Troika Campaign and Adventure Planning Tool

I found this in my archive. Supposedly it is enough to plan a campaign.

• Pick three themes
• A list of three conflicts that might happen in the game.
• A list of three interesting NPCs that might be encountered.
• A list of three interesting locations that the PCs might visit.
• A list of three "tone-setting" events that might occur, to give genre-flavor.
• A list of three plot-moving revelations that might occur.

The Big Blackout - Contemporary Mini Campaign

This is a mini campaign I intended to run and that was replaced with another game. It is intended for players who don't care for fantastic elements. It is supposed to feel at least somewhat like GTA. Everyone plays a person that was convicted for a crime. It is the player's choice if the crime was actually committed by the character or not. Use the crime table to find out what the crime is.

It all starts in a courthouse. It is focused on an unspecified city.

COURTHOUSE (Plot Point 1 = PP1)

All the characters are in one room together at the court, after being sentenced by judges, waiting for a transport back to prison. With a giant guy (Blabes). “I don’t like your face!”

2 cops (guns) are also in the room, but will ignore fights without weapons.

There is sudden tumult, sirens, cops whisper, then run out (PP2). Blabes starts attacking right away.

6 more cops (guns) are in the building. SWAT (8) will arrive, but are busy.

1 girl (secretary): “I can show you a secret way out, if you swear to pay me back.”

Hands over 2 key cards for -2 floor elevator. “Just follow the Hieroglyphs!”

UNLOCK PP3

AMOK GUY (PP2)

A psycho with trenchcoat has entered the main hall of the courthouse. He blocks basically the only exit. He has 5 hostages. SWAT teams (24) come from outside, but 8 cops are on the other side.

The Amok guy asks to talk to the president and newsstations, because “we are all controlled by beings on couches in another world. we are just imagination! they are even drunk!”

After 4 hours of waiting, the SWAT team (16) comes in. Probably a short fight. They take everyone prisoner again. Shortly after the Complete Blackout! (PP4) starts.

THE DOG CAVE - ANUBIS (PP3)

Under the courthouse there is a cave. It can be accessed by following hieroglyphs (1st Scarabeus, 2nd Ankh, 3rd dog head) in old archive file rooms (encounter: old file lady).

In the final room, remove a shelf to find an neo classicist Egyptian mural. Press in order of path: Scarabeus, Ankh, dog head. Opens mural as secret door: wet stairs down cave.

Dark, dog barking. Then attack by dogs.

Cave has many forks. Main way leads  to old subway tunnel not longer in use. You can walk out over rails at a station. When coming out, it’s completely dark. Complete blackout! (PP4) Some scared people are in the subway station. They just lie on the floor and cry.

COMPLETE BLACKOUT! (PP4)

Electricity is out for a few hours and it’s getting dark. There are traffic jams everywhere, as all the traffic lights stopped.

People walking to their apartments in poor neighbourhoods will have them either be blocked off by police units (1d4)- there is a fight going on behind, nobody is allowed to pass - or by gang members with knifes and guns.

In rich neighbourhoods corporate security by Janus Systems or Group 7 have closed down the entrances and don’t let anyone in

After dark the looting starts. 1d12 looters take stuff from a store. After 1d20 rounds police or a gang will show up.

For more details use the Blackout Random Tables

STREET BLOCKADE

While driving a car, the characters notice that the street is blocked ahead by cars parked together. 2 people with rifles stand in fron, 6 more with guns are hiding behind the cars. They look like a random group of everyday citizens. Some wear suits or business dresses, others shirts and shorts. The are between 35 and 80.

They don’t want anyone to pass and send cars back.

“We don’t trust you! Go away!”

THE ONE LIGHT

While most of the city block is completely dark, there is one bar that seems to have normal light. There is a crowd of people in front drinking. It seems everything is normal. Inside the bar is crowded. They only take cash obviously. There is a basement with a disco.

The bar has it’s own generator. It’s run by a survival maniac called Inza. She tells that she saw that coming and that she is prepared. She says she is looking for guys with guns to find her friends (actually a militia, but she won’t tell), as they did not show up. She has to stay at the bar.

Behind the disco a steel door leads to a bunker where she stores a lot of weapons. Even anti tank bazookas. She won’t tell anyone about it. The weapons are for her friends, militia.

The militia members (4 with guns) actually ended up - paranoid - as they are, dug up in the telephone franchise shop of on of the members only 2 blocks away. They had a stand off with a local gang and 2 gang members have been killed and lay out on the street. From time to time gun shots may get the attention of people nearby. The gang decided to wander off after some hours, but left 2 kids at the corner, who are supposed to ask for reinforcement (running) when someone moves inside.

