Format of plot books Options

[Demonseed Elite]

[Talia Invierno]

[Demonseed Elite]

Let's say that it's a couple of years down the road and a plot book we're writing pretty much calls for a new magical tradition as part of the storyline. Well, we're not really forbidden from putting that new tradition in the plot book. It doesn't introduce any new mechanics, those are already in Street Magic.

That said, if we do another magic rules supplement down the line, I know I'd strongly recommend putting that tradition in that supplement also, so players who pick up the magic rules supplements don't need to pick up this rule book to play that tradition.

Still, it's not new mechanics. That's the thing that SR4 is really avoiding putting in supplemental books. Which did happen in earlier editions.

[TypeRyder]

I think I like the event books most - you can simply read them or you can build shadowruns based on all the stuff inside.

Sure, track books are nice if you doesn't like to think about a run for yourself - but I for myself have the problem that I really need time to prepare them (because it's not my idea and therefore I have to read the whole thing instead of improvise on the way) and most of them have IMHO a touch of railroading which I don't like.

Players never act the direct way, they always invent other ways to handle things and I simply don't like it to put them back on line. So I have to improvise anyway - and with an adventure seed I can easily fit that new situation in - much better than to integrate a homebrewn situation inside a tracked adventure.

The reason for me to buy tracked adventures is to keep in line with the story - oh, and to get some maps *g*

[Mistwalker]

I like the event books, but like some of the detail that is found in some of the campaign books.

Brainscan had lots and lots of info on the setup in the Arcology, allowing a GM to have lots and lots of runs with or without using the runs in the book.

Hmm, event books combined with setting book?

[edrift101]

Personally, I prefer to have a bunch of game ideas loosely described like in Runners Haven. I find that the best games are character/player driven and loosely based on a set of events that you would like to happen.

Honestly, I have yet to run one of the fully plotted out adventures... Mostly because they are so easily broken and pretty linear in design.

[redne]

One problem with campaign books like Brainscan is that the possibility that the characters can actually affect the events around them is mostly illusory. Although the GM may allow the characters to "deviate from the script", it usually means that the campaign will be broken in relation to official storyline. Then the GM has the option of forgetting the storyline or fixing things somehow. I, personally, think the fixing option might be even uglier than not letting the PCs go their own way in the first place (if anything can actually be uglier than cruel railroading).

[Mistwalker]

I have no problem with chars making world shaking effects/events. If the official book says that Johnny 5 did the deed, well, the runners aren't too unhappy, as the heat is not on them, and those in the know know who really did the deed.

[fistandantilus4....]

Besides, Johnny 5 is just a rogue Ares anthroform. Everyone knows 'he' couldn't have really been behind it. It was Dunkelzhan.

[Mistwalker]

Your spilled the super secret.

The assassin bunnies have been unleashed

[OneSeventeen]

I suppose I prefer the kinds of things that are most vague and, thus, more easily modified to what we're already doing. In fact, I kind of prefer if things are happening in the background a little bit. I get a little tired of stories where the heroes save the entire frickin' Earth/Universe/Existence. I'd rather run a game at a level where global events are messing up local affairs and the characters are having to fix/modify/destroy things on that level.

Others will, of course, disagree. I think it just comes down to what level you want to play your game at; I think there's a continuum between huge save-the-world type plots and little locally-scaled plots. I imagine this is difficult to do, but ideally a book that advances world events would allow for a GM to take the information therein and run either direction with it.

I also think it's valuable to have a book be such that a player can read it and when the GM incorporates something from it, they think, "Oh woah. I remember reading about that," which will (hopefully) sort of parallel the character's thought of, "Oh... I heard about that on the news/from my contact/in the bar."


117

[fistandantilus4....]

[Da9iel]

Or does they, proud fallen Iron Chef Drop Bear Elder #19?

[fistandantilus4....]

They does.

[Magus]

[fistandantilus4....]

See. And I'm not even in Florida. :D

[redne]

What the hell are you people talking about??? :?

Anyway...

