Go to Part 1

Now that you know what the scene is about and the bang you’re using to launch it, you need to fill it with content. (Although, to be fair, the distinction we’re drawing here is not a hard-and-fast one: By the time you’ve set the agenda and the bang of a scene, you probably already know a lot about it.)

The process of filling a scene with content is an artistic one. And, like most artistic processes, there’s a virtually unlimited variation in the methods people use to do it. I’m not even particularly consistent in how I approach it and I actually think it’s a mistake to treat it as something that can be hard-coded. So I’m going to toss out a whole bunch of ideas that I personally find useful. Maybe you’ll find them useful, too. But regardless of that, you should poke around and see what other people have to say about it. And you should give yourself permission to experiment and really play around until you start getting a feel for what works for you and for your players.

First, however, there’s an all-important maxim:

You may know where the scene begins, but you don’t know where it ends.

You’re not writing a book or filming a movie. Unlike a traditional author, you may know where you’re starting off, but you’ve got no idea where the journey will end. Viewed from one perspective, this is a major limitation. But if you look at it from another angle, it’s a major opportunity.

ELEMENTS OF A SCENE

Here’s my basic philosophy: Take all the elements of the scene – the who, what, where, when – and fill those elements with all sorts of toys that both you and the PCs can play with.

(You could also think of these as “tools” that you use to build the scene. But, personally, I find the imagery of the toy – a thing which is meant to be played with; which becomes the focal point for a liberated imagination – to be far more evocative and, thus, useful.)

Hand-in-hand with this philosophy is the idea that the more flexible these toys become the more useful they will prove. If you include something which only has a single utility, that’s pretty good. But if you include something that can be used eight different ways, then you’re really cooking with gas.

(The good news is that your players are probably a gaggle of creativity: If you let them, they’ll take even the most boring stuff and spin it in ways you never imagined. But the key here is if you let them: Remain open to the players twisting or even completely inverting the people and things you include in the scene. Don’t let yourself get locked down on a preconceived notion of how things are “supposed” to work out.)

LOCATION: This is the “when” and the “where” of the scene. It’s the immediate environment for the actions of the scene and it can be either claustrophobic (“the back room at Bill’s”) or absurdly panoramic (“the highways of Texas”), depending on the nature of the scene and the characters in it. Ideally, remembering that minimizing contextualization makes for a better bang, you want to keep things short and sweet while simultaneously maximizing the number of toys that your players can grab.

A few rules of thumb that I use for crafting evocative descriptions as a GM:

Three of Five: Think about your five senses. Try to include three of them in each description. Sight is a gimme and Taste will rarely apply, so that means picking a couple out of Hearing, Smell, and Touch. (Remember that you don’t actually have to touch something in order to intuit what it might feel like if you did.)

Two Cool Details: Try to include two irrelevant-but-cool details. These are details that aren’t necessary for the scene to work, but are still cool. It’s the broken cuckoo clock in the corner; the slightly noxious odor with no identifiable source; the graffiti scrawled on the wall; the bio-luminescent fungus; etc.

Three-by-Three: Delta’s 1-2-(3)-Infinity talks about psychological research demonstrating that repeating something three times takes up the same space in our brains as repeating something infinitely. Thus, once you’ve hit the third item in a sequence, any additional items in that sequence are redundant.

Extrapolating from this, for minor scenes you can describe three things each with a single detail. At that point, you’ve filled up the “infinity queue” in your players’ brains and their imaginations will impulsively fill in the finer details of the scene you’ve evoked. For “epic” scenes, use the full three-by-three: Describe three different elements with three details each.

CHARACTERS: This is the “who” of the scene. I find it useful to conceptually break the characters present in a scene down into three categories: Leads, Features, and Extras.

Leads are the major characters in the scene. They’re the characters who are most affected by the agenda of the scene or who are capable of having the greatest impact on the agenda of the scene.

Features are the supporting cast of the scene. They wield an influence over the Leads; or provide crucial information; or are important resources in whatever conflict is being fought.

Extras are scene-dressing. They might find themselves being taken hostage or appealed to for mob justice, but they can usually just be thought of as part of the location instead of as active agents in the scene.

PCs in a scene are almost always leads. You may find it useful to think of some PCs as being the leads in the scene and the others PCs as features (because the agenda of the scene is primarily of interest to the former and of less interest to the latter), but if you’ve got a scene where none of the PCs are leads you might want to take a moment and triple-check what you’re doing. Unless you’ve got some amazingly good reason for side-lining the PCs, it’s probably a good idea to find a way of reframing the agenda of the scene.

