Saturday, June 23, 2012

Sunday Rucht Hour: First Scenario for Alpha Wolf Pack!

Sorry I'm late again, but here we are.

I got the first scenario written up for Alpha Wolf Pack, even though the role-playing game is still in its very raw stages. As I've learned from previous playtests, you don't discover the rough points of your rules until you just play through your game. Then, as each game unfolds, you realize the points that you've missed. Like, hey, how do you grapple someone? (Always complicated.)

So, an opportunity has come up to playtest Alpha Wolf Pack with some interesting folks. I'll report back when that happens. Here's a few tease peeks at the first scenario written up.




Formatting is important to me, so I put in call-outs, chose interesting fonts, printed the whole thing on card stock and even rounded the corners of the paper.

As you can see in this last picture, each act of the scenario fits on a single page. Beyond that, there are player handouts, description of a space station, and things like that. But the important bit is that the whole adventure - the part that you need to run the scenario - is contained on four pages. 

If Alpha Wolf Pack takes off, this is the sort of thing I want to push with the game. I've seen four-hour modules that are dozens and dozens of pages long. Instead, I'd like to see scenarios written short and sweet. I got this idea from Savage World's one-sheet adventures, which are a great idea. Essentially, the idea is that an entire adventure is contained on one page, period. I'd like to keep refining a short scenario format until I can get it down to maybe one, short, four-hour scenario written up in just four to five pages. 

The idea is that picking up an adventure shouldn't necessarily be an entire walkthrough. Instead, a scenario might be like picking up another GM's notes and then taking the reins from there. 

2 comments:

  1. Recently too ive started to move toward more abstract adventures. Lengthy modules detail every action and every possible solution and are good for some things but arent always necessary.

    And wow, rounding off those corners really makes a big difference on how the sheets look. Do you have one of those craft punches that rounds the corners for you or are you using scissors?

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  2. Easy as pie. Just use a craft punch just as you said. It does make a big difference, doesn't it? :) It's the little details.

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