Have you ever been running a published adventure, had the PCs encounter an NPC, and discovered that the NPC’s description was eight paragraphs of undifferentiated text? You remember reading through this stuff two days ago when you were reviewing the adventure, but how are you going to fish out all the little details from that wall of text? (And three scenes later, of course, you realize that everything has spun completely out of control because you forgot that the NPC was supposed to tell the PCs about the properties of the Starstone, but that was hidden away as a single sentence in the fourth paragraph. Whoops.)

Or have you been prepping your own material and found yourself wasting a lot of time writing up lengthy descriptions of your NPCs that never seem to have any real impact at the table? Are you trying to figure out a better way of organizing your NPCs so that you can just focus on the important stuff? (And so that, when your players decide to spontaneously visit the guy they met twelve sessions ago, you’ll be able to quickly pick that NPC up and start playing him again.)

Or maybe you’re really good at juggling all those little details, but you struggle when it comes to really getting into character or making each of your NPCs a unique, distinct, and memorable individual.

And maybe, as you’ve tried to find a solution for these problems, you’ve found various tools or techniques online or in How to GM books that are designed to give you richer and more evocative NPCs… but they all involve spending 5x longer prepping them.

Well, that’s what this Universal NPC Roleplaying Template is all about.

I’ve been using it for more than a decade now, slowly refining it through actual play. Generally speaking, it doesn’t take any extra effort compared to the traditional “wall of text” presentations, but it structures the NPC’s description into utilitarian categories that (a) focus your prep and (b) make it incredibly easy to use during actual play. I’ve found that I can design NPCs with this technique, lay them aside for months at a time, and then pick them back up again smoothly in the middle of play without any review: Instead of trying to parse several paragraphs of dense text, the template will guide you directly to the information that you need.

USING THE TEMPLATE

Name: Self-explanatory. (Or, at least, I hope it is.)

Appearance: Essentially a boxed text description that you can use when the PCs meet the the NPC for the first time. Get it pithy. 1-2 sentences is the sweet spot. Three sentences is pretty much the maximum length you should use unless there is something truly and outrageously unusual about the character. Remember that you don’t need to describe every single thing about them: Pick out their most interesting and unique features and let your players’ imaginations paint in the rest.

Quote: I don’t always use this entry, but a properly crafted quote can be a very effective way to quickly capture the NPC’s unique voice. Generally speaking, though, all you want is a single sentence. You should be able to basically glance at it and grok the voice. (Special exception if the character’s voice is “rambling old man”.)

Roleplaying: This is the heart of the template, but it should also be the shortest section. Two or three brief bullet points at most. You’re looking to identify the essential elements which will “unlock” the character for you.

There are no firm rules here, but I will always try to include at least one simple, physical action that you can perform while playing the character at the table. For example, maybe they tap their ear. Or are constantly wearing a creepy smile. Or they arch their eyebrow. Or they speak with a particular accent or affectation. Or they clap their hands and rub them together. Or snap their fingers and point at the person they’re talking to. Or make a point of taking a slow sip from their drink before responding to questions.

You don’t have to make a big deal of it and it usually won’t be something that you do constantly (that gets annoying), but this mannerism is your hook: You’ll find that you can quickly get back into the character by simply performing the mannerism. It will make your players remember the NPC as a distinct individual. And it can even make playing scenes with multiple NPCs easier to run (because you can use the mannerisms to clearly distinguish the characters you’re swapping between).

You’ll generally only need one mannerism. Maybe two. More than that and you lose the simple utility of the mannerism in unnecessary complexity. It’s not that the character’s entire personality is this one thing; it’s that the rest of the character’s personality will flow out of you whenever you hit that touchstone.

Round this out with personality traits and general attitude. Are they friendly? Hostile? Greedy? Ruthless? Is there a particular negotiating tactic they like? Will they always offer you a drink? Will they fly into a rage if insulted? But, again, keep it simple and to the point. You want to be able to glance at this section, process the information almost instantaneously, and start playing the character. You don’t need a full-blown psychological profile and, in fact, that would be counterproductive.

