Adventures
Adventure Gameplay
Collaborative narrative story with opportunities for roleplaying, character development, world building, and creative story telling.
Setting the Stage
Adventures are all about collaboration and as such start with an agreement on what the adventure is all about. Some key questions to answer are as follows:
What is the theme of the adventure? Taking action to meet an objective? An exploration? Solving a mystery? Centered on social interactions?
Goals: What do we, the protagonists, want to accomplish in the adventure?
What challenges make this an adventure rather than something much more mundane? Time crunch? One or more antagonists? Dangerous environment?
Where will this adventure take place?
Who are some key NPCs that may be involved?
Where and when will adventure play begin?
There are a few different ways to approach setting the stage:
The GM has an idea for the adventure and discusses with players. The GM should be open to expanding and amending aspects of their idea so players feel invested and bought in to the adventure's premise.
The players and GM brainstorm the adventure together.
The group consults the Oracles for guidance (see below for more on oracles).
Out of Character
Out-of-character communication is important even after an adventure begins. The GM can help steer things, "the Chief Constable has been ruled out as a suspect," for example. Players can also more directly share where they see the story going and avoid an inadvertant narrative tug-of-war.
Sharing Scenes
Adventures move forward scene by scene. As in a play or movie, a scene is where something significant happens to further the plot. Our camera will stop rolling between scenes, omitting anything insignificant to the plot. Players and the GM will take turns narrating a scene. A scene should be guided by what our protagonists are doing to try to further their goal and the challenges they face.
The scene narrator should feel free to change locations and narrate the actions of NPCs and fellow PCs. This is definitely a mindset change from typical RPGs where players look to build consensus before proceeding and don't take actions for each other. Successful asynchronous games don't have the luxury of constant consensus and can stall out while waiting for players to check in to agree or throw out another possibility. The scene narrator should feel empowered to make progress based on discussions during Setting the Stage as well as ongoing out-of-character communication.
GM Kickoff
The GM kicks things off by doing the following:
Exposition of anything important that happens before the first scene of the adventure.
List of NPCs identified as part of the adventure during adventure planning.
Provide guidelines/guardrails for the adventure.
Player Turns
Players take turns narrating a scene. This can happen in any order so long as each player gets a turn before any player goes again.
The narrating player has control over NPCs and fellow PCs during their scene
A scene should include meaningful story progression
Use of oracles is encouraged to introduce some randomness and improvisation (more on oracles below)
End your turn with some interesting open questions another player can explore in the next scene
GM Turns
The GM does not have an assumed turn as part of the player rotation, but rather can jump in and narrate a scene or introduce something that otherwise affects the story. This should be done to add new interesting elements or help steer the story as necessary.
Oracles
Oracles are SYNCH discord bot commands to interject randomness and opportunities for improvisation into an adventure.
Outcome (/yn)
When a yes/no answer is needed and would normally be provided by a GM, consult the Outcome Oracle by using the /yn 1 command.
If the Oracle responds with a but... the player should include something in the narrative that diminishes the response in some way.
"Did you see the constable last night?"
"No, but I heard somebody walking by just after dusk."
If the Oracle responds with an and... the player should include something in the narrative that reinforces the response in some way.
"Did you see the constable last night?"
"Yes, and he wasn't alone. He was with a strange man I've never seen before."
Theme Generator (/theme)
Generate ideas for an adventure theme.
Challenge Generator (/challenge)
Generate ideas for adventure challenges.
