Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 196 - Problems Not Plots

Episode Date: October 15, 2023

Preparing your overarching campaign using smaller situational pieces has a number of benefits to preparing the entire adventure as a whole.  In this episode, I talk about the benefits of preparing your game in manageable chunks and give you some tips for doing so.   #dnd #pf2e #DMTips Resources: The Alexandrian:  Don’t Prep Plots - https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots   https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/16y30hc/can_we_clarify_what_we_mean_when_we_say_dms/   Building Situations in D&D https://slyflourish.com/letting_go_of_defined_encounters.html    

This week on the Taking 20 Podcast. I had run it a few times and he changed everything on the fly, like a jazz musician improvising a bridge for a song I'd heard and make it seamlessly transition into a different song. I listened to him DM for a while and I took notes, and if I'm honest, it made me reassess everything I knew about being behind the screen. everything I knew about being behind the screen. Wherever you happen to be, thank you for listening to the Taking20 Podcast,

episode 196. Advice for DMs about running their games with problems, not plots. I want to thank our sponsor, 3D Crafts and Curios. Head over to 3D Crafts and Curios on Etsy and check out the dice towers, the initiative trackers, the coin banks, the DM screens, and numerous other products for sale at their Etsy store.

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Hang on, why does my coffee cup say sodium pentothal on it? Honey? In the interest of full disclosure, I originally titled this episode, Situations Not Plots for Agility, but that didn't have the nice alliteration of Problems Not Plots. The title could also have been Scenarios Not Plots, Situations Not Plots, or any of another 10 different names, but to be frank, I'm shit at marketing, and I'm going with Problems Not Plots. Please address any and all complaints to my email address. For this episode, I want DMs and GMs to start thinking of their campaigns as a

series of interconnected problems or scenarios that collectively form a larger vision of what the adventure could be, rather than looking at the entire thing and forcing players down a specific path. Confession time. I have been guilty of focusing on plots in the past. I'd get this idea for what would make it an amazing, awesome adventure. I'd think of some way I could do some reveals and interesting encounters and mysteries, and then I'd get frustrated with myself when I had to torpedo or at least heavily modify everything to fit it to the adventure as it was unfolding because of the choices the players made. For a short while there, I almost

held it against my players that things weren't unfolding as I expected, and it started to impact my fun at the table. But then, one day, years ago, I watched a DM run an adventure that I knew very well. I had run it a few times, and he changed everything on the fly, like a jazz musician improvising a bridge for a song I'd heard and make it seamlessly transition into a different song. I listened to him DM for a while and I took notes, and if I'm honest, it made me reassess everything I knew about being behind the screen. What did he do differently? Something you've heard me say before. He broke the entire adventure down into individual scenes, problems, or scenarios, and he bridged them together depending on the decisions that were made by the party. Let's get down to brass tacks. What do I mean by situations or problems or scenarios?

These are smaller than plots and could be as small as a single encounter or as big as an entire adventure that spans a few sessions. Contrast that with a plot, which is a fixed sequence of events. The party will do the first thing, then the second thing, and then the third thing, and you get the gist from there. You're planning the entire adventure scope from start to finish. I want to loosely quote a website called thealexandrian.net, and I'll put a link to a great article they have on this topic in the resources for this episode. They originally wrote this article in 2009, so it tells you this is nothing new, but you really should check it out

because it's a great read on the topic. Preparing situations is like handing the players a map and saying, figure out where you're going. Prepping plots is like handing the players a map and saying, figure out where you're going. Prepping plots is like handing the players the same map, but a specific route has been drawn in invisible ink and then forcing the players to follow that invisible path. But Jeremy, why shouldn't DMs make plots? Well, okay, there's multiple reasons why DMs should avoid just preparing plots and start thinking of things in terms of scenarios, encounters, and problems. If you just do things in plots, plots can lead to a more railroaded game. Things have to happen in a certain order for your pre-designed plot to unfold properly.