Background: This section is narrative in nature. You can let it breathe a bit more than the other sections if you’d like, but a little will still go a long way. I tend to think of this in terms of essential context and interesting anecdotes. Is it something that will directly influence the decisions they make? Is it information that the PCs are likely to discover about them? Is it an interesting story that the NPC might tell about themselves or (better yet) use as context for explaining something? Great. If it’s just a short story about some random person’s life that you’re writing for an audience of one, refocus your attention on prepping material that’s relevant to the players.

Key Info: In bullet point format, lay out the essential interaction or information that the PCs are supposed to get from the NPC. The nature of this section will vary depending on the scenario and the NPC’s role in it, but the most obvious example is a mystery scenario in which the NPC has a clue. Rather than burying that clue in the narrative of the NPC’s background, you’re yanking it and placing it in a list to make sure you don’t lose track of it during play. (The Three Clue Rule applies, of course, so just because something appears in this section it doesn’t mean that the PCs are automatically going to get it.)

You could also use this section to lay out the terms of employment being offered by the Mysterious Man in the Tavern. Or to list the discounts offered by a shopkeeper. It’s a flexible tool. In some cases, it might get quite long. But try to keep it well-organized (using the bullet points will help with that). If it just becomes a giant wall of text, its purpose has been lost.

Stat Block: If you need stats for the NPC, put ’em at the bottom of the briefing sheet in whatever format makes sense for the system you’re running.

DESIGN NOTES

Way back in 2001, Atlas Games published In the Belly of the Beast, a D20 adventure by Mike Mearls. This was a roleplaying-intense adventure featuring multiple factions trapped inside the belly of an immense demon. In and of itself, it’s a pretty awesome adventure. But it’s had a particularly enduring legacy for me because it contained the seeds of this NPC roleplaying template. Mearls broke his NPC information down into six sections: Key Information (which, in his version, was bullet points summarizing the character’s background), Quote, Background, Appearance, Roleplaying Notes, and Goals. The disadvantage of Mearls’ version is that it requires more prep work than the traditional method of prepping a character, but the basic idea of structuring the description of the NPC into utilitarian categories that were designed to be used at the gaming table was incredibly useful. (Like most good ideas, it seems simple enough… it’s just that nobody had done it before.)

I promptly absconded with it.

Over the years, I’ve refined the format and tightened its focus, developing it into a streamlined, universal template which I’ve found doesn’t take any extra effort to use, but which still brings all the benefits of the utilitarian structure. In that time I’ve used it in a wide variety of campaigns, and it’s proven itself to be a useful and flexible tool with a lot of different applications. (For example, check out the Muse to Your Left structure for Eclipse Phase games.)

EXAMPLE: BHALTAIR MCCLELLAN

Bhaltair McClellan is an NPC from Paradiso Countdown, an introductory adventure for the Infinity roleplaying game that you can currently snag if you’re a backer of the game’s kickstarter.

Appearance: A boisterous, round-bellied man with thick red hair that tumbles down into a beard that threatens (but does not quite succumb to) unruly excess.

Quote: “You should take a load off, mate. And have a drink. It won’t bring him back, but it’ll keep us all sane.”

Roleplaying:

• A loud and hearty laugh that comes easily.
• Somehow finds a way to use elaborate metaphors featuring Ariadnan ales regardless of the actual topic of conversation.
• Likes to slap people on the back. (If it stings, you know he likes you. If it is hard enough to make you lose your balance, you know he does not.)

Background: Bhaltair is Ariadnan of Caledonian stock. When he was just a young kid, his father went off to fight in a bloody frontier conflict between Caledonia and Rodina. He never came back. Bhaltair made a pledge that he would work to never see his homeworld torn apart by such senseless violence again. He became a politician and quickly discovered how difficult the dream of peace can be. When the Human Sphere returned to Ariadna, he was at first overjoyed at how it unified the planet…and then watched in horror as the Commercial Conflicts ripped his planet apart again. He lost himself in drink for a time and then, concluding that the only way to bring true peace to Ariadna was to solve the off-planet problems that were manifesting themselves there, he became a diplomat. He did not participate in the negotiation of the Tohaa Contact Treaty, but he has recently arrived to take part in the Alliance Summit.