Savage Synnibarr Space

Between the first Synnibarr adventure that turned into a 12.5 sessions mini campaign on the alchemist Durana's plan and the Agent-Nelson/Cloudpuncher campaign, there was an intermezzo in space - with the spaceship discovered under water.

The space adventures were supposed to be continue further, but I dropped the campaign after three sessions, because I got the impression that the players were too powerful.

Admittedly that was more an issue of me being scared to power up the NPCs enough, but I still had issues, as a normal space opera setting can't compete with the power level of Synnibarr.

Anyways: I never did a write up of the game and this should be a start.

We played 4.5 sessions. (Like in the "1st season" the final session was too long to fit into one evening or afternoon and had to be continued another day.)

In my 2013 gaming calendar the sessions can be found under the following names:

• The Home Space Express
• Spacestation V
• 2 teams of Slavers
• Through the DarkTek Office to the Vault
• The Taker: Grenades & Eyeballs

This is what happened as far as I can remember. I used my private GM notes for the summary.

The group leaves the Synnibarr on the  spaceship they found under water

Next: Back on Synnibarr: Ninjas in the rooftop lounge

Savage Synnibarr: Cloudpuncher's House

Leaving the airships and Clam Island behind, the group makes a 6 day trip with Airy's solid illusion submarine near Ship's Home, the giants' capital. Airy stays awake all that time, but is able to handle it with his mushrooms.

Gorogoroth, Dita, Trush and Douro walk along the cliffs near the coast towards Ship's Home. At one time they encounter an Giant airship patrol, but Trush turns into a giant flying stingray and covers view on the others with his wide body.

That way they make it to the city before the evening. They end up at a gate at the city wall where two drunk giant guards are on watch. Trush turns into a giant baby in a wheeled cradle and the group comes up with the story that they found the baby in a human city and want to return it to the giants. After being suspicious for a short time, the guards see them as heroes (Adventure Card) and let them pass, telling them about the way to the orphanage of Ship's Home.

While the rest of the group goes there, the invisible Gorgoroth follows Dita's instruction to look for the Cloudpuncher's house and to retrieve the book. Gorogoroth actually can smell from outside that there are two giant women in the living room in the ground floor while upstairs there are many weird and exotic objects.

He decides to fly intangible to the upper floor and lands inside a small room - at least for giants. Next to a small desk and a chair, a giant sized chest is the most outstanding object in the room. He puts his intangible head inside and can smell gold as well as a sleeping creature - an elvome. Elvomes are a cross between an elf and a gnome: 3 feet tall creatures that look like an overweight Yoda, who possess some magical abilities.

Gorgoroth decides to use his mind control on the elvome and is finally able to take him over. He makes the creature explain him telepathically that the chest is his home and that Cloudpuncher took the chest here seven years ago. The elvome's name is Chubbga and he has seen his chest change owner multiple times.

Gorgoroth asks the Chubbga to open the chest and elvome uses some telekinetic powers to open the look and come outside. Under Gorgoroth control he explains that he did not notice too much about the Cloudpuncher and his house, but that he knows where the giant captain was writing in his business journal: in another room on the upper floor. The elvome also explains that he has a magic dagger that turns people into golden figurines if they are stabbed with it. Gorgoroth commands him to take the two golden figurines from the chest with him.

In the meantime the rest of the group has reached the orphanage - at dusk. Some kids playing in front of that building notice them and a girl from the group falls for the cute giant baby. She tells them to bring it in the orphanage where an old nurse tells that the orphanage can take care of the baby, but that Dita and Douro better contact the authorities the next day, so that the parents can be found. For that night they can stay at the orphanage as there are enough cribs the humas can easily fit in.

Gorgoroth in the meantime let the elvome unlock the door to Cloudpuncher's study room telekinetically. He enters the big room that is filled with many weird objects from all corners of Synnibarr. The chameleon drake is greeted upon entering by a stuffed parrot that strangely talks to him in a shrill voice. Despite the danger of the two women downstairs hearing something, Gorgoroth decides to leave the door of the room open.

The parrot greets him and gives him advice first to clean the mirror in the room, then to take a red shield with a skull from the wall and finally to drink a potion that he found in the room. After hesitating for some moments, Gorgoroth follows the advice, as the parrot is not able to tell anything about the location of the book. Before that he tell the elvome to shut the door as the voice of the parrot is getting louder and louder, and could be noticed by the women downstairs.

Golgoroth examines the mirror and sees that its surface is dimmed by some grey film. He starts cleaning the mirror while being invisible with a cloths that is hanging over the mirror's corner. But only seconds after he starts, the mirror shatters in thousands of shards. Gorgoroth's scale skin is strong enough to withstand and harm from the sharts, but he can only rejoice for seconds, as he feels some presence making its way through from the back of the mirror, some evil presence...

