Bouldering Jove
2007-03-17, 02:37 AM
A note on lexicon and scope: I use the term "GM" in this piece, as in Game Master, instead of the D&D-centric "DM." This is both because GM is more familiar to me and because it's a generic term applicable to any pen-and-paper roleplaying game. Though my examples hew to D&D tradition, I believe the principles I describe apply across the spectrum of roleplaying games.
1. Introduction
Quite a bit has been said on these boards and in general about good and bad GMs, and more specifically the techniques they employ. Every game group is unique and so demands an individual play experience with qualities that would not necessarily be ideal for any other group, but some trends are just about universal, and one in particular is a dislike of railroading. A certain level of railroading is the necessary pressure on the game world of the GM dictating reality; only in its more constrictive forms, where players feel a loss of choice or an inability to meaningfully affect the course of events in the game world, does railroading diminish player satisfaction. A tension thus results between the (hopefully interesting) flow of events dictated by the GM and the influence of the players pursuing their character's interests. Great GMs are the ones who can resolve this tension to the satisfaction of everyone in the game group, but this management is a difficult art, as evidenced by the ease of finding complaints both from players about their GMs and from GMs about the difficulty of managing their players.
How then to avoid chaining players into a rigid sequence of events while still keeping their actions "on the map"? Complete free-ranging plot improvisation is only possible for the most quick-thinking of GMs, and in systems with involved rules for NPC generation like D&D, the crunchy side of gameplay will suffer from a lack of GM planning. So some degree of forethought is essential for your average game group to work out hard gameplay statistics, though creating those statistics by necessity creates what features will appear in your game and thus present limits on the real options for the players. If they stray from the GM's prepared creations, they'll be shunted back towards them. Making "the map" of game features large enough to encompass genuine player freedom will require an immense amount of planning, beyond what a more casual GM is likely willing to dedicate to the game.
"Generics", or stock NPCs to recycle and reuse whenever a rough archetype needs to be called in to fight, are one method of circumventing this problem. The D&D Dungeon Master's Guide provides many generics ready to use, the Monster Manuals are really lists of interesting generics with diverse powers, and depending on the circumstances of the game setting, a handful of well-designed generics may serve the GM well for a very long time. Yet no matter how large the pool of generics to pull from, drawing on them too frequently will make combat encounters predictable and, well, generic. Power progression will also inevitably force generics to be retired or rebuilt. Ultimately, generics are a stopgap, most useful for player curveballs that demand encounters completely beyond a GM's foresight, but not able to completely resolve the problem proposed here.
At this point, some readers may be questioning whether railroading is as severe an issue as I present it. It is after all the duty of players to cooperate on at least a basic level with the GM, pursuing the adventurous "hooks" dangled in front of them and not obstructing the flow of the game for personal showboating. For many (if not most) game groups, straining against the linear walls of the GM's plot will be infrequent, and the largest burden on the GM from player freedom will be creative problem-solving tearing apart what was intended to be a challenge. So why the fuss?
From my personal perspective as a GM, almost any degree of linearity is too much. I don't extract much satisfaction from events going as I planned them, and whenever I insert a change into the game world to direct my players towards a specific outcome, I feel like I'm cheating. My greatest enjoyment from GMing a game is shaping the plot as it unfolds in a natural way from the players' moves, crafting the logical reactions to their actions, and "helping" them slide into the thick of ever-worse disasters to fight or finesse their way out from. That's the heart of my game, and if I feel that way, I'm sure there are a respectable number of others who feel similarly. So resolving the issue of railroading permanently is more than a thought experiment; it's what can make a game consistently fun instead of a string of dull combats.
It's with this in mind that I propose an alternative method of adventure design from the traditional adventure/campaign construct. I don't pretend to be the first to develop or employ this technique, but I have yet to see a write-up detailing anything particularly like it, so I decided to write this and present to the unfamiliar: node-based GMing.
2. Event-Based GMing
First, to understand an alternative, the traditional framework must be understood. Those who've experienced extreme cases of railroading are familiar with "linear" games that allow only one course of action, or worse, "storybook" games where even the illusion of choice is stripped away, but I've argued that even conventional adventure design is restrictive to player freedom. Rather than linear, I believe the design of a traditional adventure is best articulated as "event-based."
An event-based adventure is fundamentally structured around a series of GM-planned events, each a piece of the plot leading to its climax and resolution. The GM can design interesting and effective crunch to suit every encounter, because all of them are planned. The events generally follow a chronological order, similar to computer adventure games where certain criteria must be satisfied before progressing to the next stage of a game. A sample adventure could be presented like so:
1. The characters arrive in town.
2. The characters discover that monsters have been attacking the town.
3. The characters are hired by the town leader to destroy the monsters.
4. The characters seek out and track down the dungeon housing the monsters.
5. The characters progress through the dungeon and destroy most of the monsters.
6. The characters progress to the end of the dungeon and fight the toughest monster.
7. The characters take the treasure from the dungeon and return to town.
This is a fairly banal example as adventures go, of course, but it illustrates how event-based adventures can be outlined. Note in particular how, while the events can be handled in quite a number of ways, each requires its predecessor. If the players aren't able to track down the dungeon, the plot stalls, and the GM must take measures to preserve forward momentum. Rather than letting the players stumble through the woods, a local farmer might approach them and help show them the way to the monsters' lair. The plot allows leeway, but only so much before it progresses.