Key Info:

• Although he is a fresh arrival on the EveningStar, Bhaltair had worked with Alinari a few years back when they were both stationed on Shentang together.
• Alinari roped him into working with a Tohaa named Sareelia Mogaal. They all work on the Technology Exchange Commission together and Alinari wanted to open up an “alternative channel of negotiation”.
• Alinari has been having an affair with Gudrun Vastag.

EXAMPLE: SYR ARION

Syr Arion appears in City Supplement 1: Dweredell.

Appearance: Arion is still a man in the flush of youth: Short-cropped, jet black hair sets off his piercing blue eyes. His frame is only lightly muscled, but toned and trained. The weight of his office, however, has brought bags beneath his eyes. And the late hours his sense of responsibility brings often causes his shoulders to stoop with exhaustion. But when the Syr gathers his strength, the image of a great man remains.

Quote: “Just give me time to think. There must be a way.”

Roleplaying:

• A passionate man, but — increasingly — a weary one.
• In desperate need of friends, but years of experience and loss have taught him not to trust lightly.
• Rests his chin heavily into the palm of his hand.

Background: Arion’s mother died in childbirth, and he was reared as the last child of the Erradons by his father, a man whose faculties were already deserting him when Arion was born. Arion’s father believed that his brother had been killed by the Guild, and the one edict he never wavered from was that Arion should be strictly sequestered. As a result, the only true friend Arion had while growing up was Celadon, the Captain of the Prince’s Guard – a man thirty years his senior.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Arion dedicated himself to rigorous self-perfection: When he was not learning swordplay from Celadon, he was spending hours pouring over the musty tomes of his father’s library. He saw that his father was a poor ruler, and believed it was his place to restore the honor of the Erradons by restoring the glory of Dweredell.

EXAMPLE: DEVOLA THE NAGAINA

Devola is a character from The Devil’s Spine, a campaign for Monte Cook’s Numenera. I adapted her into this format when I was running the campaign. My local players should skip this section, since I’m hoping to run this campaign again in the future.

Appearance: A massive serpent, 50 to 70 feet long. Her mouth is surrounded by tentacles 15 feet long, most of which have been adapted so that they end in cybernetic or bioengineered tools, syringes, or weapons.

Roleplaying:

• Extremely confident, intelligent, and cunning.
• Alien in thought.
• Considers non-nagaina inferior, almost inconsequential beings — useful as tools or test subjects, nothing else.
• Hoarse voice that sounds like the feeling of a slimy tendril against the back of your neck.
• Weave from the neck and shoulders. Cock head at odd angles.

Background: Devola is a scientist of sorts, specializing in surgical experimentation and evolutionary biology. She is far more learned in her chosen areas of expertise and far more intelligent than the vast majority of Ninth World humans.

Key Info:

• Does not speak to Lily. Lily does not speak in her presence. Never recognizes that Lily is even present.
• Immediately recognizes hosts of her offspring. Talks only to them if present.
• The Insidious Choir: Devola’s primary concern. She considers it a pre-eminent, excessionary threat. (See separate briefing notes.)
• Curing the Devil’s Spine: Devola will agree to remove the defender parasite from an infected character, but only if they agree to destroy the Insidious Choir’s Spinneret. In addition, she will need an impossible blade and gharolan (see next page for details.)

ADDITIONAL READING
Advanced NPC Roleplaying Templates
Quick NPC Roleplaying Template
Spell Component Roleplaying

Many people are familiar with the 5 Room Dungeon. It’s a simple little structure that you can very quickly pour content into, allowing you to create simple dungeon scenarios on the fly. Basically you design a dungeon with 5 rooms, and in those rooms you place:

• Room 1: Entrance And Guardian
• Room 2: Puzzle Or Roleplaying Challenge
• Room 3: Red Herring
• Room 4: Climax, Big Battle Or Conflict
• Room 5: Plot Twist

Depending on the system you’re using and exactly what you stock each room with, this should produce about 2-4 hours of game play.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the 5 Room Dungeon: Partially because its structure is too rigid (which results in effective material, but also very predictable material if you use it too frequently). And partially because a remarkable number of people preach it as the one-true-way of dungeon design (which isn’t really the fault of the structure itself, but combines rather horribly with the first problem).

