Floating the Dragon (Swords of the Serpentine)

 Sag Harbor

The swampside docks off the upriver end of the city are in the worst industrial section of town. This is the area where the unmentionable businesses are: the tanneries, the slaughterhouses, the nightsoil collections. It’s where sludge from dredging finds a temporary home, mostly because there’s a surreptitious market for people who want their enemies’ homes filled with the stuff ...

Night Markets

Daytime Sag Harbor is a sprawl of slums and unsavory neighborhoods. Nighttime Sag Harbor (at least along the edges of the District) is a riot of Night Markets. Every night when the sun goes down, the lanterns light and market tents pop up intertwined with the harbor docks and the sprawls of fishmongers, tanners, dyers, outlanders, and other lowlifes. Roving pubs pitch their tents and tap their kegs ...

Family Business

You may be a prestigious member of the ancient nobility, the merchant princes behind a major Mercanti guild, or even a close-knit family of commoners who have taken up a life of crime. For you, family is everything — and when family and friends get threatened by personal or political enemies, you turn to heroics to get your own back ...

Last time I populated the Building. Time to add some layers.

Broadly speaking there are three kinds of scenarios in any campaign: foundational, plot specific, and climactic.

Foundational scenarios are the groundwork. They elaborate on the established Building and put some flesh on its bones. They also provide the initial clues which the characters will follow up on for later plot. When I discussed Bookhounds games, and horror in general, many moons ago I said that "the first act [must] establish the setting, the characters and the overall mood of the game. Whether the players are veterans, novices or a mixture of the two, they've never played in this game world before, because it's your game world, fashioned out of your ideas and imagination. They don't know what to look forward to, or what to be worried about."

That's what a foundational scenario is. The first act. It doesn't have to include anything overtly Monstrous at this stage, because although this train is headed down Monstrous tracks this is just the first act. The establishing shot. The moment where the players get settled in to the story you're telling.

Remember that this is just as much foundational for the players as it is for you. They have only the sketchiest idea of who their characters are. Sure, they know the characters' stats and they have a more or less detailed backstory, but a character isn't defined by backstory. It's defined in play. Just like real life; character isn't about what people say, but what they do. You need to see what the characters do, before you know who they are.

Plot specific scenarios happen after the foundation is established. They usually involve some kind of plot specific quest, quest object, information or NPC. This is either a goal in its own right or it leads the investigators to a goal. Since this is a Monstrous game, a plot specific scenario will involve Monsters. It might be a reveal, a confrontation, an antagonist reaction. If this were a Night's Black Agents game then the plot-specific scenario would probably involve some kind of conspyramid reaction. In a Trail game the investigators would finally come face-to-face with the entity all those cultists have been chanting about, or find a copy of the Necronomicon.

By this point the players should already have a good idea of who their characters are, so you should be on the lookout for some character-specific reactions. Or take the trouble to create some. If you know that the duelist character is into himbos, then the antagonist for this scenario should be a himbo - that sort of thing. If you know a character is afraid of birds, then this is the time for birds. Note, I said character. It's a very different thing if the player is afraid of birds. Don't be that guy. 

Climactic scenarios often happen at the end of the arc and may or may not involve a big punch-up. In The Hobbit the arc ends with the Battle of the Five Armies. In video games, and Dungeons and Dragons, it usually ends with a boss battle. It doesn't have to be that way. A climactic scenario is a climax; it doesn't have to be a bloody one. Most horror games end in trauma, but it's a mental trauma not a physical one. The chief thing to bear in mind is that the central dilemma of the plot so far has to be resolved. 

In the first chapter of Telltale's Walking Dead, there is no clash of armies, no punch-up. The central dilemma has always been how to raise Clementine, the small child who's been the heart of the series up to that point. Therefore the climactic moment comes when Lee, the main character, resolves her plotline - in the quietest way possible, surrounded by the undead. 

That's the kind of climactic moment I like to shoot for, but seldom get. What happens, happens. But the point I'm getting at is the climactic moment can be as loud, as impactful, or as sinister as you make it. It's perfectly reasonable for the climactic moment to come when the characters realize everyone else in the Night Market is on the Rattakan's side, and they have to decide whether to join in and become one of them or leave the only home they've ever known. It's just as reasonable for a traumatic fight against birds end with the survivors sneaking away in their car. Or for a lone guest to leave the restaurant and stagger towards an uncertain future.

The last kind of scenario we need to talk about isn't really a scenario; it's a stopgap. It doesn't fit with the others, but it's necessary. This is the floating scenario. It can be boiled down to a floating scene rather than a full scenario, but the point is this: every so often events will shake out in a way you didn't plan for and you need some time to regroup. That's when you bring out the floating scenario. It doesn't have to fit with the rest. It just has to kill time while you try to resolve the problems caused by the unexpected bump in the road. 

Let's say for the sake of argument that you've been planning a punch-up with the big bad and the players unexpectedly resolve that conflict early by ambushing the big bad and smothering it while it's asleep. OK, not too heroic, but it gets the job done. Now you're short a big bad and you don't know how to get to a climactic scene when the climax you had planned came a wee bit prematurely. 

Time for the floating scenario. Perhaps at the end of that scenario you reveal that the actual big bad was something else altogether, or that the big bad the heroes slew was the real big bad's son, or that without the big bad some other terrible thing will happen so now the heroes have to do what the big bad would have done had it not been killed. But having the floating scenario available gives you the opportunity to regroup without having a nervous breakdown, and hopefully gives you time to sow the seeds for future climactic scenarios. 

The key thing to bear in mind about a floating scenario is, while it may be located in the plot area - Sag Harbor, in this case - it is not plot related. It's just something you have in your back pocket in case of accidents. A Night Market festival. An unexpected arrival, or departure. A disaster. An opportunity. Hidden treasure. Or maybe everyone gets stoned.

Cowboy Bebop

The ideal floating scenario is one which can be used in multiple situations, even different campaigns or settings, with only the most modest modifications.

Bookhounds, for example, has book auctions. Those appear to be specific to Bookhounds, but think about it: auctions can happen in any setting. You can have an auction in Dungeons and Dragons, or Swords of the Serpentine, or Dracula Dossier. If all you have to do to make an auction setting specific is to change a few names, and perhaps the McGuffin, it's the ideal floating scenario. You can put it just about anywhere and it performs the same function (killing time) while also giving the characters a new McGuffin to chase.  

OK, that's enough talking in the abstract. Next time out, some Foundational stuff.

Enjoy!