He realizes that this is a mirror demon version of himself. And there is no doubt that his demon form posses the same powers as the adventurer chameleon drake. While Gorgoroth is able to withstand the mirror demon's first trial to possess him. Instead he runs to the wall and rips off the red shield with the skull on it, hanging there, that the parrot mentioned.

He feels that this skull shield has special powers: the ability to turn an opponent into dust, if they fail an attack. Before he can achieve more with this logic, his demonic doppelganger takes control over him and commands him to stay invisible in one corner of the room.

Douro and Dita decide in the meantime that they want to check out Cloudpuncher's house themselves. They take along Trush who is still in his giant toddler form and walks with them over to the house. There he knocks while the humans stay behind him.

Together they explain that the fake baby is Cloudpuncher's child. For some reason the old and young woman take them serious and ask them to enter the room. Trush is able to convince the giant girl into breast feeding him.

Dita takes telepathic contact with Cloudpuncher's ghost in her ghost lamp and asks him about the house. He warns her about the mirror.

Next: Cloudpuncher's Secret Chamber

SeedBoneMeat: Turning collaborative story telling into a non RPG game

I am wondering why I put my creative energy into RPGs instead of - say for example - writing stories.

The answer is really simple: RPGs give instant gratification and feedback. There is an audience. And this audience is even rewarded - by participation as well as by score tracking system and by rewards for building their characters.

They also don't need a lot of written preparation. You can plan the game under the shower or while doing  a hike and those little splinters of ideas - which can be replaced later by other ideas while just daydreaming - or just put in practice on the gaming table.

RPGs provide a lot of tools to structure the plot and character creation process. There are random tables and die rolls. There are backbones of a setting laid out that can be used to support creators.

So how can we transfer these features to a non synchronous medium? Sure: there are online forum discussions and even online forum games. But the later does not really work so well in my experience. Most of the games take too long to take off and die quickly.

We need a short set up period. There should be the possibility to drop in and out quickly. That can be done best, if there are standardized elements - like character archetypes - that can be used across different realizations of the narrative - different game sessions.

It is also important that there is no need to do too much preparation work, like reading long pieces of text. Contributors would be further motivated by getting score points for every piece of text created - as long as it is a deeper development of a collaboratively designed element - as well as special acknowledgement - karma - for pieces that are well received.

All the elements - setpieces - should be small though. A collaborative writers worst nightmare is the person who starts adding more and more stuff without collaborating any longer. Somehow this energy some people develop has to brought to good use.

What I envision now is a three layer structure: SEED - BONE - MEAT

Seeds are just ideas thrown out on the gaming/writing table.

Bones are created the moment when the seeds are connected to the work already done.

Meat is turning the bones into real text.

Meat has a style texture (skin?) that can be decided on, on the bone level. But probably that is only a suggestion.

There can be different manifestations of the outer layers created from the lower layers - done by different contributors, or even by the same person. In the end it is decided in the group which of the manifestations is
made canonical.

To make all of this work. It is most important that there is a limited time frame. People are not supposed to feel that any of their ideas rejected will take the spotlight of them for too long. This creates frustration and would turn the collaborative effort into a something similar to trench warfare.

Potentially even a randomizer (dice, cards) could be used to take some tension off the cherry picking.

One question that remains is, if there is need to structure the seeds even further. For example into:

characters, locations, interactions, plot twists, scene exits, scenes, etc.

Currently I think about being pretty lose with that. Probably it is best to give a category to each seed. That way contributors can work on in parallel on the same kind of seed. E.g. "everyone creates a location seed now!" Those parallel created seeds can than be ranked and put into categories like "Needs to Be Used", "Maybe" or "Vetoed". As people are forced to rank, it is to be taken less personal.

(Having seed categories should also help to solve the issue of creating too much of one category.)

On the bone level creating connections should be rewarded - but also questioning connections or adding a twist to connections.

The question is whether the connections can be seen as seeds themselves. Maybe they are similar but they definitely belong to the 2nd level. Except for that there is probably not much left for the bone phase anyways.

One issue that comes up is that while everyone is creating seeds (and connecting bones?), is that there will not be much talk. RPGs live from the constant chat. But they also don't create text and are synchronous. The seed-bone-meat(-skin?) game is not supposed to be that. Therefore that should not create issues.

But if it asynchronous, is there a need for a session structure? Would it be possible to just provide a big tool box? I feel that there needs to be a certain pressure. A deadline - an guaranteed end helps with that. The tighter it is, the better. The issue is that asynchronous deadlines are hard to make happen. My best hope is that the reward (karma) structure will help with that.

