NODE-BASED SCENARIO DESIGN

PART 8: FREEFORM DESIGN IN THE CLOUD

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Everything we’ve been discussing here are basic, systematic designs. But there’s no reason you need to be symmetrical. Maybe node A has two clues pointing to node B while node C is clue-happy for node A.

On a larger scale, you’ll probably find yourself mashing together lop-sided conglomerations of disparate structures.

For example, a good-sized chunk of my current campaign is based around a general layer cake approach: An interconnected web of criminal organizations allow the PCs to generally make their way up the “chain of command”. But this layer cake naturally funnels towards various sub-conclusions, and I’ve also included loops designed to carry the PCs back to points prior to the various funnels.

That approach may seem jargon-filled, but it’s really just a matter of embracing the fundamentally flexible principles of node-based design, strewing clues liberally, and spot-checking to avoid problem areas.

Looking over my notes for this campaign, I’ve come to think of this as the “cloud”: Dozens of nodes all containing clues and linked to by clues. Even if we discount all the different ways in which the PCs can approach each of these nodes, the complex relationships which emerge from the node structure make literally hundreds of potential outcomes possible.

But I didn’t have to think about that emergent complexity as I was designing the campaign-scale scenario: All I needed to do was design the criminal organization, break it into node-sized chunks, and then lay down the clues necessary to navigate to and from each node.

As I write this, my players are about mid-way through this section of the campaign. It’s been filled with countless surprises for all of us, and these surprises lead me to a final point regarding the strengths of node-based design: It’s flexible in play.

Because each node is, effectively, a modular chunk of material, it becomes very easy to rearrange the nodes on-the-fly. For example, when the PCs raided an enemy compound and wiped out half of their personnel before being forced to pull back, it was very easy for me to look around, grab a different node full of bad guys, and plug them in as reinforcements.

In other words, it was as easy for me to call in the reinforcements as it was for the NPCs to pick up the phone. Node-based design gives you, by default, the scenario-based toolkit I talked about in “Don’t Prep Plots”. And the underlying structural function of that node hadn’t changed: The NPCs still had the same clues to provide that they’d been designed to provide at their previous location.

To Be Concluded...

NODE-BASED SCENARIO DESIGN

PART 9: TYPES OF NODES

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Up to this point I’ve been fairly vague about exactly what I mean by a “node”. This is largely because there isn’t really a hard-and-fast definition of the term.

In generic terms, you can think of each node as a “point of interest”. It’s the place (either literally or metaphorically) where something interesting can happen and (in most cases) information about other interesting things can be found.

In my experience, nodes are most useful when they’re modular and self-contained. I think of each node as a tool that I can pick up and use to solve a problem. Sometimes the appropriate node is self-evident. (“The PCs are canvassing for information on recent gang activity. And I have a Gather Information table about recent gang activity. Done.”) Sometimes a choice of tool needs to be made. (“The PCs have pissed off Mr. Tyrell. Does he send a goon squad or an assassin?”) But when I look at an adventure, I tend to break it down into discrete, useful chunks.

Chunks that become too large or complex are generally more useful if broken into several smaller nodes. Chunks that are too small or fiddly are generally more useful if grouped together into larger nodes. The “sweet spot” is about identifying the most utilitarian middle-ground.

(To take an extreme example: “All the forestland in the Kingdom of Numbia” is probably too large for a single node. On the other hand, 86,213 separate nodes each labeled “a tree in the Forest of Arden” are almost certainly too fiddly. Is the appropriate node the “Forest of Arden”? Or is it twelve different nodes each depicting a different location in the Forest of Arden? I don’t know. It depends on how you’re using the Forest of Arden.)

Let’s get more specific. Here are the sorts of things I think of as “nodes”:

LOCATIONS: A place that the PCs can physically go. If you think of a clue as being anything that “tells you where to go next”, telling the PCs about a specific place that they’re supposed to go is the most literal interpretation of the concept. Once PCs arrive at the location, they’ll generally find more clues by searching the place.

