Image based on Alpha-889309 by Pixabay.com/PhilipBarrington

I hardly ever start plotting a story or an adventure at the beginning. There’s too great a chance of chasing yourself down a blind alley when you do so.

The First Pass: Back To Front

Instead, I leap ahead to the next significant development and ask “what do the star(s) of the story – the PCs in an RPG – need to know in order to get there?” and “how can they find that out?”.

Working backwards in this fashion ensures that the plot has greater coherence and a rational linearity, the very definition of “the shortest line through the story”.

It’s also the quintessential definition of a plot train.

Each such leap into the future naturally defines what I think of as an Act within the overall adventure.

The Second Pass: Front To Back

Once I have the ‘most direct line”, I look for all the places where PCs have to decide what to do next. I have already defined the ‘best’ choice that they can make, but have to assume that they won’t necessarily take that course.

This defines branch points within the adventure. Once these have been flagged and highlighted, they have to be considered individually – a branch point at which there is only one obvious choice is no branch point at all.

In fact, I want to ensure that there’s at least one alternative choice that is at least as likely, based on what the PCs know and what they don’t at that point in the adventure, especially if they make different assumptions to fill in the gaps in their knowledge than the correct one.

If there are no such obvious alternatives, I have to then create such alternatives, and then map out a route from that branch back into the “direct line” that gets the overall adventure back on track.

The Third Pass: Back To Front and back again

The only reason this pass starts in an ante-temporal direction is because I’m already close to the end from the second pass. This pass is an analysis of estimated spotlight share amongst the different PCs, and a notation of anyone who’s at loose ends at any point in the adventure on any of the identified branches.

If an adventure is viewed as a series of extraordinary events in a continuum of ordinary lives, taking otherwise mundane events from those ordinary lives and amplifying them in terms of the attention paid to them provides a neat solution to anyone shortchanged by the spotlight-time tally. In fact, I will often ensure that everyone gets at least one ‘personal life’ scene in the beginning of an adventure, just to establish a baseline of normality for the character. (I also work hard at ensuring that the actual seeds that will sprout into the adventure look just like these personal scenes most of the time – which means the players can never dismiss a ‘character scene’ because they never know which ones are important).

So, once I’ve reached the head of the adventure, I create a list of “fill-in” events to equalize the spotlight time, then work out when and where to drop them into the plotline – noting that any that follow a branch point have to be present on all branches from that point.

Not All Subplots Are Created Equal

Some of these “personal” plotlines take on a life of their own when examined closely, requiring multiple scenes before they’re complete. That usually requires the insertion of additional “personal life” scenes for the other characters, interweaving with the main plot. The over-sized plot thread becomes a short-term framing device around which the other PCs take over the spotlight. Depending on the timing, this interleaving may even necessitate the subdivision of plot sequences focusing on one or more of the other PCs.

It follows that as soon as I’ve finished the third pass, inserting personal scenes, the first thing I have to do is repeat the third pass.

Ultimately, this breaks the act into a series of scenes described in extremely brief bullet-points.

Example

I’m going to illustrate this by highlighting and breaking down the current adventure in my Zenith-3 campaign. Because we haven’t finished playing this yet, I’m going to have to obscure certain parts that are still to come. But it will still demonstrate the impact of this process more clearly than any other example I can conveniently lay my hands on.

To start with, here’s the original outline of the adventure.

Title: Figures In Black
Theme: a series of confrontations with figures in black clothing, some unrelated & coincidental.
Game Date (start): Monday, February 13, 2056.