A more sophisticated adventure design may incorporate any number of subplots. A subplot will be chronologically interwoven with the primary plot, and may be used to stimulate the adventure when it's flagging. At heart, however, it has the same structure:
A-1. The characters are ambushed by monsters just outside of town.
A-2. The characters discover there is a traitor in town.
A-3. The characters discover a clue to the traitor's identity.
A-4. The characters seek out and track down the traitor.
A-5. The characters fight the traitor.
Further complexity and player freedom can be added by incorporating contingency plots, essentially "branch points" provided for events where the players can resolve them in multiple ways. For example, let's alter that subplot:
A-4. The characters seek out and track down the traitor.
A-I-5. The characters fight the traitor.
A-I-6. The characters kill the traitor.
A-II-5. The characters speak to the traitor and discover his daughter is being held hostage.
A-II-6. The characters seek out and track down the traitor's daughter.
A-II-7. The characters fight monsters to rescue the traitor's daughter.
While it might be a bit depressing to consider the fate of daughter if the players choose plot I, it doesn't need to be an issue. The reality of the world will generally be tailored to the contingency the players enacted. If the players shot first and asked questions later, the daughter may never have existed, and the traitor's journal reveals a payoff or other similarly nasty motivation. Of course, it's also an option to emphasize the consequences of such decision-making, and have the players discover the hostage daughter's existence and save her to atone for their rash action. Both GM choices are viable; an event-based adventure is by no means lacking in depth.
Of course, it's highly unlikely that many GMs actually write out and outline their plots in this manner. Nevertheless, if they develop their campaigns around events for the players to encounter or trigger (a villain to kill, a victim to save), the GM almost certainly could outline the entirety of their campaign plot in this sequential manner. Improvisation will still likely have a role, adding depth and texture to the game world, but if the players push too far past the boundaries of the plot, the GM must either find a way to bring them back or ad-lib until there's downtime to plan out a new series of events. Depending on the individual GM and their degree of contingency plotting, players may be jumping through arranged hoops or they may have a reasonable degree of liberty, but ultimately, the sequence of the plot will still bend their characters towards it. How to construct an alternative?
3. Node-Based GMing
A node-based adventure is fundamentally constructed around dynamic GM-created characters, factions, and forces. These are the "nodes" described by node-based GMing, and shall hereafter be referred to as such. Each node is designed with factual details, crunchy statistics, interests, methods, motives, and relationships to the other nodes. No events need be planned, though a GM will probably have plans for the actions of each node regarding the others. The plot emerges in the interactions of the player characters with the nodes, and the best way to represent a potential adventure is with a flowchart rather than an outline.
What constitutes a node? Detailing every NPC in the game is obviously a waste of time. Instead, nodes are the important forces, whether a single actor or a legion, that act on and respond to the player characters. Every soldier in an army is not a node, but the army as a whole is one, being an entity with power, objectives, and leadership. A villain and his loyal crew of henchmen will constitute a single node because they act as one; a villain controlling tribes of creatures, each with internal leadership and enmities towards the other tribes for the players to exploit, will be one node with relationships to several others. Powerful independent agents will be their own nodes, while a faction including many powerful individuals of similar intentions and goals will be a single node. The purpose of thinking in terms of nodes is not to describe those with power but to easily describe the interactions of in-game powers.
When the GM designs a potential node-based adventure, they sketch out and refine an array of nodes for the adventure's particular setting. In essence, they are creating a web of local interactions and tensions for the player characters to stumble into. A well-designed array will include several nodes with an interest in the player characters (who are really a mobile node of their own), for advancing their goals or removing potential obstacles. A plot can be created almost completely on the fly, centering around what the players are most interested in and their characters the most involved in. With predefined motives and methods, each node will present logical courses of action to follow.
On a very small scale, the town guards will fight against everyone who breaks the law and recruit help when they're outgunned or too busy to investigate, the thieves' guild will be trying to prey on the richest people and choicest items in town, the necromancer will be stalking the graveyard and kidnapping people to experiment on, the disreputable inn will recruit thugs to sabotage the honest one, and so on. On a grander scale, the order of paladins will be hunting down evil and protecting the innocent wherever possible, the tyrant will be taxing his kingdom to the bone to gain power and wage war, the forces of evil will be gathering legendary artifacts to complete a sinister ritual, the church will be recruiting champions to take on an extraplanar threat, and so on.
All of these nodes can interact with the players, and other nodes will react to the effects the players create. In essence, by thinking about the actors on the stage rather than the story, the GM can easily continue the flow of action under almost any circumstance without needing to take time to reassess the plot. Indeed, the plot no longer needs to be assessed or managed or brought to heel at all, and can instead unfold in any direction the players wish to travel in. Players can easily join the thieves' guild instead of fighting against it because the GM already knows what nodes will be working against it, and can thus quickly create effective challenges for players to overcome. When the course of play exhausts the adventure potential of the various nodes, then new ones can be easily introduced, with either new ones showing up in the area or the characters' travels taking them to new node arrays (the former is an excellent hook to introduce the latter).
An example would help solidify exactly what nodes are and what a node-based adventure looks like. In the case of the adventure described under Event-Based GMing, the nodes would break down like this:
-The townfolk, including their leader.
-The monsters.