PEOPLE: A specific individual that the PCs should pay attention to. It may be someone they’ve already met or it may be someone they’ll have to track down. PCs will generally get clues from people by either observing them or interrogating them.

ORGANIZATIONS: Organizations can often be thought of as a collection of locations and people (see Nodes Within Nodes, below), but it’s not unusual for a particular organization to come collectively within the PCs’ sights. Organizations can be both formal and informal; acknowledged and unacknowledged.

EVENTS: Something that happens at a specific time and (generally) a specific place. Although PCs will often be tasked with preventing a particular event from happening, when events are used as nodes (i.e., something from which clues can be gathered), it’s actually more typical for the PCs to actually attend the event. (On the other hand, learning about the plans for an event may lead the PCs to the location it’s supposed to be held; the organization responsible for holding it; or the people attending it.)

ACTIVITY: Something that the PCs are supposed to do. If the PCs are supposed to learn about a cult’s plan to perform a binding ritual, that’s an event. But if the PCs are supposed to perform a magical binding ritual, then that’s an activity. The clues pointing to an activity may tell the PCs exactly what they’re supposed to be doing; or they may tell the PCs that they need to do something; or both.

NODES WITHIN NODES

In other words, at its most basic level a node is a person, a place, or a thing.

As suggested above, however, nodes can actually be fairly complex in their own right. For example, the entire Temple of Elemental Evil (with hundreds of keyed locations) could be thought of as a single node: Clues from the village of Hommlet and the surrounding countryside lead the PCs there, and then they’re free to explore that node/dungeon in any way that they wish.

Similarly, once the PCs start looking at the Tyrell Corporation they might become aware of CEO James Tyrell, the corporate headquarters, their shipping facility, the server farm they rent, and the annual Christmas party being thrown at Tyrell’s house -- all of which can be thought of as “sub-nodes”. Whether all of these “sub-nodes” are immediately apparent to anyone looking at the Tyrell Corporation or if they have to be discovered through their own sub-network of clues is largely a question of design.

In short, you can have nodes within nodes. You can plan your campaign at a macro-level (Tyrell Corporation, Project MK-ALTER, the Chicago Sub-City, and the Kronos Detective Agency), look at how those macro-nodes relate to each other, and then develop each node as a separate node-based structure in its own right. Spread a few clues leading to other macro-nodes within each network of sub-nodes and you can achieve highly complex intrigues from simple, easy-to-use building blocks.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: DEEP WATER OIL SPILLS

Figuring out who, exactly, is to blame for this catastrophe is going to play out over several months. Possibly years. But there are  a couple things which are abundantly clear:

(1) There's something rotten with BP. When you've racked up 700+ safety violations at your deepwater drilling platforms and every other oil company has less than a dozen... well, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that BP was doing something wrong.

(2) Under President Bush, the Minerals Management Service somehow managed to devolve into the sort of cocaine-snorting, sex-addled, graft-ridden machine of corruption one really only expects to see in Hollywood action blockbusters. This was part of the Bush Administration's wider failure to maintain the robust regulatory agencies required by law. (See also No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller.) And the election of Obama didn't magically fix these problems.

Since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, the MMS has approved 27 new offshore drilling projects. All but one of these were granted the same exemptions from environmental review as the Deepwater Horizon platform. Incredibly, the reason these exemptions were granted is because of the implausibility of a spill resulting from deep water drilling.

(3) President Obama isn't to blame for the current spill. Nor is it clear to me what action he could reasonably be taking at this point to speed the progress of disaster efforts in the Gulf. (Getting angry or wearing a less-fancy shirt won't actually accomplish anything, no matter what the brain-dead, narrative-addicted media tries to tell you.)

But where Obama does deserve to be smacked around is the fact that he decided to reverse course on his campaign promise not to allow off-shore drilling. Of course, there was no way for Obama to know that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was coming (and that, as a result, he was irreparably shooting himself in the foot and wasting what could have been amazing political capital and a complete vindication of his policies).