Background (selected unresolved plot threads from previous adventures):

1. A mysterious figure in black has been harassing Blackwing and creating super-villains to confront him.
2. Each such confrontation weakens Blackwing, as does any use of his powers.
3. Something has overpowered spells that directly affect the target beyond the capacity of even expert mages to control.
4. Religious Zealots amongst the American Religious Ultra-Right, egged on by the Vatican for political reasons, have been harassing the PCs through sermons and religious messaging, even to the point of creating super-villains to oppose them.
5. There is a small but growing undercurrent of political opposition to the team for all sorts of reasons, publicly led by a Congressman who the team exposed as corrupt and possibly powered by the wealthy and influential parents of a Cyber-gang, the Chrome Tigers.
6. The Bright Cutter has been exploring a hobby – hologram sculpture – and a personality quirk as a practical joker has manifested in the process.
7. The team have recruited a top-notch bureaucrat to function as their political adviser and want his opinion on who to recruit as a Press Liaison.
8. The team have contracted with Holo (a digital super-villain) to wipe all copies of the Mutagenic Drug recipe released onto the net by U.N.I.T. (a government agency) using funds provided by Voodoo Willy (another super-villain) in return for a yet-to-be-disclosed favor from team member Vala.
9. Various members have spent the time on hobbies and interests and can now buy the associated skills, moving on to other activities.

Here’s the adventure summary line(s) from my master plan, rearranged slightly so that they can be presented full-sized:

I then turn that plan outline into a list of content for the adventure:

Specific Content (for this adventure):

• RV#29 – Team Encounter: Wraith – tread water in the Figure In Black plotline (BW 15+18).
• BC01 – Conclusion: Hobby Plotline
• V07f – media reports that catholic churches and catholic-owned businesses are being harassed by Z3 fans, St B needs to calm things down without political damage.
• BW15 – is notified that his probation has been rescinded following the recent review, sentence reduced for good behavior.
• V02e – the Chrome Tigers pretend to be Z-3 fans and attack a string of churches. Grand Tour in hypercars?
• BW15+18 – The Figure In Black plotline continues. Immediately after, there is a development in the Magic-goes-wild subplot, which might be just a coincidence of timing! If not, Z3 can only surmise that whoever was behind it has achieved their purpose – whatever it was.
• + RA12 mana pickmeup (ongoing subplot series, the + means to drop it in anywhere appropriate and repeat if there is good reason)
• VP#64 – Team Encounter: give the team a moment of heroic unity at the fade-out, entire confrontation takes place off-camera between adventures.

Right away, I can see from this synopsis that this adventure will revolve around Blackwing. There’s one team encounter at the start and another at the end, and a pair of encounters in the middle that may or may not be whole-of-team encounters. St Barbara gets one feature moment, and it can be assumed that Runeweaver (the team mage) will also get one in the aftermath of the continuing Figure In Black plotline.

And yet… the observant may have noticed the orange color of the three plot threads at the bottom of the plan, and the fact that neither DP05 nor SB07 are listed as being part of the adventure, according to the synopsis. This is a useful observation because it shows how much tweaking of even a well-established plan goes on after the fact. According to the plan, it’s the encounter with the Chrome Tigers (which is about to happen, in-game) that is the feature conflict of this story, the Blackwing plotline is supposed to be just another solo encounter with the Figure In Black or some agent empowered by him, and the encounter with Warhammer is to take place in an entirely different parallel world (the one from which most of the PCs originate).

Instead, I’ve juggled schedules, chosen to downplay the confrontation with the Chrome Tigers, play up the Man In Black plot, accelerating it’s conclusion dramatically, and filched an encounter from the next planned adventure with the intention of using it as a bridging device.

That’s as a direct result of the desire to avoid a potential anticlimax, and the desire to make these adventures slightly more self-contained, learning from the lesson provided when the PCs encountered the-villain-who-shall-be-called-Mortus-in-these-pages.

Beyond the material in the synopsis, and the ongoing thematic material of the team interacting with the bureaucracy that has been placed in an oversight position above them, and engaging in the politics of the setting, everything else in the adventure stems from past campaign events as modified by PC responses to those events.

Note also that unless specifically stated (it usually isn’t, but is in a couple of these cases), the events can occur in any order within the adventure. They can even occur simultaneously.

