Scenario Structure (RPG All)

 … I'm struggling to convert them to proper scenarios. Do you have any tip to create a scenario structure using a hook? Do you create a set of clues? Do you write scenes that connect all the facts of the hook so that the bookhounds need to go one scene after other one? You improvise? Carlos Roig 

Now there’s a question. 

I had something else in mind for this week's post, but this caught my attention so I went ahead and wrote this instead.

Let’s go back to Coleshill Abbey for a moment; that destroyed library which has hidden secrets buried both in the past and the present. 

… the estate be used to run the library, open by subscription to certain scholars. Mostly friends of Vincent and fellows of Vincent’s old Oxford college, though the list included a scattering of worthies who got in on merit alone. The library was in operation from 1872 to its destruction in 1915 … 

The hook is that forger Winona Pryce, who used to work with Coleshill Abbey’s librarian, has a book stolen from the library which she now wants to sell. Before the Bookhounds can arrange the auction Pryce dies of a heart attack, and her body is found at the ruins of the old library. The book is nowhere to be found. Important customers are impatient for the auction. The Bookhounds are caught in the middle and must resolve the problem. 

Because it’s the problem that’s the issue. 

I spent some time talking about Baldur’s Gate 3 last week. In that game the problem is the Illithid tadpoles that the player is infected with right at the start. Those tadpoles will kill the player and anyone else they infect, so the player has to get rid of them. Thus begins a search for a cure. Everything else in the game, all those complicated plot tangles and quests, flows from that.  

Which is exactly what a good hook does. It poses a problem that the players have to solve. 

Coleshill Abbey poses three problems: 

What to do? 

Where’s the book? 

What was Pryce doing at Coleshill Abbey? 

Let’s tackle them and see what they lead, because that, my friend, is how you design a scenario. 

What to do? 

This is about those disappointed customers. They wanted that book. Now they won’t get it. This means problems for the store which in turn means problems for the Bookhounds. Since this is a valuable book it stands to reason that the people who wanted to buy it have money in their pockets. Since this is a Mythos book it stands to reason that the people who wanted to buy it are mad, bad and dangerous to know. Some of them more than others, no doubt. 

At this point it would be helpful to know who they are and sketch in a little of their history, the amount of detail dependent on whether we’re talking about background players or potential threats, even long-term threats. I’m not going to do that here; just be aware that it’s something you have to do. 

Now, look at the problem from a structural point of view. You have the Hook. It has the Question, which is the foundation of the scenario. Put yourself in the Bookhounds’ shoes. If it were you, and you had to deal with an irate customer, what would you do? 

Well, there are two obvious solutions that spring to mind.  

One is to dodge the confrontation altogether. Whenever so-and-so calls, I’m out. To Lunch. To Dinner. Sick. Whatever. From the Keeper’s perspective, you want to sketch in a scene that deals with this possibility. Potential spends. Will this result in, say, a chase scene? Will this result in a fight? What might the Bookhounds learn about the book, or Pryce, or the Library, as a result of this plot choice? 

The other is to meet the confrontation head-on. Negotiate. Bluff. Pretend they have the book after all and the auction will go ahead. Again, you want to sketch in a scene that deals with this possibility. Will this result in a Maltese Falcon series of confrontations with strange and dangerous characters?

Maltese Falcon

What will the Bookhounds learn about the book, or Pryce, or the Library, as a result of this plot choice? 

Going back to Carlos Roig’s original question these are the scenes that connect the facts of the hook. That’s part of scenario design. However, that’s not the whole of scenario design, because in any given scenario you have to have one scene constantly available, which is: 

Whatever the players want to do to solve the problem. 

There’s no accounting for taste. Players get all sorts of ideas in their heads. You can’t anticipate them. They might decide to forge their own copy of the book, or steal a copy from somewhere else, or murder all those disappointed customers. Anything’s possible.  

This is where improv comes in. I’m sure I don’t need to describe improv to you. The basic point is this: you need to have just enough random facts at your disposal that you can deploy them as necessary in a yes, and situation. If this becomes a crime scene, you need to have some stats for cops. If this becomes a fight, you need some stats for mooks, monsters, what have you. If this becomes a criminal conspiracy, you need some criminals, and so on. 

The great thing about these improv stats is, you don’t need them for one scenario. You need them for all scenarios. Which means you can re-use them as needed. If Constable Grigson doesn’t end up being used in the Coleshill Abbey scenario you can use him in Vathek and the Burning Tower.  Or you can use him in both scenarios. The cheap-john Morris Farraday and his partner ‘Ribs’ Macavoy can turn up in as many scenarios as you like.  