-The traitor.
This looks pretty simple, and their motivations barely need to be expanded on. With the obvious antagonistic relationship between the townfolk and the monsters, the adventure will probably play out much the same way as it did originally. To show the potential of node-based GMing, a more complex example is needed.
4. A Sample Node-Based Adventure: "Bad Company"
Setting: The town of Postoar. Postoar is small but a caravan site of some significance, connecting to the northern port city of Caerten (which it is governed by) with long trade routes south into forestland and west into the plains. The main road that runs through town is the north/south route to Caerten. Its buildings are small and humble but well-maintained. Pleasant as they are, they're overshadowed by the caravan grounds that take up almost the entire west side of the main road. A maze of wagons, carts and livestock are in a continual bustle on the dry, well-trampled grounds. Caravanners are constantly arriving, trading, talking, making plans, checking in with the town's suppliers and striking out again. A haphazard of tents forms a makeshift border to the caravan grounds, populated by travellers in between rides and too cheap to stay in town. To the northwest is a thick and untamed forest, while to the east are some small local farms.
The players will probably arrive in Postoar by working as caravan guards.
Nodes:
Seibel and his Gang: Seibel is a creepy lowlife who runs the only town inn, which is also the shoddiest building in town. His real business is the shakedown operation he runs on all the juicy merchandise passing through Postoar. Using the hidden basement of his inn as his base of operations, he has a variety of thugs who do the dirty work for him and keep his name clean. Every day they trot out through the caravan grounds, look over the various cargo, and pull off a quick heist or bit of knife-at-the-throat extortion when the dust is so thick that the town guards can't see them through it.
Resources: Seibel is a competent rogue himself, and has quite a few fighters and rogues of varying ability working through him. He keeps two barbarian bodyguards, and also keeps in touch with some shady caravan contacts who let him know when big money is going through town. The inn itself has a secret basement which serves as his office, and two secret doors from there, one of which is his personal storage and one of which is a secret passage which leads to his emergency exit behind the inn.
Goals: Profit and nothing more, with no ethical compunctions to get in the way. Pushing out the competition and keeping the law away is a plus.
Relationships: Tries to keep out of sight of the town guards as best he can but isn't afraid to kill any of them that get too close. Wants to kill the new bandits in town (the Silver Band) before they start cutting into his business, but knows nothing about them except that they've been poking around. Doesn't know about the gnolls and doesn't care.
Hooks: An agent of Seibel's will probably try to recruit them to do the dirty work of tracking down and killing the bandits. Of course, Seibel has no attention of paying anyone who can just be killed instead.
The Silver Band: The Silver Band is the secret arm of the Silver Bastion Mercantilist Guild up in Caerten. The Guild is trying to corner the market on rare magical items, and the Band are the agents that both rough up the competition and "acquire" the most interesting magical items for the Guild to sell or reverse-engineer. A team from the Silver Band has set up camp in the forest northwest of town, in pursuit of a particularly exotic magical item that was supposed to be passing through Postoar. They've been sending agents into town and along the roads to watch for it, but the caravan hasn't showed, and they're beginning to suspect someone intercepted it.
Resources: The team has a few competent professionals, including a ranger and a spellcaster, and premium equipment to help them do the job. Most of the grunt work is done by a pack of relatively skilled goblins.
Goals: Getting the item they're after is their top priority. Without it, they'll have to find some way to return back with gear of equivalent worth, probably by raiding a few caravans. They're not upstanding citizens, but they know talking is smarter than fighting when they have a choice.
Relationships: They knew about Seibel before they came to town and have nothing but contempt for him, though they also suspect he may be sitting on the item they want, and are trying to sound out whether he has it. They're trying to avoid the notice of the town guards, but a lot of caravans have reported the goblins watching them from the roadside. They don't know about the gnolls, but one of their goblins never came back from patrol, and they're on the alert.
Hooks: The Silver Band will be making forays into town. They may try to kidnap or steal from a character with interesting gear, but most importantly, their routes back to camp (some of which lead through the west plains) will be helpful for party trackers.
Captain Brasset and the Town Guard: Captain Brasset is a military veteran who didn't want retirement and was assigned to Postoar as a gentle equivalent. This has given him a deep, abiding fury which he takes out on the lawbreakers of Postoar at every opportunity. Seibel's crafty avoidance of legal culpability has only made him angrier. He runs a tight ship, keeping the caravans under constant surveillance and investigating the increasing caravan disappearances of late as best he can with his limited personnel.
Resources: The town guard is the local law, with the authority and punitive power (including a jail) that implies. Though small in number, they're well-trained and fairly well-equipped, and Brasset himself is a ferocious combatant. They have a cleric to attend to wounds.
Goals: Brasset passionately wants dead or in jail every person shaking down the caravans, but he wants Seibel exposed and arrested most of all. He also wants to investigate the goblin appearances and caravan disappearances, which he believes are related, but his limited manpower is an obstacle.
Relationships: The guards are focused first and foremost on bringing Seibel and his goons to justice. They have a vague idea that new bandits (the Silver Band) are in the area, but don't know much beyond that. They know nothing about the gnolls.
Hooks: Brasset will personally tear apart anyone he suspects is working for Seibel, but honest adventurers are just the kind of manpower he needs, and he'll be willing to pay someone who can investigate the caravans and the goblins.
