Anyone else have story prompts they can add? I’m always looking for good jumping off points for adventures 🙂
Story Style:
Typically, each style is going to want to have a Beginning (Set-Up), Middle (Area of Exploration/Growth), and End (Conclusion). Remember that those that have power want to keep it and those that don’t want to get it. 🙂
– 1 & Done
– Graphic Novel: A longer one and done story.
– Event: 2+ Episodes of a fairly stand alone story possibly bringing together outside help to stop a cataclysmic event or major villain and usually self contained.
– Arc: 5-6 Episodes Building to a Conclusion and with hooks beginning in the last episode or 2 that lead to the start of the next Arc.
– Season: 12-24 Episodes Building to a Conclusion and with hooks throughout that can lead to the stories of the following Seasons.
Tropes (You can always start off with one and twist the story in a new direction with another):
– Enemy of the Week
– Time Travel-Fix the Past
– Time Travel-From the Future to fix the Present
– End of the World Battle
– Doomsday Plague/Event (Zombies, Disease, etc.)
– Unstoppable Force
– Immovable Object
– Heroes as Villains
– Villains as Heroes
– Epic Journey-Someone Comes to Town (New Sheriff in Town)
– Epic Journey-Someone Leaves Town (Road Trip)
– Origin Story/Explore the Past (Bourne Identity)
– Pass the Torch/End of an Era
– New Powers Threats Responsibilities
– Vengeance, Pay-Back or Justice
– Redemption (Making up for the Past)
– Any of the Deadly Sins (Envy, Pride, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed, or Sloth)
– Terror Attack
– Conspiracy Theories (Aliens, Illuminate, Big Brother, etc)
– Heist (ala Oceans 11)
– Chase
– Mystery
– Enemy of My Enemy/Strange Bedfellows
– Survival on a ‘Desert Island’
– Battle Royal/Fight Club
– Time to Train
– Mind-Control/Pod People/Taken Over
– Love Triangle
– Someone Cashes in a Chip
– Hostage Negotiations
– Lost Powers
– Swapped Powers
– Framed for Something You Didn’t Do
– Secret Identity Crisis
– Running the Gauntlet
– Caught in a Trap/Prisoner
– Moral Conundrum/Impossible Choice
– Easter Egg Hunt (ala National Treasure, Da Vinci Code)
This is pretty cool and comprehensive!
Something expanded like this could be quite helpful in the book.
If Kyle wants to use any of it in the book, I’m totally cool with it. I can try to expand on the ideas further as well. I’m also thinking about ‘scene’ ideas as well, where u could almost put them on index cards or fancier for prompts.
Something along the lines of Action Scenes, Transition Scenes, Exposition Scenes? Again, for a stuck GM to just pull out for an idea of what to do next.
Hi Chip,
That’s very kind of you to offer – this kind of thing is great when coming up with an overarching plot idea but you want to be careful about putting down specific scene ideas. With a game powered by the Apocalypse World engine an outline works fine but you don’t want to specify certain things since players have a lot of control over how the fiction unfolds and where the story goes – you play to find out what happens and everyone kind of collaboratively world builds as they play.
That said, there’s no reason you can’t have certain scenes prepared for introducing a villain or conflict or key scenes like you suggest. They could even be prepared Soft or Hard moves in case you get stuck or plot points in the story. In the alpha there are some ideas about this (prepared soft and hard move examples for certain locations) or putting plot points on index cards. I think it could be helpful as long as they don’t make any important assumptions about where the players will go, what they’ll do or what information they are limited to since they have a ton of power and control over that stuff! Preparing stuff to throw at them in terms of moves and challenges though? Rock on!
After veering off point there, what I meant to say: I was definitely planning on including some tropes, though I can’t say for sure that I would’ve hit all of these. It’s really pretty awesome!
k exactly what you say 🙂 i was mostly thinking about soft scene prompts a la savage worlds using a deck of cards to create scene ideas that allow players a chance to move the story in a little less structured manner than railroading them relentlessly into a conclusion by any means necessary. Sadly, I have hopes of writing a story/comic at some point and games like this give me a chance to stretch my creative muscles and try to work on developing plots and structure in a tight way so the story moves at a good pace.
Cool! I’ve never actually played Savage Worlds, maybe I’ll check it out.
I see them more as ideas for teh stuck EiC who needs a comic book trope to help get his brain going.
These are rad Chip Moore!