TEXT:  
  
  Introduction 
  Having just finished reading “Return of the Lazy DM” by Mike Shea, I started an introspection to my 
  planning method and how it relates to running a successful game session. 
  I’ve obviously gone through dozens of different styles and variations throughout the years like most game 
  masters. Some of the styles have focused on having strong character focus, others have a focus on 
  narrative and story-arc etc. Now I’ve kind of made a full circle. 
  What I’ve come to learn is that trying to write “static entities” is not the most optimal preparation vs. 
  improvisation investment. By this I mean working out NPCs and locations beforehand and then figuring out 
  action and scenes on the fly as the story unfolds. While it often works in satisfactory manner, I’ve felt the 
  story would have been even more memorable if there had been a more profound connection between – 
  well, everything. 
  This has made me come back to the roots of writing scenes but with a revelation that focusing on scenes 
  with all the learnings of improvisation and preparation in general, it is a completely different approach 
  altogether. It’s no wonder why a movie script is all about the scenes, their importance, order and 
  eventually, if they are included in the final story or not. And a game session is not about following the script 
  – it is the script writing process enacted. 
  This article is for veteran game masters clearly. It is raw, concise and does not explain all that much and as 
  such, assumes state of the art knowledge of the craft, using as the benchmark what Mike Shea describes in 
  his outstanding publications for example. For these reasons, it did not apply my usual nominal price but 
  made this available for free. 
  Writing scenes for improvised play 
  As a community, we’ve wanted to veer away from writing adventures in a rigid scene structure format 
  because the game is not supposed to go according to a plan in the first place. However, did we in that 
  process also become a little too scared of writing scenes altogether? 
  I have a pretty good grasp on what I write before a session and how it will likely go down in a session. I 
  guess my players are predictable and willing to work with me. Most of the time I can trust them to kill 
  anyone raising their suspicion as their default way of handling things. This knowledge I can use to trick 
  them sometimes to act against their own interests. 
  By knowing my players, I can assume more and prepare less. That’s an asset of course. I have an idea of 
  how they typically approach challenges and their individual roles and styles. By knowing them as players 
  and as a player group, I’m already prepared. 
  Using this foundation, I can focus on the good stuff: writing interesting stories and potential scenes that fit 
  my idea of the story. And my players can trust that as I know their preferences, I have always something 
  prepared just for them. 
  The secret sauce 
  We all praise movies like The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, The Village etc. for their unremarkable way of telling 
  you a story and then reveling the story you were just told was actually quite different and it still all makes 
  sense. And that’s what we want from our role playing adventures and campaigns from time to time, to be 
  amazed and wonder a tapestry of an elaborated plot and how it all worked out in the end. 
  
  I’ve already described the idea of active contradiction in planning in my earlier publications like Free 
  Association Story-Plot Method and Adventures Design in Practice. Exploring this principle in the mentioned 
  movie plot examples, I’ve highlighted the core concept that was put to question at the plot twist moment. 
  Note that often it is the one that you would least suspect thus making it most impactful. I’ve also written 
  my own twist variants that are arguable worse than what the movie feature due to choosing a more 
  conventional target for the plot twist. 
  So, SPOILERS ahead if that was not obvious. 
   
  The Village 
  o synopsis : A 18th century small town sends out a girl on a dangerous mission to seek for 
  help in their murder mystery 
  o original twist: The town lives in isolation in 21st century era 
  o twist variant: The girl is not send out on a mission but exiled instead under a secret plot 
  o twist variant: There is no murder at all, it is all staged to allow certain characters to rise in 
  power 
  o an absurd twist variant: the town is actually a living being with humans as its parasites 
   
  Fight Club 
  o synopsis: a man suffering from narcolepsy meets another man and they form together an 
  unground movement 
  o original twist: the two men are the one and the same 
  o twist variant: it was all his narcolepsy-infused dream (oh how boring that would have 
  been..) 
  o twist variant: the anarchy is actually coordinated by government higher-ups 
   
