceeding,
or at least cuts out a possible choice. Not learning
something is the most boring bad result in tabletop
roleplaying. Instead the team might learn what they
need to know, but at a cost. They antagonize some-
one who makes trouble for them, suffer a delay that
makes a later scene harder, or provoke a fight.

29
 Rooting Interest: Getting clues is the emotion-
al currency of investigative play. Knowing more
makes the players feel smarter, or at least holds out
the possibility of future understanding.

SCARE OBSTACLES

In other media most investigations in books, shows, and movies

are police procedurals. Most horror movies and stories center around
the victims of supernatural or frightening events; only a fraction use
an investigative structure. At the tabletop, thanks to the eldritch
tradition laid down by Call of Cthulhu, most investigative games take
place in the horror genre. Thus they use a classic staple obstacle: the
terrifying moment that threatens the heroes’ ability to continue. The
emotional content of the scare, and the creepiness of the imagery you
evoke, does the work in what is otherwise a simple resistance roll to
avoid a negative outcome.

Dilemma: You just experienced something uncanny

or disturbing, and must try to shrug off the mental
distress it might cause.

Choices: Scare Obstacles are an odd case where giv-

ing the players choice can cause them to avoid the
horrific moments the scenario was built to deliver.
Structure them so that the players can’t choose the
boring option of looking away, refusing to go down
into the basement, or declining to open the awful
tome.

Consequences: Success preserves the characters’

ability to delve deeper into the mystery and grants a
feeling of resilience. Failure weakens the character,
intensifying dread.

Rooting Interest: Scare Obstacles stand as an un-

30
 usual case. The obstacle doesn’t just threaten the
character. In a truly memorable horror game, it un-
nerves the player.

ESCALATION

As you construct or improvise scenes, look for ways in which the

antagonists can become aware of the investigation and strike back at
the heroes.

Or give them a ticking clock, the awareness that something worse

than the precipitating incident will happen if they don’t solve the
mystery in a restricted timeframe.

The moment when the investigators realize what the villain is

doing serves as your reliable final escalation.

RESOLUTION

You could herd the players toward a specific concluding scene with
particular big moments. This may work best in a one-shot or con-
vention game, where players will conspire with you to accept some
linearity in the concluding segment of a session. In open-ended play
you might leave room for the players to initiate and carry out a plan
of their own devising.

In some genres, mysteries lead to a political or moral dilemma.

Many Star Trek episodes do this. The result may become a hybrid of
Mystery and Intrigue scenario.

CHAIN OF FIGHTS

In the action-forward Chain of Fights structure, the heroes defeat

adversaries in a series of set piece battles. They engage in a fight, which

31
informs them of a threat to be vanquished. That knowledge leads them
to seek, or be sought by, enemies connected to the ones they beat, or
who beat them, the first time around. After a mix of simple investi-
gation, preparation, and character badinage, they engage in this next
fight. Their win or loss changes the parameters of another sequences of
interstitial scenes, leading to another fight. This is either the climactic
fight, or again leads to another step in the fight-interstices-fight-inter-
stices pattern. My game Feng Shui defaults to the Chain of Fights struc-
ture. In it I recommend three fights as ideal for a roleplaying scenario
in this format. Actual action films may contain many more than that.

Superhero games also typically follow the Chain of Fights format.

PREMISE ACCEPTANCE

Assuming your players have bought into the genre and its lean to-
ward action, they are already three quarters of the way to accepting
any premise. In the unlikely event that your game does not supply a
set of enemies and a motivation for the PCs to duke it out with them,
collaborate with your players to agree on an overall group mission
and preferred set of adversaries.

EMOTIONAL STAKES

Either in a brief setup before the first fight (if the heroes make the
initial move) or in the interstitial scenes between fight one and fight
two, the PCs learn of wider consequences should they fail to defeat
their enemies. The structure favors simple answers.

• The adversaries pursue world domination.

• Or will hurt many people if not stopped.

When emulating a gritty action movie, gravitate to smaller but

more personal stakes.