You need the party to be in the village of Icy Falls on the night of the Great Meteor Shower so they'll meet Maximus Dreamtide, the wandering fortune teller who can give them the portent of doom that the meteor shower brings. Because if they don't get that portent, they won't know what the impact arrangement means. And if they don't know what that means, they won't know to seek knowledge from the Church of Abadar, who will require them to collect taxes from the catfolk town, where they'll meet Jenkins, the lovable quest giver who will send them to collect taxes from the catfolk town, where they'll meet Jenkins, the lovable quest giver, who will send them to the Ashen Vault, where they will learn the truth of the meteors

and discover the location of the carbuncular rod that can be used to defeat the otherworldly creatures and save icy falls. Railroad, railroad, railroad, this is my plot and you must follow it. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing at all wrong with a little railroad in your game, especially if you're running a pre-made adventure and don't feel comfortable changing things up on the fly. Also, especially if you're first starting to GM, there's nothing wrong with sticking very close to a pre-written story, even if that requires a

little bit of choo-choo all aboard to keep the game moving. Plots are also, believe it or not, more work for the DM. If you're trying to force a plot path on the players and you're constantly having to give urges and bumps and suggestions to keep the party on the planned path, it's exhausting. Maybe you'd plan for the party to go south to Southerton and had meticulously planned out what would happen in each town along the way. What happens when the party goes north to Northerton? Sorry, I'm not feeling really creative with town names today. You'd have to readjust everything, and that's a ton of work to redesign everything just because your players made one different decision. Instead of planning the path, plan the encounters, the scenarios that will happen along the way,

the situations you're going to put them in, the dangers that will befall them. By planning problems, you can even reuse what you'd planned all along, changing the names of the NPCs, the towns, the roads, or the monsters they encounter. You could still have bandits on the road. Maybe a rapid thunderstorm comes in anyway, even if they went north instead of south. And maybe instead of a green hag on the road to Southerton, since Northerton is more mountainous, maybe you have them find a Wendigo or Skylord Aarakocra. There's still a CR3 encounter, it's just a different environment.

Another reason not to plan plots is because players are never going to do what you think they're going to do. If you're trying to shoehorn the players to a specific choice, sooner or later they are going to fight the bit and go in a direction they want to go, as is their right, and they should be able to do that in a tabletop RPG. When that happens, it could undo all of your session prep, because your prep was dependent on the players making a specific choice, going Northerton instead of to Southerton. Or another way of saying it, by prepping plot and only forcing the players down the path of your plot,

you're robbing the players of player agency, the ability to make choices that they feel would be best for their character. And that leads to a worse game and maybe even angry players. Let's compare the Icy Falls discussion where you're just preparing problems or scenarios. In the Icy Falls example, you had the party in a city where a meteor strike happens. The meteor strike being in a certain pattern and causing destruction. An expert that can help them recognize the pattern. The party being sent to another quest hub. The party meeting a friendly NPC who points them towards the Ashen Vault,

finding the carbuncular rod, and then saving the day for everyone. So instead of preparing this giant plot of exactly where everything has to happen, prepare them individually and maybe genericize them a little bit. Now the party doesn't have to be in Icy Falls. They can hear about the disaster from the citizens in Icy Falls. They could hear about the disaster from the citizens of Icy Falls or maybe hear that they're being in danger as travelers come to whatever town they happen to be in. Or maybe a survivor of the meteor strike could show up and tell them about the destruction. Maybe they're even close enough to see the rocks plummeting

from the heavens and see the impact from a long way away. Or you could even relocate the meteor strike to the town of Everglade where the party happens to be when it's time for the meteors to strike. Planning via scenarios and problems give GMs more flexibility. It leads to more options than planning by plots does. DMs can reveal these scenarios to PCs in whatever order and whenever they need to find a direction or to face choices. Sure, maybe you planned on the green hag having a number of thralls that the PCs would fight on the way to finding out why she's plaguing the road to Southerton, but couldn't that be just as interesting with an Aarakocra leader? Of course it could.

I've used another term for scenarios in the past, and it's Lego pieces. Imagine breaking down your adventure into its individual encounters and components, and then reassembling them in whatever order you need to, making whatever change you need in order to keep the game going. I've done both, plots and Lego pieces, plots and scenarios, and trust me, scenario Lego pieces dropped my stress as a DM to 10% of what it once was. Now, I know I can adjust my prepared scenarios to incorporate the choices made by the players and make them feel the agency that they have over their characters. Now, I'll be honest, I tend to learn best with examples.