But what Obama should have known is what everyone who supported his opposition to off-shore drilling knew years ago: Off-shore drilling platforms are not some form of magical technology which is completely impervious to bad luck, bad design, or bad maintenance. Like everything else ever built by man, this technology is fallible. And, as we're seeing, the environmental impact when something goes wrong can be huge.

THE SOLUTION

All that being said, I have the solution for stopping the oil spill.

This isn't because I'm a genius. It's because everyone involved already knows what the solution is: Drilling relief wells which can be used to repressurize the pipe. 

Everything else going on in the Gulf of Mexico right now is a sideshow of bread and circuses designed to keep people mildly appeased and distracted until the relief wells finally reach the right depth. (Which isn't anticipated to happen until August.) Relief wells are the only way we know to stop spills from blowouts.

We know this because all of this has happened before: On June 3rd, 1979, the Ixtoc oil well suffered a blowout. All of the same techniques being attempted at Deepwater Horizon were attempted at the Ixtoc: Garbage was dumped into the hole. Mud was pumped into it. Chemical dispersants were used. A massive Top Hat-like cap was unsuccessfully lowered into place. (It was called -- and I wish I was kidding as I said this -- SOMBRERO.)

And the only thing that finally stopped the Ixtoc blowout were the relief wells that were finally drilled to relieve the pressure. The Ixtoc well was not successfully capped until March 1980.

So here's the hard, bitter truth: There is absolutely nothing that can be done about this spill until the relief wells currently being drilled are completed.

But here's what needs to happen in the future: Instead of waiting for disaster to strike before beginning the relief wells (which will then take months to reach the necessary depth), oil companies should be REQUIRED to maintain two relief wells in addition to their main well at ALL of their ocean oil rigs.

The next time disaster strikes, these pre-drilled relief wells can be quickly connected to the main well, pressure can be rapidly alleviated, and the scope of the disaster can be rapidly contained.

WHAT I'M READING 71: TWILIGHT SAGA

Over the past 20 years there has been a fascinating trend in vampire fiction. Ever since Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles crystallized the sub-genre, there has been a steady and seemingly inexorable trend towards systematically stripping vampires of their traditional weaknesses: Garlic and running water were the first to vanish, but holy symbols were quick to follow. It wasn't long before they were able to cast reflections and even sunlight was downgraded from an instant sentence of death to a minor inconvenience before eventually being phased out entirely. Murderous, bloodthirsty beasts? Not so much. I mean, sure, they might get peckish once in awhile, but even that hunger is easily sated by a visit to the local blood bank or sucking a few rats dry.

The root for the trend was obvious: Vampires are alluring. They have the handsome, civilized polish of Mr. Darcy with a dark edge of bad boy danger. And this appeal moved them steadily from them villains to anti-heroes to heroes and, from there, to romantic leads. The result may be a rather bland creation with only the faintest glimmerings of moral and ethical complexity that was once inherent to the vampire mythos (the typical vampire these days has all the moral conflict of Superman eating a Big Mac), but the motivation was also crystal clear.

What's interesting in reading Stephanie Meyer's Twilight is seeing what is, in retrospect, the perfectly logical progression of the trend: Having systematically stripped vampires of their weaknesses, the genre had no choice but to start giving them new bling.

And thus we end up with vampires who literally sparkle in sunlight while being gifted with various assortments of psychic powers.

Okay, quick concept summary for the three people who have no idea what the Twilight Saga is: Isabella Feyfucker moves from the sunny world of Phoenix, AZ to the cold, rainy climes of a small town in the Pacific Northwest. Once there, she becomes the romantic center of attraction for every paranormal male in a 500-mile radius. Particularly Edward Cullen (a vegetarian vampire) and Jacob (a werewolf).

