Getting the Most Out of Your Writing (Part 2)

Well gamers, I'm back again to talk about how to add depth to your role playing game stories. Last month, we talked about how to take a simple core idea for a plot and map it out to give it depth. This month we are going to talk about fleshing out scenes (key moments in the plot) and ways to incorporate longer stories into your existing plot.

It's no good having an in depth plot map if your not prepared for your players actually doing something that will move them through it. To prepare for that you will first need to further flesh out your major plot points into scenes. This is something everyone does quite a bit different. Some game masters may actually write out character sheets for each NPC that they plan on their players encountering as well as pages of dialog. Others may choose a more simple approach not writing down anything and choosing to run the scenes “off-the-cuff.” But, once again, the core idea is the same from game master to game master whether written written or winged. Only the method changes.

The first method we'll discuss, I think works best with heavy NPC interaction style games. I call it “The Loose Structure” scene plan. (A blank version of the document will be available on the RPGX website soon.) The loose structure plan works best with this style game because with high NPC interaction means there are more variables in the scene that could cause the plot to change. By using a loose structure scene plan, you will be able to adapt to the players decisions easier.

To create a loose structure scene plan you will only have to flesh out the basics. Assuming that you are a decent GM and have already drawn up your location maps, the first section of the scene plan is a physical description of the scene. This is the single most important part of the scene plan because this is the part that most GM's screw up. An unprepared GM will give bad descriptions of the scene, leave out critical information, or simply give a bland utilitarian description of the area (which could cause your players to lose interest.) The most important part of the scene is the description, it should appeal to your players senses and draw them into playing their characters. To add depth to a scene description, a GM should use as many sensory appealing words as possible. You want to describe not just the layout of the room, but it's smells, sounds, and how it makes the players character feel. When I start off a new scene, I read directly off my scene plan and then add to it as my players ask questions. By writing your scene description as a narrative, it can help to draw in your players as if they were reading a novel or watching a movie.

[Example] “As your characters enter the tavern the first thing each of you notice is the sweet smell of dinner cooking somewhere in the back. The smell is of a sweet meat that you cannot immediately identify roasting slowly, teasing your pallet. Looking around the room is a bit of a chore in the dim light of the wooden building. Small oil lamps on every table illuminate the faces of the many patrons that have settled in for their nightly conversations. The low roar of chatter fills the room like a calm ocean slowly pulsing and shifting. A quick estimate puts the room at half capacity and currently holding about 20 people of mixed races and sizes. Two bar wenches walk quickly back and fourth from the main bar area serving drinks and food.”

Notice how I gave a description of the room, but not a verbal layout. This section is to set the atmosphere of the area. Leave the layout descriptions up to your maps or as answers to your players specific questions.

The next part of your scene plan should be the NPC's that will appear in it. Of course you do not need to fully flesh out every single character that might be in the room. You need only spend a great deal of time on the NPC's that your players may interact with in the scene. Now this isn't a full blown character sheet, or even the NPC's stats. Instead this is a short mood setting description of the characters in the scene that will give each “extra” in your game a face for your players to remember. In real life every person is unique, and so should they be in your game. By doing this it will go a long way towards making the world “real” for your players. In addition to the mood setting description you should give a small list of items the NPC is carrying. This way should the character somehow end up in combat and get killed, or decide to barter, you already know exactly what they are carrying.

1)Joe the Bartender (Human, Bard)
Tall man, slightly balding, wearing a leather apron.
6gp, Butcher Knife, Pocket Comb

2)Lidia the Wench (Elven, Common)
Short frail figure, Bright blond hair, strange red necklace
3gp, 2 throwing daggers, jewelry, letter to father back home

3)Gamb (Human Cleric)
Mysterious and brooding in the corner, white cloak with hood up
25gp, mace of destruction, boots of warmth, Temple Keys

Now even though there are more people in the room these are the main people who have anything to add to the plot. Everyone else you can wing, but these characters are placed to add flavor. If you wanted you could add some random cool sounding characters in for flavor as you were writing. Not only will it ad depth to have extra characters that stick out a little, but it will make the game seem unique to the player who is allowed to notice or interact with them.

