Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 18 - Homebrew 101 - The 3 Act Structure

Episode Date: April 26, 2020

Everything you didn't want to know about the 3 Act Structure and why Jeremy loves it so much!  He discusses how to frame an entire plot around this useful story framework, the action that takes place, and what signifies the transition points from one act to the next. Send us some feedback at [e-mail]!

This episode of the Taken 20 podcast is brought to you by showers. Seriously, take one every now and then. Thank you so much for tuning in to episode 18, continuing the Homebrew 101 series, this time focusing on the three-act structure. In episode 17, we talked briefly about the three-act structure, setup, confrontation, and then resolution. This episode, we're going to about the three-act structure, setup, confrontation, and then resolution. This episode, we're going to expand that concept and apply it to RPG adventures. In compiling this episode, I pulled data from lots of different research locations. There are a whole lot of different definitions about what happens at transitions between acts and exactly what each

act should contain. The version of the three-act structure that I'm going to give you is the one that I enjoy running and that I use and have used successfully for years and years. So the three-act structure that I'm going to give you is the one that I enjoy running and that I use and have used successfully for years and years. So the three-act structure. Act one is the setup. This should be very brief, definitely no more than 25% of your story, and a lot of times less is more here. It's very short and sometimes even starts before the first gaming session.

In act one, you establish the who, what, where, and when. It's very short and sometimes even starts before the first gaming session. In Act 1, you establish the who, what, where, and when. Who the characters are. Who the NPCs are. What sort of interpersonal and interconnected relationships do they have? You establish why the party is together. Which, by the way, why the party is together I think could be an episode all its own. I've got quite a few episodes queued up so I'm not sure when I'll get to it but at some point I do want to talk about ways you can get your party together at the beginning of an adventure. The tried and true and one that I hate to say it is so overdone is you start in a tavern or start in an inn. Oh it just feels like

it's done so many times. Please do me a favor. Pick somewhere else every now and then. An adventure that I DMed recently, we actually started in the middle of combat. Everyone settled into the first session. They all had their characters. They all had their dice out. I said, okay, is everybody ready? Good. Roll initiative. And there was a whole lot of panic. Oh my gosh, where are we all? What's going on? What are we fighting? It'll all be determined. Roll your initiative. And we actually started the campaign in the middle of combat for session one. It was actually a lot of fun. But something else besides an inn, I mean, anything. A used horse lot. Prison. They're stuck next to each other on a plane. They went to school together and they're at their 10-year class reunion.

And things go sideways. So find a reason for the party to be together. You can use that in inn or tavern, but try to find something else. Also at this point in Act 1, you determine what secrets exist. What sort of connections do characters have to other people and organizations that maybe the rest of the PCs just don't know about? What are the characters' desires and plans? Are they innocuous? The barbarian wants to open a bakery when he retires.

Or are they a little more dangerous? The cleric wants to murder the High Paladin for crimes he committed against her family. Establish those secrets early on in Act 1, even if it's just on a one-on-one conversation between you and the player. At this point, you reveal whatever parts of a backstory that the characters and players feel comfortable revealing. If applicable, give the characters individual quests. Some of them may be kept secret from the party, and maybe some of them are overt and advertised. But once you've established the who, what, where, and when, there's some sort of event that happens called the inciting incident or the catalyst.

This is the thing that happens to give your players a purpose. It's your first big plot hook. The town burns down. The players are hired to kill this ravenous beast marauding through the countryside. A merchant's son is murdered. War breaks between the Red and Blue Nations. One of the characters receives a letter from a relative she believed long dead. But this inciting incident, whatever you pick, whatever it is for the adventure, introduces conflict.

Now in storytelling, conflict is not necessarily a fight. It's something that keeps the heroes from getting what they want. What's keeping that barbarian from opening a bakery? Oh, there's a necromancer raising an undead army that's about to storm the town. But this inciting incident makes the players answer the call to adventure. Their normal humdrum lives are changed and will never be the same. In Act 1, you can give a hint to the big bad evil guy's plans and stakes, but don't reveal too much. Maybe the way you reveal that something bigger is going on is that you give the PC second thoughts.

Their journey has begun, they've gone off to investigate the torn down keep, and things start getting a little shaky. There's some sort of minor setback that they have, and things get worse. While they're away at the keep, the village granary is burned down, and the village is now out of food. Maybe the PC's mentor is killed. The person who hired them goes missing, so the whole reason they went out there to clear this keep was for money, and now there's no one to pay them. So some sort of minor setback. So they make the PCs check up a little bit and ask, are they doing the right thing by going on this adventure? And then bang, act one climax. There's some sort of confrontation with

the people responsible for the initial inciting incident, and maybe they overcome their fears and overcome the challenges ahead of them, but that's when they discover that's not the end of the plot. There's something much bigger afoot here. Begin Act 2. Act 2 is called Confrontation, signified by rising action and rising tension. confrontation signified by rising action and rising tension. The stakes are getting higher, the scope is getting bigger, and if the PCs fail, the results are looking worse and worse and worse. During Act 2, the PCs discover just how big this plot is. It wasn't just a necromancer raising an undead army to take over their little hamlet. This necromancer wants to slay the world. Also during act two, if you can work it in, give PCs a temptation to do things the easy way or make

a deal with the devil, so to speak. Oh yes, the thieves guild would be happy to help you achieve the king's riven regalia, but you must make a blood pact with us so that you will look the other way when we assassinate the queen on the same mission. So the PCs are tempted. They can get the Riven regalia, which will help them combat the big bad evil guy, but they also must look the other way as this criminal organization is assassinating the queen. During Act 2, there should be one to three major hurdles that the PCs have to overcome. Some sort of obstacle, disaster, crisis, setback, fight dungeon, invading a keep, invading a headquarters. Something for the PCs to do that is a hurdle on their way to progress. Mix things up here, by the way.