I started by breaking the material down into acts:

ACT I: Pre-Adventure: The skills from hobbies,some backstory, and the encounter with Wraith. Background Developments and consequences of past adventures. Personal Stories. “Ordinary Life” & Bureaucracy dominates.

ACT II: Valentine’s Day. Hobby Subplot. Payback for the Favor comes due. The Origin of Voodoo Willy. Conclude the Hobby subplot. Intro the Chrome Tigers plotline, which dominates the Act. Personal stories interleaved with developments in the Chrome Tigers plotline to increase the sense of time passing in between. Discuss Media Liaison with Karlos Green. Other PCs gradually become aware of the Chrome Tigers plotline. Valentine’s Day Gifts.

ACT III: Confront the Chrome Tigers. Figure In Black plotline becomes dominant. Personal Stories. Team Meeting (already played – we had some time to spare). Summons to Villain. End Adventure.

Side note: I sometimes name Acts, and sometimes not. It depends on how much time I have spare, and whether or not I want to use the title to manipulate the expectations and intensity of the players, i.e. get them into the right head-space.

Now, obviously, I can’t go into ACT III, because that’s what we’re up to in-game. But I can talk about Acts I and II.

I want to avoid getting too specific, however, for a completely different reason: if you aren’t a player, it’s likely to get boring, fast. So, instead, I’m going to present it as a set of bullet points – the same bullet points (approximately) that I used to plot these parts of the adventure. In other words, I’m going to try to stick to the point of this article. Abbreviations: St B = St Barbara, V = Vala, RW = Runeweaver, BW=Blackwing, De=Defender, BC=Bright Cutter.

ACT I:

• 1. Team (RV#29): Breakfast Muffins, Blackwing’s case review, alert – bank robbery, wraith, team initial moves / stock responses, the crane collapse. PCs deal with the emergency, pursue and capture the villain, capture the amulet empowering the villain, blame the Figure In Black.
• 2. Team (BC01): meeting to debrief after the mission is somewhere deep in a holographic forest.
• 3. St B (BW15): Advised of a forthcoming unscheduled visit by a senior prosecutor from UNTIL’s Legal Division. St B is requested to ensure BW is available.
• 4. BW+St B (BW15): Conversation mentioned in 1 resumes. Lots of reason to worry.
• 5. St B: Meeting with Karlos Green. How is the Political Adviser role going to function? KG offers some general advice – how to avoid painting themselves into political corners. Puts long-term decision of which political faction to ally the team with on St B’s agenda.
• 6. De (BC01): Signing Birthday Cards that turn out to be Holograms, complains to St B
• 7. RW: RW decides on whether he wants to learn old-world whittling or full-on artistic carving.
• 8. St B (V07f): Media reports that Catholic Churches are being vandalized and catholic-owned business harassed by out-of-control Champions fans unhappy at the anti-Champions stance of the Catholics. St B has to figure out how to respond.
• 8a. St B / Team (V07f): OPTIONAL: Karlos Green, if consulted, lays out an official response. All team members available to hit the airwaves immediately and be interviewed by anyone who’ll take their video-call to get the message out.
• 8b. St B (V07f): OPTIONAL: If St B remembers it, she can use her anti-pollution power to clean off the paint graffiti on the church door, giving the media a visual that will generate publicity for the team’s message.

Notice that where a scene is a continuation of a previous scene, it has the same scene number – so 8 is followed by 8a, 8b, and so on – unless there is a change of location. This becomes an important tool in the interleaving in Act II.