Finally, you will need a short description of the scene direction. This is like an over all goal for the planned scene. Ask yourself: What are my players supposed to get out of this scene, and how obvious will the next step be while still presenting a form of challenge? All this means is at the bottom of the page make some notes on the over all scene direction and how it should progress. As the players start to hit each goal you will begin to know as a GM when to move characters to the next scene or location.

1)The players were told to find Gamb because he would have the key to the back room of the temple. Any listed character will know who Gamb is and point him out, but warn that he does not like to be bothered when he drinks.
2)Gamb will not answer any question and only sit in silence until he hears the name “Silvan” the man who sent the characters. Other than direct conflict he will ignore the characters completely.
3)As soon as the characters explain to Gamb exactly why they need in the temple he will take them there via the back door and alley way. (Go to scene 4)

Of course the characters may do a number of things while in the scene. Drink, eat, or talk to characters not on the list (who will not know Gamb and probably suggest they talk to the bar keep.) But as they stumble around the goals they will be propelled further into the story.

Well, that's it for this time. Keep on gaming and be sure to check the “New Downloads” section of the homepage for the “Loose Structure Scene Planner.”

Setting Up An SLI Configuration

Recently I have been talking allot about SLI configurations vs. Crossfire configurations. A question I have been asked allot lately "That's all fine and dandy Acid, but how do I set up my SLI configuration to test it?"

Below are my notes on getting your SLI configuration set up and off the ground.
Later on I will write about Crossfire configs, but for now here you go...

Setting Up Your SLI Configuration
NVIDIA's nForce4 SLI reference design calls for a slot to be placed on the motherboard that will handle how many PCI Express lanes go to the second x16 slot. Remember that despite the fact that there are two x16 slots on the motherboard, there are still only 16 total lanes allocated to them at most - meaning that each slot is electrically still only a x8, but with a physical x16 connector. While having a x8 bus connection means that the slots have less bandwidth than a full x16 implementation, the real world performance impact is absolutely nothing. In fact, gaming performance doesn't really change down to even a x4 configuration; the performance impact of a x1 configuration itself is even negligible. (The SLI card slot looks much like a SO-DIMM connector)

The card itself has two ways of being inserted; if installed in one direction the card will configure the PCI Express lanes so that only one of the slots is a x16. In the other direction, the 16 PCI Express lanes are split evenly between the two x16 slots. You can run a single graphics card in either mode, but in order to run a pair of cards in SLI mode you need to enable the latter configuration. There are ways around NVIDIA's card-based design to reconfigure the PCI Express lanes, but none of them to date are as elegant as they require a long row of jumpers.

With two cards installed, a bridge PCB is used to connect the golden fingers atop both of the cards. Only GeForce 6600GT and higher cards will feature the SLI enabling golden fingers, although we hypothesize that nothing has been done to disable it on the lower-end GPUs other than a non-accommodating PCB layout. With a little bit of engineering effort we believe that the video card manufacturers could come up with a board design to enable SLI on both 6200 and 6600 non-GT cards. Although we've talked to manufacturers about doing this, we have to wait and see what the results are from their experiments.

As far as board requirements go, the main thing to make sure of is that both of your GPUs are identical. While clock speeds don't have to be the same, NVIDIA's driver will set the clocks on both boards to the lowest common denominator. It is not recommended that you combine different GPU types (e.g. a 6600GT and a 6800GT) although doing so may still be allowed, yet resulting in some rather strange results in certain cases.

You only need to connect a monitor to the first PCI Express card; despite the fact that you have two graphics cards, only the video outputs on the first card will work so anyone wanting to have a quad-display and SLI is somewhat out of luck. I say somewhat because if you toggle off SLI mode (a driver option), then the two cards work independently and you could have a 4-head display configuration. But with SLI mode enabled, the outputs on the second card go blank. While that's not too inconvenient, currently you need to reboot between SLI mode changes in software, which could get annoying for some that only want to enable SLI while in games and use 4-display outputs while not gaming.