Don't just throw dungeon, dungeon, dungeon and be done. Mix things up here, by the way. Don't just throw dungeon, dungeon, dungeon, and be done. Mix things up. Have some sort of crisis that they have to solve, and maybe have a fight followed by a dungeon. Setback followed by a dungeon, then a disaster that they have to avert. During this first section of Act 2, they're confronting their fears, they're overcoming threats, and things are looking pretty good. And then, the optional twist. Maybe a big bad evil guy has a stronger tie-in to a PC backstory than you've let on. The person the PCs believe is an ally is really working with the enemy. Maybe the actions the PCs have been taking this entire time have been unknowingly helping the big bad evil guy on his plans. entire time have been unknowingly helping the big bad evil guy on his plans. An NPC they believe dead comes back and the party realizes she was working with the big bad evil guy all along.

Regardless of whether you have this twist or not, throw one to three more major hurdles, see previous discussion about that, about disasters and crises and setbacks and dungeons the clear and keeps to invade or what have you. But then, bang, the act two climax. At this moment, the villain is triumphant. He appears to be winning. Maybe the players find the big bad evil guy's headquarters, invade the area, and they discover too late that the headquarters has moved. It's teleported into another plane. It's shifted to another location. The players realize that all the sacrifice they've made up until this point has really left them no further along. Maybe the players discover it was their mentor behind this all along. That he was pulling their strings, keeping them away from where the real action was. Perhaps the players found an artifact that they believed would save the world

or slay the big bad evil guy or give them an advantage in the adventure to come. Have that major artifact stolen or lost. The point being, the transition, the big bang between Act 2 and Act 3 should be the low point for your PCs. This is the darkest before the dawn moment. But that kicks off Act 3, which is the climax or resolution of the story. Honestly, if you're actually writing, this tends to be about 10-15% of the story. But this is the moment hope seems lost.

This is the moment where they sit there, defeated, lost, bruised, and battered, wondering what to do next. Someone comes up with a new idea for how to confront the big bad evil guy. A new ally appears. The players get stronger and level up. So now they have one last big fight, one last big obstacle to overcome. They have their Avengers assemble moment. They have this confrontation between the party and the forces of evil. They fight at the Big Bad Evil Guys headquarters or in some creative location where the environment's an antagonist as well. Volcano, pocket dimension, disintegrating spaceship, haganess as well. Volcano, pocket dimension, disintegrating spaceship, different plane of existence, back of a giant turtle that's turning slowly and changing the battlefield. It's a

confrontation with a major NPC at this point. Huge fight, party wins, hopefully, and they save the day. Everybody has a big sigh of relief around the table. Now the denouement, which if you listened to episode 17, you know what denouement means. The party returns as big damn heroes. Things aren't the same as they were, but the water is starting to settle and the new normal is starting to kick in. At this point, you have your ending, whether it's happy, sad, or somewhere in the middle, kind of melancholy. As a GM, describe what happens after the end. Use the character's desires from the beginning, the choices they made throughout the campaign, and tell them what happens afterward. It can all be happy, but I think it's better when there's a

few tragedies thrown in there as well. Maybe at this point you even hint at a bigger story. A rogue I played way back in the day ended a long campaign at level 17. He became the head of the Thieves Guild, according to my DM. But 15 years after the events of the adventure... Wow, that sounds weird. 15 years after the events of the adventure. But 15 years later, he was found dead on a beach with strange runes carved into his skin. I stared at the DM and just said, why? And he said, because, and went on to explain that the next campaign was starting

and the fact that people were being murdered in this way was the basis of that DM's next campaign. We rolled up new characters and had a blast. I've talked a lot about the three-act structure, and I am passionate about it because it is a tried-and-true story structure that you can design a campaign around. How tried-and-true is it? This shit was around in ancient Greece. It's still used today. Go watch a movie and look for that big bang transition between Act 1 and Act 2 when things are never going to be the same again. Look for that big bang transition between act one and act two when things are never going to be the same again. Look for that big bang transition from act two to act three when it's darkest before the dawn. Get comfortable with this structure. Start paying attention to it in stories. Then sit down and try

to write down a simple campaign with one or two sentences for each act. Get more comfortable with it. As you become familiar with a three-act structure, you can start doing more advanced things, like making each act a three-act structure of its own. I ran a campaign like this earlier, where act one was a really quick three-act structure that introduced a lot of the players and the big bad evil guy and so forth. Act two was most of the campaign. It was longer and drawn out and a lot more complicated. And then Act 3 had a three-act structure all of its own. There's an art to doing this, and that might be something that's a future episode. I've got a whole lot of episodes in queue right now. I've gotten some great feedback. I plan on making this as an episode at some point in the future,

so I'll come back to this at a later date. Speaking of feedback and reviews, please rate us on iTunes and Google Play. Very much appreciate the feedback. I promise I read every single comment that's made. Head over to the Taking20 subreddit. I read every single post. I would love to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening to Episode 18, Homebrew 101 Series, The Three-Act Structure. Once again, I want to thank our very clean sponsor, Showers.

It's the best stage for your rendition of Taylor Swift songs. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I sincerely hope that your next game is your best game.