But what the 5 Room Dungeon does a very good job of demonstrating is how valuable it can be to have a simple structure like this in your back pocket. Not only does it let you very quickly (and very effectively) prep simple scenarios, it’s also incredibly useful when you need to start improvising during a session: You can very quickly brainstorm ideas, paste them into the proven scenario structure, and know that the result is, on a basic level, going to work.

I’ve got a similar structure that I default to whenever I’m looking to whip up something simple and quick. I’ve come to call it…

THE 5 NODE MYSTERY

The 5 Node Mystery structure arose pretty much completely independently from the 5 Room Dungeon, but the repetition of the number 5 isn’t really coincidence: Five good, meaty chunks of interactive material is pretty much what you need to fill an evening of gaming. The interaction between five different elements is also roughly the bare minimum complexity required to create something more meaningful than a solitary random encounter. Nothing wrong with a random encounter, of course, but if you’re looking for the next step up — if, for example, you’re interested in what the random encounter might lead to — then this is basically what you’re looking for.

You use the 5 Node Mystery when you want a simple, fairly straight-forward investigation. It uses node-based scenario design and it works like this:

1. Figure out what the mystery is about. Was someone murdered? Was something stolen? Who did it? Why did they do it?

2. What’s the hook? How do the PCs become aware that there’s a mystery to be solved? If it’s a crime, this will usually be the scene of the crime. It could also be “place where weird shit is happening”. Or maybe someone or something comes to the PCs and brings the mystery with them. (Thugs kicking down the door is a classic.)

3. What’s the conclusion? Where do they learn the ultimate answers and/or get into a big fight with the bad guy? (Big fights with bad guys are a really easy way to manufacture a satisfying conclusion.) This will be your Node E.

4. Brainstorm three cool locations or people related to the mystery. Ex-wife of the bad guy? Drug den filled with werewolves? Stone circle that serves as a teleport gate? These will be your Nodes B, C, and D. (Hint: Brainstorm more than three items. Then pick the three coolest ideas. You’ll end up with better stuff. Also: Before you toss the other ideas, see if there’s any way that you can combine them with the three you picked and make them even cooler.)

5. You’ve got five nodes. Connect ’em with clues. The default structure looks like this:

The basic idea here is that Node A points you in three different directions (although, remember, the PCs might find only one of the clues). Then those three locations point to each other and also point towards the big conclusion. Simple.

You’ll also find that the precise structure of the 5 Node Mystery is easy to modify on the fly. In some cases, you’ll find that the nature of the scenario will pretty much dictate the pattern of the clues. (For example, while working on the Violet Spiral Gambit — which was designed in a few hours using this structure — I discovered that it made more sense for the initial node to point to two locations and then have those two locations point to a third. Then I loaded up that third location with a bunch of different clues all pointing to the conclusion.) About the only thing you should avoid as a general rule are clues pointing directly from Node A to your conclusion.

There is a possibility in this structure, of course, for the PCs to go from Node A to Node B to Node E (skipping Nodes C and D). In some cases, the scenario will be modular enough that this just means the conclusion isn’t what you thought it was. (You thought the conclusion was a big showdown with a bad guy in the violet tower at the center of the graveyard. Turns out, it was actually a rooftop chase as the badly injured PCs try to escape the werewolves from the drug den.) In other cases, the nodes left behind the PCs will metastasize into new adventures — either because the werewolves end up causing trouble or because when the PCs go back to mop-up the werewolves they’ll find clues pointing them to other scenarios.

THE 5 x 5 NODE CAMPAIGN

Seasoning your scenario with clues pointing to other scenarios is actually a pretty good way to start expanding from 5 Node Mysteries into designing more interwoven campaigns.

1. Design five 5 Node Mysteries. You might have some idea about how they all relate to each other as you’re designing them, but maybe not. Discovering how seemingly unrelated things are actually connected to each other is a great way to make both things richer and more interesting.