Stephanie Meyer makes it very easy to dismiss her work as that of a talent-less hack. Her prose is crude. Her plotting is uneven and often nonsensical. Her world-building is simplistic and inconsistent. In short,her books simply exude a sense of either carelessness or incompetence or both.

For example, in New Moon Meyer very specifically establishes that it's the latter half of February (within one or two weeks of Valentine's Day). Bella wants to sneak out of the house to go hiking and she's excited when she discovers that her father is planning to go ice-fishing on the river. So far, everything tracks. But when she reaches the woods:

Well, of course it seems creepier! You've left your father ice-fishing in the middle of winter and entered some sort of Twilight Zone Narnia featuring eternal summer!

A few paragraphs later Meyer has added "chest-high ferns" (a well-known winter growth) and a "bubbling stream" (which has inexplicably failed to join the river in freezing over) just to maximize the surrealism of the scene.

In the big picture, this continuity gaffe is of relatively minor importance. But Meyer strews this stuff all over her apparently unrevised, unedited, and unread manuscript. And it's not just the minor stuff, either. Major plot points often fall prey to the same traps.

It was particularly interesting to watch the Twilight movie after reading the books: Meyer's fanbase screamed bloody murder about a number of minor changes which had "ruined the movie", but ironically these changes almost universally fixed the fundamental flaws in Meyer's novel.

For example, in the novel Meyer gets about four-fifths of the way through the book before suddenly realizing that she doesn't have an ending. To "solve" this problem she has three vampires show up out of nowhere. One of them decides to harass Bella just 'cause he can, Edward kills him, and... that's it. End of novel. These vampires have no connection to the rest of the narrative, but apparently because there's a fight the story can be over.

The film doesn't change much: It just adds a couple of extra scenes in the first three-quarters of the movie to establish these evil vampires as a persistent background threat. But the result is a narrative which actually holds together instead of falling apart.

The film is also remarkably successful in turning Bella's classmates -- who are uniformly bland, forgettable cardboard in Meyer's novels (to the degree that they quietly fade away in the sequels) -- into quirky, memorable characters.

I bring this up only to demonstrate how little effort (or skill) it would take on Meyer's part to fix many of the most egregious flaws in these novels.

So if these books are so painfully flawed, why did I keep reading them?

Because Meyer is not, in fact, a talent-less hack. To the contrary: She has one particularly exceptional talent that I feel fairly safe in saying is the reason she's now a multi-millionaire and her books have become cultural icons.

Are they foolish? Unstable? Irrational? 

Absolutely. And it's easy to make fun of them for that. But there are plenty of foolish, unstable, and irrational people in the real world. Meyer simply captures them in narrative form and then, through the application of the supernatural, she adoitly elevates these all-too-human characters into a mythical plane.

Are those supernatural elements nothing more than a cliched reworking of the vampire-and-werewolf cultural gestalt created by White Wolf's World of Darkness? Sure. But it doesn't matter. The mythic elements of Meyer's milieu don't need to be particularly original in order to heighten the reality of her characters.

So, basically, you have the powerful alchemy of teen romance with the dial cranked up to 11. That, by itself, is basically paint-by-numbers. What can't be trivially duplicated is the potent reality of Meyer's characters. With that added to the mix, the result is explosive.

It's a pity that this gemstone is mired in the muck of Meyer's weakness as a writer, but the jewel itself glitters no less brightly. And it's not surprising to me that these books were able to capture the imagination of a generation of teenage girls.

 
THE DEEPER PROBLEMS

There has always been something vaguely disturbing in the sub-genre of vampire romances: Holding up the "dangerous man that I can change through the power of love" as some sort of romantic ideal is certainly a popular trope, but not a healthy one. On the other hand, while Meyer doesn't precisely deal with these issues, she does manage to avoid some of the thornier patches of the sub-genre.

But where the series gets particularly creepy are the sequels. In New Moon, Edward suddenly embraces hardcore emotional abuse as his modus operandi. And then, in Eclipse -- as if Meyer were checking off abusive relationships on a To Do list -- Edward goes for full-on stalker. Whether it's literally disabling Bella's car so that she can't go where she wants to go or the constant variants of "I only hurt you because I love you, baby" that he mouths, the warning sirens were screaming.

