User:Spazalicious Chaos/The Book of Splendid Performance (3.5e Sourcebook)/Story

Before any of the later material becomes relevant, concerns must be adressed and terms must be defined, as it is these definitions that ultimately decide which, if any, of these new rules will work for you.

Campaign, Story and Scene

Here are the terms as this book defines them:

• Campaign is the total collected stories that feature the same setting and build upon previous events into a continuous chronical that details the actions of a select few individuals, usually the players characters but not always, especially when events conspire either in or out of game to remove or replace them.
• Story is a collection of related scenes that spells out a chain of events from start to resolution. Multiple stories can be interwoven or could branch off from a cntral story like braids of rope, but over the course of a campaign all stories must have resolution, whether positive or negative, at the end of the campaign. Finally, stories must have clear beginings and endings, whehter they take one or hundreds of gaming sessions to play out.
• Scene is a single plot point within a story. A story could be as short as a single scene or contain thousands of scenes, but a story is made up of scenes.Unlike stories, scenes do not interweave peacefully, but must be split if they are to coexist. Thus, while multiple stories can share a single scene, two scenes must be divided up and share focus to exist at the same time.

Story Types

Not all stories are alike, becasue that would be boring. However, what kind of story you tell will determine how useful this book will be to you.

• Episodic- This stories are very loosely related. They are usually all set in the same setting with the same or similar cast of characters, but events are usually isolated from one another. In D&D these are dungeon crawls and short quests that have nothing to do with one another. This book is zero use to these stories unless the GM is vindictive or really good at linking subplots.
• Heros' Quest- The grand spanning story wherein a massive change is made, either in the world or in the hero herself. The hero is the constant as well as those bound to her, as the hero is what gives the story meaning. Thus, the adventures are purely player driven and all the rules in this book help.
• Coming of Age- Similar to the Heros' Quest but with and end of the hero grows up, losing whatever nievity or innocence that kept her from being considered "mature" in her surroundings. These stories should start the player much weaker than average, thus Plot Points may be a life line, though Fate and Narratives are strange fits at best.
• Epic- These stories are about changing the world. Threats are universal and have wide reaching consequences, and counter measure take place on a massive scale. To compete the players must be high powered, thus Fate will go great with these stories, while Plot Points would be redundant at best.
• Others- To recount every possible story type possible in D&D would be a rediculous undertaking, thus use the above as guidelines for your story. Are the players magical school girls and boys that get mostly social problems that affect the school? Were the players once powerful villains that lost memories of their skill and the war that they set the stage for? The guidelines help, but the list is far from exhaustive.

How Rules Work

The story you create is useless in RPGs unless the rules back up your story. D&D is a perfect example of this, where the ruls don't even enforce it's own stated concept at about 6-10 level. However, discovering a rule disrupts the story and changing it after the fact is bad GMing at best. Thus, you must consider the following:

• How Powerful Are the Players/Will The Players Get? Setting this bar will change a lot in D&D, from what homebrew you use to how XP and treasure are handled. Determining this will also set how you arrange scenes and settings. If the players start out at 1rst level but you know you want to put them all the way through 20th, then any defenses/actions/features in the world to accomadate 20th level characters must be in place and observable at 1rst level. The best sign of a good GM is when the GM can refference something from 10 sessions back and the players can react accordingly. For example, if the throne room of the king is warded against teleportation and divination from the begining, when the players must assassinate the king later they will use other abilities to arrange his death, like coming in under mundane disguise.
• How Powerful Is The Rest Of The World? Almost more important than the first question, this one determines where the players stand. If nearly everyone else is just under gods in the power totem, high level character will never be as unusual or unique as a world like ours that just happens to have only one dragon that is ancient. This also sets a reasonable level of how NPCs act and react to events. A 20th level High Wizard of the Innermost Circle of Sequestered Magick is going to react to a red dragon crashing into his tower very differently from a 6th level HWICSM, just as a 1rst level innkeeper would be impossible if the innkeeper across the street is 15th level.
• Do I Need To Change The Rules? I have yet to see a game of D&D where the experienced GM says "no." D&D, as I have said once and will say again, does not work in any sense of the word as is. Thus, if (as is the likely case) D&D does not support your current story you must determine what is to be changed and how. If you need gritty and realistic combat (or highly theatrical comabt) then combat rules need to be changed. Magic might need to be changed. D&D's shameful economic system almost certainly has to be changed. New skills might need to emerge. In short, if a rule hurts the story or is just plain unfun, change it.