• 9. V (BC01): Vala leading a tour group through the Knightly Building (the team’s HQ). They reach the souvenir shop when the fire sprinklers let loose, creating panic. It’s another of BC’s holograms.
• 10. V: Fan Mail.
• 11. St B+BW+RW (BW15): Colonel Rothstein of UNTIL arrives and the trio have to drop everything to meet him.
• 12. V+De (BC01): BC attempts to use a Hologram to convince the Lavender Gang they no longer need to be in “protective custody”. One appears to be having a heart attack in response. BC impersonates Security to ask if he should summon an ambulance. PCs react to the immediate situation.
• 13. Others (BW15): Rothschild advises that BW’s sentence has been reduced for good behavior and he is now officially on Probation. Other restrictions have been lifted, and he is now free to hold team Office.
• 14. V+De (BC01): The two deal with the situation in the cells. De will insist on making a formal complaint.
• 15. V (privately): Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. As an alien, she may not understand the history or reasons for them, but the practice is clear. The targeting / romantic aspects, however, are not understood by Vala. Get a decision from V’s player on how she will proceed.
• 16. RW: Kira (the Knightly Building’s AI) acquaints RW with the Vehicle Fleet allocated to the Champions as a result of a remark by Karlos Greene.. Kira proposes a policy for the team’s utilization of the vehicles.
• 17. St B + De (V07f): Rothschild is fare-welled. De proposes a Police Liaison Training Program as a result of something Karlos Greene remarked.
• 18. St B: End the in-game day with a short dream sequence showing how much St B has on her plate (as team leader) at the moment.

END OF ACT 1.

In fact, we not only got through all of the above, but part of Act II on the day in Question, and had enough time left over to play part of a team meeting from Act III. One of the reasons for this was because one of the players was away that day, reducing the time lost to interaction between players.

This is Good News for interested readers, because it means that I made far more careful notes than usual, and turned those notes into a PDF for the absent player to read, and can share that with you all!

Th synopsis makes for interesting reading because it shows the adventure veering off at different points as the PCs made decisions that I hadn’t anticipated and how the consequences of those would be folded into Part II.

It also shows how I developed the adventure from those bullet points, assembling narrative and illustrations, analyzing options, and being ready with alternatives where it was important. A good adventure in an RPG is like a dance between players and GM: in this one, sometimes it was a waltz, sometimes a ballet, and sometimes, a line dance.

The other thing to be noted is that scene numbers have continued to evolve. As written, they weren’t in the nice neat sequence shown above – they danced, too, as scenes were shuffled this way and that in search of a better narrative flow and smoother distribution of the spotlight time available. This will become more evident in Act II, where I haven’t done this sort of cleanup.

ACT I:

• 19. St B+Team (BC01): BC uses his holographic trickery to make the Breakfast Muffins appear two feet to the left of their actual location. Schedule the meeting already role-played, and run through the team’s planned activities for the day.
• 20. V: Vala attends the patient whose treatment is the price demanded by Voodoo WIlly. Institution and Case background & history. The latter is full of holes and inconsistencies and the case is so delicate that she can’t afford not to have the whole story. Describe mental scan results and treatment options.

That’s as far as play got on game Session 1 (plus the meeting from Act III). We would have gotten about as much done in Session 2, but the time spent on extras (part of Act II and the meeting) was taken up in the absent player reading the synopsis and getting up to speed.

Which means that everything that follows was rewritten as necessary to expand on or allow for decisions made by the players.

• 20a. V: V meets Voodoo Willy, gets the truth about Miranda Abelard’s condition, and in the process, the origins and true name of Voodoo Willy. The origins and generations of Mutagenic Drugs. The relationship between Willy and the team edges closer to a full alliance.
• 19a. St B (BC01): St B has the difficult conversation with BC about his practical jokes and hobby, both of which have gotten out-of-hand.
• 27a. St B (V02e): Intro the Chrome Tigers plotline as notification of three perps in 400 mph hypercars being pursued by NOPD and Louisiana State Troopers.
• 21. RW: Intro Bear Lake and Tulimaq Arju, a genius sculptor who takes on a small number of students for a course in woodcarving of his own design. RW is accepted into Tulimaq’s class for Beginners.
• 27b. St B (V02e): Perps get through St Charles before police were finished setting up the roadblocks. Highway Patrol officers attempted to close the border but could not do so in time. The original pursuit has to break off as the Perps are now in Texas.
• 22. BW: BW is playing tour guide today. Encounters an eight-year-old Goth named Naomi who is extremely excited by the presence of her favorite team member.
• 27c. St B (V02e): Perps outmaneuver the Texas police and literally drive around the roadblock set up to capture them by leaving the main roads.
• 23. St B: Meeting with Karlos Greene to review the effectiveness of the Media Blitz, and – unknown to him – sound him out about his becoming a member of the team.
• 27d. St B (V02e): The meeting is interrupted by an update. The police have a new interception planned and are taking their humiliation personally.

