musings22 Aug 2007 02:41 pm
setting questions… should now be situation questions…
I want the setting quesitions to create a situation that once complete you have a clear premise that…
“… it is designed to tell an incredibly powerful story from beginning to end…”
This is why I think people keep coming up with the idea of relationship maps.
My understanding of stories is such that what makes a “powerful” story is totally dependent on the characters involved, how interesting those characters are and the conflicts between those characters.
Setting creation can’t just be about creating a world. It has to facilitate the creation of not only the heroes, but also villains, allies, love interests, heroes’ relatives and other NPCs that the characters (and players, through interaction with these characters), really care about. I don’t think the setting creation rules do that in enough detail.
Interesting characters the players care about + Conflict + Unexpected outcomes = Powerful stories
Setting creation, at this point, has lots of stuff to create a cool world but not enough to facilitate the creation of interesting NPCs that the setting players can work with to drive conflict.
Also, in this case, interesting NPC = a character that is not only interesting in and of him/herself, but also somebody that the heroes have some kind of personal connection with, for good or for ill.
The setting creation rules only ask for brief sketches of critically important NPCs and their relationships to the characters.
Anyway, that’s my take on what’s missing.
Good points.
another thing is the brainstorm, I think the setting questions can be set up in a way that draws more out of the brainstorm then just using the brainstorm as a way to get started.
That’s probably true, but how? Right now there are only so many factors that affect the game mechanically. Beyond Cues, Scars the premise-related stuff, what else could you get? Also, how would it affect the game mechanically? Just things to think about.
well all that leads to the creation of cues… so the answers would translate into cues.