  The Sixth Sense 
  o synopsis: a psychiatric has a eccentric child patient who claims to see ghosts 
  o original twist: .. and he can – including the ghost of the man who is his psychiatric 
  o twist variant: the child is no longer a child – it is all events in the past 
  Out of the three examples, I give best points on The Sixth Sense due to being able to connect two secrets in 
  the same frame. The role of doctor-patient is not as it seems and that is explained by even more profound 
  but well-established plot twist of which of the characters are living in the first place. 
  In regards to a twist or a plot twist, they are moments of secrets coming to play, nothing else. When you 
  write your secrets and they enter the game, they have a potential of providing a twist. 
  Coming back to game mastering and planning and running games, when preparing to run an improvised 
  game, you will need to be able to contradict any belief, even the ones you just yourself introduced.  
  Writing scenes – and only scenes 
  The method I describe loses potential if you consider it “in addition” to other styles of planning. If you 
  would write characters and NPCs separately prior to engaging with scene-centric design, you would simple 
  restrict yourself or produce duplicate and inconsistent designs. 
  The key is to write a scene after another and stick to scenes only. The characters, their motivations, real 
  identities etc. all come via this process. Yes, you can and should have ideas of what you are wanting to 
  write about, but the actual written down material is about scenes. 
  A scene is like a glue between characters and their goals. Characters that don’t have any scenes written for 
  them or their goals don’t have clear impact on the plot are left in the vacuum. This is why an alternative 
  
  character preparation is not productive – that material would not have a logical scene connection. Also, I 
  argue it produces less flexible game play overall. 
  For example, taking an all-time banal evil wizard character. Is he even evil? Only if scene 8b is enacted. Or is 
  he even a wizard? Well not if scene 14c takes place. What did drive him to be evil in the first place? That 
  depends on a result of scene 6. And is the story even about him? No, according to scene 28 it is actually his 
  daughter who is the real nemesis. Or ultimately, does he even exist? There’s a chance he does not and the 
  story is about completely something else. 
  Now if your immediate reaction is “oh my god, he is suggesting me to write tons of variants of every 
  element of play – that’s not what I came for in the first place!”, please remain calm. You really only write 
  for your next session and then some. That’s probably a 10+ index cards for 4 hours of play perhaps. You 
  only produce the amount you think you can consume. And all the stuff you did not write, you are well 
  equipped to improvise that too. Read on please. 
  Not all scenes will happen and all scenes don’t happen as they were 
  written 
  Just as a reminder: scenes you write will not all happen. They are purely your inventory for potential scenes 
  in actual play. As such, there is a state of flux in and between the game sessions, just as we like it to be to 
  consider our games “dynamic” and “interesting”. 
  A well-deserved side-effect of preparing scenes is the increased capability to improvise scenes that were 
  not written beforehand. If you have considered five different variants of how the nemesis may approach 
  the final encounter, you are able to come up with a few more on the fly as well. Preparation increases 
  flexibility of improvisation when done correctly. 
  The idea is to write scenes that could happen. This core principle can be applied to any scene, from a 
  starting scene to a big finale. All of them can have variants in stock and again, all of the variants do not have 
  to be prewritten. 
  When it comes to variants of the same baseline scene, I find it easier to write complete variants instead of 
  twists and variants inside a scene. This makes it easier to question any element of the scene, coming back 
  to my movie plot analysis previously. However, there is a build-in drive for secrets, twists and contradiction 
  in my format of preparation to ensure this important aspect is never overlooked. 
  A scene on an index card 
  As a planning and a game aid format, 3x5 index cards have become quite popular. They are like game 
  master’s little cue cards. Their brevity and modularity is inherently driving flexibility to running games. But 
  what is written onto those cards in the first place? 
  In essence, if the index card holds a scene for a roleplaying game, it describes the interaction of PCs in a 
  setting with other characters or the setting itself. The visual structure of the elements, their attributes and 
  relationships could look like this: 
  
   
  However, a tabular format may be more practical when writing an index card and that I’ve used in my 
  examples below. 
  Exploring the anatomy of the presented scene structure: 
   
  A scene often consists of one or multiple NPCs or factions or monsters, interacting with the PCs and 
  with each other. 
   