It’s worth mentioning that, as hoped, by this point, all the players were following the story of the pursuit intently, even though their characters weren’t involved.

• 23a. St B: Karlos Green discusses the Criteria by which a Media Adviser should be selected. St B can’t help but agree with his assessment. He then recommends Kira (the AI that runs the team’s Headquarters) for the position.
• 27e. St B (V02e): The suspects use a plasma cutter of some sort to literally carve a passage through the roadblock and cross back into Louisiana. Expectation is that they will soon head into Arkansas; the plan is to block the road with heavy machinery somewhere between Shreveport and Little Rock.
• 23b. St B: Karlos reveals the truth behind the extraordinary number of signatures required of the team and how you have to be careful with what you say to Kira. He then gives St B another decision to make.
• 27f. St B (V02e): The Perps blow through Shreveport, do donuts on the lawns of the Holy Trinity Christian Church, and race off in a completely unexpected direction, oblivious to the roadblocks set up to block them. Louisiana State Troopers are again in pursuit but the difference in vehicle speeds is 240mph. Missouri forces based in Jackson are preparing for a showdown, with the full intention of showing their neighbors how it’s done.
• 23c. St B: Give Karlos a communicator and raise the question of a membership. Karlos won’t commit himself, asking 5 questions that show that it won’t be the easy answer to the problems he had previously raised that St B thought it would be. He leaves.
• 27g. St B (V02e): Details of the past actions by the Perps begin to emerge. Cybernetic weaponry; and targeting a variety of churches and religious symbols like statues. There’s a hint that the three are taking it in turns to plan the attacks, and distinctions of style are becoming evident. It is also confirmed that they are doing their best to tease the Champions into joining the hunt.
• 21a. RW: Tulimaq’s first class. Intro two of the other students – Jack Hasquittuk and Endless White Cloud. The first is wearing an Ankle Monitor and the second, a patch from the British Columbia Correctional Service.
• 27h. St B (V02e): It is discovered that the hypercars have undergone Hover-conversion when they literally fly over the top of the roadblock. Lots of schadenfreude from those mocked by the Missouri forces earlier. Perps are now heading for Alabama. The Alabama State Police haven’t learned from the Missouri Experience, boasting of blocking the road with big rigs loaded with “red-blooded gun-totin’ good ol’ boys”.
• 25. BW: The tour continues. More emo interaction with young Goth Naomi.
• 27i. St B (V02e): Confirmation that all the targets attacked by the Perps were religious. Perps then blow through Tuscaloosa 30 mins ahead of schedule causing all sorts of speculation on how they managed to exceed nine-hundred mph. Given the surprises that the Perps have employed thus far, no-one doubts that’s what they have done. Except Kira, who picks up on an overlooked fact: the maximum range of the Pagani MaktigSlopstrims is 850 miles when driven at maximum efficiency, not flat-out. Conclusion: prepared lookalikes were lying in wait and the original trio have now gone to ground. A further clue to the identities emerges because the total cost of the escapade rises dramatically with the addition of three more identical hypercars, to 54 million Imperial Pounds. But meanwhile, law-enforcement is becoming increasingly rattled and shrill; an ordinary police scanner would be all the Perps need to once again humiliate a branch of law-enforcement.
• 26. BW: At the end of the tour, Naomi begs BW to ‘turn himself into something scary,’ not knowing that each time he uses his powers they grow weaker. BW to figure out a way out of the situation.
• 21b. RW B (V02e): The woodcarving lesson continues as Tulimaq shows his skill. RW should be deeply impressed, write accordingly. Preview lesson 2, which will already take RW beyond where he originally wanted to go.
• 27j. St B (V02e): Remind St B that everyone else is away doing something else. Attempting to gather the team and intercept the Paganis would only add the team to the list of those humiliated. Certainly, law enforcement don’t want any help – this has become a matter of pride and bragging rights to them. The team are viewed by regional police as being a federal agency who swoops in somewhere, takes over an investigation, and takes all the credit. Emphasize the relationship as it stands and the role in changing it of the Police Liaison role. St B discusses the Media Liaison role with Kira, who accepts.
• 28. BW: Gets back from his tour guide duties. Outline his options for the evening, let him choose. Expect him to choose to check in with St B and become “officially” aware of the pursuit.
• 29. RW: After visiting the hardware store and an art supplies shop the team know from V’s studies of oil painting, RW returns to the base. Outline his options for the evening, let him choose. Expect him to choose to check in with St B and become “officially” aware of the pursuit.