(Off-hand, the only example I can think of is a situation where the PCs are deliberately not participating in a scene. For example, maybe they’re eavesdropping on a conversation. Although even then you should double-check and make sure that a secondary agenda in the scene isn’t about the PCs avoiding detection. And then triple-check to make sure that the scene isn’t really about something like, “Will the PCs stop Roberta from confessing her love to Charles?”)

CONFLICT vs. COLOR: The “what” of the scene is largely encapsulated by the agenda of the scene, but in actually running the scene I often find it useful to categorize the scene as either being primarily about conflict or primarily about color.

Conflict scenes are about two or more characters who want mutually exclusive things. The result might be a firefight, a formal duel, a boardroom takeover, a political debate, a psychic assault, or a torrid argument. Whatever form it takes, though, heads are going to butt and (in a roleplaying game) dice are probably going to be rolled.

Color scenes, on the other hand, are about exposition, planning, and/or preparation. They’re a time for character development; for showing what the PCs are like (and how they relate to each other) when fireballs aren’t flying at their heads. They’re the scenes when your crew studies the blueprints and calls in their favors. They also provide a valuable contrast – a negative space to highlight the positive space; a moment of calm to emphasize the frenetic chase.

From a purely utilitarian standpoint, color scenes are also where the facts get established which will allow you to minimize contextualization for later bangs. (For example, if you know a character’s long-lost brother is going to show up on their doorstep next week it’s more effective to seed information about the brother into a series of scenes leading up to that bang instead of trying to communicate the full meaning of the bang in the same moment that the brother arrives.)

With all of that being said, most of the time you’re going to want your scenes to be about conflict: Conflict is usually interesting and meandering exposition is usually boring, so try to find ways to build your exposition into conflict. (For example, you might have a scene where the PC’s mother is angry because she feels like the PC has stopped caring about his missing brother.) This frequently allows you to have your cake and eat it too.

Addendum: How NOT to Frame a Scene (Starring Harlequin)

Go to Part 4: Closing the Frame

There are three ways to foreshadow in RPGs:

(1) Strew the foreshadowing around liberally. If the PCs might go to location A or they might go to location B, foreshadow both of them: Whichever one they go to has now been foreshadowed and they’ll think you’re brilliant. The foreshadowing for the other will simply be irrelevant trivia or, at worst, red herrings.

(2) Retroactive foreshadowing. After a few sessions, look at what the PCs have actually done / experienced. Now, take some of that stuff (particularly stuff they liked) and use it as the building blocks for prepping the next chunk of the campaign. (For example, maybe they were fascinated by the small jade statue of a knight that you included as a piece of random treasure. Make the next major villain in the campaign a knight who wears green armor.)

(3) Vague foreshadowing. Simply make statements that would be true or significant regardless of the specifics of a given event. (For example, when Gandalf says, “My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many – yours not least.” Tolkien is very specifically foreshadowing the role he knows Gollum will play in saving Frodo’s life and completing the quest to destroy the ring. But even if Tolkien were just a GM who had no idea where the story was going at that point, he could just as easily have Gandalf say that. The statement, after all, boils down to nothing more than saying, “Gollum is going to do something and this quest is pretty important.” Which is pretty much a given since, at that point in the story, Gollum is already following them.)

If it’s all just a trick, why do it? Well, foreshadowing can be used to give a sense of cohesion and completeness to the campaign. It can also invest the players with a feeling that what their characters are doing is important. It can also be used to reinforce themes. Basically, you can use foreshadowing in a roleplaying game to achieve all (or most) of the things that it can be used for in other mediums; the only difference is that the non-linear nature of a good RPG scenario forces a different execution of the foreshadowing.

Quick update for backers: The first batch of refunds was supposed to go out this week. That didn’t happen. The problem is that PayPal is dawdling in confirming the transfer of funds from my checking account to my PayPal account. Until the money is actually in my Paypal account, I can’t send it to you.

What they’re doing here is holding onto the money for a few extra days so that they can earn a little more interest out of it. I’d forgotten how much of a pain-in-the-ass PayPal is. In any case, PayPal is telling me that the money should clear in the next 2-3 business days. So my expectation is that the first batch of refunds will actually clear some time next week.

And if you were an L&L backer and you have no idea what I’m talking about, go here and follow the instructions.