  The apparent motivation of an NPC is written as the PCs are experiencing it, supported by game 
  master exposition suggesting that is the truth. 
   
  The secret motivation is the true motivation however – but only if you consider the secret to be 
  true at the time of game play. This is important. The secret is not fixed. As a game master, you can 
  choose on the fly to consider the apparent, original motivation as the true motivation instead. 
  Otherwise, this would become formulaic and players would always expect a twist in every character 
  motivation they come across. 
   
  The same approach applies to character relationships – there is apparent relationship and a 
  potential secret one. This secret may be one-way or two-way i.e. both characters share the secret 
  or only one side has a secret agenda. 
   
  When writing aspects, the same principle is applied again. Aspects are way of describing an 
  interesting key detail that defines a character or a location. And once again, all that appears may 
  not be true… 
   
  The scene itself has to contain action (and often tension and drama) involving the characters and 
  the setting. This can be described as goals and stakes and once again, their secret variants. 
   
  Last, but not least, PCs themselves can be addressed with the similar method. It is not about 
  choosing for players what their motivation and potential secret is but seeing the PCs from the eyes 
  of NPCs. Are the PCs like they appear or not to various NPCs is a strong dynamic to explore. 
  Ok, enough abstraction. Example time. 
  Sample scenes 
  My sample scenes are actual next session material in the spirit of practical advice. I believe it is fair that if 
  I’m describing a method I personally use that I also show a real application of it. 
  
  For some background, this is continuation of what was described in Adventure Design in Practice 
  publication (yes, we had a long hiatus). Not needing to know any details as such, the loosely flowing 
  campaign is about a town near a Pictish (Conan the Barbarian) frontier with intrigue and plotting of various 
  sorts in the local political landscape, involving power mongering, mystic arts and sheer brutality. The 
  players are up against the town authority figure, a dirty opportunistic merchant, and are fighting to free 
  themselves from his persecution as they happened to accidentally meddle in his plans earlier. Last session 
  ended with players bringing down a tower of a local religious sect, one thought to be in league with the 
  merchant. 
  The larger secret theme is that the most characters are shades of grey while players have clearly divided 
  them into allies and enemies. In reality, it is more of a survival of the fittest with shifting morals and there 
  are no real good and evil men. 
  Please note that the examples are not meant to explain my entire campaign setting. They only work as 
  examples of the technique and related formatting. I’ve provided some editorial notes just for this purpose, 
  to explain my motivations (real ones, not false motivations – ha, I’m getting consumed by this idea) why 
  certain elements are fun and exciting to consider. Also, I’m slightly more verbose than I would be for purely 
  personal needs. 
  Example 1: starting scene for the session 
  What 
  Apparent  
  Secret 
  Setting 
  A winter forest, party on the run 
  with the tower burning behind 
  them and town guard with 
  tracking dogs on their trail. 
  - 
  PC goal 
  To flee to safety with the help of 
  the prisoner they just rescued, 
  the leader of the local rebels 
  hiding in the woods. 
  - 
  PC stakes 
  If they get caught, they will face 
  a serious threat and could be 
  exposed to mercy of nefarious 
  individuals. 
  - 
  NPC Prisoner goal 
  To escape with the help of PCs 
  and have them ideally join the 
  ranks of the rebels to fight a 
  common foe. 
  He pretends to be more of a 
  good guy than in reality he is. 
  Setting 
  A gleaming-eyed wolf stares 
  from the distance the PC group. 
  It is a shape-shifter spy doing the 
  bidding of his master, The Lady 
  of Khitai. 
   
  Now, that would be all I need to get the in media res with direct continuity from our previous session. It has 
  action and mystique enough for the first scene. It is very likely to go in PCs favor and I can trust a few other 
  scenes to happen as a result. If not, I’m prepared to have a different type of session as well, improvising 
  more around my “knowledge” of the overall campaign setting. That is to say, there is a whole lot already 
  happened that I can build upon if required. 
  This example featured relatively little secrets however, let’s try to write one emphasizing more of this 
  duality. 
  
