Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

When I first started playing & running RPGs, prep was simply for “the game”.

Then, with a little more experience, and in particular when I spread my wings from D&D to running a superhero campaign at the same time, it became prep for “the x campaign”.

As the number of campaigns under my belt (and the number of campaigns being played concurrently) grew even larger, the term “scenario” entered my vocabulary to describe the prepared interaction between plot and characters, especially player characters.

In February 2016, I admitted the conscious decision to replace that term except in very limited circumstances, and replace it with “Adventure”, in the course of Definitions and the Quest for Meaning in Structure, stating that I had been generally depreciating that term for the last 14 months or so – putting the date of the initial change at around December 2014. Beyond the annual reverie in which I reflect on the year’s gaming (as most GMs do whenever there is a pause in play), I can’t really pinpoint the source of the change.

I recently found myself musing on the difference between these terms, and today I’m going to submit my thinking to at least get others thinking about the subject as it applies to their own games.

Does it even matter?

Yes, it’s a nuanced distinction, but an important one.

You see, I think it does matter. The terminology that we use defines the “holes” that we try to push our game-prep into, shaping our thinking and approach. The distinction might be subtle at times, but it can be profound – and the change in terminology very strongly tracks with the approach that I was using and advocating at the time.

Bear that in mind as you read on, and I think you will see the correlation, as I now do (in hindsight).

Defining Adventure

The definition that Tracey Snow compiled from a number of posts here at Campaign Mastery back in 2015 (which explicitly refers to Scenario), as annotated by myself, reads as follows:

Adventures are a single story or episode within the larger narrative of the Campaign, linked thematically, tonally, stylistically, and conceptually into a single sub-narrative. An adventure may also contain elements (usually referred to as “linked sub-plots” or simply as “subplots”) that violate those qualities but form part of a dispersed wider narrative. One Adventure may link to another in various ways, but each can be considered isolated and self-contained within the context of the Campaign. If the Campaign is a book, an Adventure is Chapter; if a Campaign is a book series, each Adventure is a separate volume.

Adventures are sometimes referred to as “Scenarios” but this is an outmoded expression, deriving from the equivalence “Synopsis = Adventure Outline” or “Adventure Idea”. Early articles will use this term more often than later ones, and for the last 14 months or so I have been deliberately depreciating this usage as obsolete terminology; “scenario” in the lower case might still be used from time to time in the sense of a plot idea suggested hypothetically or speculatively, but this usage is also avoided as much as possible to limit confusion.

A single adventure lasts an average of 2.5-3.5 play sessions. Two makes an adventure seem short, five or more makes it seem long, subjectively.

And, in the 750th post, in which I ran a “pseudo-interview” between Tracey and Myself, I wrote:

An adventure is always designed to run to a firm conclusion in which the major plotlines are resolved or transformed by events.

Those are all close, but none of them quite fit what I mean by “An Adventure” these days, and the difference is important.

• I start with an outline or a “treatment” – a brief synopsis of the plotline that will be central to the adventure.
• I will also extract any theme that presents itself so that I can use it as inspiration for side-plots and encounters.
• I will then make a list of side-plots that I know are to form part of the “background hum” of the adventure – some of these will be character development or personal relationship developments, some will be consequences of past adventures, some may foreshadow future adventures, and some will simply be there to show what character “B” is doing while character “A” is enmeshed in one of these side-plots.
• To that melange, I then add research – for example, for upcoming adventures in my superhero campaign, I need to look into why one might or might not want to live in four specific US states while evolving them to fit the campaign continuity. Plus photos, maps, etc.
• To the research, add outlines of any new NPCs, and a rough indicator of how substantially-developed they will need to be.
• In a fantasy campaign, or a wilderness setting, I’ll need an outline of any encounters that can’t be described as being with an NPC – including giving the encounters a personality. Even stray dogs have a personality, or should – they certainly do in real life! In a tech-oriented campaign, I’ll also need at least a general idea (or pseudo-scientific technobabble) of the principles on which any new tech will operate, and any inherent limitations in what it can do.

Those are my building blocks. “Writing the adventure” is integrating all of them into a coherent plot structure and padding encounters with any canned dialogue, GM directions, etc. This usually entails anticipating the most likely directions the plot will travel (note the plural) and ‘what will happen next’ so that I am prepared for the things the PCs are most likely to throw at me in response to the situation.