As if to emphasize Edward as a co-dependent, abusive stalker, Meyer simultaneously establishes a second love interest in the werewolf Jacob. Jacob is everything Edward isn't: Emotionally available. Stable. Supportive. And, thus, completely rejected by Bella as anything more than a good friend (who she can't see because her jealous boyfriend forbids it).

In Breaking Dawn, the abusive nature of the relationship drains away. But while it made for a more enjoyable reading experience, in retrospect it's equally creepy: The subtext appears to be that marriage is a magical cure-all. Having problems with an abusive boyfriend? Get married and he'll start treating you better!

Ironically, Meyer's strengths as an author only serve to make the Edward-Bella relationship even creepier. She writes Bella with an absolute truthfulness, detail, and depth that seems to fully capture the psychological mire of someone caught in an abusive relationship. In other circumstances, one could hold this up as a literary triumph. But the narrative never presents itself as a the gut-wrenching tale of a girl trapped in a co-dependent tragedy. Meyer is writing a self-destructive horror story, but she thinks she's writing about exemplary True Love. It's sad, disturbing, and rather disgusting.

• TWILIGHT: C-
• NEW MOON: C
• ECLIPSE: C
• BREAKING DAWN: B-

In the spirit of the recent facelifting I've been doing to some badly outdated portions of the site, I've re-designed the Bibliography page to be a little bit snazzier and a little bit more useful. Perhaps most notable, however, are the cover shots for all of the books I've written or contributed to:

City Supplement 1: Dweredell June 8th, 2007 Buy!

City Supplement 2: Aerie July 1st, 2007 Buy!

City Supplement 3: Anyoc October 20th, 2008 Buy!

There will probably be another revision of the Bibliography coming at some point down the road: The links to the Pyramid articles no longer work since Steve Jackson Games stopped hosting the old weekly version of the magazine; and at some point I really do need to get around to hosting my old RPGNet reviews on the Reviews page.

But I honestly have no idea when any of that will be resolved.

As I reviewed some of the older material while prepping this revision, I realized that some of it feels like a bit of a tease. For example, I wish that the adventures I wrote for Fantasy Flight's Legends & Lairs were still available. But they are apparently almost impossible to track down. I've received several e-mails in the past asking me if I had any extra copies, and unfortunately, no, I don't.

These were among my earliest published work, and although I still cringe occasionally when I read some of the prose in them, I'm still quite proud of them. The only one I really regret is The Wreyland Serpent, on which I blew my word count by producing something like 150% of the maximum content, which subsequently resulted in most of the really nice detail work I'd included being (rightfully) cut. Basically a complete meltdown by a neophyte freelancer. I frequently feel the urge to call Greg Benage (my editor on the project) and apologize all over again for the mess.

How does something like that happen? Basically you let your eyes get bigger than your stomach. You start with a nifty (but probably too complicated) concept:

And then you try to flesh it out with details on the local protectorate; a princess in distress; warring colonies of living silver and gold; details on a mining village; and two separate dungeon complexes...

Which is right around the time that you remember that you can't actually do all of that in 15 pages, no matter how much you might pride yourself on squeezing a maximum amount of content into a minimum amount of space. But it's too late now because everything you've written depends on all the other parts of the adventure's structure, and there's probably a way to cut it and rewrite it, but your deadline is looming and--

Kaboom.

Freelance writing: Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes its a car crash. Not infrequently, it's both.

KOTS REVISION CORRECTION

I was running an OD&D version of Keep on the Shadowfell on Thursday night and discovered that I made a mistake while compiling the PDF cheat sheet for the adventure. Specifically, two relatively important paragraphs got dropped:

This was included in the original posts on the website. It just got dropped from the compilation.

You can download the corrected PDF here.

JUNE 2010: 

PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4

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