(Note: The first half dozen or so people who responded to my e-mail have received their refunds. I sent those out using the small balance I had standing in my account.)

Exit, Pursued by a Monster – Alex Drummond

I did a series of teasers for the Art of Legends & Labyrinths awhile back at a time when I thought we were gearing up for the eminent release of the book, but it ran aground on the rocky shores of the project. I’ve still got a half dozen or so pieces that were completed but never previewed and I’m going to go ahead and roll those out now for everyone to see.

One of my goals for the art in Legends & Labyrinths was to have it representative of what actually happens at the gaming table. It’s one of the reasons that I offered an illustration based on a backer’s campaign journal as one of the reward levels for the 8-Bit funding campaign: I wanted to have the visuals of the game drawn from actual play.

This piece is one example of that. Here’s what the original art order looked like:

A cavern which has been excavated to reveal the ancient remains of a city. The surroundings have the feeling of great age; the dust of Sumerian clay. We are looking toward an ancient tower half-embedded into the cavern wall.

On the floor of the cavern in front of this tower a huge, mob-like melee is raging: Tor, Elestra, Ranthir, Tee, and Nasira (or some selection thereof) are fighting large, ogre-like creatures with ebon black skin who are being commanded by a small cadre of robed cultists. (These are the same guys Tee was about to ambush in the illustration for page 67.)

One moment ago, Agnarr leaped through the upper window of the tower – from the third floor or thereabouts; high up. It’s like a stunt out of an action movie and Agnarr looks totally cool in mid-air; like some sort of combination of Conan, James Bond, and John McClane.

What we’re looking at right now is a massive creature which has smashed through that window and large chunks of the wall around it. It looks like a sandworm from Dune except that its mouth is rimmed with needle-like teeth and it’s got two lanky arms thrusting out from its sides.

So: Tower window being smashed open; chunks of masonry hanging in the air. And a giant worm chasing Agnarr in a race to a floor which is filled with a crazy melee.

For those following along at home with the Black Book Beta, this piece was intended to appear on page 74 (replacing the photoshopped placeholder of the volcanic dragon).

Tagline: A simple vehicle construction system. An oxymoron? Not so. Big Robots, Cool Starships succeeds at the impossible.

Big Robots, Cool Starships, the first supplement for the Big Eyes, Small Mouth roleplaying game, is perhaps the most surprising gaming product I have read all year.

Did I say surprising? I meant mind-blowing… as in “mind-blowingly good”.

Why is it surprising? you ask. (We’ll get to “mind-blowing” later.) Very simple: This book should not be anywhere near as good as it is.

First off, it is a vehicle construction system for a simple game. And when I say “vehicle construction system” I mean “vehicle construction system”. BRCS doesn’t cut corners and it doesn’t fudge (any more than BESM does). It is a concrete, dynamic, flexible system with precise definitions and seemingly limitless potential. This type of thing should not exist. And yet it does. BRCS not only succeeds at being a true system, it also manages to pull it off without becoming far too complex for the basic game. We’ll get back to how this is all possible in a couple seconds.

Second, BRCS is written by David L. Pulver. I also discovered (by reading Mark C. MacKinnon’s Foreward to the book) that Pulver signed on as Associate Line Editor and Senior Staff Writer for Guardians of Order back in November of ’98. This would, of course, be the same acclaimed David L. Pulver who wrote GURPS Biotech, GURPS Mecha, GURPS Vehicles, and the forthcoming revision of GURPS Space. It isn’t surprising, therefore, that Pulver can turn out products of sterling quality. What is surprising is that Pulver is working on BESM. I can’t imagine a longer, or stranger, jump than the one taken from GURPS to Big Eyes, Small Mouth. What is even more surprising is that Pulver, one of the Founding Fathers of vehicle construction systems in my mind, could have turned out BRCS — which is unlike any VCS I’ve seen before.

Then again, maybe that isn’t so surprising either.

By this point I’ve either tantalized or bored you enough. What the heck is this Big Robots, Cool Starships thing, anyway?

THE SYSTEM

Big Robots, Cool Starships is – in its own words – “a mecha/SF supplement for Big Eyes, Small Mouth”. It expands the basic BESM system to allow for more dynamic mecha play – “mecha” being used in its more broad-based definition of “any mechanical device found in anime”. To sum up, therefore, BRCS is a vehicle construction system (plus some general campaign info) for big robots, combat cyborgs, really cool cars, cybernetic body armor, starships, fighters, tanks, and just about anything else you can think of with two gears to rub together.