Gatti and her Gnolls: Gatti is the hideously scarred matron of a small gnoll hunting party, which arrived and claimed the plains west of town as their personal grounds about a month ago. They are predatory, vicious, spiteful, and fond of bipeds when they get hungry. They've been the ones attacking caravans, mostly to fill their bellies, but they've been looting the shiniest objects. Of course, the magic item the Silver Band are looking for is exceptionally shiny; the gnolls were the ones who snatched it first and buried it beneath the dead tree that serves as their camp, a few miles into the thick grass of the plains.
Resources: Gatti is a low-level cleric (who can speak broken common) with a pet hyena. Her brood is a sturdy bunch, but the only material resources they have to work with are the weapons they looted from caravan guards.
Goals: To kill and eat anything that shows up on their turf and looks tasty (and to hyenas, everything looks tasty).
Relationships: They don't know or care anything about Seibel or the guards, but they do know that goblins have been running through their territory, and they don't like. They already killed one, but it put up a good fight, and they're aching to take their revenge out on the others.
Hooks: Anyone moving through the plains or trying to track down the item is probably going to have a nasty encounter with them.
How it Actually Played Out: When my player group (a fighter, ranger and druid) arrived in town, fresh off a caravan, their first order of business was to secure a place to sleep in the inn. One of Seibel's henchmen (a halfling woman by the name of "Tiny") saw them as some new muscle in town, and brought them to Seibel for a business proposition. Seibel offered them a very substantial amount of gold to hunt down the bandits and kill them, which they accepted, and got to work by shadowing some of Seibel's thugs the next day and waiting for goblins to show up.
They did, a fight quickly broke out between the goblins and the thugs. The law tried to break it up, the goblins scattered, the guards pursued, and Brasset gave the players an earful. They put a good samaritan spin on tailing Seibel's goons, though, and so he gave them an offer to investigate what the goblins were doing (and leave Seibel to him). They accepted, and started tracking the goblin (and guard chasing him) west. Of course, they ran into the gnoll squad.
The results were hilarious. Revealing in the most bloody way possible that she'd already had her fill on the town guard who was passing through, Gatti was almost willing to let the players through, until she asked them if they were with the goblins and the druid said yes ("Roll initiative." "DAMN it, Eric!"). One Burning Hands spell from Gatti (Fire domain) and a quick fight later, the players and the gnolls were both fleeing from a rapidly spreading wildfire in opposite directions. In between curses, Gatti did shriek that they should leave her hunting grounds and go back to the forest, though.
Resting up in the inn to recuperate and striking out the next day, the players succesfully tracked the disturbances caused by fast-moving armored goblins in the forest (undamaged thanks to the wind pushing the fire in another direction). They tried to spy on the Silver Band encampment when they came to it, but while they were bickering about whether to observe it or attack with the element of surprise, a patrolling goblin came across them and alerted the camp. Outnumbered and quickly surrounded, the players opted to converse (mostly with a very intelligent half-orc while the leader argued with the spellcaster), were told that Seibel was just a two-bit thug, and were offered some cash (with a greater probability of payment) to take him out. The players told them about the gnolls, too, which they were interested to hear.
After the trek back to town, they were quickly brought before Seibel again, the activity attracting the interest of the town guards. Seibel inquired if the work was done. The reply was roughly along the lines of "Fire in your face," and so Seibel bolted through his secret passage while his body guards took on the party. A comedic scuffle ensued, including a critical that decapitated one of the barbarians in the very first action and an attempt to bull rush a writing desk. Without enough time to pore over Seibel's room for hidden treasures, they followed through the secret passage, coming out and discovering Seibel and some more of his thugs in a heated conversation with Brasset and the town guards. The players weighed their options, and were planning to kill Seibel with a ranged attack, when the ranger was spotted, bow in hands. In the following hasty explanation, when they admitted to Brasset that Seibel had hired them to kill some people, Brasset tried to arrest Seibel on the spot. He bolted, but the druid had cleverly gotten around to the other side of the building and managed to knock him down as he passed. One thug was mauled, the others surrendered, Seibel was arrested, and the players were offered no charges in exchange for signing depositions against Seibel and getting the hell out of town. Hooray!
Of course, after they returned to the inn, it was pointed out by the ranger that they technically hadn't completed their contract, as Seibel was still alive.
The following stealth mission attempting to kill an unarmed man in a jail cell was priceless, but suffice to say that it involved fighting through a barred window, a screaming Brasset in pajamas, some diplomacy checks, and getting the hell out of town.
5. Conclusion
I didn't have a particularly strong idea how that adventure would play out going in, and I'm thrilled with the outcome: a good time for all that never had a hitch and never flagged. My campaign continues, and the players have now made the journey up to Caerten, which has many times more nodes, and trouble's already brewing between our intrepid heroes and the local halfling crime families as they enter the Silver Band's employ. Combined with a game I'm running online, I've at least proved that node-based GMing works for me.
The more important question, however, is whether node-based GMing has general utility rather than being my personal technique. That's why I'm posting this on a forum rather than keeping on with my own games, after all. I believe that designing adventures around nodes rather than events provides for flexible, adaptable game plots with a superior degree of player freedom, without any particular sacrifices or additional rigor of planning. But I'm just one person with a limited degree of experience, so I throw this open to all of you guys:
Do you see this as viable? Do you already use comparable techniques? Do you see problems I don't? Does this sound interesting? Too long, didn't read? I've been typing my thoughts out for quite some time here, and I'm curious to see yours.