32
 • Vengeance against the gang that killed the group’s mentor.
• Rescuing a loved one.
• Regaining status by defeating the rivals who framed the PCs.
• Reclaiming honor by turning the tables on victorious enemies.

CUTTING TO THE FUN

In an ongoing struggle against an enemy organization, or when the

team works for a group that sends them out to attack their foes, a
basic briefing scene before the first fight can certainly work.

Ideally though you’ll start the narrative right before the opening fight.

• The heroes are minding their own business as bystanders when the
enemy stages an attack in the area.
• Or are the targets of the attack.
• Or are about to launch their own assault on minor members of the
enemy group, whose full extent they may or may not know.

OBSTACLES

The fights are the main event here; fill your scenario with the ele-
ments needed to run them with gusto and variety. Set them in places
with plenty of elements to interact with. Filmmakers with limited
budgets may favor anonymous locations like warehouses, and that’s
fine for the occasional nod to cinematic tradition. Since you don’t need
to book locations, you can put them anywhere. Look for well-known
or spectacularly visual places. Multiple levels provide lots of oppor-
tunities for action descriptions. When you’ve picked your spot, list a
number of moves the bad guys might make when fighting in this en-
vironment. These help when describing the fight on the fly, which can
be a challenge while also managing the rules part of an RPG fight. Em-
ploy one of the key Feng Shui tips, suggesting that players may freely
narrate the presence of props and other details in the environment
into their action descriptions. Find ways for these to confer mechani-

33
cal advantages in games that do not otherwise encourage them.

The obstacle breakdown for a centerpiece fight is almost too

obvious.

Dilemma: “We have to fight these enemies.”

Choices: “We will choose tactics that help us win.”

Consequences:
• Prior to Final Fight: “Winning this fight gets us one step clos-
er to stopping the bad guys. Losing will put us at a disadvan-
tage in finding and winning the final fight.”
• Final Fight: “By winning this fight we stop them once and for
all.”

Rooting Interest: “Something very bad happens if we

don’t stop them.”

INTERSTITIAL OBSTACLES

Interstitial scenes may involve very basic information gathering.

As distinct from full-on Mystery scenarios, PCs in a Chain of Fight
scenario aren’t trying to reconstruct a complicated narrative or gain
enough evidence to prove guilt of a crime. They seek answers to these
simple questions:

• “Who exactly are we fighting?”

• “Where do we find them?”

Secondary questions may also arise. These feed into the main ques-
tions.

• “What bad action are they planning?”

• “What additional resources do we need to even the odds against them?”
• “How do we acquire those resources?”

34
 Design these not as brain teasers, but pretexts for scenes of char-
acterization, interaction, and preparation. Ensure that answers flow
easily to the players. Here failure to gain information leads to boring
play by extending downtime between fights. Construct sequences
that enable the GM to maintain momentum. Provide more than one
way to gain each plot-advancing piece of information, so that players
feel they’re making meaningful choices.

Dilemma: “We have to find these enemies.” (Less often:

“We have to find a means of evening the odds against them.”)

Choices: “Who should we seek out to learn more?”

Consequences: “Dragging our heels will allow the enemies

to complete their plan.”

Rooting Interest: “We can’t let them do that.”

The training sequence in which the heroes forge themselves into

more accomplished warriors is another action staple. You might
have advancement occur in an interstitial scene and encourage play-
ers to quickly describe the montage that goes with it.

ESCALATION

Chain the fights together so that they build in difficulty, conse-

quence, and spectacular details. The penultimate fight might act as
your escalation point. Follow it with a minimum of interstitial mate-
rial, to let the GM speed the pacing.

RESOLUTION

You don’t need me to tell you that the resolution is the big fight at
the end.

35
 SURVIVAL

In a Survival scenario, danger comes toward the PCs. They try to

evade it, defending when necessary, until they are able to end the
current threat. It unfolds as an inverted, tonally darker Chain of
Fights.

PREMISE ACCEPTANCE

Players who take their places at the gaming table to feel powerful
and in control need to be warned away from scenarios featuring des-
perate, outmatched characters. Set expectations explicitly with your
players, or show other GMs playing your scenario how to do the same.