Note the word “expand”, above. It’s there for a very good reason. When most games have a book described with the blurb “new rules for XXX!” what that really means is “the system in the core rulebook for XXX was so crappy that we’ve completely ripped it out and are starting over from scratch; plus we’re charging you extra for the privilege of having decent rules”.

BRCS isn’t like that at all. The system for “giant robots” and their ilk in the core BESM rulebook works just fine. BRCS is, literally, an expansion of that basic system. It doesn’t replace; it adds to.

“But wait,” you say, “If the basic system works just fine, why does it need expanding?” The answer is simple: It doesn’t need expanding. But some people might want it expanded. If you’re running mecha-oriented campaigns, then the rules in BRCS will provide you with more options, more detail, and more innate potential. Think of it like this: In first grade you learned about addition. It wasn’t until later on that they taught you multiplication. Was the system you had learned for addition incomplete because now you had this new thing called “multiplication”? Of course not. Multiplication was simply an expansion of your mathematical concepts – more useful for some things; less useful for others. Same thing applies here.

BRCS accomplishes this expansion in a five-step process: First it redefines the “Own a Big Robot” attribute from the basic BESM rulebook to include all sorts of mecha. (“Ah ha! They did change something!” Oh, calm down. Would you have preferred it if they added a whole new attribute which accomplished nothing at all? Sheesh.). Second, they made it so that both “Own a Big Robot” and “Cybernetic Body” give you a pool of “Mecha Points”. Third, they added the attribute “More Powerful Robot” to get you some additional Mecha Points. Fourth, they added the “Personal Gear” attribute to cover situations where a character has access to gear your average person probably wouldn’t (okay, this isn’t really all that important, but I wanted a “five-step” process not a “four-step” process — so sue me). Finally, they inserted a six-step mecha design process between Step Five and Step Six of character creation as described in BESM. These steps are conveniently numbered 5A through 5F.

Basic character creation in BESM is an eight-step process. Half of those had nothing to do with the system at all (they were entirely conceptual). Similarly, three of the six steps to mecha design as described in BRCS are conceptual in nature, not mechanical – Step 5A is “GM Discussion” (self-explanatory); Step 5B is “Mecha Outline” (get your concept); and Step 5F is “Mecha Background” (when all the numbers are hashed out, your write up the details to “personalize your creation”). Therefore it’s steps 5C, 5D, and 5E which are the meat of this system. Let’s take a closer look.

Step 5C: Mecha Sub-Attributes. The BRCS system for mecha creation is extremely similar to the basic BESM character creation system. Not only is BRCS an expansion to the BESM rules, it is a seamless one – the system naturally fits right into the existing character creation process, as if it had always been meant to be there. To avoid not only the “let’s replace everything” syndrome, but also the “tacked on rules” syndrome is, quite frankly, amazing (have I used that word and its synonyms often enough to make this review’s conclusion clear, yet?).

Character creation in BESM starts with the purchasing of Attributes (with five discrete levels). BRCS mecha creation starts with the purchasing of Sub-Attributes (with six discrete levels). These are things like “Super Strength”, “Space Flight”, “Artificial Intelligence”, and so on. Like BESM character creation, BRCS is very much an open-ended effects-based system – you purchase “Space Flight” in order to build intergalactic battlecruisers and 20th century spacesuits alike. The system is incredibly dynamic and resilient, although it tends to scale poorly: You can build BMW’s and intergalactic cruisers; but you can’t have them face off against each other very well. This isn’t a major issue, and can easily be worked around in the rare circumstance when it actually crops up (for example, by giving the intergalactic cruiser appropriate action resolution bonuses based on its size, etc.; or you could just GM fiat the situation out of the way, the necessary difference between the technology levels before the problem crops up being large enough that there is really only one logical conclusion in most of these situations).

Step 5D: Mecha Defects. The next step in BESM character creation is the selection of Defects – which give you Bonus Points to spend on additional Attributes. Similarly, Mecha Defects (“Exposed Occupants”, “Hanger Queen”, “Start-Up Time”) give you additional points to spend on Mecha Sub-Attributes.

Between purchasing additional levels of “Own a Big Robot” or “Cybernetic Body” (which give you big chunks of extra Mecha Points); purchasing “More Powerful Robot” (for smaller chunks of extra Mecha Points); and Mecha Defects (for very small, precise chunks of extra Mecha Points) you should be able to tweak things for your character in just the right way so that there is little or no slop in the number of Mecha Points you purchased versus the number of Mecha Points you need to build your mecha.