1. Introduction
Quite a bit has been said on these boards and in general about good and bad GMs, and more specifically the techniques they employ. Every game group is unique and so demands an individual play experience with qualities that would not necessarily be ideal for any other group, but some trends are just about universal, and one in particular is a dislike of railroading. A certain level of railroading is the necessary pressure on the game world of the GM dictating reality; only in its more constrictive forms, where players feel a loss of choice or an inability to meaningfully affect the course of events in the game world, does railroading diminish player satisfaction. A tension thus results between the (hopefully interesting) flow of events dictated by the GM and the influence of the players pursuing their character's interests. Great GMs are the ones who can resolve this tension to the satisfaction of everyone in the game group, but this management is a difficult art, as evidenced by the ease of finding complaints both from players about their GMs and from GMs about the difficulty of managing their players.
How then to avoid chaining players into a rigid sequence of events while still keeping their actions "on the map"? Complete free-ranging plot improvisation is only possible for the most quick-thinking of GMs, and in systems with involved rules for NPC generation like D&D, the crunchy side of gameplay will suffer from a lack of GM planning. So some degree of forethought is essential for your average game group to work out hard gameplay statistics, though creating those statistics by necessity creates what features will appear in your game and thus present limits on the real options for the players. If they stray from the GM's prepared creations, they'll be shunted back towards them. Making "the map" of game features large enough to encompass genuine player freedom will require an immense amount of planning, beyond what a more casual GM is likely willing to dedicate to the game.
"Generics", or stock NPCs to recycle and reuse whenever a rough archetype needs to be called in to fight, are one method of circumventing this problem. The D&D Dungeon Master's Guide provides many generics ready to use, the Monster Manuals are really lists of interesting generics with diverse powers, and depending on the circumstances of the game setting, a handful of well-designed generics may serve the GM well for a very long time. Yet no matter how large the pool of generics to pull from, drawing on them too frequently will make combat encounters predictable and, well, generic. Power progression will also inevitably force generics to be retired or rebuilt. Ultimately, generics are a stopgap, most useful for player curveballs that demand encounters completely beyond a GM's foresight, but not able to completely resolve the problem proposed here.
At this point, some readers may be questioning whether railroading is as severe an issue as I present it. It is after all the duty of players to cooperate on at least a basic level with the GM, pursuing the adventurous "hooks" dangled in front of them and not obstructing the flow of the game for personal showboating. For many (if not most) game groups, straining against the linear walls of the GM's plot will be infrequent, and the largest burden on the GM from player freedom will be creative problem-solving tearing apart what was intended to be a challenge. So why the fuss?
From my personal perspective as a GM, almost any degree of linearity is too much. I don't extract much satisfaction from events going as I planned them, and whenever I insert a change into the game world to direct my players towards a specific outcome, I feel like I'm cheating. My greatest enjoyment from GMing a game is shaping the plot as it unfolds in a natural way from the players' moves, crafting the logical reactions to their actions, and "helping" them slide into the thick of ever-worse disasters to fight or finesse their way out from. That's the heart of my game, and if I feel that way, I'm sure there are a respectable number of others who feel similarly. So resolving the issue of railroading permanently is more than a thought experiment; it's what can make a game consistently fun instead of a string of dull combats.
It's with this in mind that I propose an alternative method of adventure design from the traditional adventure/campaign construct. I don't pretend to be the first to develop or employ this technique, but I have yet to see a write-up detailing anything particularly like it, so I decided to write this and present to the unfamiliar: node-based GMing.
2. Event-Based GMing
First, to understand an alternative, the traditional framework must be understood. Those who've experienced extreme cases of railroading are familiar with "linear" games that allow only one course of action, or worse, "storybook" games where even the illusion of choice is stripped away, but I've argued that even conventional adventure design is restrictive to player freedom. Rather than linear, I believe the design of a traditional adventure is best articulated as "event-based."
An event-based adventure is fundamentally structured around a series of GM-planned events, each a piece of the plot leading to its climax and resolution. The GM can design interesting and effective crunch to suit every encounter, because all of them are planned. The events generally follow a chronological order, similar to computer adventure games where certain criteria must be satisfied before progressing to the next stage of a game. A sample adventure could be presented like so:
1. The characters arrive in town.
2. The characters discover that monsters have been attacking the town.
3. The characters are hired by the town leader to destroy the monsters.
4. The characters seek out and track down the dungeon housing the monsters.
5. The characters progress through the dungeon and destroy most of the monsters.
6. The characters progress to the end of the dungeon and fight the toughest monster.
7. The characters take the treasure from the dungeon and return to town.
This is a fairly banal example as adventures go, of course, but it illustrates how event-based adventures can be outlined. Note in particular how, while the events can be handled in quite a number of ways, each requires its predecessor. If the players aren't able to track down the dungeon, the plot stalls, and the GM must take measures to preserve forward momentum. Rather than letting the players stumble through the woods, a local farmer might approach them and help show them the way to the monsters' lair. The plot allows leeway, but only so much before it progresses.