  Example 2: a foreign visitor arrives  
  What 
  Apparent  
  Secret 
  NPC Visitor goal 
  A Khitai sorcerer arrives in town, 
  invited obviously by his kin The 
  Lady of Khitai, wife of the 
  powerful merchant. 
  The sorcerer has an agenda to 
  meet with a Pictish shaman and 
  make him help him in this 
  “transformation” 
  NPC Visitors aspect 
  A large flying drake accompanies 
  the sorcerer, as his pet and his 
  bodyguard. 
  It is more than a pet – it is the 
  other half of his soul and if he 
  gets his will, also will be part of 
  his body. 
  NPC Lady Khitai goal 
  There is not known publicly why 
  the foreign visitor comes to town 
  but it is big news obviously. 
  She has invited a powerful ally to 
  help to consolidate her power 
  and elitist cultural ideals how she 
  wants to shape the local region. 
   
  I leave it to that purposefully. Note that it does not describe at all the PCs – I’m willing to leave that part 
  completely open without making any assumptions. Nor does it consider the setting itself that much – some 
  time, some place, whenever it is best suited. If at all. I like this scene however and all that can come from it, 
  it holds a lot of plot potential. If it never comes to this in one way or another, no sorcerer means no flying 
  drake and no pact with the shaman and no “transformation” (inspired by the movie Red Dragon). 
  The scope of the scene is only the arrival and the impact that has. The other plot elements would be 
  derived from this scene and given their own scene in a similar fashion.  
  Note that this scene has no connection to the starting scene. It is not meant to be in chronological order. 
  Actually, the more you avoid any kind of timeline in writing the scenes, the more dynamic your overall 
  scene inventory will be. Don’t allow the scenes start to lean onto each other too much or form too 
  predefined sequence. 
  Example 3: assault on the rebel camp 
  What 
  Apparent  
  Secret 
  Setting, the camp 
  A well disguised winter camp 
  with a couple of dozen town folk 
  and other nearby peasants are 
  all busy attending to the camp. 
  They are more cutthroat than 
  what they appear – a group of 
  thugs and bandits most of them. 
  NPC, some of the rebels 
  A small group of rebels return 
  from their raid to Pictish lands, 
  bringing food and other loot with 
  them. 
  The picts have been able to track 
  the group back to their camp and 
  are preparing an assault. 
  NPC, Pictish warrior 
  Picts attack during the night. 
  They send rolling flaming balls 
  down the hill to the camp, 
  adding an extra threat to their 
  charge. 
  The picts have come to revenge 
  all the abuse they have suffered 
  from people in the region. 
  PC, goal 
  PCs are likely taking the side of 
  rebels against picts, considering 
  the rebels as their allies to reach 
  their own goal of getting rid of 
  the murderous merchant. 
  The rebels put little value on the 
  PCs and see them expendable 
  mercenaries. 
  
  This scene is a combat scene with some environmental threats and a lead-up. There would probably be 
  some other fluff before this scene takes place. It is an easy scene to trigger as all it requires is the PCs to be 
  amongst the rebels really, the location of the camp could be changed on the fly to a road or even a almost 
  ready-to-start rebel assault on the town. 
  Final thoughts 
  I have come to value preparing scenes in a new light. Writing scenes Hollywood-style allows coming up with 
  better material in general and everything else is subjected to serve his purpose. To reiterate, the characters 
  are what the scenes will make them. 
  By always exploring the potential secret in each aspect of the scene, you will explore two sides to the story 
  at least. It does not always have to be an alternative truth but simply what is publicly known and assumed 
  versus what some characters in the inner circle know and are planning to do. Nothing more elaborate is 
  required to write mystery in my opinion. 
  I’ve provided only a few examples and all of them from my current domain with some of the background 
  information not detailed, but I hope that the simplicity of writing scenes is apparent in them. The scale of a 
  scene if it is a single GoT Red Wedding or a potential master scene with smaller scenes derived from it does 
  not really matter. As long as you have enough ideas to run the next session, you have enough. The method 
  of writing scenes made you ready. 
   
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Dungeons & Dragons [multi]/5th Edition (5e)/3rd Party/DMsGuild/Preparing Scenes.pdf