The same applies to any other yes-and contingency you devise, whether it’s an NPC, an event, or something similar. Think of these things as guest stars. Or recurring characters. TV Tropes. 

Moving on. 

Where’s the book? 

This question gives you a little flexibility, because you, as Keeper, know where it is. You designed the scenario, after all. From that point, you need to put together one or more scenes that guide the Bookhounds from the hook to the end goal.  

Let’s say that Winona left the book with a friend of hers for safe keeping, Howard and Thripps, a pawnbroker with a reliable safe. 

Again, put yourself in the Bookhounds’ shoes. You have to find out where the book is. How would you do that? Well, you’d look around. You’d search places where you think it might be or have been – Winona’s apartment is the obvious choice there. You’d talk to Winona’s friends, her neighbors, her business contacts.  

All these scenes or mini-scenes give clues, which will eventually lead to Howard and Thripps. Exactly how many of these scenes you need is up to you. If it helps, think of it as a police procedural. At the beginning the cops interview everyone they can, search the crime scene, probably talk to the forensic examiner to see if any scientific evidence is available. That’s pretty much what your Bookhounds are doing. 

Always remember that extra scene: whatever the players want to do to solve the problem. The improv moment. The Bookhounds may decide that the best way to find the book is to hold a séance to contact Winona and ask her. Or use their own magical abilities, whatever they may be. Summon up a Rat-Thing and get it to sniff out the book. Hire a private investigator to do the legwork for them.  

The solution to this is the same as before. Have just enough random facts at your disposal that you can deploy them as necessary in a yes, and situation.  

Going further, whether this is an improv moment or a designed scene there’s still that final question which needs an answer: what will the Bookhounds learn about the book, or Pryce, or the Library, as a result of this plot choice? 

OK, let’s take a look at the overall scenario. We’ve got the hook. We’ve got questions that flow from that hook. As a result of those questions we’ve anticipated scenes which answer those questions, and we have some improv hooks in our pocket for those moments when the Bookhounds decide to use their initiative, precious little angels that they are. 

What happens when the questions which flow from the hook are answered? What happens when the characters have dealt with What To Do, Where’s The Book and What Was Pryce Doing At Coleshill Abbey? 

When that happens, you’ve reached scenario midpoint.  

In game terms, this is a Core scene. The Bookhounds will always get to Core scenes; the interesting thing is how they get there. But it fulfils the same function as the Hook, which is: it proposes problems which the players have to solve.  

Exactly what those problems are depends on the kind of scenario you want to write.  

In the example last time I gave three Options and today I’m going to use one: 

The Library Eternal. Sykes died in 1915 and the Abbey burned to the ground, but that didn’t mean it was gone forever. Sykes used his occult skills, and his Megapolisomantic ability, to turn the Abbey into an eternal institution just as the flames consumed it. 

By the midpoint all the questions asked by the Hook have been answered and the Bookhounds should be aware, as a result of those answers, of the Eternal Library, that it has the book, and that Winona’s there now along with Sykes and possibly others. The Bookhounds will also know by this point that the Library has a peculiar clientele that can include almost anyone or anything.  

Incidentally if you’re wondering why the Bookhounds are aware of this, remember that bit I kept repeating about ‘what will the Bookhounds learn about the book, or Pryce, or the Library, as a result of this plot choice’? That’s why. This is what they were learning. This was Rome, for this scenario. 

This plot choice also means that the book, if it was ever being kept in a safe at Howard and Thripps, is no longer where the Bookhounds thought it would be. Maybe it dissolved into dust or dream-stuff the minute they tried to pick it up. Maybe it just wasn’t there. However that gets resolved, the book is now on the shelves of Coleshill Abbey Library. 

So what questions are being asked by the midpoint? 

Probably something along the lines of ‘how do we get that book’ and ‘how do we satisfy our unhappy customers,’ both of which have the same solution: get into the Library Eternal and swipe it, so the Bookhounds can sell it. 

Exactly how that is done could involve a variety of scenes. The Bookhounds might approach an existing Library member – one of those peculiar cultists, say – and steal their library card, so they can get in. They may attempt a mystic ritual, preferably one that you’ve hinted at in one of the clues the Bookhounds gathered in a previous scene. They may try to enlist Winona’s help. Each of those three options involve at least one scene each, so three scenes in all.  

Plus, of course, that inevitable fourth option: whatever the players want to do to solve the problem. 