So here's one. Suppose, in the adventure, there are two guards out in front of a store that the PCs have been asked to break into. Because, I don't know, it's a suspected front for the underground group called the Trio of Darkness. If you prepared by plot, you might be thinking, okay, they have to kill the guards, they have to steal their keys, they have to drag the guards in so they're not discovered, and then find both the fake and the real ledgers that they're going to come and present to the local police.

I mean, it sounds like a fun night adventure, you'd know me wrong, but players rarely do what you expect, and when they take other tacks, you may be forced to completely redesign the entire evening, or worse, force your players to do what you'd planned for the plot, thereby limiting creativity and removing the player choice. After all, there are a lot of ways to deal with those guards. What if instead, they sneak in through the roof, or knock out the guards, or crawl in via air conditioning ducts, or have the bard seduce one or both guards, and the guard leader, and the people at the guardhouse, and whoever else the bard has to seduce. The PCs could poison their food, or water, or bribe them,

or commit a crime nearby that forces one or both to respond to that crime, thereby leaving the door wide open. Any one of these could potentially take the guards out of the picture and allow the party to bypass them. Now you're panicking, because that's not what the plot said. Guards, A's relative was going to seek revenge after the party killed them, and that'd lead to the next big plot point of discovering the corrupt soup kitchens, yeah. Okay, first off, relax.

You're a great DM, and you can do this. Let's break this entire encounter down into its simple components. First, they have to bypass the guard. Then they have to bypass the guard. Then they have to find the evidence. Then they have to bring the evidence to the authorities and then discover the corrupt soup kitchens. To start thinking about this in terms of scenarios, let's add the word somehow to each statement. Somehow they have to bypass the guards. Somehow they have to find the evidence. Somehow they have to bring the evidence to the authorities. And then somehow they have to find the evidence. Somehow, they have to bring the evidence to the authorities.

And then somehow, they have to discover the corrupt soup kitchens. With one or two answers to somehow for each of these, you've completely broken these scenarios down from the larger story, and you can reassemble them as you have to to keep the game moving. Start thinking of what you could fill in for somehow in each of these statements. We've talked about the various ways they could bypass the guards. Maybe the evidence is in the manager's safe or on an accountant's desk. Or maybe it's on a computer.

Maybe they go to the mayor's office that night to bring the evidence or talk to the sheriff in the morning. Either way would work. Finally, maybe they find out about the corrupt soup kitchens by talking to victims or the authorities who've had an eye on these soup kitchens because they suspect something's going on. Or maybe they find out about the soup kitchens by going undercover to be part of a gang. Let's make this a catastrophic situation. Suppose the party discovers the corrupt soup kitchens first somehow. Maybe you were improv-ing and let it slip

that oops, a little bit early. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've done that. With situation preparation, you can have investigating the soup kitchens lead to the location that's the front for the trio of darkness, not the other way around. And boom, adventure is back on track. I can hear some of you saying,

Jeremy, I'm not that good at making cohesive plot by just preparing scenarios. I have to think about the entire picture from the very beginning, starting at 50,000 feet, not down in the weeds at the encounter level. If I do that, the final version isn't going to make any sense and my players will see me for the fraud DM that I am. First off, like I said earlier, you're a great DM. Secondly, your players want to play in a game with you. Thirdly, you may know your flaws and the adjustments you're making behind the scenes, but the players don't. I guarantee you they are happy that you are DMing for them

and are more than willing to overlook any plot holes you introduce by working with scenarios instead of the big overarching plot. Time for another confession. This one's about one of the biggest F-ups I have ever had while DMing. This was about 10 years ago. Oh, jeez, this was about 10 years ago. God, it feels like a lifetime. Anyway, I was getting better at preparing scenarios