A more sophisticated adventure design may incorporate any number of subplots. A subplot will be chronologically interwoven with the primary plot, and may be used to stimulate the adventure when it's flagging. At heart, however, it has the same structure:
A-1. The characters are ambushed by monsters just outside of town.
A-2. The characters discover there is a traitor in town.
A-3. The characters discover a clue to the traitor's identity.
A-4. The characters seek out and track down the traitor.
A-5. The characters fight the traitor.
Further complexity and player freedom can be added by incorporating contingency plots, essentially "branch points" provided for events where the players can resolve them in multiple ways. For example, let's alter that subplot:
A-4. The characters seek out and track down the traitor.
A-I-5. The characters fight the traitor.
A-I-6. The characters kill the traitor.
A-II-5. The characters speak to the traitor and discover his daughter is being held hostage.
A-II-6. The characters seek out and track down the traitor's daughter.
A-II-7. The characters fight monsters to rescue the traitor's daughter.
While it might be a bit depressing to consider the fate of daughter if the players choose plot I, it doesn't need to be an issue. The reality of the world will generally be tailored to the contingency the players enacted. If the players shot first and asked questions later, the daughter may never have existed, and the traitor's journal reveals a payoff or other similarly nasty motivation. Of course, it's also an option to emphasize the consequences of such decision-making, and have the players discover the hostage daughter's existence and save her to atone for their rash action. Both GM choices are viable; an event-based adventure is by no means lacking in depth.
Of course, it's highly unlikely that many GMs actually write out and outline their plots in this manner. Nevertheless, if they develop their campaigns around events for the players to encounter or trigger (a villain to kill, a victim to save), the GM almost certainly could outline the entirety of their campaign plot in this sequential manner. Improvisation will still likely have a role, adding depth and texture to the game world, but if the players push too far past the boundaries of the plot, the GM must either find a way to bring them back or ad-lib until there's downtime to plan out a new series of events. Depending on the individual GM and their degree of contingency plotting, players may be jumping through arranged hoops or they may have a reasonable degree of liberty, but ultimately, the sequence of the plot will still bend their characters towards it. How to construct an alternative?
3. Node-Based GMing
A node-based adventure is fundamentally constructed around dynamic GM-created characters, factions, and forces. These are the "nodes" described by node-based GMing, and shall hereafter be referred to as such. Each node is designed with factual details, crunchy statistics, interests, methods, motives, and relationships to the other nodes. No events need be planned, though a GM will probably have plans for the actions of each node regarding the others. The plot emerges in the interactions of the player characters with the nodes, and the best way to represent a potential adventure is with a flowchart rather than an outline.
What constitutes a node? Detailing every NPC in the game is obviously a waste of time. Instead, nodes are the important forces, whether a single actor or a legion, that act on and respond to the player characters. Every soldier in an army is not a node, but the army as a whole is one, being an entity with power, objectives, and leadership. A villain and his loyal crew of henchmen will constitute a single node because they act as one; a villain controlling tribes of creatures, each with internal leadership and enmities towards the other tribes for the players to exploit, will be one node with relationships to several others. Powerful independent agents will be their own nodes, while a faction including many powerful individuals of similar intentions and goals will be a single node. The purpose of thinking in terms of nodes is not to describe those with power but to easily describe the interactions of in-game powers.
When the GM designs a potential node-based adventure, they sketch out and refine an array of nodes for the adventure's particular setting. In essence, they are creating a web of local interactions and tensions for the player characters to stumble into. A well-designed array will include several nodes with an interest in the player characters (who are really a mobile node of their own), for advancing their goals or removing potential obstacles. A plot can be created almost completely on the fly, centering around what the players are most interested in and their characters the most involved in. With predefined motives and methods, each node will present logical courses of action to follow.
On a very small scale, the town guards will fight against everyone who breaks the law and recruit help when they're outgunned or too busy to investigate, the thieves' guild will be trying to prey on the richest people and choicest items in town, the necromancer will be stalking the graveyard and kidnapping people to experiment on, the disreputable inn will recruit thugs to sabotage the honest one, and so on. On a grander scale, the order of paladins will be hunting down evil and protecting the innocent wherever possible, the tyrant will be taxing his kingdom to the bone to gain power and wage war, the forces of evil will be gathering legendary artifacts to complete a sinister ritual, the church will be recruiting champions to take on an extraplanar threat, and so on.
All of these nodes can interact with the players, and other nodes will react to the effects the players create. In essence, by thinking about the actors on the stage rather than the story, the GM can easily continue the flow of action under almost any circumstance without needing to take time to reassess the plot. Indeed, the plot no longer needs to be assessed or managed or brought to heel at all, and can instead unfold in any direction the players wish to travel in. Players can easily join the thieves' guild instead of fighting against it because the GM already knows what nodes will be working against it, and can thus quickly create effective challenges for players to overcome. When the course of play exhausts the adventure potential of the various nodes, then new ones can be easily introduced, with either new ones showing up in the area or the characters' travels taking them to new node arrays (the former is an excellent hook to introduce the latter).
An example would help solidify exactly what nodes are and what a node-based adventure looks like. In the case of the adventure described under Event-Based GMing, the nodes would break down like this:
-The townfolk, including their leader.
-The monsters.
-The traitor.
This looks pretty simple, and their motivations barely need to be expanded on. With the obvious antagonistic relationship between the townfolk and the monsters, the adventure will probably play out much the same way as it did originally. To show the potential of node-based GMing, a more complex example is needed.
