I'm not new to playing/running games. Been doing it since '88. However, I have a hard time grasping the narrative dice system. I'm rigged as can be. I'm looking for examples of how you prepare for your games. I'm used to writing down everything with contingencies to boot. With narration, it seems ANYTHING can happen. It is hard to prepare for me. Anyhow, how do you write up your adventures?

Here is an example of how mine are starting to look, I usually don't include advantage or triumph so the PCs can work more freely with those, but this is so much more free form and alien to me. What are your thoughts?

MADE UP ENCOUNTER

PCs enter the mansion to learn of the plot behind the local disappearances and to find notes relating to the Deep Ones. When entering, there is a counter to encounter the ghouls nesting here. It begins at 6, when it reaches 0 through action, the ghouls attack the characters. The mansion has 1.5 (round up) minions per character and two rival ghouls.

…

STUDY (Discipline Fear check 1 purple) (Perception on Search 2 purple, 1 black(dim lighting))

The study contains….and behind the desk is the professor, his throat gouged by a jagged tear. Amongst the many relics of his lifetime of adventures to the orient are paper clippings and notes. Most seems conspiratorial, but some may contain valid information.

Perception (Success) – The PCs discover a note with the summoning of Deep Ones outlines (handout 1).

Perception (Failure) – The PCs find little of value to their mission.

Perception (Threat) – A PC bumps an artifact and it smashing to the ground, loudly. Something stirs in the mansion, the counter to encounter is lowered by 2.

Perception (Despair) – A ghoul from the attic moves into the study. Rival ghoul is: ….

….

I always do a rough write-up of the adventure for that session, and after every session I write the next one, because my character's choices can often steer the story somewhere completely different than I originally intended, but that is a good thing. The thing with this system is it is supposed to be free form. The players are supposed to feel like they can influence the story. My last session was 98% ad-libbed, as the characters ended up taking over the bridge of the ship that captured them, locked down the bridge, and vented everyone else on the ship into space.

With this system, it is best to keep a loose idea of what you want to happen, but give the players as much creative freedom as possible. Let them help make the decisions on what happens with the Triumphs and Advantages, and keep some basic ideas for the Threats and Despairs, but let the specific events that are occurring give you some ideas as well. Often the players will give you the ideas for what to do. My favorite thing is when a player rolls a Despair, and then another player says something along the lines of "Oh, it better not be...", giving me the perfect idea for what that Despair should do. It results in some exciting sessions.

I write a list of dot points for my goals for the session, clues to find, encounters I want to happen, NPC’s they will meet, hooks for the characters, brief descriptions of locations. Nothing has an order. I then put a couple of stat blocks together and I’m done.

Ill start the session with a refresh of last session then let the story unfold.

I generally improvise everything but NPCs, where I spend the most of my time. I am running Star Wars, so same narrative dice system. Haven't gotten ahold of my copy of Genesys yet. Anywho, when I do write up a session, it's because i worked with the player to bring in their backstory. I'll take notes on what the player wants and then throw in a few twists to keep them on their toes. What I write is basically the summarized form of what events happen up to the point that the players need to act or react, i don't write down pathways or what the end goal should be. I write the situation, the problem and leave the resolution of that up to the players. I also write down what information ties those events to the player group.

As for the narrative dice, I find it the most fun to improvise instead of having to sit down and come up with options for each die result on several of the significant rolls throughout the session. I allow the players to choose what their advantages and triumphs will be, per the rules and I handle the threat and despair. However, I do give the players the option of coming up with threat and despair for themselves or even some of the NPC rolls, as long as that effect is sufficient to match the amount of threat/despair rolled.

After running several sessions with some groups, I realized that all the planning I made could be thrown out the window and I didn't want to feel the need to railroad them just because I wrote down how I think they should handle the situation. So here's one of the shortest session plans I made:

1. BoSS soldiers capture group (at least in part)

2. Rescue mission/jailbreak baby

3. Battle inside the star destroyer “Dolitte”

4. Land on surface to finish job

Funny thing is, only the first part actually happened. The rest played out differently. One player ran off into a forest, the one that the BoSS Soldiers were after, ran into a large beast, got its attention and brought it back into the village to wreak havoc. Another player talked through things with the commander of the BoSS guys, so he could stall for time, ended up getting knocked out and captured (only person to be captured). Before he made it to their ship, an NPC ally came by (because the players flipped a destiny for it) and saved the player, cleaving the soldiers in two with a large vibro-ax. So no jailbreak at all. The battle took place in the village and the players rigged a bomb to the shuttle the BoSS guys came in, so it exploded when it went back to the Carrier ship. The job wasn't completed at all, they knocked out their buyer and then left the planet. The job, which was selling slaves (this was a group of murderhobos and this was the story where everything went downhill from, the point of no return as I like to call it), the job wasn't finished until we handled it narratively, like 2 sessions later, because every chance they got, they did something ridiculous instead of negotiating a deal.

