Don’t prep plots, use situations
- Plots are a determined series of events leading to a grand finally
- Plots tend to follow a specific trail and easily lead to railroading because of key elements have to happen
- Situations are a set of circumstances
- Situations happens whether or not the players interact with them
- Situations don’t have things hung up on a player doing a specific thing
- Situations react to player interaction rather than expect it unless players have repeatedly interfered
- Even if players have interfered earlier, a situation would still only prepare for the players inevitable interference or create other situations to distract them
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots
Structure
Scenarios consists of situations or other scenarios. Situations consists of scenes. Scenes consists of nodes at a specific point in time. Nodes can be locations, individuals or things. Nodes can contain other nodes.
graph TD Scenario-->Scenario Scenario-->Situations Situations-->Scenes Situations-->Nodes Scenes-->Nodes Scenes-->Time Nodes-->Nodes Nodes-->Locations Nodes-->Individuals Nodes-->Things