4. A Sample Node-Based Adventure: "Bad Company"
Setting: The town of Postoar. Postoar is small but a caravan site of some significance, connecting to the northern port city of Caerten (which it is governed by) with long trade routes south into forestland and west into the plains. The main road that runs through town is the north/south route to Caerten. Its buildings are small and humble but well-maintained. Pleasant as they are, they're overshadowed by the caravan grounds that take up almost the entire west side of the main road. A maze of wagons, carts and livestock are in a continual bustle on the dry, well-trampled grounds. Caravanners are constantly arriving, trading, talking, making plans, checking in with the town's suppliers and striking out again. A haphazard of tents forms a makeshift border to the caravan grounds, populated by travellers in between rides and too cheap to stay in town. To the northwest is a thick and untamed forest, while to the east are some small local farms.
The players will probably arrive in Postoar by working as caravan guards.
Nodes:
Seibel and his Gang: Seibel is a creepy lowlife who runs the only town inn, which is also the shoddiest building in town. His real business is the shakedown operation he runs on all the juicy merchandise passing through Postoar. Using the hidden basement of his inn as his base of operations, he has a variety of thugs who do the dirty work for him and keep his name clean. Every day they trot out through the caravan grounds, look over the various cargo, and pull off a quick heist or bit of knife-at-the-throat extortion when the dust is so thick that the town guards can't see them through it.
Resources: Seibel is a competent rogue himself, and has quite a few fighters and rogues of varying ability working through him. He keeps two barbarian bodyguards, and also keeps in touch with some shady caravan contacts who let him know when big money is going through town. The inn itself has a secret basement which serves as his office, and two secret doors from there, one of which is his personal storage and one of which is a secret passage which leads to his emergency exit behind the inn.
Goals: Profit and nothing more, with no ethical compunctions to get in the way. Pushing out the competition and keeping the law away is a plus.
Relationships: Tries to keep out of sight of the town guards as best he can but isn't afraid to kill any of them that get too close. Wants to kill the new bandits in town (the Silver Band) before they start cutting into his business, but knows nothing about them except that they've been poking around. Doesn't know about the gnolls and doesn't care.
Hooks: An agent of Seibel's will probably try to recruit them to do the dirty work of tracking down and killing the bandits. Of course, Seibel has no attention of paying anyone who can just be killed instead.
The Silver Band: The Silver Band is the secret arm of the Silver Bastion Mercantilist Guild up in Caerten. The Guild is trying to corner the market on rare magical items, and the Band are the agents that both rough up the competition and "acquire" the most interesting magical items for the Guild to sell or reverse-engineer. A team from the Silver Band has set up camp in the forest northwest of town, in pursuit of a particularly exotic magical item that was supposed to be passing through Postoar. They've been sending agents into town and along the roads to watch for it, but the caravan hasn't showed, and they're beginning to suspect someone intercepted it.
Resources: The team has a few competent professionals, including a ranger and a spellcaster, and premium equipment to help them do the job. Most of the grunt work is done by a pack of relatively skilled goblins.
Goals: Getting the item they're after is their top priority. Without it, they'll have to find some way to return back with gear of equivalent worth, probably by raiding a few caravans. They're not upstanding citizens, but they know talking is smarter than fighting when they have a choice.
Relationships: They knew about Seibel before they came to town and have nothing but contempt for him, though they also suspect he may be sitting on the item they want, and are trying to sound out whether he has it. They're trying to avoid the notice of the town guards, but a lot of caravans have reported the goblins watching them from the roadside. They don't know about the gnolls, but one of their goblins never came back from patrol, and they're on the alert.
Hooks: The Silver Band will be making forays into town. They may try to kidnap or steal from a character with interesting gear, but most importantly, their routes back to camp (some of which lead through the west plains) will be helpful for party trackers.
Captain Brasset and the Town Guard: Captain Brasset is a military veteran who didn't want retirement and was assigned to Postoar as a gentle equivalent. This has given him a deep, abiding fury which he takes out on the lawbreakers of Postoar at every opportunity. Seibel's crafty avoidance of legal culpability has only made him angrier. He runs a tight ship, keeping the caravans under constant surveillance and investigating the increasing caravan disappearances of late as best he can with his limited personnel.
Resources: The town guard is the local law, with the authority and punitive power (including a jail) that implies. Though small in number, they're well-trained and fairly well-equipped, and Brasset himself is a ferocious combatant. They have a cleric to attend to wounds.
Goals: Brasset passionately wants dead or in jail every person shaking down the caravans, but he wants Seibel exposed and arrested most of all. He also wants to investigate the goblin appearances and caravan disappearances, which he believes are related, but his limited manpower is an obstacle.
Relationships: The guards are focused first and foremost on bringing Seibel and his goons to justice. They have a vague idea that new bandits (the Silver Band) are in the area, but don't know much beyond that. They know nothing about the gnolls.
Hooks: Brasset will personally tear apart anyone he suspects is working for Seibel, but honest adventurers are just the kind of manpower he needs, and he'll be willing to pay someone who can investigate the caravans and the goblins.