I learned this trick from a friend. I set up the adventure planning out what my npcs would do without any interference from the pcs. Once I have that laid out with a basic timeline of events I try to come up with the safeguards they put in place to protect their plans. That way when the pcs do whatever they do, I have some options on what happens if they roll threats and despairs.

Only have experience with EotE and don't have Genesys yet but advantage, triumph, threat, and despair were always improvisational bonuses or drawbacks that I would either be the final arbiter on automatically, or I would negotiate the event happening with my players.

EotE also has a chart on how you can mechanically spend the Advantages and Threats if you can't think of anything relevant for the situation (things like recovering or inflicting stress). That combined with just loving improv is what made me really love the FFG narrative dice systems.

All I prepare are certain story beats that need to be hit to drive the narrative forward. The how, when and sometimes, where, of it are entirely discretionary. I have to know the world very well, so whatever players want I can facilitate. There's nothing worse than the sensation as a player you've been stopped from doing something because it's off the railroad - it's like hitting the edge of the map in a videogame.

One nice trick is to come up with some scenes with no story attached, make an interesting pub, a busy market, a fight on the roof of a train, a chase through warehouses, a sunken ship.

Then when your pc’s go sideways with the story and you want some place interesting you just grab the appropriate scene and run with it knowing some of the ideas have already been created.

Here's a copy of the write-up I used for the game I ran today. I don't always have a chance to, but I like giving detailed write-ups when possible. For our Star Wars campaign, players would often step in as GMs for a weekday rewind of old missions for new players and new PCs of old players. That said, I also go with missions with very little prep and improv. It really depends on my mood that week and whether the session is part of the main storyline or more of a "monster of the week" scenario.

22 hours ago, verdantsf said:

Here's a copy of the write-up I used for the game I ran today. I don't always have a chance to, but I like giving detailed write-ups when possible. For our Star Wars campaign, players would often step in as GMs for a weekday rewind of old missions for new players and new PCs of old players. That said, I also go with missions with very little prep and improv. It really depends on my mood that week and whether the session is part of the main storyline or more of a "monster of the week" scenario.

Watching this now. Thank you for posting it. I like your write up. It isn't too different from mine, but I'm still clinging to my rigid write-up...ideas on what success/failure/threat/and despair are....

I write-up my adventures on a single page, whenever possible. I start either with an opening scene or with a short summary of the adventure. Then I list key scenes that are necessary for the action to unfold, or that I assume that will happen based on my knowledge of the players. Then, I write a paragraph about possible resolutions, usually best and worst case. The actual resolution usually falls somewhere in-between. Then I list important NPC or adversaries. Lastly, I might call-out potential rewards or possible continuing adventures. Sometimes I write down sample names for use during the adventure. I haven't prepared an adventure for Genesys yet, and I suspect that adversaries take up more space than I am used to. Thus, I think I'll end up with two pages per adventures.

I leave it up to the players and the flow of the story to see which scenes actually get used, and how the players will go from one scene to another. Genesys will mesh with my style nicely, I hope.

7 hours ago, Forgive said:

Watching this now. Thank you for posting it. I like your write up. It isn't too different from mine, but I'm still clinging to my rigid write-up...ideas on what success/failure/threat/and despair are....

Can I ask a challenging question - as in, can I challenge you for a second, rather than "there's no way you could answer this"?

What happens if you don't write anything down? No suggested advantage, threat, despair, triumph results? No encounters, no scripted points etc?

9 hours ago, Endersai said:

Can I ask a challenging question - as in, can I challenge you for a second, rather than "there's no way you could answer this"?

What happens if you don't write anything down? No suggested advantage, threat, despair, triumph results? No encounters, no scripted points etc?

I've ran games long enough that more than once I've had to wing it. I don't mind no-script, just going in with an idea - not sure if it was head injury or age, but coming up with results on the fly isn't as quick any longer. Performance anxiety maybe? Anyhow, what I did most recently is threw out everything except times rolls are needed (IF PCs are in area A, perception 3 diff for example). I then wrote an outline for planning a loose story, then made a power point presentation with cool pictures and some sound.

The game group I'm going to run for is used to using miniatures and grid, so I will likely follow suit - but am refraining from mapping out maps, all the contingencies and options, etc. Trying to stay less rigid.

Trust yourself and your players, and let the dice prompt you where to go. So long as you take the notion that there's only one direction of movement - forwards - and that forward momentum is indifferent to success or failure, then you will be fine. Remember, the game wants people to succeed, even if the dice result is a failure. Players bribe an official and get success with threat or triumph? The superior officer to the official bribed has had suspicions for some time and may investigate, thus causing you grief. Or you may be surrounded by city watch or similar and taken to the superior, who wants you to help bring the corrupt officer down in a sting operation, forgiving your crime in the process. The dice give you hints, if you know how to listen for them.

21 hours ago, Forgive said:

Watching this now. Thank you for posting it. I like your write up. It isn't too different from mine, but I'm still clinging to my rigid write-up...ideas on what success/failure/threat/and despair are....