Step 5E: Mecha Derived Values. Finally you figure out the mecha’s “Armour”, “Health Points”, “Energy Points”, and “Combat Value” based on its attributes. Action resolution proceeds normally.

As I said with character creation in BESM: It don’t get much easier than this.

OTHER STUFF

So Big Robots, Cool Starships is a vehicle construction system, focusing on mecha. Right? Right.

But wait… there’s more! The book also contains:

1. A brief, two page overview of the history of mecha in Japanese anime. It is surprisingly detailed considering its short length (particularly considering the broad definition of “mecha” with which the supplement is working). Noticeable oversights (at least to me) included Bubblegum Crisis and Armored Trooper Votoms. Plus, Pulver tends to ignore manga entirely (even when the series he is talking about was manga before it was anime). I was also upset that he referred to Robotech as the English translation for Super Dimensional Fortress Macross — if you don’t have the space to detail the controversy regarding the relationship between those two pieces of animation, then please don’t mention them at all.

2. A chapter on “Mecha Combat and Other Actions”. You might be thinking “new rules”, but you’d be wrong. With the exception of a couple of charts on “Falling Damage” and “Crash Damage”, health points for buildings, and a list of suggested mecha-related resolution modifiers the section is pretty much ruleless. This is for the best: The basic BESM resolution mechanics are more than capable of handling mecha. This is a testament not only to the strength of BESM’s mechanics, but also the strength of Pulver’s design system (insofar as it remains completely compatible). So what is in this section? Guidelines. Stuff you might not think of, but which Pulver takes the time to mention and bring to your attention. Excellent stuff. With a system like BESM I don’t need a rule for every occasion, and by simply bringing the stuff to my attention Pulver has done more than enough. Kudos for this restraint, which leads to a far better product than if these twenty pages had been packed full of useless rules (which would have ruined the simple elegance of BESM).

3. And we’re still not done. Pulver includes a short section on potential mecha campaign settings (from Ancient Japan to High Fantasy to Modern Day to Far Future); a game seed for each of those campaign settings; and a sample adventure.

4. Finally, I just want to make note that with this product Guardians of Order has moved up my list from “company which produces interesting stuff” to “company whose stuff you should buy”. The minor quibbles I had with their production values in their first publication (the core BESM rules) have evaporated; their general art quality has improved tremendously (although I’m still spoiled by the folks over at Dream Pod 9, so I’ll say they could be even better); their writing remains spotless (particularly with Pulver at the helm); their product conception is elegant; and their future plans look bright (with Dominion Tank Police and Demon City Shinjuku RPGs in the future as well as additional supplements for BESM).

5. To end on a weird note: BRCS has a two-page index with an entry for just about every major concept in the book. This is great, right? Wrong. Every single entry has exactly one (and only one) referenced page number. According to this index, for example, “Big Eyes, Small Mouth” is referenced only once: On page six. Not only is this, of course, inaccurate, it’s actually mentioned on page five and page seven as well. This is completely bizarre. Out of curiosity I went back and checked the core BESM manual. It’s the same damn thing! I don’t get it. This is not how indexes work!

CONCLUSION

Big Robots, Cool Starships is, in my estimation, one of the best supplements of its type I have ever read. I’ve never seen a rules-based supplement mesh so seamlessly and effortlessly with its mother product. BRCS doesn’t leave you feeling as if you were ripped off by the mecha rules in BESM; yet at the same time once you own it you know you wouldn’t want to play without it. On top of it all, Pulver has thrown in campaign seeds and a fairly interesting adventure.

When I need a simple system which is, nonetheless, a solid game engine (so that I don’t have to fudge a lot of different things to make it work) BESM has become the game I look to. BESM is the best game of its type I have encountered. The same holds true, now, for BRCS — even if I’m not sure there is another product like BRCS out there.

In short, Big Robots, Cool Starships is not only an excellent product, it is a solid product. You won’t be disappointed.

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Author: David L. Pulver
Company/Publisher: Guardians of Order
Cost: $15.95
Page count: 110
ISBN: 0-9682431-3-4

Originally Posted: 1999/08/06

As I mentioned in my review of Big Eyes, Small Mouth, the second edition of the game remains a go-to system for me. And BRCS remains one of the best vehicle construction systems I’ve ever used (although it has been awhile since I had cause to actually pull it out and play around with it).

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.