Gatti and her Gnolls: Gatti is the hideously scarred matron of a small gnoll hunting party, which arrived and claimed the plains west of town as their personal grounds about a month ago. They are predatory, vicious, spiteful, and fond of bipeds when they get hungry. They've been the ones attacking caravans, mostly to fill their bellies, but they've been looting the shiniest objects. Of course, the magic item the Silver Band are looking for is exceptionally shiny; the gnolls were the ones who snatched it first and buried it beneath the dead tree that serves as their camp, a few miles into the thick grass of the plains.
Resources: Gatti is a low-level cleric (who can speak broken common) with a pet hyena. Her brood is a sturdy bunch, but the only material resources they have to work with are the weapons they looted from caravan guards.
Goals: To kill and eat anything that shows up on their turf and looks tasty (and to hyenas, everything looks tasty).
Relationships: They don't know or care anything about Seibel or the guards, but they do know that goblins have been running through their territory, and they don't like. They already killed one, but it put up a good fight, and they're aching to take their revenge out on the others.
Hooks: Anyone moving through the plains or trying to track down the item is probably going to have a nasty encounter with them.
How it Actually Played Out: When my player group (a fighter, ranger and druid) arrived in town, fresh off a caravan, their first order of business was to secure a place to sleep in the inn. One of Seibel's henchmen (a halfling woman by the name of "Tiny") saw them as some new muscle in town, and brought them to Seibel for a business proposition. Seibel offered them a very substantial amount of gold to hunt down the bandits and kill them, which they accepted, and got to work by shadowing some of Seibel's thugs the next day and waiting for goblins to show up.
They did, a fight quickly broke out between the goblins and the thugs. The law tried to break it up, the goblins scattered, the guards pursued, and Brasset gave the players an earful. They put a good samaritan spin on tailing Seibel's goons, though, and so he gave them an offer to investigate what the goblins were doing (and leave Seibel to him). They accepted, and started tracking the goblin (and guard chasing him) west. Of course, they ran into the gnoll squad.
The results were hilarious. Revealing in the most bloody way possible that she'd already had her fill on the town guard who was passing through, Gatti was almost willing to let the players through, until she asked them if they were with the goblins and the druid said yes ("Roll initiative." "DAMN it, Eric!"). One Burning Hands spell from Gatti (Fire domain) and a quick fight later, the players and the gnolls were both fleeing from a rapidly spreading wildfire in opposite directions. In between curses, Gatti did shriek that they should leave her hunting grounds and go back to the forest, though.
Resting up in the inn to recuperate and striking out the next day, the players succesfully tracked the disturbances caused by fast-moving armored goblins in the forest (undamaged thanks to the wind pushing the fire in another direction). They tried to spy on the Silver Band encampment when they came to it, but while they were bickering about whether to observe it or attack with the element of surprise, a patrolling goblin came across them and alerted the camp. Outnumbered and quickly surrounded, the players opted to converse (mostly with a very intelligent half-orc while the leader argued with the spellcaster), were told that Seibel was just a two-bit thug, and were offered some cash (with a greater probability of payment) to take him out. The players told them about the gnolls, too, which they were interested to hear.
After the trek back to town, they were quickly brought before Seibel again, the activity attracting the interest of the town guards. Seibel inquired if the work was done. The reply was roughly along the lines of "Fire in your face," and so Seibel bolted through his secret passage while his body guards took on the party. A comedic scuffle ensued, including a critical that decapitated one of the barbarians in the very first action and an attempt to bull rush a writing desk. Without enough time to pore over Seibel's room for hidden treasures, they followed through the secret passage, coming out and discovering Seibel and some more of his thugs in a heated conversation with Brasset and the town guards. The players weighed their options, and were planning to kill Seibel with a ranged attack, when the ranger was spotted, bow in hands. In the following hasty explanation, when they admitted to Brasset that Seibel had hired them to kill some people, Brasset tried to arrest Seibel on the spot. He bolted, but the druid had cleverly gotten around to the other side of the building and managed to knock him down as he passed. One thug was mauled, the others surrendered, Seibel was arrested, and the players were offered no charges in exchange for signing depositions against Seibel and getting the hell out of town. Hooray!
Of course, after they returned to the inn, it was pointed out by the ranger that they technically hadn't completed their contract, as Seibel was still alive.
The following stealth mission attempting to kill an unarmed man in a jail cell was priceless, but suffice to say that it involved fighting through a barred window, a screaming Brasset in pajamas, some diplomacy checks, and getting the hell out of town.
5. Conclusion
I didn't have a particularly strong idea how that adventure would play out going in, and I'm thrilled with the outcome: a good time for all that never had a hitch and never flagged. My campaign continues, and the players have now made the journey up to Caerten, which has many times more nodes, and trouble's already brewing between our intrepid heroes and the local halfling crime families as they enter the Silver Band's employ. Combined with a game I'm running online, I've at least proved that node-based GMing works for me.
The more important question, however, is whether node-based GMing has general utility rather than being my personal technique. That's why I'm posting this on a forum rather than keeping on with my own games, after all. I believe that designing adventures around nodes rather than events provides for flexible, adaptable game plots with a superior degree of player freedom, without any particular sacrifices or additional rigor of planning. But I'm just one person with a limited degree of experience, so I throw this open to all of you guys:
Do you see this as viable? Do you already use comparable techniques? Do you see problems I don't? Does this sound interesting? Too long, didn't read? I've been typing my thoughts out for quite some time here, and I'm curious to see yours.