Turn on the computer, go into your SLI configurator and check the multi GPU box.
Click "Okay" and re-boot. You are now in an SLI configuration.

Finally, you need to use the latest SLI Forceware drivers. I mentioned before that the driver is very important in SLI performance, the reason behind this is that NVIDIA has implemented several SLI algorithms into their SLI driver to determine how to split up the rendering between the graphics cards depending on the application and load. For example, in some games it may make sense for one card to handle a certain percentage of the screen and the other card handle the remaining percentage, while in others it may make sense for each card to render a separate frame. The driver will alternate between these algorithms as well as even disabling SLI all-together, depending on the game. The other important thing to remember is that the driver is also responsible for the rendering split between the GPUs; each GPU rendering 50% of the scene doesn't always work out to be an evenly split workload between the two, so the driver has to best estimate what rendering ratio would put an equal load on both GPUs.

GameSpot names new editor-in-chief

After the much-publicized departure of editorial director Jeff Gerstmann, GameSpot's parent company, CNet, has named its new editor-in-chief: Ricardo Torres, who has been with the site since 2001. "I'm eager to continue the site's tradition of excellence" Torres said in response to the promotion, "and I'm confident we can move forward into 2008 and set a new industry standard for how video games are covered."

As editor-in-chief, CNet says that Torres "will oversee GameSpot's award-winning editorial staff in their coverage of the latest games and breaking news." What it doesn't mention is that he will also take on the responsibility of repairing GameSpot's shattered image. GameSpot's editorial section has been in a state of disarray since the Gerstmann incident, in which rumors suggest that the former editorial director was fired due to advertiser pressure. After his departure, several staff members (including Alex Navarro) left the publication in protest. (By Andrew Webster Published: January 28, 2008 - 02:32PM CT)

Okay so now my turn to comment on the situation (What you didn't think I would just leave this alone did you?

I noticed this article doesn't seem to say anything about if they plan on doing reviews that are honest. So this guy has to come in and repair the rep of the company? Can that even be done at this point? Nobody will let them preview or review their material. Even if they did would you trust any future reviews from this company? I mean, apparently one CRITIC under their employment tried to have an opinion about something (his job I might add) and he got canned because how dare you bash the product of one of the companies signing checks!

I personally refuse to support gamespot until they show me that they have really changed their dirty ways. And effective February 2nd, all of their affiliate banners will be pulled from RPGX. This isn't just a moral thing either. Because of current events, all indie site ads have been pulled from the site. That includes us. While it is not something I wish to go to war over, it is something to consider when deciding where to get some of your videogame source materials.

Props in Pen/Paper Gaming

Many people have asked me for little tips here and there on ways to make their pen/paper style RPG's more immersing. While my biggest advice is always going to be to use sensory words whenever possible to describe EVERYTHING; The room FEELS cramped, the tone of the room SOUNDS shallow giving you a sense of CLAUSTROPHOBIA. Pulls the player in allot more than “You have entered a 10x10 room and the lights are out. What now?”


Of course this is the most basic and important aspect of creating an immersing environment as a GM, and hopefully you are already doing this. That's why I want to talk about a trick you can use along with “good GM” skills... Props.


Generally when you think of props in Role-playing your mind goes into two very distinct locations; One would be the gutter, and the other LARPing (The live action version of whatever it is you are playing.) The idea is borrowed a bit from the latter, but not on such a large scale. Instead of fully acting out entire scenes or constructing elaborate sets, a GM may use a few key items to help draw in their players.


One example might be a letter from the prince. However, instead of scribbling a simple note, a GM might take the time to print it in a handwritten style font on a piece of parchment. Then, seal it in an envelope with a bit of red wax. Things like this can go a long way for giving your players a little taste of what their characters may actually “experience” helping to draw them into your world. Another good example of prop placement is the creation of character credentials. Give your players a drivers license sporting their characters portrait and information. Even better, give them an opportunity to use it or lose it in game.