2. Arrange the 5 Mysteries into the same node pattern. In other words, Mystery A will have clues pointing to Mysteries B, C, and D. Mystery B will have clues pointing to Mysteries C, D, and E. And so forth. (If you didn’t already know how the mysteries related to each other, the process of figuring out how clues for Mystery D ended up over in Mystery B is the part where you’re going to figure that out.)

As you’re seeding your clues into each mystery, mix it up a bit. Some clues will be the “pay-off” for solving the first mystery: You’ve taken out El Pajarero, but who was he really working for?! But don’t fall into the trap of always putting the clues in the concluding node. Spread ’em around a bit.

And that’s basically it. It’s a very simple technique for you to use, but you’ll find that (much like the technique of the second track) it creates experiences for your players which are complicated, interesting, and ornate.

FURTHER READING
Game Structures
Node-Based Scenario Design
Gamemastery 101

The Infinity roleplaying game will give you all the tools you need to create an exciting campaign set anywhere within the Human Sphere: Play as Hassassin Govads seeking to recover the lost Cubes of their former brothers from the Equinox terrorists who stole them. Join the crew of the Go-Go Marlene! Show as location scouts. Journey into the depths of Acontecimento’s oceans in aquatic Apsara Lhosts. Hunt Shasvastii Speculo Killers through the shattered planetoids of Human Edge. Sign up for a PanOceanian mercenary company fighting Libertos rebels on Varuna, then steal a spaceship and become Haqqislamite privateers!

The default mode of play for the game, however, assumes that you are agents working for Bureau Noir, O-12’s Secret Service. Bureau Noir’s operative teams are flexibly liaised through the other O-12 Bureaus, which means that their duties can effectively take them anywhere in the Human Sphere.

Theoretically, Bureau Noir — like O-12 itself — is a neutral agency and its agents are impartial and unaligned. In reality, the Human Sphere is wracked with factions and every PC will belong to one of them. Their loyalties will be divided and their true agendas will be hidden.

We call this the Wilderness of Mirrors.

SUBTERFUGE INTENSITY

In addition to their primary mission objective, scenarios for the Infinity roleplaying game are designed with multiple faction goals. (For example, the primary mission objective might be to protect media tycoon Charles Angleton from threats made by the criminal AI Svengali. Yu Jing agents, however, have a faction goal to insert an eavesdropping virus onto Angleton’s comlog, and Nomad agents have a faction goal to retrieve intel on Angleton’s suspected collaboration with Svengali.)

When running an Infinity scenario, the GM needs to decide how many of these faction goals they’re going to use. Using a single faction goal for each mission (while perhaps rotating which team member has a faction goal for each mission), for example, will lightly spice the campaign with complications. On the other hand, if every PC receives a faction goal then the mission becomes laced with paranoia in a complicated loop of espionage and counter-intelligence.

PARANOIA LEVEL

The GM will also want to decide on the paranoia level for their campaign.

In Deep Cover campaigns, the faction loyalties of the PCs are concealed and their secret agendas for each mission are kept hidden.

In Diplomatic Immunity campaigns, the PCs know the faction loyalties of their compatriots, but everybody smiles at the polite fiction that they are all loyal, unbiased O-12 agents. (In a campaign like this, it is even possible that the faction agendas are openly known at the gaming table, even if the characters are not aware of them.)

In a Faction United campaign, all of the PCs belong to a single faction and they’re all working together to pursue both their primary mission objective and their faction goal. (This method also allows the GM to easily repurpose published scenarios for Infinity for campaigns that aren’t using the O-12 framing device. For example, if the PCs are working for Yănjīng, the Yu Jing Military Intelligence Service, the GM can simply use the Yu Jing faction goal as the scenario hook.)

Finally, in a Loyal Agents campaign the PCs have no faction goals and their only objective is the primary mission.

USING THE WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS

Setting the right subterfuge intensity and paranoia level for your group and your campaign may require a little bit of fine-tuning, but once you dial in the right values your players will feel the weight of the increased stakes in every action that they take, and the conflicting agendas will heighten the dramatic tension of every decision. The Wilderness of Mirrors will bring the broken alliances and fraught tensions of the Infinity universe to burning life at your gaming table!