Once in, they have to get out again. This could be a clever heist, a smash-and-grab, a chase. Again, you want to account for those contingencies and again, that’s a scene each.  

There will almost certainly be an antagonist reaction of some kind in which Sykes, his allies and his library members rally to protect the Library against intrusion, and you want a scene for that. 

Finally, there will be a Resolution. At some point the Bookhounds either get away with it or not. They get the book, or don’t. However it goes, by the time they get to this point they have answered all the questions posed by the Core midpoint scene.  

What happens when there are no more questions to answer? 

The End. 

Cabaret

In summary: yes, you want a series of scenes that connect up to reach certain Core moments which, in turn, lead to a resolution. There will be a certain amount of improvisation but improv doesn’t solve all your problems. Improv is a support for your existing structure, not a replacement for that structure. 

Crucially, you need to bear in mind that your structure isn’t some magical castle in the clouds that can only be reached by imagination wizards. Your structure is very simple. It starts with this:  

You put yourself in the characters’ shoes and ask yourself, if I had to answer this question, what would I do? 

Private Investigations (Mutant City Blues)

The recent Mutant City Blues reboot offers the option of playing as a heightened private detective in this brave new world of superpowers and those who abuse them, and that got me thinking: just what is a private detective, anyway?

The oldest examples are crooks who went straight - sort of. Men like France's Eugène François Vidocq, a rakehell, soldier, convict, probable forger, duelist and martial artist who turned his life around and, in 1811, joined the cops. Later, when the Sûreté decided in 1833 that it didn't need recruits with a criminal history, Vidocq formed his own investigative agency, Le bureau des renseignements, made up mainly of ex-cons like himself. Larger than life and full of devilment, Vidocq became the subject of plays, books, gossip, and several films, from the silent era to modern day.

His English equivalent is Jonathon Wild, Thief-Taker General, who operated roughly a century before Vidocq but without the latter's successful career. Less a crook gone straight, more a crook gone even more crooked, this gang boss decided that, in the absence of a police force, he'd act as the police. This allowed Wild endless opportunities for bribe-taking, racketeering and bounty hunting. Wild would offer to find and return stolen goods, and then extract cash from the thieves and the putative owners, threatening to expose criminals or actually turning them over for the bounty on their heads. It all came crashing down when Londoners started taking corruption seriously, for the first and possibly last time, and Wild went to the gallows in 1725, later ending up on the dissection table. His skeleton is possibly the most famous one in the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons.

In the United States the most famous private investigator is Allen Pinkerton, a cooper (maker of barrels) who by chance discovered a gang of counterfeiters, informed on them, and as a result became a Chicago police detective. From there he went from strength to strength, eventually becoming Lincoln's spymaster in the Civil War, a union buster and a terror to train robbers and bandits. The agency he founded still exists today, and became synonymous with private investigation - the Pinkertons.

The earliest fictional detectives tend to operate along these lines, albeit slightly more respectably. Poe's Auguste Dupin is a man born to money but now poor, a kind of gentleman detective who can operate in both the respectable and less-respectable realms because he belongs to both, by training and circumstance. He shares this quality with Sherlock Holmes, whose antecedents might be of the squirearchy but whose financial constraints lead him to make money the best way he can. 

Holmes' creator Conan Doyle was himself comfortably middle class, but spent his early life in straitened circumstances due to his father's alcoholism and spent much of his early career bouncing from failed job to failed job before finding a niche in fiction. Whereas Dashiell Hammett left school at age 13 to work, eventually becoming a Pinkerton himself and, later, a soldier, before ever committing a fiction, and Hammett's protagonists are fiercely independent fixers and private agents. His contemporary Raymond Chandler had a decidedly rosier early life, but again financial woes intervened and he turned to writing to solve his cash problems, creating fictional characters like Philip Marlowe, world-weary intermediaries between the rich and those who would prey on the rich.

    Big Sleep trailer. Sourced from Movieclips

Agatha Christie meanwhile had a conventional early life unmarked by the kind of financial and social hardships that created Hammett, and thus Hammett's Sam Spade. So her characters are themselves fairly conventional. Christie's Poirot operates in a world in which he can specialize in the detection of murder, and Miss Marple doesn't really have to earn a living at all but finds herself mixed up in murders regardless. Whereas Spade has to do what he can to get by, and will take, say, $200 if you offer him, say, $100 to find a mysterious missing objet d'art.

Already we can see a stylistic break. For Hammett's Spade, how is less important than who, and why is usually self-explanatory. There's no question about anybody's motive in the Maltese Falcon, nor are there exotic poisons and doubts about time of death. Floyd Thursby is shot to death, Miles Archer is shot to death, all out in the open rather than behind locked doors, and the central question isn't how or why they died but where the Falcon is right now, and who has it. 