While I am on the subject of props, there is something I should address... prop weapons. Of course the decision is entirely up to you and your group. But, as a personal choice I GREATLY urge groups never to allow any form of prop weapons. Some pen/paper groups and LARP groups use cardboard cutouts, Nerf, and air soft weapons. With the right level of maturity and a close group this could work. I have no doubt in my mind that my group could probably handle the same kind of responsibility. The effects of allowing such types of props into your games is far more hindering than immersing (in my opinion.) Now while you may think that I am an anti gun activist, or some extreme safety nut. That is not the case. I have a very large weapons collection as well as a large assortment of air soft assault weapons for back yard fun.


My main argument is of course safety. Beyond that there is more to the case. Weapons are a distractive prop. By giving your players weapons to brandish at the table, you have set a hack n' slash tone. You are telling your players that combat will always be the most viable option in your game (why else would you have armed them for combat, but not given them the spell book prop?) It sets an aggressive tone. Rather than actually negotiate a situation, you may find more standoffs at gun point than you normally would. Weapons have a tendency to replace role-playing, which is not the goal of props. There are many more reasons I am against weapons at the table, but I'm sure you can think of many more. Ultimately the choice is yours. But I urge safety. And Never, ever take your weapons out on the streets.

Zombies Everywhere

Wow, it's been a great year for zombies. Somehow I failed to notice how beloved the shambling hordes have become here in America. It seems not to long ago that any movies containing zombie anything were pretty much doomed to become a piece of cult b-movie nostalgia, that only die hard fans of the genre would seek out an buy. While that is still true to some extent, that idea isn't as relevant as it once was. With many box office, A-list movies that have come out,somehow zombies have managed to chew out their own little niche in our society.

I'm almost embarrassed that I didn't notice one of my biggest loves becoming so popular sooner. I feel like the last in on a joke. I only started noticing the rise in zombie-popularity when I started new board games for our gaming group to get into this year. Naturally my first choice was Zombies!!! a zombie killing “board game” by the great minds at Twilight Creations. As easy as this choice might seem to the rest of you, I was actually confronted with quite a conundrum at the time. “Which zombie board game do I pick.” Because what you may not realize is... I had about 10 to choose from in stock, and 5 more I could order. While 15 games isn't exactly a daunting number, the fact that they were all the same theme makes it quite a bit more significant.

When did Zombies become so popular that the market for zombie board games became so large? The really surprising bit is that only about 1/3 of these are simple type “run n' gun” games. Many of the genre's board games are well fleshed out strategy style “thinking man's” board games. The list goes on forever: Zombies!!!, Doom, Maul of America, Zombie Town, Zombie Plague, Give Me The Brain, Dawn of the Dead, Last Night on Earth... Not to mention the 6 expansion sets for Zombies!!! some of which are stand alone products.

Twilight Creations deserves special note since they have been ever present in the underground world of “horror” board games. Not only do they have the title Zombies!!! in their arsenal but a slew of others including, Zombie Town, Mid-Evil, Grave Diggers, When Darkness Comes, and The Haunting House. I'm not even going to name off the 6 expansion sets to their core game. Not to mention you can buy zombie figures buy the bag load for about $10.00 for a bag of 100! All of these are quality games with great flavor and mechanics that I would recommend to any horror fan.

But back to the core of the discussion. What has made these “un-dead” nightmares so popular in recent years? I think that movies have had allot to do with it. Sure we have had zombie movies shambling onto our TV sets in hordes ever since Gorge A. Romero broke the genre in 1968 with “Night of the Living Dead.” But, most of what we saw was either campy or just down right horrible with only a few gems of goodness to speak of. While there is an audience for anything and everything, before there just never seemed to be much of one for the “classic” zombie flick (dooming them to the bottom of the b-movie bargain bin forever.)