This format attracts players with a taste for a gritty mood and pun-
ishing challenges. It also appeals to tacticians whose efforts to avoid
costly combats are typically thwarted by other structures where the
fight is the fun.

Players who say they want to have the screws steadily tightened
on them can still grow demoralized as the scenario does just that.
Look for ways to renew their buy-in to the scenario with moments of
triumph and relief amid all the running and defending.

EMOTIONAL STAKES

You won’t find a more elemental emotional hook than “Run, fight,
or die.”

CUTTING TO THE FUN

Get to the moment when the protagonists first realize they’re in

trouble as quickly as possible. Consider beginning in media res, then
using description and flashbacks to fill in the context.

36
 OBSTACLES

Fights, or the threat of same, serve as an obvious primary obstacle

in any Survival game.

The scenario might place the heroes in one location, hunkering

down and looking for advantages as waves of foes come at them.

The obstacle breakdown for fights covered in the Dungeons section

applies here. A key difference is that in a Survival game successfully
disengaging from the enemy can also be felt by the players as a vic-
tory. Build skirmish scenes with off-ramps, literal or otherwise, that
the heroes can take to break off a fight and feel a sense of accomplish-
ment about it.

A multi-location Survival scenario puts the heroes on the move,

adding pursuit sequences in which they try to put distance between
them and their pursuers. When they aren’t fighting, they’re running,
hiding, or running while looking for a place to hide.

Interstitial scenes may feature interaction with secondary charac-

ters who, if the heroes persuade them, can provide the information,
equipment, reinforcements they need to survive. As they negotiate
for leverage, the PCs must also figure out who really wants to help
them, and who intends to betray them to the enemy.

Dilemma: Getting what the group needs to survive.

Choices: “Who has what we need? How do we convince

them to help? Can we trust them?”

Consequences: Success helps even the odds. Failure

weakens the group and buys time for the enemy.

Rooting Interest: Did I mention survival is at stake?

A post-apocalyptic or horror Survival scenario also makes liberal

use of Scare Obstacles (p. 29)

37
 ESCALATION

A Survival scenario needs only escalate in intensity of danger,

as the group’s resources dwindle and the opposition comes thicker
and faster. A turning point might occur when the group discovers a
means of permanent escape. This could be a literal escape vehicle, an
event they can trigger to force the adversaries to relent, or a chance
to ambush and defeat the main antagonist straight-up.

RESOLUTION

End on the biggest fight or most suspenseful escape. Save your best
ideas for last.

INTRIGUE

In a game of Intrigue, the protagonists, as likely to take the roles

of morally ambiguous anti-heroes as fighters for truth and justice,
vie against rivals to gain status, resources, and authority within a
power structure. Amber and the various Vampire games provide the
prototypical examples.

Glorantha, with its emphasis on an epic unfolding history marked

by conquest, rebellion and war, and shifting allegiances, supplies
much grist for intrigue.

Although we don’t necessarily think of its shining knights as back-

stabbing operators, Greg Stafford’s Pendragon balances political play
with internal moral dilemmas.

Some Krakeneers may immediately think of Glorantha Freeforms

when their minds turn to intrigue. This scenario structure essen-
tially takes the LARP dynamic and ports it to the tabletop, with the
players typically acting as one united faction and the GM playing the
NPCs who populate all of the other ones.

38
 Because they are so open-ended, there are many ways to construct
an Intrigue scenario. What follows is one straightforward frame-
work.

PREMISE ACCEPTANCE

If players want intrigue at all, all you have to typically do to engage

them is dangle a chance to increase their power base. They might
show up in town as disruptors looking for patrons to launch them on
their way to prominence, or start with some foothold in the hierar-
chy and a yen to climb the ladder.

Be cautious when introducing political wrangling into a campaign

not exclusively devoted to it. Though Intrigue comprises a staple ele-
ment of genre source material, many players balk at it. To have fun in
an Intrigue game you have to be willing to make trade-offs, and some
players would much rather fight monsters or unravel mysteries than
ever do that, even a little bit.