• 30. V: V gets back from the hospital in Rochester. Through her psionic links to the others (muted while she concentrates hard on something else, like treating her patient, or deciphering Voodoo Willy’s hypertalk), she is aware that BW has had an awkward afternoon, RW is procrastinating doing something out of a deep-seated fear of failure, and St B is agitated about something. Get a decision as to what she’s doing. Expect her to choose to check in with St B and become “officially” aware of the pursuit.
• 27k. St B (V02e): Perps are heading for Chattanooga and new attempts at a roadblock are being made – technically, over the border into Georgia, though they seem inclined to look the other way. Kira reveals that she contacted the Alabama State Troopers to advise them of the significance of the cruising range of the Hypercars and get them searching for the original trio of what are become known as the Pagani Perps. Sheriff Tost is calling back to confirm what “that sweet little lady on the phone done told us”.
• 27l. Team (V02e) 7:05PM: Those members who chose to do so now check in with St B. Expect her to put their evening plans on hold, giving her a strike force if and when she chooses to intervene.
• 27m. St B (V02e): 7:21PM The Pagani Perps are five minutes overdue at the roadblock and appear to have vanished. Police are going to give them another 5-10 minutes and then have to reopen the road.
• 27n. St B (V02e): 7:54PM With the roadblock disbanded, the Pagani Perps blow through Chattanooga unopposed, hightail it to Nashville (blowing out all the amps at a concert being held at St Peter’s Church Of The Sacred Country Singer and head west before law enforcement could respond. They are now heading for Memphis. That lies just within the range of the Paganis if they are the second trio – but Kira suspects the delay was caused by another changeover, bringing the cost of the operation to 91 million pounds – even though the Pagani Perps could recoup most of that by selling the cars afterwards. The Governor of Tennessee then calls out the National Guard, who put missile-carrying fighters in the air with instructions to pursue and attack the vehicles as long as they are within Tennessee jurisdiction. Expect St B to intervene. Begin discussion of who the Pagani Perps are, based on the clues so far.
• 27o. St B (V02e) 8:25PM: Kira is still running through a long list of those who could both afford to mount this attack and might benefit from humiliating the Champions, but none of them sound “right” so far. The cars turn out to be equipped with some sort of scramblers that made the missiles go haywire; they had to be detonated midair by their operators, none of them come close to hitting the target. The National Guard tried dropping bombs from helicopters but had no hope given the speed of the hypercars. Kira now has enough information to begin extrapolating pattern to the Chase. She suggests that a third changeover will occur in less than 2 hours. She suggests discussing the question of team intervention with Chief Raven of the NOPD, because he will probably know many of his counterparts personally.
• 29. BW 8:30PM: Check in with BW if he isn’t in St B’s office; determine based on prior decisions by himself and St B.
• 27p. St B (V02e): Conversation with Chief Raven. He approves of any sensible policy. St B may also raise the Police Liaison proposal. He likes it. St B decides to appoint Blackwing to the position because he’s an ex-cop and gets on well with the Police. She informs BW of his new task. At 8:37PM, the Media finally catch up with the Pagani Perps story, broadcasting live footage of the trio blasting through Memphis. The Pagani Perps obligingly put on a show.
• 30. RW 8:39PM: Check in with RW if he isn’t in St B’s office; determine based on prior decisions by himself and St B.
• 27q. St B (V02e): Kira works her way down the list of possible suspects to Matthew Muller’s “Church Of Christian Science”, which should spark discussion. Logical conclusion should be “Not his style”. The entry Muller on the list sounds a lot more plausible, even with the investment up to 120m pounds – the Chrome Tigers. Expect this possibility to be seriously discussed.
• 31. V (V02e): Check in with V if she isn’t in St B’s office; determine based on prior decisions by herself and St B.
• 27r. St B (V02e) 8:43PM: The Arkansas Police set up a roadblock using absolute radio silence, using trucks stuffed full of cinder-blocks. The three vehicles have stopped, line abreast, 500m away from the roadblock and appear to be considering their options. Give St B the option of sounding the alert and joining the roadblock.
• 27s1. Team (V02e) 8:45PM: OPTIONAL: If St B chooses to intervene, it all goes horribly wrong when the Paganis charge the roadblock, teleporting out at the last second after releasing a magic-based teleport scrambler. Count through events second-by-second. When the team attempt to leave: modify 27s3 below.