In recent years though, a few directors have shown main stream movie goers the light at the end of the grave. Moving away from a lust for “Brains!” and turning the world upside down with... bigger budgets?!? I think the trend may have actually started with the release of 28 days later. This fresh take on the zombie condition scared the hell out of people all over again. It took the message that Romero gave and turned it up to eleven. For those who could not hear, a little while later we were greeted with a remake of Dawn of the Dead. The zombies who at one time were ridiculous were now horrifying and valid. Later more movies would come and go, a few failing miserably. The makers of the Doom video game movie tried to jump on the zombie bandwagon but would see certain defeat. At the same time Resident Evil movies have shot through the roof with success.

Another factor in the popularity surge may stem from well made video games. Zombies really hit their stride with the Resident Evil series. While now campy, at the time the original Resident Evil by Capcom struck a serious chord with gamers. Nobody I knew dared played that game with the lights off. Soon to follow in it's footsteps would be the Silent Hill Series, House of the Dead, as well as a slew of other horrifying games that would either feature zombie type enemies as it's main attraction or as part of a family of enemies that you would have to face. While horror games may not have been anything really new to the world, the quality behind them was. As an argument you could say that a good quality game will always bring in new interests regardless of whatever the content actually is. After all a good game is still a good game.

So it seems that the “Recently deceased, returning back to life...” have found themselves a bit of a place in the heart of our modern society. Not that I am complaining. Zombies and their movies have been longtime favorites of mine since I first saw the late night showing of Night of the Living Dead.

Assassin's Creed Patch

The patch that Ubisoft promised to deliver to PlayStation 3 owners of Assassin's Creed is due to be delivered over the course of a few days. Ubisoft's community manager posted on the company's official forums that "a corrective update has been developed and will be released worldwide on the PLAYSTATION® Network over the next few days." As you may have heard, Assassin's Creed PS3 users have reported lock ups and "white screens of death" on the official forums.

You know, that's record time for getting a patch out. I think maybe Ubisoft knew that the game was full of bugs when it was released. (Trust me, no shock on my face.) I think it's great that consoles can now have bug fixes released post production through a download because it can improve the game. It also opens up the idea of downloadable expansions 9Unreal Tournamnet III anyone?) But it also means that game companies don't have to have any kind of quality control. It means that the consumer has potentially become the play tester (and we'e paying to do it) so that hey can just patch the game later.

Getting the Most Out of Your Writing

(2 Part Series)




One of the big questions I used to hear allot: How do you make your games so entertaining? The answer is really simple... Depth.


A game is only going to be as exciting and entertaining as the imagination of the GM. Now that's not to say a boring person can't be a good GM, but if they do not have an active imagination they should probably stick mostly to published campaigns and adventures. However, imagination is only going to get a GM so far. An Idea is great, but unless you are able to proficiently translate it into a playable game, nobody is going to notice.


So how does a person transpose an idea into an game ready adventure? How does a GM make the story as exciting for the characters as it was in their head when they thought about the idea in the first place? You may be surprised but very little of the transposition has anything to do with the rules of the game you are playing. In fact, your greatest asset will be your ability to utilize writing structure. Of course no GM writes out their games or game notes in the same exact way. Others don't even write their games down and still manage to have spectacular games even while playing “off the cuff.” However, while these styles are all different, in the big picture they are all using the same basic method (although, the best GM's are able to do it mentally on the fly.)


The Very First Outline
This article is assuming that you already have a group set in a particular game. If not, this article can still help you out, just adapt it to what you are doing with your group. As with everything I write, it is only an opinion. Take from it what you want and ignore the rest. I also welcome any feedback or alternate methods that you might use.


So you have this great idea for a game. Maybe it's a few games. You will either want it to stay that way or expand it out into an entire campaign. This part you can decide later, but you may want to keep an idea in the back of your head how long you would “like” your game to be. This all happens before you even pick up a pencil.