Whereas Christie's Poirot, Dorothy Sayer's Sir Peter Wimsey and others of their type are obsessed with how and why, and less concerned about who. The Mysterious Affair at Styles features a wealthy woman poisoned with strychnine, and the central question becomes how that poison was obtained, whether or not people knew about the dead woman's altered will, and how the poison was administered. Novels like these care about who did it only because someone has to have done it; the prize for working out the puzzle is finding out who, but the puzzle is the point, not the murderer.

So a Hammett protagonist navigates an uncertain world of changing allegiances and lies, where a Christie protagonist lives in a fairly certain world where crime is more of a logical conundrum than an opaque mist of bluff and counter-bluff.  You'd never get a speech like Sam Spade's at the end of Maltese Falcon in a Christie novel. A Poirot never needs to explain himself, or examine his own motives, because Poirot knows his motives are pure. A Sam Spade knows his motives are anything but pure. Yet that speech is the bleeding heart of Maltese Falcon. There is no heart in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

From these early beginnings come others, operating broadly along similar lines - the specialist, the clever amateur, the genius. Seldom are they former crooks, like Vidocq or Wild. More often they are former detectives, like Spade or Poirot. Very often they're neither of those things but happen to wind up near a murder regardless, whether they bake cookies for a living or have a famous detective for a father. The more respectable the author, the more likely it is the detective will be someone either respectable or formerly respectable but now in straitened circumstances. The crime is nearly always murder, and when it isn't murder to begin with it usually becomes murder by the third or fourth chapter. A far cry from The Maltese Falcon's snatch job gone wrong, Dupin's purloined letter, or Holmes' Beryl Cornet. Finding the McGuffin isn't anything like as important, in this kind of narrative, as unmasking the killer.

The world these fictions live in is quite nice, on the whole. Someone might threaten them or try to hurt them, but as a general rule folks are pleasant, innocent creatures and they're not at the mercy of circumstance. If anything, it's the detective's job to ensure the world remains pleasant for everyone, and when it isn't they step in to make it so.

Every so often someone like Walter Mosley comes along and the detective returns to his roots as a middleman in a larger, dangerous world. In that kind of fiction nobody's completely innocent, least of all the protagonist, and often the dividing line between success and failure is vanishingly slight. However the Mosley's of this world are the exception rather than the rule; in fiction, there are far more Marples than there are Easy Rawlins. 

Devil in a Blue Dress, from Sony Pictures

So after all that rambling, the central question: who or what is a private detective?

The private detective is a hired agent whose job is to help their client achieve a particular goal. A contractor. A middleman. It's not their job to build a legal case against a guilty party, but to build the case their client wants them to. Equally is it not their job to denounce anyone from a pulpit. They work for pay, like everyone else, and their day-to-day resembles more a researcher's than a gunslinger's.

When your detective is a man like Thief-Taker Wild the client is usually someone who wants to stifle potential scandal or avoid a criminal conviction, and will pay any amount of money to make sure the truth never comes out. When your detective is someone like Vidocq then the client is someone who has been failed by the authorities, possibly because of political shenanigans, and will pay any amount of money to get what they want - whether or not they deserve it. Dashiell Hammett's protagonist in The Glass Key, gambler and racketeer Ned Beaumont, is built along Vidocq's lines, as is Sam Spade of Maltese Falcon fame. Philip Marlowe leans more to Thief-Taker Wild, particularly in The Big Sleep.    

If your detective is someone like Allen Pinkerton then everyone's operating within the law, but the law is a very big tent and can include intimidation, beatings, political twisting and shady deeds. Immoral, but not necessarily illegal. Or, if illegal, the kind of illegality that is seldom prosecuted and almost never successfully prosecuted. Mosely's Easy Rawlins operates in this kind of world. 

If your detective is a Dupin, Holmes or Poirot then not only is everyone operating within the law but also the law has a decidedly moralistic tinge. Poirot can say, in all seriousness, that he disapproves of murder - and he does so because his creator disapproves of murder. In much the same sense someone might disapprove of opening a liquor store on Sunday, or of spanking children, or of sexual behavior. Murder is wrong and people who do wrong things are punished. Q.E.D. Most modern police procedurals - The Rookie, Law & Order, especially L&O SVU - fall in this category. There are good guys and bad guys, and the good guys are supposed to win. 