• 27s2. St B (V02e) 8:48PM: The Perps teleport through the roadblock as per 27s1. The use of Teleportation takes this outside any reasonable local jurisdiction and demands team intervention; V, RW, and De should inspect the scene immediately, and that means BW and St B should go as well.
• 27s3. Team (V02e): Effects of teleport scrambler. Remind St B of a sealed record from the parent team about a teleport scrambler they encountered, one of only a handful of occasions when the team has taken extra security over and above the usual. As soon as the team get through the teleport scramble (probably taking damage in the process), BW’s surface (a dimensional interface) begins to heave and bubble and ripple uncontrollably. Let the team react, let RW confirm a magic-based Teleport and that the scrambler means there is no way of knowing where the Pagani Perps have gone.
• 28. Team (V02e+BW18): Return to Knightly Building to await further developments. Some rogue thought will nag at RW but he can’t pin it down. Get decision on how he’s trying to bring it to the surface. V leaves unobtrusively to implement the decisions made in 15. Karlos Greene wants St B to update him. De has an idea for a safe way to test BW’s loss of abilities, if BW is willing. Expect a yes.
• 29. St B (V02e): Karlos suggests that when the team go after them, he live-streams the confrontation – live-streaming so that everyone can see it’s unedited and totally genuine. If the team make the take-down sufficiently forceful and dramatic, it will go a long way toward discouraging others who might like to interfere in the Champions’ good name for their own purposes. NB: Not live won’t cut it – this needs to be all-or-nothing. But it’s a risk.
• 30. V: Part 1 done. Now for Part 2.
• 31. BW+De (BW18): Explain the testing methodology to BW. It’s all about secondary effects – casual strength leaning against a wall, measuring finger stiffness when stretching the hand, and running a finger down a tray of tiny foam balls.
• 30a. V: Part 2 done. On to Part 3.
• 32. RW (V02e): RW trying to nail the important stray thought – improve based on the technique RW chose. Roll, expect failure.
• 30b. V: Part 3 done but trickier. Sounds of exasperation from behind the door. And hitting a pillow. And banging a head against the wall. And muttering auto-hypnotically to themselves. Part 4 to go – fortunately, the target is distracted and elsewhere.
• 31a. BW+De (BW18): Give BW the bad news. STR 1/4; Claws 1/10; Armor 1/5; Arthritis; shape-change 1/3 (i.e. triple difficulty and time); and margin of uncertainty around the dimensional interface of almost 1/2 a mm. De has no idea how much that last can grow before BW dissipates completely! The only good news: BW has been weakened so much that the final confrontation can’t be far away – and there will be one, the FIB still wants something from BW.
• 30c. V: Mission complete, now lay low and wait for results.
• 32a. RW (V02e): All methods he’s tried will (almost certainly) have failed. Try one more – this one works. The rogue thought: “Slithering Ice slowly sliding down the spine from neck to base while an ice-pick pierces the right-hand temple and you walk on red-hot ground glass in a great-circle perpendicular to ‘down’.” This is the mnemonic reminder of the Arcane Pattern of the Man In Black’s devices that he has devised, a description of how they made him feel. And he’s been trying to bring it to mind because the arcane “aftertaste” of those items matches the aftertaste of the Chrome Tigers Teleport.
• 33. St B (V02e): No sooner has RW finished reporting his findings to St B than her monitor beeps. The Pagani Perps are back, spotted doing 300mph through Little Rock. Arkansas State Police seem to have withheld this info from the team, noses perhaps out of joint by the teams uninvited involvement in the case. They have commandeered some hypercars of their own, and are in close pursuit. Kira suggests ignoring them and working with the Oklahoma State Police – the Perps are not a little under 26 minutes from the state border. The Arkansas police are supposed to turn back when the Perps leave their jurisdiction but don’t appear in any mood to play nice. Give St B a choice of actions. Roleplay decision process in real time.
• 34. RW: When St B summons the team, he finds the Valentine from Vala. Let him decide how he interprets it and how he will respond.
• 35. St B: After summoning the team, she heads for her quarters to change into a fresh uniform. At the front door, she discovers a Valentine from Vala. How is she going to interpret it and how will she respond?
• 36. BW: When St B summons the team, he finds the Valentine from Vala. Let him decide how he interprets it and how he will respond.
• 37. De: When St B summons the team, he finds the Valentine from Vala. He thanks her mentally as a fellow non-human, but suggests that it was inappropriate as he doesn’t consider her a potential mate and doesn’t think she thinks of him that way, either,” informing Vala of her misjudgment.