EMOTIONAL STAKES

Intrigue scenarios most clearly match, in considerably heightened,

genrefied fashion, motivations that drive our everyday lives. In real
life few of us clear areas of hostile forces, solve mysteries, pummel
our adversaries, or go on the run from terrifying pursuers. We do,
however, spend a significant chunk of time and effort chasing mon-
ey, security, status, and autonomy. Many people you know work to
advance a cause of some kind. Probably a more altruistic one than
their characters’ in Intrigue scenarios.

Players may simply enjoy coming out on top and getting their way.
Creating a scenario that allows them to spell out exactly what they’re
fighting for cements that buy-in. For added payoff, salt it with sleazy
or arrogant figures they’ll enjoy outwitting.

39
 CUTTING TO THE FUN

An Intrigue scenario might commence with the PCs encountering

an existing power structure as ambitious newcomers. By squeezing
their way into it, they become the factor that shakes up that structure
and puts the story in motion.

Alternatively, they may start out already embedded in the politics

of a royal family, monstrous underworld, or fantasy city. In that case,
the scenario kicks off with an Inciting Incident that inspires the vari-
ous established players to scramble to either protect the status quo or
attempt to advance their positions.

• The king has taken ill, raising the prospect of a succession crisis.
• An armada sails toward the port, dividing the guilds between those
ready to pay tribute and those who want to roll out the cannons.
• Someone blew up the clubhouse of the biker vampires. Some blame the
sorcerer vampires; others, the ghoul clan.
• The emperor has ordered the squabbling sects to choose a single
doctrine, lest he revert to the policies of his predecessors and return the
entire religion to outlaw status.

Put the PCs at the center of the action by making them the first
on the scene to stumble upon this game-changing situation. Supply
notes on how to respond to their most likely responses.

OBSTACLES

With their emphasis on decision-making and wheeling and deal-

ing, Intrigue scenarios can be tough to create for other GMs to run.
Instead of particular rooms, scenes, or fights, you might simply pre-
pare profiles of the various power brokers the PCs might ally with
or contend against. In an Intrigue scenario major NPCs themselves
act as obstacles. Divide them into two categories: rivals and potential
allies.

40
 Potential allies might want what the PCs want, but are either up for
grabs or on the fence.

Dilemma: This person wants something in ex-

change for their help, but giving it imposes some
cost or difficulty on the group.

Choices: The players might choose between possible

allies making incompatible demands. The players
decide how to approach the possible ally, the means
of persuasion, and what counter-offers they might
make.

Consequences: Winning an ally adds another fac-

tion to the group’s supporter roster, but requires the
payment of the agreed-upon cost, which might trig-
ger another obstacle. Losing the person to the other
side puts greater pressure on the PCs to successful-
ly bargain with all of the remaining uncommitted
power brokers.

Rooting Interest: The PCs will leave a scene satisfied

if they secure assistance at a cost they’re willing to
pay. The feeling of getting the short end of the stick
can sting harder than losing half your hit points to
a pit trap.

FIGHTS AS BARGAINING CHIPS

In a setting where violence is an option, which is to say most worlds

you’re likely to run Intrigues in, the PCs may offer their strongarm
skills to possible allies, or have to take on dangerous missions to keep
their current ones already onside. Be sure to make the consequences
of the fight on the political operation clear. Otherwise they may play
as irrelevant distractions to the main action.

41
 FIGHTS AS COSTS OR RISKS

The PCs might also have to engage in combat to protect themselves

or their allies from their political rivals. Again, keep in mind the po-
litical fallout that flows from victory or defeat.

VICTORY CONDITION

Specify ahead of time how many power brokers the PCs need to get
onside to prevail and gain their desired outcome. The simplest way
to do this is to treat them as all equal. In addition to their existing
allies, they need three of the waverers.

