Tell a Good Story

By Drizzt

One of the most common questions I’ve seen is this: What makes an interesting scenario? How do I make a good plot? I certainly can’t exhaustively answer this in a short article, and I am also certainly no expert in this area, but below are a few points. Thanks to Glynn Reaper (1), Creator (2) and John (3) for their input from the Lyceum’s Message Board. Their contributions are referenced with the numbers above.

Plot is important!
In my opinion, the story is THE most important part of a scenario, and you should treat itas such. Before you even start to design the first town or outdoor area, you should have at least a rough idea of the complete story written out (2). What happens first, what then,what choices does the player have here, and so on. If you don’t have a clear goal of how your scenario will proceed from start to end, then continued productive design becomes harder and harder to do. A plot doesn’t have to be intricately complex, but should be a bit deeper than the simple, “go here and get this”, and the party does it and the scenario ends. A plot twist doesn’t have to be a radical, direction-changing event either, but it at least should make sense (2).

So what makes a good plot anyway?
There is no single answer to this question. The story should be somewhat original, the good old “Vahnatai attacking the Empire with another monster plague” should be avoided like, well, the afformentioned plagues. The “stop the bad guy out to take over the Empire” storyline is dangerously nearing this category, as well. Actually, these stories could still be made into good scenarios, as long as the story is well told.
Quite honestly, a scenario that has a well-told story can be interesting, no matter (almost) what the plot is. So how do you do this? You need to be flexible with your story, and not involve things that can’t be realized with the Blades engine. The story should be clear enough so that the player always has a good idea of what needs to be done next. And it should make sense. Always ask yourself “why”, as in “Why would the bad guy being doing what he is?”, “Why is the party involved in this mess?”, or “Why does anyone care?” Answer these questions, and you’re well on your way to a decent plot.
How then, do you tell a good story? Create a “real” world, not just yet another nameless Empire province. What’s more, make your world different somehow, not just the Empire with a different name. Give the townspeople lives and interests (3), other than selling you that nice piece of Steel Plate Mail. Furthermore on that point, the stone — bronze — iron — steel weapons — armor theme is pretty tired by now, too. Do something new!
Then logically move the story along. Say something is strange with the Empi . . . er, theGeldorian Camp you’ve been assigned to. You find that they have been poisoning the locals with a strange addictive substance that gives them incredible strength, but keeps them under the control of the Geldorian mages. You then must journey across the country to find the source of this substance, and to prevent the rogue Geldorians, closely behind in pursuit, from getting more of the stuff and enslaving the rest of the valley.
Sound vaguely familiar? That was the original plot-line of the Forsaken (using the Empire,granted), which was somewhat inspired by the book (and slightly inferior movie) The Relic. Of course a few towns into the design the plot took an entirely new direction in my head, and wound up, I think, for the better. The point is, though, that inspiration can come from all places, but what’s important is that the story moves consistently and coherently along.
With those few sentences in the last paragraph you already have a rough scenario outline that would make a decent story. What’s left is to fill in how the scenario moves from A to B, and the plot details in between. If you feel like changing direction midstream, that’s fine, but make sure everything makes sense.
Another point that I’ve seen mentioned in many places, when discussing what makes a good story, is the value of memorable characters. The people one meets are the MOST important part of a good story (1). Any good scenario out there has well-developed bad guys and interesting NPCs whose lives intersect and affect the plot. Using the Spiderweb scenarios as examples (if you’ve played them), quickly think about any characters or NPCs you remember from those three scenarios.
Chances are, you might remember Jaen and Stalker from A Small Rebellion, but I couldn’t come upwith a single name from Valley or Za-Khazi. This might just be me, but I think it is no coincidence that A Small Rebellion is consistently listed as one of the top scenarios around, yet the others are pretty much forgettable. If you put good characters in your story, a good plot will flow out of their interactions and conflicts (3).

Help! Where do I get ideas?
This is an even harder question, because I think it deals directly with motivation. If your scenario doesn’t interest you, then sooner or later you will tire of the sometime tedious design work, and give up. Your story HAS to be personally interesting, otherwise you will never want to finish it. There were many times that work on Shadow Of The Stranger became rather boring for me, but I pressed on because I wanted to finish the story. There is something about a completed work, that you can sit back in your chair and look upon it with an immense amount of satisfaction, knowing the time that went into its creation. Because of this, I would argue that the best scenario ideas come from within. They musn’t betotally original, but you as the designer MUST have something vested in this story, if you ever hope to finish a scenario. I think the worst thing any designer could do would be to post on a message board “I need scenario ideas”, and then try and make a scenario using an idea from someone else. This is a sure-fire plan for a scenario that won’t make it past the first few towns.
Along the same lines, a trend I’ve noticed recently is “using” people’s names and personalities from the Blades message boards as townspeople and NPCs, instead of the designer creating people on his or her own. In scenarios that are specifically designed for this reason, like TM’s Inn Of Blades, this is fine, but otherwise I think it is a bad idea. Just like plot ideas, I think the best personalities come from the designer, and fit within the world that he or she has created. Otherwise, with “borrowed” personalities, the typical result will be names that are recognizeable, but personalities that are still flat and meaningless, just the thing the designer was allegedly trying to avoid.
Not that there is anything wrong with “borrowing” ideas from other places. Play some of the good Blades scenarios out there, and see how other designers put together a story. Read books, then read some more books. Then some more. Tolkien, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Thomas Covenant are all series of books that I’ve enjoyed, and where some of my scenario ideas comefrom. If you’ve read the Death Gate cycle, by Weis and Hickmann, you might have noticed a group similar to the guild in The Brotherhood Of The Hand, and (if my memory is correct) they even share the same name. Everything else about them and the entire story is different, but I used the idea of the Brotherhood as a basis to create a completely different story in the Blades world.
Another example. In Alcritas’ scenario Redemption, he introduced the character of the Sovereign. This unknown, bad guy controlling everything in the background was one of the things I liked the most about this scenario, so I designed a similar character into Brotherhood (although he was vaguely referred to in Forsaken). I used the same basic idea, but I made the character unique to my story.
The bottom line, I think, is that a good plot tells an original story. It’s fine to be inspired by something else, but let the tale wander off in your own unique direction. In this way, you will create something the Blades community will want to play, and a scenario you will want to finish.

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