Reality Check

Here’s the hard reality: without some sort of augmentation, five or six of the Chrome Tigers would be a fair fight for ONE of the PCs. Only three of them? No way. So, who could augment them? Dr Vossen, the “Monster Maker,” could, but wouldn’t – he’s ethical, at least within his own terms of reference. Mathew Muller might be able to, but wouldn’t willingly do so – the Tigers are not his followers, and it’s not his style. Lance Andrews, the former Behemoth, could – but if he were around, he would be targeting the team with something a lot nastier than a bruised ego and possibly-damaged reputation. The Figure In Black, by a process of elimination, is the best answer.

And that means that they can’t be the climax of the adventure – just a stepping stone. Which confirms the impression from the initial synopsis, and toward which I was writing all along.

It’s also worth noting that about 1 decision in 3 was an unexpected choice by the PCs. The other 2 in 3 decisions either went the way I expected them to, or at least went in a direction I had prepared for. If I had to, I could discard the planned adventure at any point and improv based on what I have outlined above – St B came very close to intervening immediately after the Texas debacle, for example – which would have simply brought forward the teleport-and-scrambler, because that’s the whole objective of the crime spree from the point of view of the Figure In Black – weakening Blackwing further.

So there it is – a real life example (well, 2/3 of one). I hope it wasn’t boring to readers and that you got something out of the techniques that I employ!

As a final point, I employ basically the same technique when improvising an adventure on the fly – divide the adventure into acts, synopsize each act, then use that “destination” as the foundation for everything that happens.