Lovers of complexity might weight the influence of different power

brokers. Each has a number of influence points. For example:

POWER BROKER INFLUENCE POINTS

Queen 4

Chamberlain 3

Drunk Prince 1

Stuffy Prince 1

Archbishop 2

Minister of War 2

Swamp Witch 1

In this version, the PCs get what they want if they hit a certain
threshold of points. The figures with higher values naturally play
harder to get. And they don’t coexist well in the same faction.

Players who like to handle the game mechanics will want to know
how many points they’re shooting for and how many they’ve accumu-

42
lated. You might withhold from them the point values of allies they
have yet to secure. Players who favor immersion might instead ask the
GM to keep all of that behind the curtain. Lovers of simplicity might
decide to wing it, allowing the GM to decide subjectively whether the
PCs need to protect their lead when the escalation comes around, or
have fallen behind and need to take a dramatic risk to come from be-
hind and win. Winging it gives the GM needed flexibility in a limited
time slot.

A game built around intrigue probably has its own purpose-built

subsystem for this, which you should use instead of the above.

ESCALATION

In a one-shot, the scenario escalates with half an hour to an hour

to spare. Otherwise, whether you’re winging it or using influence
points, it escalates when the PCs are one negotiation away from vic-
tory. The negotiation itself might provide sufficient tension to serve
as the climactic scene. Or a new crisis, or an unwelcome development
from the original Inciting Incident, rears up, forcing the PCs to take
action that might win it all, or set all of their progress so far on fire.

RESOLUTION

A Freeform Intrigue game generally finishes with a group scene

with all the major players on stage. Scenes with a huge cast of NPCs,
especially ones who are working at cross-purposes, or simply talking
to each other, can be hard for GMs to pull off.

You might treat the fruits of the group’s politicking as a simple coda.
With some quick narration the GM describes how they paid off and
what the new status quo looks like.

Players favoring a traditional big finish may hanker for an ac-

tion sequence in which the PCs take a central role. In the simplest

43
version, henchmen of the losing faction attack them or their most
essential ally.

Better yet, the action sequence develops and concludes the Inciting
Incident:

• The PCs identify the king’s poisoner and fight their bodyguards
to apprehend them.
• Assisted by the corsairs the guilds have hired, the PCs take on
the armada.
• The PCs team up with the biker vampires to sabotage their
enemy’s headquarters.
• Egregores of the defeated theological faction swarm up from
the underworld, inadvertently opening up a gateway to hell.

PLAYER VS. PLAYER

For an added level of complexity, a scenario might presume, or al-

low for, a situation in which the PCs belong to different factions. They
intrigue against each other, with the GM using a cutaway technique
focusing first on the PCs from one faction, then on another, parcel-
ing onstage time between participants. This requires a very loosely
written, if not wholly improvised, scenario. I will sometimes run one-
shots in which the PCs are the only intriguers, who must ally with and
against each other to achieve a goal in a zero-sum competition. Tonally
the results resemble a Picaresque (below) and an elimination-based re-
ality TV game. The written scenario consists of a brief description of the
situation. The rest emerges in play.

HYBRID STRUCTURES

Some scenarios fuse elements of the five main structures.

A heist scenario might start as a Mystery, as the heroes gather in-

formation about their target, then turn into a Dungeon as they en-

44
ter and take control of a hostile area, with the map providing con-
nections between scenes. Heists replace the fight obstacle with the
stealth obstacle as the main attraction.

Nearly any other scenario can turn into a Dungeon or feature a

Dungeon sequence. Investigators in a Mystery might track their
quarry to a series of caverns inhabited by his serpent folk compa-
triots.

The KRAKEN Chapbook Mother of Monsters is a scenario set in Glo-

rantha that fuses Intrigue with a Chain of Fights.

OFFBEAT STRUCTURES

A couple of other scenario structures exist but don’t get as much

use as the big five. For completeness, let’s give them a brief look.

PICARESQUE

In a Picaresque, morally ambiguous or foolish protagonists wan-

der about meeting other fools and scoundrels. Reversals of fortune
rule the day as they mete out comeuppances to the deserving, and are
themselves laid low for their own humorous flaws. A tone of droll de-
tachment attends their activities. On the printed page a wry or dead-
pan narrator supplies this. At the gaming table the players laugh, out
of character, at their mistakes and ridiculous overreaches.