[Slash_Thompson]

put me down for track books and event books,

don't get me wrong, I like reading the campaign books but they really don't have much use for me to actually run them (either too much to tweak or too much effort to keep players close enough to canon paths for the events to be coherent - more recent campaigns have improved this, a little bit.)

track books on the other hand, I can start dropping the runs into my regular games right away with minimal tweaking, since you're getting basically just the 'plot' of the run and not the 'mechanics'.

and event books work great for my group since I use them to generate my own run ideas with a greater sense of tie-in for my players (these are also the only kind of plot book that I encourage my players to buy before I finish using it - since the runs are mostly not detailed)

[FrankTrollman]

Much as it seems to hack some people off really bad, I prefer it when events are never explained or returned to again. It would be a major problem for me if it was ever explained what "really" happened to Saito because it almost certainly wouldn't end up being what it was in my campaign.

Maintaining a shared world requires a shared cast of characters and a shared set of countries, but it also requires a substantial amount of "unknowns". Quantum areas of the world and the plot where players can take actions that they know in advance will never be countermanded in any later books.

Let's take the throwdown in Cambodia between Queen Rochefort of the Republic of Cambodia and the Nagaraja of Nag Kampuchea. Player characters could potentially choose to support either side, possibly even causing one team or the other to win - which would probably involve killing the leader of the other faction. That's fine. But if the books ever come out with an official storyline of what happened there in the last 6 years it's a total coin flip as to whether your team's antics were even possible.

In general, more plot hooks should be dealt with like Saito or the identity of Sheila Blatavaska. The plot hook is thrown down, some possible answers hinted at, and then the acual "answer" left up to individual campaigns with the promise to never speak of this again. It's the only way for player character actions to be rectifiable with future releases.

-Frank

[eidolon]

Campaign book: I like them, but I tend to wait until I can pick them up used. This is mostly because rather than run them beginning to end, I usually end up mining them for stuff that either will spark a new game/campaign, or stuff to fill out an existing game/campaign. I usually don't care much for trying to run a story line that fundamentally does not allow for player actions outside those expected in the linear story. (That's me. Not trying to start an argument.)

Track book: Predominately the same to me as a Campaign book. I love to skim through them, and I'm always interested in the meta developments (even the ones that I toss out and leave out of my game world).

Event book: My absolute favorite of the three. As a GM, YotC gave me a framework against/in which to set any number of runs, games, story lines, and campaigns. I was able to delegate the larger meta-world to the book, pulling events and timelines from that, while I was able to focus on the micro - the runs, the character stories and plots, the interactions, the NPCs for my game, etc.

Which ones are most enjoyable to read?

Event books, as you describe them.

Which ones are most useful to you as a GM?

Event books, for reasons given above.

Would you like to see more of one format or the other or an alternating mix of formats used?

I would like to see more event type books, but I think it's important to have a few different ways of presenting things. The other two types you describe are good for exactly those purposes, but to me, the way to present major events in the world is an Event book. Sure, the stuff in the other two make up bits of the plot, but it seems that they do so best on a smaller scale.

What might be missing from these various formats that you really wish were in plot books?

Maybe some more "major players" lists, more info on the movers and shakers? I love having "real" people in the game world to lean on and use. I know, pretty weak, but I really can't come up with anything else right now.

Do you have a "dream format" that you'd like to see plot books done in?

YotC. ;)

[Rifleman]

[Demonseed Elite]

I agree that leaving a number of unknowns in the metaplot is important. The hard part is that we never really know what we'll be leaving as unknowns and what we don't. If San Francisco were chosen as a signature sprawl in one of the sprawl books, the writer might be forced to deal with Saito, or at the very least they are going to have to establish the current situation, which says something about the direction of the Saito storyline.

I also encourage GMs to break canon and not to worry about it. I did it all the time in games I GMed, even going against canon I had written. The canon is there to provide a basic framework and an ongoing story but it's not there to lock anyone down into it. It's a roleplaying game, after all, and the freedom to go outside of canon is one of the great things about this medium that hasn't been duplicated very well elsewhere.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Demonseed Elite]

I agree with you on that point. :P

[odinson]