Karma should expire, creating an urgency to use it. But it is still undecided what Karma actually allows you to do. Probably you are given something like director rights: e.g. what seeds are created next? what bone category do we need now? Probably the Karma can also be used to gain an extra vote in the ranking process.

Now comes the tricky process of meat creation: I never enjoyed turning ideas into final, detailed text. But I think that this process can hopefully gain something by turning into micro competitions. Everyone creates the meat for the same section and then this is ranked. As reward for winning you can create the follow up meat or give it as assignment out to some other players.

The most important part about the meat is that it has to stay SHORT. Probably there should be a strict limit around 500 characters - with the option of "follow up meat" (or "meat bridge"?): another 500 characters. That way it stays modular and hopefully playful.

It would be also great to tag the meat pieces so that they can be recycled to be used with other seeds. E.g. action sequence, or first kiss, or whatever. Meat transformation would be another process: it rewrites a current peace of meat. The director / Karma holder could request a rewrite.

Maybe it would make sense to turn this into a game about the "writers's room" on the set of a TV show. This is an interesting idea - taking something like Primetime Aventures one step furter: you don't play characters: you play writers, or parodies of writers: the melodrama king, the hand grenade action guy, etc.

But this is another interesting idea I will discuss in another post.

The distribution of SBM should be handled via a pyramid structure. For each two Seed decisions there is one Bone created and for 2 Bones there has to be one Meat, before more seeds are allowed to be created.

Just one afterthought: SeedBoneMeat is based on a voting process. Every time there is a stalemate a randomizer is used instead to come to a decision. This way SBM can be even played/used by a single person: just always put two elements out, and let the randomizer pick one. I think this option will make testing the structure for me much easier.

Here you can find a first SBM test run.

Savage Synnibarr: Attack of the Giant Airships

After taking care of Cloudpuncher's remains, Douro decides to check back inside the Temple of Yanak. On the way through the gate he is attacked by two fire clams, but he is able to switch on his Tiger Fire before their flames can hit him and is therefore immune to the fire damage.

Inside he collects all the money covering the floor of the lower floor. He splits the 100.000$ in gold coins between everyone. He also wants to save Kylie, but decides to wait for 24 hours until Dita is not fatigued any longer (from healing herself), because she can use her telekinetic power to move the mage warrior out of Yanak's gaze.

In the meantime Gorgoroth realizes that the Storm Sphere he took as treasure from the Temple is actually an sentient being which - surprisingly - has powers related to storms. He telepathically probes the Sphere and notices that it is in a state of dreaming, but decides not to go any deeper.

The rest of the crew rests for 24 hours in Airy's submarine. But just as they want to return to the temple, Gorgoroth smells a taste of fuel he did not notice before: Seconds later three airships break out of the clouds above the island.

Gorgorth, invisible and intangible, flies up to figure out what are the intentions of the ships' crews. He realizes fast that they are slavers who came here for the same emergency signal, that lured Cloudpuncher in.

Trush takes robot bird form to attack one of the airships. Despite enemy fire he creates a laser peak from his laser sword and damages the hull of one of the three airships. Gas is streaming out, and the zeppelin starts to sink slowly.

Dita in the meantime is focused on getting the submarine to the sea together with Airy. Gorgoroth uses his mind control powers to take over the gunners of the other two airships, making them fire on each other. Another airship's hull is broken. But his decision to let the mind control slip off the Winged Lion, takes him to a dangerous place: the Lion who was plotting revenge all the time uses the first opportunity to slam the invisible Chameleon Drake into the razor clam covered ground with telekinesis. Thanks to his tough drake skin, Gorgoroth is able to soak the damage, but he realizes that the psionic lion can see him even when being invisible.

In the meantime Douro shoots fire from a distance, but he is not as powerful as in melee, and despite multiple attacks misses the do break any of the hulls.

Trush has less of an issue with his laser peak from nearby and damages the hull of the last airship.

Dita has the submarine prepared to leave by now and, telepathically urges everyone to stop fighting. They follow her request and get inside right away. Seconds later the submarine is underwater and on it's way to the giants' city, Ship's Home.

The Winged Lion telepathically reaches out to Gorgoroth and - in what is supposed to be an intimidating threat - tells the Chameleon Drake that he will never be forgiven for the suicide forced onto the Lion's partner for centuries. Instead the Lion promises a brutal revenge and the painful death of Gorgoroth. But the Chameleon Drake is neither scared nor impressed and shakes the threat off with laughter.

The telepathic contact breaks off as the Orange Submarine has gone too far and too deep.