I think having a couple notes in a given scene of how the various symbols could be spent is never a bad idea. It avoids that moment when your creativity seizes up and you have no idea what to do. But be prepared to go off in a completely different direction if need be. Also, if something must happen, don't let the dice trigger it.

Otherwise, I think Varlie's advice is perfect for any game that has a large amount of player authority: plan out what your NPC's would do if the PC's don't influence the scene. The flipside of that is try to funnel PC's into situations more interesting than "kill everything that isn't us" and make the enemies into the obstacles preventing them from achieving their goals.

I'm saying all of this not having written a Genesys encounter yet, and it's been a few years since I wrote one for EotE.

Guys... I think most of you are missing his question. I don’t think he’s asking how to structure an adventure, or how to plan the storyline, he’s asking how to prepare for the possibility of advantage/threat because no other system has anything comparable. Reading the thread, it sounds like

Him - "I’m terrible at ad libbing and thinking stuff up on the spur of the moment, how do I plan for possible advantage/threat results"

All the replies in this thread - "just ad lib it and come up with something on the spur of the moment"

@forgive - correct me if I’m wrong here.

As for me, I’m the same. I’m absolutely terrible at making stuff up on the fly. The thing to remember about advantage/threat is that it is not really supposed to directly relate to the check being performed (except when it does, like critical hits and the like) but it should relate to the players or the adventure. So the first thing to do would be to list the stuff in the book that is mechanically triggered by the results (cries, out of ammo, etc...), and also look at the examples of narrative things the book suggests could be triggered (reinforcements and so on) then look for ways to tailor those recommendations to the adventure your planning. So, for every significant area/group in the adventure, have some reinforcements planned out that you can grab if you need them. Another thing they can be good for is foreshadowing. If you overplan everything the way you say, you probably have a good idea of what else is going on away from the PCs and what encounters are likely to come up in the future. Plan a few ways those events that the PCs aren’t involved in yet could be slipped into an encounter. An enemy unexpectedly swears in another language, suggesting that foreigners the PCs didn’t know about are involved in the current machinations, create a letter that isn’t vital for the story to continue, but references or provides clues to a future encounter or adventure that the PCs didn’t know about and keep it in your back pocket until needed.

A last suggestion. Years ago I stopped bothering with the venerable concept of "random encounters". Threat is an awesome way to reintroduce the effect of random encounters, without the hassle of tracking hours of time and rolling to see if they happen. It’s sort of like the reinforcements effect, except the newly arrived forces/creatures don’t have to actually be connected with anybody involved with the encounter, just having innocent bystanders or mindless creatures wander by while the party is busy fighting/searching/researching/scanning/whatever can do wonders to create the impression that there is other stuff going on beyond what the PCs are involved in, and those kinds of encounters can easily be prepared in advance, then, when advantage or threat come up, it should be a relatively simple thing to pull an appropriate one from your stash of prepared stuff.

On 2017-12-08 at 2:35 PM, Forgive said:

However, I have a hard time grasping the narrative dice system.

Thought it might not be your chosen genre, it would be well worth the time and money to read or even run one of the published FFG Star Wars modules. You'll see how they lay out investigations and other information gathering by the narrative dice, advantages, threats, etc. Beyond the Rim, for example, could easily be adapted to almost genre: in a western setting, the Wheel could be a rough mining town, finding Cholganna could be replaced with a search for a lost Western Union stagecoach in some trackless outback, the colony might be some kind of lost Donner party, etc.

That's just one example, but all the modules have great examples of how to leverage the narrative dice.

On 13/12/2017 at 2:51 PM, Forgottenlore said:

Him - "I’m terrible at ad libbing and thinking stuff up on the spur of the moment, how do I plan for possible advantage/threat results"

All the replies in this thread - "just ad lib it and come up with something on the spur

Yeah, this seems like an oversight!

You should definitely have a listen to an old podcast called Skill Monkey, find the archives here:

http://www.madadventurers.com/category/field-recordings/skill-monkey/

They are short and full of fun ideas for spending the various results of this system. It may be Star Wars themed but it’s worth it.

On 12/12/2017 at 10:51 PM, Forgottenlore said:

The thing to remember about advantage/threat is that it is not really supposed to directly relate to the check being performed (except when it does, like critical hits and the like) but it should relate to the players or the adventure.

I disagree. I think every use of symbols should emerge out of the roll and be at least tangentially tied back to how the roll itself influences the narrative. That's actually what makes it pretty hard to prep. I agree that having a list of ways to spend symbols is a good idea, but pick ones for which you can at least draw some sort of tenuous causal connection between the event of the check and spending those symbols to make X happen. Otherwise you get something odd like "You rolled a despair on your Knowledge check. A red dragon appears!" Yeah, a good improv artist could connect the two of them, but he'd break a sweat doing so if he wanted to evoke anything but a "WTF?" from the rest of the table.