DESIGN NOTES

As I’ve previously discussed at length, one of the most overlooked aspects in the design and play of traditional roleplaying games is the underlying game structures that we use in play. In adapting the incredibly rich universe of Infinity into a roleplaying game, there were two key things that I considered of vital importance:

First, to guarantee that Infinity didn’t simply become “yet another science fiction RPG”. There are a lot of SF roleplaying games on the shelves, but Infinity is too cool for people to just glaze over it as one option among many.

Second, to capture the high-stakes, faction-vs-faction tensions of the miniatures game in a context that made sense for an RPG. (I also recognized that current players of the miniatures game have already chosen “their” faction in the universe, and I wanted to make sure that a group of those existing Infinity players could come together to form a roleplaying group with everyone playing a character belonging to their faction of choice.)

Hopefully you can immediately see how the Wilderness of Mirrors helps us accomplish both of these goals. It emphasizes the inter-factional conflicts and maintains them as a persistent, underlying theme. The Bureau Noir structure makes it trivial for characters with diverse backgrounds and allegiances to come together. And the hidden faction goals add a unique spice that will make a game of Infinity feel very different from a generic science fiction game.

But the Wilderness of Mirrors won’t be the only place that you’ll see Infinity presenting strong game structures for you to build your campaigns around. For example, the Tactical Assault Gear sourcebook will be describing the mecha warsuits of the setting. The scenario structures required to support campaigns revolving around TAG pilots routinely jumping into their armored suits are fairly unique, and so we’ll be creating a game structure specifically to support those campaigns. We’ll be doing the same thing for Corsair space pirates and Hypercorp raiders and mercenaries plying their services on the War Market. (And I think things will get really interesting once you can start mixing and matching these scenario structures together.)

Modiphius launched their Kickstarter for the Infinity Roleplaying Game, based on Corvus Belli’s incredible sci-fi skirmish miniature game.

Actually, what I should say is that we’ve launched our Kickstarter. I’ve been hired as the line developer for Infinity. I’m also the lead writer for the core rulebook, and I’ll also be personally developing a deluxe campaign supplement for the game that we’ll be unlocking through the stretch goals in the Kickstarter campaign. (Plus, with your support, a dozen other amazing supplements.) If you’re one of the many people who have wanted to see me use node-based scenario design to design a full-fledged, dynamic campaign… well, I’ve finally found a company who shares that vision.

WHAT IS INFINITY?

In the twisted jungles of Paradiso, humanity fights for its survival. The fierce, alien warriors of the Combined Army have poured through the Acheron Gate, descending upon the emerald jungles of the newest colonial world in a seemingly unstoppable torrent. The bestial Morat pound the Paradiso Front, where brave men and women fight ceaselessly to maintain a desperate defensive line which the sly Shasvastii penetrate with devastating ease. In the star-swept skies above, the collected might of humanity’s armadas maintain a life-or-death blockade to cut off an endless horde of alien reinforcements. And if any of humanity’s fractious forces should falter, then all may be lost…

But beyond that terrifying holding action, the intrigues and adventures of the Human Sphere spin on. Space pirates cruise through the shattered planetoids of Human Edge. Scientist adventurers delve the oceans of Varuna. Merchant guilds scheme amidst the scourging sands of Bourak. From Yutang, the Emperor gazes forth from an uneasy throne. Titanic war machines stride across the icy plains of Svalarheima. Byzantine hypercorps struggle for dominance amidst the chrome towers of Neoterra.

For the last ten years, players have tested their mettle upon the battlefields of the Human Sphere in Corvus Belli’s hugely-popular Infinity skirmish game. Now you can expand your adventures, diving deep into the amazing, never-before-seen depths of the Infinity universe with the ultimate science fiction roleplaying game.

Play with the full dynamic 2d20 game system featuring: 

• Cinematic action driven by the twin engines of Heat and Momentum
• The triple battlefields of Warfare, Infowar, and Psywar
• A multifaceted Zones system which brings the game world to life
• All New Artwork of the Infinity universe commissioned by Modiphius and Corvus Belli
• Find out more about the 2d20 System further down the page

Explore the definitive guide to the Infinity universe with: 

• A complete Chronology of the Human Sphere detailing centuries of bloodshed
• The culture, history, and intrigue of seven powerful factions
• Gazetteers for all twelve planets of the Human Sphere, including beautiful, full-color maps

Leap into your character by: 

• Forging your identity with an immersive Lifepath character creation system
• Fighting for your faction with the fractious, innovative Wilderness of Mirrors scenario design system
• Facing dozens of fearsome, ready-to-play adversaries who stand between you and your destiny!