 

The Wire

If you're looking for strict realism in your game then you're probably going to want to lean towards the Pinkerton model. Vidocq and Thief-Taker Wild belong to an earlier age, when there is very little law to speak of and almost as little civil authority. Modern society couldn't survive without some kind of organized leadership. Someone's got to be the glue holding this rickety bucket together, after all, and it's not going to be the PCs - they're too busy getting into fights and looking out for Number One. 

There's a lot of talk about Invincible right now, for obvious reasons, and while I've not watched it through I have noticed something odd about the series - and perhaps it holds true for all modern superhero comics. In Invincible, there really isn't an organized leadership of any kind. Buildings blow up and civilians get vaporized, but there's no suggestion of a civil authority, no real government at all. It's almost as if the planet is just a pretty backdrop for selfish costumed jackasses who want to party. 

A private investigator has to operate within society's rules, a superhero doesn't. A private investigator has to worry about getting arrested, about keeping her nose clean and not getting caught doing something shady. If the PI doesn't worry about those things then the best they can hope for is to have their license pulled, at which point they're not a PI any more. The worst case is time in jail, if not the death penalty.

In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade spends a fair amount of time keeping the cops at bay, and calling his attorney to make sure he and his client don't get railroaded.

The same holds true for your PCs. In any private investigator game the cops, the civil authority, the mayor's office and whoever else are all going to get in the PI's face. This might be because the PI is holding onto explosive information that could embroil the city in scandal, or it might just be because the PI is a pain in the ass who doesn't play well with others. Which would explain why the character isn't working within the HCIU. Either way, one of the main antagonists in any PI game is going to be the city itself, whether or not the character has a decent relationship with the cops at the local precinct.

The Pinkerton-style world is a little different from the Miss Marple and Poirot model. In a Pinkerton world the authorities may actively work against the investigator, our of malevolence or protecting their own interests. At best the authorities passively block the investigator at every turn, or make things more difficult. There are constraints on what the PI can do, and the authorities enforce those constraints.

In the Poirot kind of fiction the investigator - who doesn't hold any kind of license and is the very definition of a free agent - can do as they like, because the authorities are assumed to be on their side. They share goals, because this is a moralistic world in which people who do bad things are punished, and the law is implicitly on the side of those who do good. Poirot might have a friendly or not-so-friendly rivalry with the detective in charge of the case, but Poirot's relationship with the law as an institution is always sound. 

Take The Rookie. Nathan Fillion's John Nolan is always going to be on the side of righteousness, because that's the essence of his character. If tempted, he will never eat the apple. Thus his relationship with the LAPD is always going to be good, even when (at the end of the second season) it appears to everyone as if Nolan's gone rogue. The Rookie's LAPD is always on the side of the angels, and Nolan is basically an angel at heart, so the LAPD will always back Nolan's play.

Fictions like the Rookie might ape Chandler and Hammett in some superficial respects - after all, they all take place in Los Angeles, the heartland of detective fiction in America - but they differ in fundamental ways, which you as Game Moderator should bear in mind. The most fundamental of which is that, in a Rookie fiction, bad guys are always punished by the righteous, while in a Hammett fiction bad guys may or may not be punished, and if they are it's seldom by the righteous. 

That in turn will determine the shape of your campaign going forward, which means it's a vital part of your Session Zero. What kind of fiction do your players lean towards? Do they like the idea of being cogs in a mincing machine? A Pinkerton-style go-between, acting on behalf of less-than-innocent clients - perhaps even doing things that a more moral character would recoil at? Falsifying evidence, theft, bearing false witness? Then their clients are going to be powerful, unscrupulous people who want what they want whether or not they deserve it, because in that kind of world nobody deserves anything. They only keep what they can take.

Deadwood

Do they like the idea of being the clever, morally centered Poirot, Marple, Monk or Rookie? The kind of person who, like Poirot, refuses to act on behalf of the unworthy 'because I do not like your face?' Then their clients are going to be innocent people looking for something that rightfully belongs to them. No grey areas, only moral absolutes, and the adventure along the way involves solving puzzles, not playing several different gangs of crooks against each other and hoping to come out on top. In fact solving the puzzle is the only reason this kind of detective exists. That's why Holmes examines cigarette ash and Miss Marple interrogates vacationers at a Caribbean getaway. It's implicit that the criminal is bad and must be punished, and because it's implicit nobody's going to be examining their motives or delve into psychological angst over them. That just leaves the locked-room question as the meat of the narrative.

Knives Out

Anyway, that's it for this week's discussion. Next week, some Mutant City Blues scenario seeds ...