Another way of describing the process is “customizing the plot to integrate the specific PCs and their personal lives.”

A ‘finished adventure’ isn’t one with every I dotted and every T crossed, it’s one that is prepped enough to play. And that means that the definition will be slightly different for every GM.

And the term “Scenario”?

I used to use the term “scenario” all the time to describe my game prep. What I have realized in the last week or so is that it was entirely appropriate, given my approach to game prep at the time, which is quite different to what’s given above.

A “scenario” could refer to several different things (and that’s one of the reasons I changed terminology to the more specific, “Adventure”):

• An outline of an adventure with greater structural content than a “treatment” or “synopsis” – such a synopsis PLUS the list of side-plots, with outlines of what’s to happen, all arranged in the structural form of “the adventure” (as defined above), but none of the specifics. You could think of this as a “direction for play”. Another way of looking at it is that the Adventure-Prep process described earlier generates this type of “Scenario” as a construction skeleton but doesn’t stop there.
• A generic plotline that could be used in many different campaigns and possibly many different genres. An example might be, “Boy (PC) meets Girl. Girl’s parents disapprove. They are cannibals who attempt to eat the boy.”
• A suggested plotline for a specific campaign that has zero specific allowance for the current situation within that campaign or the established characters within it, usually focusing more on evolving or progressing the campaign in a specific direction.

That’s a very diverse set of meanings, all clearly related. If I were to sum them up into a single definition, it would be a “substantial and detailed treatment or outline that is clearly lacking or deficient in specifics in some respect.”

Twenty years ago, that far more accurately describes what I was doing in terms of game prep, in comparison to what I do these days. In particular, I focused on getting the PCs into this situation or that, and – aside from ensuring that there was some solution to the problem – letting the players figure out how to resolve it with the tools available to them, i.e. their PCs.

There are merits to both approaches.

A “scenario”, by it’s nature, is looser, more flexible, more instinctive. If the players aren’t having fun, you can change it up. But it’s also more anarchic, more chaotic, and less suitable for big plotlines, which tend to emerge more holistically by the GM putting two and two together at the time – which is fine if you can remember every past adventure in detail while you play, but becomes less so if your memory starts to fade.

My memory seems to fade a lot, these days. And, as I noted in the “un-interview” with Tracey, I’m always too busy doing to take notes – so the more structured and comprehensive “Adventure” format serves as surrogate notes, or at least, as prompts for that failing memory. Nothing happens by accident, it’s all pre-planned – which is a lot more work, but it’s work that you (I) should probably be doing, anyway.

There are also downsides to both approaches.

You are far more likely to be caught short and taken by surprise under the “Scenario” model, and are more prone to falling in love with (and steering players toward) the solution that you envisaged (even if you haven’t put it in writing), so plot trains are more likely to develop. And heaven help you if you hitch the players up to a plot train that has a logic hole in its’ tracks – you’re often committed before you discover the problem. This can leave you scrambling. And if you should misremember a detail from a past adventure – if you’ve counted on a plot thread being unresolved and connecting in to the current plotline, and you actually resolved it in an intervening but forgotten adventure, you can have serious holes appear!

The “Adventure” model, on the other hand, mean that you are more dependent on knowing the players and their characters; there’s less room for generic cookie-cutter characters. So you are demanding a higher standard of character construction and game play from your players – and while some players can lift to meet that standard, others can’t. This can make your game table seem less welcoming of newer players, who simply don’t have the experience to meet the target, no matter how willing they may be.

When you were a naive young player, did you ever just sit back in awe at the abilities demonstrated by experienced players to absorb a complicated situation and immediately have a plan of action in mind? To know what their characters were capable of without even glancing at their character sheets? It certainly happened to me!

The Cart Defines The Horse? Or The Horse Defines The Cart?

The other potential impact is the one that I touched on at the start of this article. To what extent does the terminology used define what we aim to produce in game prep, what is satisfactory, what is the standard we seek to achieve – and to what extent does, or should, what we are actually producing define the terminology that is appropriate?

Self-help programs, gurus, and charlatans, have all been saying that perceptions shape outcomes for a long time – that the first step in achieving some transformation or transfiguration within your life is to imagine the change. Sometimes this is phrased as “fake it until you make it”.