and was improvising my way through some of the party shenanigans when the party's actions led to a lot of collateral damage at a market square. I threw out a couple of names of people that they recognized amongst the deceased, but forgot to write down what I had said. Two to three sessions later, the party had to attend a formal dinner to get some of the local gossip and scuttlebutt and potentially evidence against a particular noble when I mentioned that Lord Foxglove entered the dining hall. One of my players looked at me very confused and said, didn't he die in the market square? I thought back and I realized that I had listed him as one of the deceased and that was wrong. These days, I'd probably just admit the error,

change the noble that came in, or say that I had misspoke earlier when I said they had died or something like that. But at the time, I wasn't as comfortable behind the screen as I am now. As soon as my player said, didn't he die in the market square? All I heard in my brain was, F***. What am I going to do? I have completely screwed the pooch now. They're going to realize that this is all just a thin veneer

on a bunch of improv and weird voices, and they're not going to ever want to play with me again. So I panicked, and I just blurted out, but he doesn't look right. His skin is gray, and he points at Lady Cremond and says, You, you did this to me. I invoke the right of trial by combat and accuse Lady Cremond of murdering me. The party's eyes got wide, and since it was getting late, that was a great place to stop the session, which coincidentally gave me time to plan the next steps of trial by combat.

Lady Cremond begging a party member to serve as her champion and for me to figure out what the next steps of the campaign were. I had accidentally, because of my bad note-taking and attempting to improv, had committed the sin of potentially breaking causality in the world and had to scramble to make up for it. A few sessions later, one of my players said that Lord Foxglove coming back to accuse her of murder and later clearing her name, that was a twist that she'd never expected, and

she really enjoyed it. I smiled, thanked them so much for playing, while inside thinking, you have no idea how desperately I had to scramble. DMing by preparing scenarios gives you a little bit of flexibility, even if things go completely sideways. So maybe you want to start this. What do you need to do to prep situations instead of plot? Honestly, with a little practice, this becomes second nature. It's like a muscle. You have to exercise it to get good at it. First thing I would suggest you start doing.

Break down the next few scenarios or encounters that you're going to throw at your party to their base components, like we did earlier. Have some pre-generated NPCs behind your screen, which really you should have anyway, and then think about some common ways that these scenarios may be resolved by the party. Sticking with the alliteration, scenarios usually resolve via fighting, fleeing, figuring out, or finagling. Yeah, finagling, that's it. Either it's combat, they run for the scenario, they discover what they needed, or they use charisma, guile, or wit to diffuse the situation. Preparing scenarios means not predefining how the party is going to overcome that problem or scenario,

but it gives you the flexibility to adjust the game world around the choices that the party makes. Throw in some potential resources for the party to use and or gain by quote-unquote winning the scenario, and you're done. Now, do I still have an overarching escalation for the campaign? Absolutely. They're securing the train from the attackers. They're trying to keep the Viridian Lobo from gaining the Spear of Destiny.

They're helping the nation of Axanus withstand the invasion by the Leo Principality. But really? I think about that between sessions as I'm figuring out what scenarios I need to prep for the next one. Depending on the complexity, usually one to two scenarios per hour will be sufficient unless they move like jackrabbits on cocaine, and then I would maybe do three scenarios per hour will be sufficient unless they move like jackrabbits on cocaine, and then I would maybe do three scenarios per hour. No matter, I generally keep one or two prepped and in a notebook just in case I need to pad out the time. Preparing problems gives you flexibility.

Even if you're scared to do so, start small. Try preparing your next session by thinking of the different encounters in terms of individual Lego pieces instead of the story as a whole. Be flexible. Let the party resolve the situation with the choices that they make. Practice using this skill more and more, and I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. Do you have a topic idea for a future episode?

Send it to me, feedback at taking20podcast.com, and I'll try to slot it in in the near future. Tune in next week when we'll borrow from the Pathfinder 2E Core Rulebook and look at its advice for making your settlements, villages, towns, and cities more realistic. Thank you again, Brenton from 3D Crafts and Curios, for sponsoring the Episode 200 contest. Don't forget to send me your entries to contest at taking20podcast.com and follow 3D Crafts and Curios on Instagram. But I also want to thank this week's other sponsor,

Food Cart Vendors. I love Middle Eastern food, but I got a hold of some bad food the other day. It wasn't fall good. It was fall awful. This has been episode 196, all about preparing problems, not plots. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2023.

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