political
Individual Actions (usually due to down time for 1 or more characters working on a project or task)
Travel
Combat
Dungeoncrawl / Exploration

but have several players who are brand new (3/6) and several players (3/6) who haven’t played in an rpg campaign in 10+ years. We are coming up on our 1 year in April. Things are now starting to develop. Characters, plots, and goals are manifesting. It’s nice to see the group working together and also helping to drive the story through development of their characters.

One of the key elements to consider in establishing your criteria for categorisation is anything that you know about your player’s preferred gaming styles – if it were not for that one player’s aversion to “cosmic” scenarios, the categories I will use would be quite different. I’d probably bundle both “Cosmic” and “Fantasy” into a single category and label it “High Concept” or something similar.

Just a point that I thought worth reiterating!

@Anarkeith: Thanks for the heads-up on the Marshall Plan, I’ll have to check Amazon for it. I’m currently reading “Make A Scene” by Jordan E. Rosenfeld and it seems to translate really well into the planning of individual scenarios. You might find it worth checking out.

Here is the frame I use and flushes it out for greater planning. Dr.Nik Method:
1. List Story Arcs Horizontally
2. List Scenarios below each Arc
3. Flush out crap, keep the good stuff.
4. Group remaining scenarios and arcs into acts (usually iii-v)
5. play!

Ex:
Plot1 Plot2 Plot3
SceneA SceneA SceneA
SceneB …

1. List Story Arcs
This should include an ARC for each character, major plot line, NPC group, Antagonist, and an Other. Arcs should, at the early stage be numerous and broad!

2. List Scenarios below each Arc
Brainstorm and get as much ideas as possible, From prequel to postscript, list out the various scenarios that make up the arc. The end results should be in rough chronological order. These are all those couple sentence and concept ideas you were mentioning. After reading the article, I am going to insure that I subtype the scenarios for better long term game balance.

3. Flush out the crap, keep the good stuff.
The editing process, which I think you summarized well, is a key part of story and writing that is often overlooked. In the end, a lot of stuff gets cut from detail or developed and shelved due to PC’s going down another path. This step should also include combining of related arcs and general pruning.

4. Group Scenarios and arcs into Acts
So, Now is where the fun stuff happens. Since you now have a layout of rough chronological order, you can start to play Chinese menu! I group into iii-v acts, pending upon the group and length of campaign.

act i – The prequels, introductions, group and team building. These are key concepts, tones, and ideas that need to be established. Early scenarios that introduce important NPC/groups happen here, as well as mission that encourage and help promote group cooperation.

act ii – Key plot lines are revealed, The first twist/turn usually happens early in this act, if not the very end of act i.

act iii – key antagonist attempts major defeat of individual or group. develop political and broader game world player impact and interaction.

act iv – searching for the answers to the questions and plots in i-iii Second major twist/turn.

act v – resolutions

Building each act becomes a choice of 1 from column A, 2 from column B. “a 14, a 7, a 9 and lychees” This sets of the frame of the sessions. Eact Act should contain a variety of scenario types, e.g. investigation, political, action. I try to be flexible in the putting the scenarios into the buckets as well. I like the lunar example. In my model, if the lunar colony can get desotroyed, that goes in act iii or iv, while the mission to the lunar colony and prequel take place in act i or act ii.

Once it’s built, I role play with the group to find out which specific pieces of the Act they want to bite into. I develop each scenario for the act including likely outcomes and responses. The players, through their own choice, gravitate to the missions they feel strongest about. Typically they play through ~75% of the act before it begins to naturally transition to the next act. This means that not every arc or scenario ends up getting used. Sometimes the players go off or create a new path. But since I have already developed the likely outcomes and responses to it, those events can happen outside of the game. If there are critical pieces, I will usually bring those in as a “housekeeping” event, which is another way of saying… I force the players to finish that key piece before opening up the next group of events.

After you’ve done it a few times, you start to blend the acts together better and weave a tighter and more dynamic game world. I find that this model greatly helps me manage the complex groups, inviduals, and game world. When you have the story mapped out in a rough chronological campaign with balanced acts and scenarios… you can really make the world sing and come alive, it allows you to plan, plot, and put real depth into the NPCs and events that happen. Thanks again, Great work!