Paranoia combines the Picaresque with satirical science fiction. My

own The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game and its generic version, Skuldug-
gery, use this structure.

To create a Picaresque scenario you can follow the techniques de-

scribed here. Or you can create a series of straight-faced F20 village
or town encounters and wait for your players to set it down a pica-
resque path with their irresponsible chaos agent hijinks.

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 Picaresque scenarios require quasi-deserving comic adversaries to
hoodwink and be hoodwinked by, and the possibility of ready escape
to the next misadventure. Aside from the obvious choice of fanta-
sy you might also try it with musketeers, time travelers, wandering
cowpokes, space traders, or Victorian scoundrels.

PREMISE ACCEPTANCE

To accept the premise of a Picaresque, the characters need merely

to arrive in a new place and then go poking around for trouble and
advantage.

EMOTIONAL STAKES

Picaresque offers laughs, surprises, and comfortingly low stakes.

The anti-heroes are mucking around causing trouble, not saving the
world.

Players with a high ego investment in their character’s coolness

and success may struggle to adopt the needed acceptance of the peri-
odic downfalls they are destined to undergo.

CUTTING TO THE FUN

Any Picaresque can start with the group’s arrival in a new place,
and with it a temptation that leads them to make trouble or seek ad-
vantage there.

OBSTACLES

The main obstacle in a Picaresque is a negotiation, as in Intrigue.

Here though it takes place for low-level, fleeting advantage.

46
 ESCALATION

The scenario turns on a reversal of fortune. If the locals have the

upper hand, the group gets a chance to teach them a lesson. If they
have bamboozled their way to a cushy position, a new development
threatens to topple them.

RESOLUTION

A climactic scene offers the anti-heroes the chance to triumph over

the locals before skipping town, or to be triumphed over, forcing
them to flee in humiliating and unfavorable circumstances.

DRAMA

Emulation of dramatic storytelling usually happens in the story

game space.

That said, players often fondly remember sessions of a traditional

roleplaying game that spontaneously veer from the usual pattern of
obstacles and problem solving into pure dialogue-driven character
interaction.

The structure of a dramatic story varies so much from the scenario

types discussed here that it really merits its own separate treatment.
You can find this in my game Hillfolk. You could use the structures it
lays out to run a change-of-pace dramatic session featuring the char-
acters from an ongoing trad game. Alternately you could hybridize
its dramatic scenes with a trad scenario structure, making their dia-
logue interactions a form of Inciting Activity.

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 SCENARIOS IN THE SANDBOX

A common roleplaying dichotomy distinguishes between mis-

sion-focused play and Sandbox play. Most of the time both styles of
play feature scenarios. The difference lies in how they are generated.

In mission-focused play, the GM prepares a scenario and expects

the players to engage with its premise.

• The party meets in a tavern. There a wizened man in a strange hat tells
them about the dungeon entrance his research has uncovered.

In Sandbox play, the characters wander about until they find a

problem they care enough about. In response to this play-emergent
collective request from the players, the GM devises a scenario, prob-
ably largely improvised.

• The GM drops an image of a map into the group Discord. Among the
places marked on it are the Demontusk Pit, the Tomb of Despond, and
the Arcadian Ruins. After researching what these all mean, the players
conclude that they’d like to go to the Arcadian Ruins.

In both of these examples, the characters wind up adventuring in a

Dungeon. In the first they took the one choice the GM offered them. In
the second they chose from a list.

Some groups prefer the simplicity of mission play. They get to the
fun fast, without a lengthy preamble section where they have to come
to a group decision. This group also orders personal pan pizzas, one for
each member. Other groups prefer the freedom of choice that comes
with Sandbox play. They get the scenario that most appeals to them
and enjoy mulling over their options. By the time they have chosen,
the single pizza has arrived, with the toppings they have all agreed on.