Example 1 “ Game A”: Your group is playing a sci-fi space exploration RPG. After watching a zombie movie one night you decide to add in an element of horror by planning an zombie outbreak on their smuggling ship. You think that because of the cramped conditions of the ship, isolation of space, and the lack of anywhere to run it could make for a really tense game.


Example 2 “Game B”: Your group is playing a fantasy type RPG. After reading a really cool book, you decide that it would be cool to play a character questing after the fountain of eternal life. You also think that even if the characters have no desire to live forever, their enemies do. The characters will either be tempted by it's power, or want to destroy it before it falls into evil hands.


To start the process, begin by making your first (broad) outline in a linear format. Only touch on the key elements of the story that have to happen to make the story go forward to the end.


Game A: For the zombie scenario you decide that it actually make more sense with the sci-fi genre that the “zombies” are actually “infected” with a virus. For the most part the plot remains the same. The characters are trapped on a ship full of “infected” and must somehow survive without getting infected themselves. You decide that you only want the scenario to last for one game, maybe two if things run slowly for some reason.


Broad Outline:
1) Group encounters a derelict space ship.
2) Characters are trapped on ship when "infected" break out and attack.
3) Characters finally escape to their own ship to get away.
4) One of the crew is starting to feel sick. (Cliffhanger open ending)


Game B: After thinking a little bit about the scenario you decide that it will fit into your currently existing campaign well over the course of a few games. With a little behind the scenes tinkering, you decide that the plot of this adventure fits in really well with your groups arch enemy Lord Voradin, and evil cleric bent on ruling the realms. Note that even though you decided that this adventure would last over the course of a few games, the broad outline isn't any longer than the one-shot adventure. This is because you are only touching on the key elements of the game that have to happen in order for the story to take place. In fact each step of this outline may take place in a different game, while each step of the other plot may happen within a few rounds.


Broad Outline:
1) Characters overhear a rumor that Voradin has started excavating to the East in the forbidden zone. A rumor is circulating that he is looking for a powerful artifact that will make his army invincible.
2) Characters follow clues and spy on Voradin to figure out the truth behind what he is looking for.
3) Characters find the fountain before Voradin's army can. Must decide what to do.
4) Voradin finds the characters (and the fountain if they haven't destroyed it.) Huge final battle.


Giving the Idea "Depth"

Okay, so now you have a decent idea of what you want your group to do. Now it's time to transpose your “idea” into a playable format. To add depth to a game, the players need to feel like they have options. Your game may only really have one ending, but your players need to feel like they helped create it by the actions that they took. A really good GM will adapt as the game progresses to add in extra options that they did not previously write in and sometimes even multiple endings based on what the characters did. Players will always find a way to do something the GM did not expect so think of your game plan as more of a guide line that your plot will stick to, not your players.


The following are examples of how I write out my main plot line for games.
Example Game A: http://www.rpgx.org/Acid_Burn/infected.pdf
Example Game B: http://www.rpgx.org/Acid_Burn/voradin.pdf


While not all GM's may choose to use this format, all will agree that they are doing some form of it either mentally or in just another format. These examples show how multiple options can derive the same results. Notice that the main plot points are marked as “Scenes” and the different paths they take are “sub-scenes.” You may decide to write in more or less options, but you should never limit what the player can try because of your lack of imagination. Always try to adapt a players actions to fit in with your plot without forcing the player to take different actions. By letting your players try different things and failing or succeeding, they will feel that the world is reacting to their presence in it. This will make the world they are playing in have depth and seem more real.

Also note that example "B" is actually a tighter and shorter outline. That's because each element of it is only a part of a large scale picture. While in example "A" the entire outline will happen over the course of one game, in example "B" the characters may only move one or two progressions in each line per game (most likely while questing for something else.)


Stay tuned for part II, on detailing your scenes. Part II will teach you to expand on your plot points, plan for unexpected player choices, and add even more detail to the world you are creating. I will also explain how to integrate your long term plot (example B) into a pre existing adventure.