Our natural cynicism should (and in my case, does) make me wary of such psychobabble, such simplistic prescriptions for life improvement. There were far too many stories of the trust placed in such programs by individuals being abused back in the 80s and 90s for me to relax that cautious attitude. “Science works, whether you believe it or not,” is something I believe – and the corollary is that anything that requires that you believe before it will work is Pseudoscience.

But, when you start digging into psychology, you quickly find that self-perception and self-image are very powerful forces. Or look at the headlines regarding Anorexia Nervosa, or other forms of self-harm, or the trauma of bullying, or the stories of non-acceptance brought forward by LGBTQI individuals. There is undoubtedly an element of undeniable plausibility to the notion that perceptions of self matter.

It’s a short leap from that fact to the more general statement that perceptions shape ambitions and actions, and hence, outcomes.”

And the implication of that is that the terminology that you use shapes the way you think and the way you approach any task involved in the subject being defined in the terminology.

In other words, if you use the term “Scenario,” your game prep will have a tendency shaping it more towards “scenario” outcomes, and if you use the term “Adventure,” you will have a trend that shapes it more towards “adventure” outcomes. You shouldn’t, under this theory, use the terminology that accurately describes what you are doing, but should instead choose the terminology that better describes what you eventually want to achieve.

Evolution and Development

Terminology defines our concepts. If you really have no words to describe something (as opposed to ‘inadequate’ words), can you really imagine it?

Well, obviously you can, because otherwise there would be no growth in, well, anything. We imagine something and then find the words to communicate that concept to someone else – inventing new terms if necessary.

Terminology isn’t the only driver – there’s the accumulation of experience and expertise, and the experience of seeing others take different approaches, and the inherited second-hand expertise of people like me who write relevant articles and books and even social media posts, and the evolving needs and expectations of the game table (who are also accumulating experience, expertise, and inheritance concepts of their own). This is why what I was doing for the game table evolved from being a “Synopsis” to being an “Adventure”, with the terminology lagging behind.

Let me posit a fairly common situation: someone posts a question on social media asking for a suggestion or an idea. They might want a name, they might want a character idea, they might want a plot suggestion, they might want an opinion. I respond to such whenever an idea presents itself, and I have the time to articulate it – that’s a lot of the time! – but I also try to take the time to look at the other responses, and to understand the thought processes that led that respondent to answer as they did. I might or might not agree with them, but I want to at least understand where the idea came from – because that helps me improve and refine my own idea-generation capacity.

And occasionally delivers a lesson in humility, I might add – which brings me to a strange observation: Only those who have insufficient humility can receive a lesson in humility. Think about that one for a while.

Terminology matters. Using the incorrect terminology can mean that we are fooling ourselves, or it can mean that we are defining what we want to achieve, and what is “good enough”. Without terminology to direct and articulate it, there can be no ambition.

And the ambition to better yourself and your art is a good thing to have driving you. How can you be a “Better GM” without being able to define what “Better” means?

PS: Optimism In Perspective

Image by Shahid Abdullah from Pixabay

I thought that I would leave you all with one final (related) set of thoughts deriving from the heart of this article, which (ultimately) is all about getting better at GMing:

No matter how bad things are, they weren’t always that bad, they were better and got worse – which means that they can always get better again.

Whenever things look bad, remember that things can always get better.

Hope springs eternal.

Never forget that. And remember too, when things get better, that they can always get worse – so treasure the good times while they last, and swim against the tide as much as you have to.

Never surrender to the dark. There is always reason to hope that things will eventually get better, if you just hold on long enough.

If two people are unable to better their own situation, but each can make life just a little better for the other, life will get better for both. So do what you can to help others, and protect yourself from things getting worse, and endure.

Things in the US and Europe look pretty dismal at the moment, but that only means that you are closer to the point where things start to turn around. There are already signs of such a turning in fortune, if you only look for them. May you all Be Safe and Be Well.

It’s my intention to post relatively short articles through December and early January. I’m also going to be trying to process and upload articles in advance, permitting me to take a few weeks off over the Holiday season – something that will only be possible if the articles are in fact shorter than usual! But we’ve all seen such plans come adrift before, haven’t we?