WHAT’S NEXT?

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be talking more about some of the really cool things we’re developing for Infinity (like the Wilderness of Mirrors scenario structure and the triple battlefields of Warfare, Infowar, and Psywar).

But for right now, I hope you’ll join us on Kickstarter and help us publish what I think is going to be a fantastic game. As I write this, we’ve already blown through three major stretch goals and we’re closing in on the Gamesmaster Guide.

Weird Discoveries is a collection of ten “Instant Adventures” for Numenera. The concept behind these instant adventures is basically what I talked about in Opening Your Gaming Table. I’ll let Monte Cook explain:

It’s Friday night. Your friends have gathered at your house. Someone asks, “What should we do tonight?” One person suggests watching a movie, but everyone else is in the mood for a game. You’ve got lots of board games, and that seems like the obvious solution, because they don’t take any more time to prepare than it takes to set up the board and the pieces.

Those of us who love roleplaying games have encountered this situation a thousand times. We’d love to suggest an RPG for the evening, but everyone knows you can’t just spontaneously play a roleplaying game, right? The game master has to prepare a scenario, the players need to create characters, and all this takes a lot of time and thought.

Cook’s solution to this problem is to create one-shot scenarios in a custom format that makes it possible for the GM to run a four hour session after quickly skimming 4-6 pages of information.

This basically boils down into three parts:

First, a two page description of the scenario’s background and initial hook.

Second, a two page spread that generally looks something like this

and which contains the entire scenario. (This two page spread is the only thing you’ll need to look at while running the adventure.)

Third, two more pages of additional details that you can use to flesh out the scenario. (These pages are optional. If you don’t have time to read them, the evocative details they provide can easily be replaced by material improvised by the GM.)

The basic idea is that these scenarios give Numenera the same commitment profile as a board game: You pull out the rulebooks and dice. You quickly explain the rules. You hand out pregen characters to the players. And while they’re looking over their character sheets, you spend two or three minutes quickly reviewing a scenario.

Then you play for three or four hours and… that’s it. No prior prep commitment. No long-term commitment from the players. Just pick it up and play it.

WHERE THIS GOES A LITTLE WONKY

First, there’s the weird decision to kick off this book of stand-alone one-shots with two linked scenarios where one is clearly the sequel of the other. (The first scenario is “gaining access to the pyramid” and the second is “exploring the pyramid”.) This isn’t the end of the world and if those had been given at the end of the book as a sort of variant on the form, it probably would have been fine. But one of these scenarios is actually used as the free promo for the book, and I actually held off buying it for awhile because it appeared that the book wasn’t actually delivering on its promise.

Another bit of wonkiness comes from the way that Cook tries to streamline the presentation of the scenarios through the use of Keys. Each Key is some essential element of the scenario which could potentially be found in several different locations within the scenario. Each key is given a symbol, which is then used to indicate the locations where that key can be found.

For example, in a mystery scenario a Key might be:

Evidence that Supect A is innocent.

And that Key might be indicated by a little blue triangle. Then you look at the two page spread and you might see an NPC marked with a blue triangle, and their description will include:

If Bob is the KEY, then if the PCs really grill him, he’ll eventually admit that he saw Suspect A on the opposite side of town at the time of the murder.

In general, you’ll see two or three different places in the scenario where that little blue triangle shows up. That basically mirrors the redundancy suggested by the Three Clue Rule and it makes a lot of sense. And highlighting those essential bits with a visual cue in the form of the Key symbol also makes sense, because it flags the importance of including that bit for the GM.

A couple things mess this up, however: First, the table that tells you what each symbol means ISN’T located on the two page spread. So the simple elegance of the two-page spread is marred because you keep flipping back to that essential information.

