Aedilred
2014-10-19, 10:13 PM
That is to say, a scenario about a railroad. Or railway, as I would normally call such things, but since I'm going for a bit of an Old West vibe "railroad" seems appropriate too. Players of EMPIRE!, feel free to look away.
So anyway, my plan is to run a scenario that revolves around the construction of a railway in a largely pre-industrial society and the resulting issues from it, taking inspiration from some of my favourite westerns (most notably, Once Upon a Time in the West) but also I guess from stuff like Cranford if anyone's familiar with that, or even Raising Steam. It'd be a one-off scenario to be done preferably in one ~four-hour session but could conceivably stretch to two sessions. The system is homebrew, fairly crunch-lite and largely freeform so we can probably move relatively quickly compared to, say, D&D 3.5; the players will all be (or should be!) familiar with the setting, and I can probably get much of the immediately relevant non-spoilery backstory out of the way before play starts.
My principal issue is that I have no experience with running short one-off scenarios. I've done plenty of GMing but that's all been long campaigns and any time I try to tell (or indeed GM) a story it always takes about four times as long as I plan for. The plot doesn't have to be particularly complex: something along the lines of "<local people/tribe> are causing trouble with the construction of the railway, the PCs are sent in to sort it out one way or another" would probably be fine. But when it comes to working it out in detail; what sort of a twist to put in, how many encounters, etc. I start to struggle because I'm aware of my tendency to overcomplicate things.
So firstly, does anyone know of any pre-written scenarios that might be ripe for adaptation? It feels like the sort of setting where there would be, but of course searching for anything RPG related with "railroad" or "railway" in the title throws up a rather predictable set of results. Secondly, does anyone have any general advice on writing short one-off scenarios that might help me come up with something original (or indeed with any adaptation I do)?
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.
So anyway, my plan is to run a scenario that revolves around the construction of a railway in a largely pre-industrial society and the resulting issues from it, taking inspiration from some of my favourite westerns (most notably, Once Upon a Time in the West) but also I guess from stuff like Cranford if anyone's familiar with that, or even Raising Steam. It'd be a one-off scenario to be done preferably in one ~four-hour session but could conceivably stretch to two sessions. The system is homebrew, fairly crunch-lite and largely freeform so we can probably move relatively quickly compared to, say, D&D 3.5; the players will all be (or should be!) familiar with the setting, and I can probably get much of the immediately relevant non-spoilery backstory out of the way before play starts.
My principal issue is that I have no experience with running short one-off scenarios. I've done plenty of GMing but that's all been long campaigns and any time I try to tell (or indeed GM) a story it always takes about four times as long as I plan for. The plot doesn't have to be particularly complex: something along the lines of "<local people/tribe> are causing trouble with the construction of the railway, the PCs are sent in to sort it out one way or another" would probably be fine. But when it comes to working it out in detail; what sort of a twist to put in, how many encounters, etc. I start to struggle because I'm aware of my tendency to overcomplicate things.
So firstly, does anyone know of any pre-written scenarios that might be ripe for adaptation? It feels like the sort of setting where there would be, but of course searching for anything RPG related with "railroad" or "railway" in the title throws up a rather predictable set of results. Secondly, does anyone have any general advice on writing short one-off scenarios that might help me come up with something original (or indeed with any adaptation I do)?
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.