A Sandbox game can tick along for a good while before a mission
arises from a group’s poking about. If players never settle on a mission,
it meanders along as an extended exercise in the picaresque.

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 SUMMATION

In this KRAKEN Chapbook we’ve defined the five bedrock scenario

structures of trad-style roleplaying:

Dungeon: The heroes explore and achieve control

over a physical area, advancing the scenario by
moving from location to location within that space.

Mystery: The heroes investigate a mystery, advanc-

ing the scenario by moving from one source of in-
formation to another.

Chain of Fights: The heroes engage in a series of

fights, connected by interstitial scenes that give
them context and meaning.

Survival: The characters defend themselves from an

incoming threat, either in one location or by moving
from one location to another in search of escape.

Intrigue: The characters seek allies and thwart ad-

versaries in pursuit of authority, status, resources,
or political outcomes.

49
 To build a scenario from scratch:

1. Pick the Structure you want to use. This might be a hybrid, if you’re
feeling like taking on some additional complexity.

2. Devise a Premise that engages you.

3. Ensure that it will also engage the players by identifying, or add-

ing, Emotional Stakes.

4. Envision an opening scene that will Cut to the Fun.

5. Conceive the key Obstacles, as determined by the structure you’ve

chosen.

6. Check how strong they are by breaking them down into Choices,
Consequences, and Rooting Interest.

7. Connect the obstacles by following the narrative direction of your

chosen structure.

8. Make sure that none of them are Fun Ruiners, as per the table
below.

9. Find a point of Escalation in your scenario.

10. Bring it all home by devising an appealing Resolution.

To strength-test a scenario you have already created, check the

above list to see what you might punch up. Pay special attention to
eliminating Fun Ruiners.

Checking your scenario against a list is just a preliminary to the

real strength test, setting it loose on players and GMs. No matter
how clear you think you’ve been, you will always be surprised by the
rough spots they encounter.

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 DEFINING OBSTACLES BY SCENARIO TYPE

SCENARIO STRUCTURE KEY PAYOFF

Dungeon Defeating the threats on a section of the map

Mystery Gaining a clue

Chain of Fights Winning a fight

Survival Defeating or escaping pursuers

Intrigue Speak to subject’s friends and family;

canvass their usual haunts

FUN RUINERS

SCENARIO STRUCTURE BLOCK TO AVOID

Dungeon Area that can’t be entered; areas that pro-

vide only one choice of where to go next

Mystery Failure to gain information

Chain of Fights Steps toward next fight not apparent

Survival Means of defense/escape not apparent

Intrigue NPCs who want nothing from the PCs; negoti-

ating partners the PCs have no way of meeting

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 DEFINING CHOICES

SCENARIO STRUCTURE CHOICES

Dungeon Which area to enter next; tactics

during fight to clear that area

Mystery Where to go next for information;

how to get it once there

Chain of Fights Where the next fight is; how to pre-

pare for it; tactics during fight

Survival Defensive preparations; method of

escape; tactics when forced to fight

Intrigue What to offer other intriguers; what to ask

for in return; how to make the approach

DIRECTION OF TROUBLE

SCENARIO STRUCTURE WHERE CONFLICT COMES FROM

Dungeon Heroes move toward their adversaries

Mystery Initially, heroes seek adversaries, whose

identities they may not know; later, ad-
versaries may come at the heroes

Chain of Fights Adversaries move toward heroes or vice versa

Survival Adversaries pursue the heroes

Intrigue Heroes seek allies; adversaries compete

with them and seek to disrupt them.

52
Robin D. Laws designed such roleplaying games as The Yellow
King Roleplaying Game, Hillfolk, Feng Shui, HeroQuest and
QuestWorlds. He is the winner of eight Gold and five Silver ENnie
Awards and the coveted Diana Jones Award. Other works of gam-
ing and narrative analysis are Hamlet’s Hit Points and Beating
the Story. His works have been translated into eleven languages.
Hear his insights on gaming, narrative, history and weirdness on
the weekly podcast Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.
TENTACLES PRESS