Second, the “if” nature of the Keys tends to make it much more difficult to run the scenarios cleanly. The intention seems to be that the GM should control the pacing of when these keys are triggered, but in practice trying to keep track of the locations where a particular key is available (and whether or not this might be the last opportunity for it) requires a totality of understanding for the scenario which stands in sharp contrast with the goal of being able to run it off-the-cuff. (For off-the-cuff stuff, I generally want to be able to focus on the content directly in front of my nose without having to think about distant portions of the scenario.)

In general, you can probably just ignore the “if” portion of the text and run most of the scenarios with the Keys present in all of their potential locations. There are a handful of scenarios, however, where you can’t do this. (For example, a “missing piece” of a machine which can be in several different locations and actually be completely different things.)

In any case, these scenarios would be better if the keys were simply hardcoded. And I’d recommend altering them in whatever manner necessary to make that true before running them.

BAFFLING CARTOGRAPHY

The other thing that doesn’t quite work are, unfortunately, the two-page spreads themselves. These take two forms.

First, there are flowcharts which show how the PCs can move from one scene to another. (Go to the home of the murder suspect and find a clue that points to where the murder suspect is.) These mostly work fine, although there are a few scenarios with mysterious extra arrows that don’t actually represent any tangible information. (The intention with some of these seems to be “the PCs are done here and can now go follow a lead from another location”, but that’s ideographically confusing because the arrow implies that there is a lead here that should take you there.)

Second, and unfortunately more prevalent, are the spreads based around maps surrounded by blobs of text that have arrows pointing to various sections of the map.

The best of these are the dungeons, because they at least make sense. But they’re not very good dungeons. One keeps talking about how you can explore beyond the rooms shown on the map… except there are no exits from the rooms on the map. The other is composed of mostly empty rooms. And in both cases, most of the room descriptions don’t match the visual representation of the room that they’re pointing at.

This is because, as far as I can tell, the maps were drawn largely at random and then the various bits of content were “associated” with the maps by drawing arrows that just kind of point at whatever’s convenient. And this is even more apparent when you look at some of the other two-page spreads. For example, consider the spread we looked at before:

That’s supposed to be the map of a city. Except it obviously is not. And one of the content bubbles is “three dead bodies lie here”… except the associated arrow points into the middle of a wall. Another content bubble is “monster that’s explicitly moving around in the ruins”, but it has an arrow pointing to a very specific (and obviously completely meaningless) location

Another common technique here is “rough sketch of a wilderness area that’s radically out of scale with random arrows pointing at it”.

WHY IT DOESN’T MATTER

Because the scenarios are really good.

They cover a wide variety of nifty ideas backed up with fantastic art that’s designed to be shown to your players as evocative handouts (instead of featuring imaginary PCs doing things).

And despite my quibbles with some of the shortcomings of the presentation, the basic concept of the two-page spread fundamentally works: The maps and arrows don’t make any sense, but the essential content is nonetheless packaged in a format that makes it easy to simply pick up the adventure and run it with no prep time at all.

For my personal use, I’ll be basically ignoring all of the maps and using the content bubbles as either random encounters or logical progressions of an investigation (depending on the exigencies of the scenario). And I’ll take the time to lock down the Keys in a more concrete fashion, but I’m not anticipating that taking any more than 5-10 minutes per scenario, which is not an undue burden.

Ultimately, with ten full adventures, this book is incredibly valuable and I’m going to be getting dozens of hours of play out of it.

The final reason why the book’s shortcomings ultimately don’t matter, however, is because the roleplaying industry desperately needs more books like this: The board game renaissance is palpably demonstrating the power of memetically viral games that can be picked up and played as part of an evening’s entertainment. Games like Mice & Mystics and Mansions of Madness clearly demonstrate that the only reason traditional roleplaying games can’t hop on that bandwagon is because we’ve systematically ghettoized ourselves as an industry and as a hobby by embracing long-term, dedicated play as the only form of play.

With Numenera as its flagship, Monte Cook Games is fighting to change that. And I’m more than happy to help them out. (Particularly since their game is so much damn fun.)

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Monte Cook
Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Print Cost: $24.99
PDF Cost: $9.99
Page Count: 96
ISBN: 978-1939979339