It's constantly a struggle to find equilibrium when I'm running an RPG story. If I script the whole thing, my players invariably want to do things that the storyline doesn't/can't accommodate, meaning I went to all the trouble for nothing. If I don't script anything and just throw random encounters at the players, the game becomes just that: random. It lacks form and substance and winds up just being a mishmash of events that rarely comes together into something coherent. I say "rarely" because occasionally it does, but the odds against it happening are tremendous.
I've entered into a new experimental style recently. Once everyone in the party has created their character, I take them aside and ask them a few questions.
-What is your character's innermost desire?
-What is their biggest rational fear? (fear of death, snakes, loosing money, etc.)
-What is their lifetime goal? (accumulate 1,000,000 dollars, steal a new cyborg body)
-What is their worst nightmare? (not necessarily rational)
From the answers to these questions, I create a list of events that would be meaningful to the character. For example:
Character "V"
-is a sentient humanoid-type machine called a Gen-Drone. He has been infused with human-class intelligence through artificial means and is as 'human' as the next person, except that he's made of a metal skeleton covered with nanomachines for skin.
-His innermost desire is to fall in love.
-His worst fear is failing in his duties or letting down a friend.
-His lifetime goal is to be rich (to accumulate at least a million CiMarks)
-His worst nightmare is to have his mind infiltrated or to loose control of his body through external interference.
Without giving away plot points to the player of this character, I can say that from what he told me of V, I would present him with game encounters that would give him the chance to form meaningful relationships with people, encounters that would test his loyalty and/or his ability to be there for a friend when he was needed, the chance to either gain or loose large sums of money, and finally, put him in a position where his neural integrity could be compromised.
Testing his limits and giving him events that are meaningful to his character allows three things.
1) It makes him feel as though V is playing a significant part in the events
2) It allows all the rest of the party to participate in V's world in a very personal way
3) It makes it easier on me; I don't even have the need to script everything, but rather, just give him the events pertinent to his character in a (more or less) logical order. Or in a totally random order if I feel like screwing with him.
So we take it in turns; I run an event for one character, then either shortly after or mid-event, bring in an event pertinent to another character. The hard part here is again, finding the balance. The characters will invariably want some downtime between events to reload and repair their armor (I like to throw well-armed opponents at my players...they never leave home in regular clothing anymore, they just wear their body armor everywhere) so I have to give them a little time. The good news though is that they no longer have the need for additional downtime to pursue their own agendas because the main storylines have been tailored to them!
Of course, this is all "best case scenario." It is still not unheard of for my players to ignore my plot points and do their own thing, no matter how important I think it may be to their character.
Or maybe I just have an excessively random group.
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