“An uncharted world, in the deeps of space. What emergency caused your crew to make the Wild Jump that led you to this system?”
I’m experimenting with a brief format for creating story prompts, using clip art as inspiration to get me started. I’ve got enough of these now to share, and I welcome any feedback. (You can also comment on the doc, if I’ve set it up right.)
The intent is to create evocative images (“Details” / “Discoveries”), and then Prompts related to each, followed up with a worksheet space for Threats, Factions, Moves, etc.
Feel free also to kick the tires in play. What other types of question would you ask?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oIqpJ4anEF-r6YztJuAs8NTFy8p6fYcX/view?usp=sharing
Okie doki. Sorry it took so long to respond (also, warning, long post incoming)
I’ll be using page 2, Ubhey, as an example.
Right off the bat, I’m seeing a bit of a problem with the angle of the prompts. Prompts should be used to fill in important gaps that the GM purposefully left blank. The answers should have a direct impact on the story, or at least have a strong relation to the characters.
Here I’m seeing a bit too much solo-world-building, a bit too much gm-railroading. Even minor, purely visual elements are already decided, and the characters are simply prompted to react to them? Working with assumptions is fine. But there must be room for answers. If you can’t think of 3-4 answers that will have very distinct impacts on the game, then perhaps consider another tack. You prompt them to find out stuff about the planet, not to tell them about it. Sadly, a lot of these questions are just statements of fact with minor fill-in-the-blanks.
For example, when you ask “Have any of the crew been to Ubhey before?”, that’s a simple yes or no question that doesn’t invite expansion or consequence. Worse, if a player takes the initiative and describes their time in Ubhey you’re left with two choices: all the following prompts will be undermined, or you undermine the player’s prompt.
Also, a very important thing to remember: You are asking the characters what they know. Every prompt is done through the lens of the character’s personal experience. When you ask “What rare stellar event were the long-vanished cultures of Ubhey witness to?”, you are assuming that the character you are asking will know (and again we have a problem with a prompt that doesn’t have a direct impact on the narrative). Ask questions “in world”, and add descriptors around them to make the question pertinent to the current situation.
Thirdly, prepare follow-up questions that directly reference the answer of the previous question, no matter what that answer was. The newly prompted character will have to build on the previous answer.
So I suggest a step back. An approach from a new philosophy:
Start with your Netflix episode blurb. That 1-2 line blurb when you choose the next episode of your favorite sci-fi show. For example:
Ubhey
The turquoise seas and golden sands of Ubhey slowly swallow the ruins of a long-vanished culture. Yet the crew can’t allow the most important secrets to sink beneath the waves.
That’s it. No mention of memory stones or secrets of jumpspace or the Ubhey Array. That may or may not exist. It probably won’t. It’ll be something that the players build together. All the whys and whats will be discovered in-game.
Here’s what I would prompt:
> “Ubhey comes into view, a marbled turquoise and gold. Your ship’s telemetry floods your screens with information. What’s cropping up on comms channels? Any signs of other ships in the area? Any obvious signs of habitation? Or are you all alone?”
> > If there is habitation: “How heavy is the communication? Just local? Or do they have a starbase?”
> > If there are ships: “You recognise those idents. What faction is already here?”
Note the in-game framing. I’m talking to the character, speaking from the character’s point of view. Most importantly, I’m setting up the first very important decision, one that will greatly affect what threats or allies are at my disposal. Until I ask this question, I don’t know if there is civilization, or enemies, or allies, or what. If they choose “alone”, that’s fine. That cements this planet as so damn backwater that if anything goes wrong there will be no one to call for help.
> “At first you think your sources must have been mistaken. There’s nothing here but sand and rocks and water. But you finally spot it. Signs of sunken, sand-smothered edifices. You’ve followed the rumor this far. The lost secret buried there, sinking ever deeper. What do you expect to find? What rumored prize is down there?”
> > Depending on the answer “Which faction is funding this expedition? Or are you here on your own behalf?”
Again, the prompt lays important groundwork: this is from the character’s perspective. And it defines the prize for completing the mission. There could be hundreds or thousands of potential answers. Each answer creates an entirely different scenario, because whatever it is, they’ll have to get it out. Or free it? Or absorb it? Or copy it? The whole point is that none of the “audience” knows until the character gives their line of expository dialogue.
Sorry if that was long-winded. I’ve begun writing a new set of these for Carta Galaxia, so the theory is fresh in my mind. Hope this didn’t come off as too harsh. There’s a lot of cool potential here, just step back and approach it from a less railroad-y angle. Let the characters shape the important bits of the story.
Sean Gomes Hi Sean – Thanks for the feedback! It’s very helpful. I’ll go back to the drawing board with these notes in mind.
It’s an interesting challenge. It seems like there’s a balance to be struck between detail and latitude for the story to develop. For instance, in your own draft for Zinya Biotech, you detail quite a bit about them, rather than leaving those things blank. You’re writing a faction guide, so that is probably the reason. But even so, there’s always a line being determined between the known and unknown prior to play.
In this case, it’s interesting that you picked Uhbey as the example to critique, as it’s the one with the most material close to an eventual goal — I want to develop a set of campaign hooks specifically about a precursor civilization, with just one other particular thing to be known about them. Yet even in setting forth that one thing, there’s a need to diverge from the ten thousand other things that might otherwise be the case. Since it’s meant to be a campaign anchor, I want to find a way and describe the civilization’s nature with enough precision that it’s not just utterly generic/incidental/useless.
The other vignettes are more incidental by nature, and will probably be easier for me to start with in revision with your notes in mind.
I like your idea of using a logline (in screenwriting parlance) or episode blurb as one type of starting point. I’ll probably reorient the ‘details and impressions’ to be beneath that, and it remains to be seen whether I can do so without leading too much. One inspiration for the approach I attempted (a detail or impression, then a prompt) came from ideas found in The Perilous Wilds, a DW supplement put out by Lampblack & Brimstone. They pursue far more detail in sketching out wilderness adventures.
But there is clearly a balance and I’ve started out too far over on the “known” scale, so I look forward to trying again.