Aetrimonde

In my continuing column on the Game Master’s Handbook’s advice to would-be GMs, I’m going to cover the book’s introduction to two of the core components of Aetrimonde’s adventure structure paradigm: exploration and interaction.

There are a lot of ways to approach writing and running RPG adventures: the way I’ve chosen to describe things in the GMH for novice GMs revolves around scenes, being self-contained pieces that can be strung together into a narrative. Among the types of scene I discuss in the book are exploration and interaction, as well as non-combat encounters (which I’ve already touched on in this blog) and combat encounters.

Exploration

In exploration scenes, you present the players with an opportunity to examine scenery, objects, and other elements of the scene to uncover information that furthers the plot of the adventure. This might be:

• Breadcrumbs: Information that plainly reveals a next step in the adventure, such as a hastily-written note that reveals where a kidnapped NPC is being taken, or a map to a hidden treasure.
• Clues: Information that the players can piece together to figure out a next step or overcome an obstacle, like a poem concealing the secret word that opens a magical door, or a set of receipts from several shops in the same area, which hints at the location of a thieves’ hideout.
• Lore: Obscure knowledge about people, places, events, or objects in the setting where the adventure takes place, like who built and lived in some ancient ruins, or the origin of a magical sword. Lore might become important over the course of an adventure or campaign, or it might simply be a fun tidbit for the kind of players who like understanding the fantasy world that they’re playing in.

When running an exploration scene, you’ll need to:

• Describe the Scene: You are the players’ guide to the adventure: they only know as much about the scene as you tell them. You’ll need to give the players all of the relevant information about the scene, so that they understand what their characters are facing, and have enough information to make appropriate choices. This includes just telling the players what their characters see and hear, but can also include narrating changes (“You push down on the statue’s arm, and it moves; the floor shudders, and elsewhere in the temple complex you hear the sliding of stone on stone…”) and suggesting what their characters might feel about a scene (“As you set eyes on the fabled lost library of Gjalerbron, the very weight of eons seems to press down on you…”).
• Answer Questions: As they interact with the scene, the players will have questions: “What do the murals on the walls depict?” or “How cold is the tea on the colonel’s desk?” Some of these questions will (hopefully) be related to information you want them to get out of the scene, but remember: the players don’t already know what’s important in the scene like you do. Often, they will ask questions about aspects of the scene that aren’t relevant, and you’ll need to come up with an appropriate answer on the fly.
• Adjudicate Checks: Sometimes the players will need to make checks to uncover information in a scene: they might try to use Athletics to climb up and inspect a wall carving in detail, or translate some ancient writings using History. You’ll need to set a Difficulty for these checks, if you haven’t already planned on the players making them, and adjudicate what happens based on how the players roll.
• Drop Hints: Sometimes, players get stuck in an exploration scene, and they don’t find the information that they need. And sometimes that’s fine—the players don’t need to uncover every last piece of lore or unlock every hidden door in an adventure—but sometimes, missing out on a clue means not being able to progress further in the adventure until they find it. When that happens, you may need to drop hints like “Would you like to make an Intelligence check to decipher the riddle?” or “Maybe you should look for hidden doors…”

Interaction

In an interaction scene, you present the players with one or more NPCs and roleplay their conversation or other interaction with the PCs. There are a range of things that the PCs can get out of these interactions:

• Exposition: NPCs can be a source of information, much like an exploration scene with more opportunity for roleplaying. They might be forthcoming or outright talkative, or the PCs might need to prompt them for relevant information or outright convince or coerce them into revealing what they know.
• Aid: With the right prompting (or, again, convincing or coercion), NPCs can do useful things for the PCs. This can range from the simple and routine (selling them equipment and supplies or translating obscure languages), to the more complicated (agreeing to serve as a local guide, or serving as a distraction while the PCs pick someone’s pocket), to the plot-advancing (giving the PCs access to their extensive private library, or raising an army to resist a dark lord).
• Fun: And of course, roleplaying an NPC can just be fun: memorable NPCs are one thing that gets PCs attached to a campaign, and interaction scenes give the players a chance to get into their characters and explore their mannerisms, outlooks, and motivations.

In an interaction scene, you’ll need to:

• Play the Part: Like always, you’ll need to play the NPCs. Depending on the particulars of the scene and the importance of various NPCs, you may also want to narrate notable features and habits (like for an NPC who hiccups uncontrollably when nervous, or whose every appearance has them wearing a different outrageous set of clothes). And, if you have the acting chops for it, giving NPCs different voices helps distinguish them from each other.
• Convey Mood and Motivation: NPCs have moods and motives that can (and should) inform how the PCs approach them—and it’s up to you to convey this all to the players. If you’re up to it, you can often convey this through body language and tone of voice as you speak for an NPC—but if you need to convey a particularly complex motivation or attitude, it helps to state it outright in the narration, e.g. “She violently twitches as you mention Inverchyle, spilling red wine over her dress and breaking into vituperous swearing in Victish” or “He eyes you up and down as you speak, seeming to ignore you as he focuses on the quality of your clothing and jewelry.”
• Adjudicate Responses: Depending on how the PCs interact with an NPC, the NPC’s attitude toward them may change. This may be the product of pure roleplaying, but use of social skills (particularly Intimidate and Persuasion) can also be involved. You’ll need to decide how NPCs react to what PCs say and what checks they make—and since players can be unpredictable, you’ll sometimes need to decide on the fly what an NPC does in response to particularly strange or unexpected prompts.
• Take the Lead: As in exploration encounters, the players may get stuck when speaking to an NPC, either because they’re not sure what to say, or they haven’t picked up on a social cue, or similar. Dropping hints can actually be easier in an interaction scene, because if necessary you can have an NPC take the lead to bring up an important topic of conversation. You can also drop hints to a player by suggesting what their character might think of an NPC (“You find it odd how he’s been steering the conversation away from the topic of…”).

This passage from the GMH serves as an introduction to these two types of scenes, but as I have it planned, they also get their own chapters later in the book offering more detailed advice on running (and writing!) these scenes effectively. Stay tuned–excerpts from those chapters will be showing up here eventually!