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Chapter 9: Running the Game
Adventure Basics
At the most basic level, an adventure has an objective that characters seek to complete. Often, to complete the objective, multiple tasks must be undertaken. Sometimes achieving the adventure’s objective reveals a new, larger objective.
Conflict
Adventures and stories require conflict. Without some form of conflict, a story lacks drama. Nobody wants to read a boring conversation between two people who agree on everything. A side-scrolling video game that features neither obstacles nor enemies will be dull and pointless.
Adding conflict into an adventure requires opposition, competition, obstacles, complications and even the occasional set-back. This does not mean that every simple task should become difficult, nor should it seem as though the world is out to get the Player Characters. But the major milestones on the way to achieving the main objective must present some challenge.
Characters must have problems to solve. Some problems can be dealt with using a sword or pistol. Some problems can be dealt with using a skill or a spell, or by using equipment or other objects. Some problems benefit from speaking eloquently and Roleplaying a clever idea or strategy. Most require a blend of thought and physical action.
Note that these challenges and problems are not included to frustrate the players or thwart their every action. Rather, the adversaries, dilemmas, barriers and other difficulties are included in order to give the players opportunities to take interesting actions, to use their character’s many abilities and make their success that much more rewarding.
Story Elements
Plot
The plot consists of events going on in the game world that trigger action, and becomes the basis of the story.
Characters
Characters are the protagonists and their allies, the antagonists and their allies, and neutral bystanders. Player Characters are the protagonists. Antagonists may be any NPCs with opposing goals to the PCs or individuals who otherwise pose as an impediment towards achieving success. They might be enemy agents or soldiers, thugs, members of organized crime, hostile law enforcement, members of a restrictive or secret group, a competing adventuring group, mercenaries, spies, thieves, monsters, supernatural creatures, or any other number of villains or misguided souls.
Time
The game takes place in the year 1076 CE (Current Era). The majority of the world still has strong medieval roots, although a new base of advanced technology has been growing over the last seventy years.
Setting
Eldlandria is a medieval fantasy world with varying landscapes not unlike Earth’s. Humans make up the dominate species on this world. Allterions, a group of scientifically advanced humans who began to colonize Eldlandria in the last century, have introduced new technology..
Eldlandria is made up multiple Nations and Kingdoms. Many adventures are set within the Kingdom of Lundor.
The Spellchrome world is detailed in Chapter 11: Setting.
Suspension of Disbelief
Most players come to the gaming table with a willing suspension of disbelief. Even though you are basically telling a made up story using Roleplaying, the players will accept what is happening as true within the context of the game. A player with a willing suspension of disbelief will accept fantastic acts, such as someone casting a spell that lets them communicate telepathically or launch an ice blast from their fingertips, because these things are explainable within the game world.
If things have no real explanation or Non-Player Characters act in a way that seems unlikely, players start to lose their willing suspension of disbelief. For example, if the Player Characters thoroughly searched a captured foe for hidden weapons and supernatural energies and then that NPC pulls a concealed heavy gun, the players will lose their willing suspension of disbelief. “How could that happen!?” they might ask. Once you hear that, you know you’ve gone over the line; best to have a good explanation or take it back and move on.
The willing suspension of disbelief is attributed to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who you may know from the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Genre Fiction
The stories your group will tell when playing the Spellchrome RPG lend themselves best to genre fiction (as opposed to literary fiction). This is probably true of most Roleplaying Games.
Genre Fiction tends to be plot driven with a focus on actions (the characters do something). Most action or adventure movies, as well as nearly all summer blockbusters, are examples of genre fiction.
Literary fiction focuses on characters, relationships between characters, and realism (with an aim of telling more personal stories). Obviously those elements still exist in genre fiction, but simply not to the same extent.
If you want to dial in the tone of the game based on your players’ personalities and play style, focus more on the different characters and their relationships with each other and NPCs, or focus less on those things – keeping the plot and action constantly moving along.
Using the World
Eldlandria is designed to be flexible in its setting and in the types of adventures that you, as the GM, can run. If you have an old, fantasy style dungeon that you want to run – well that shouldn’t be too difficult, as the game has a medieval base. If you see a movie that’s set in the modern day and want to use some element from it in an upcoming adventure, there are locations that are the general equivalent of our own modern world, give or take a few decades. If you get inspired by some science fiction and want to run a cyber-thriller adventure, the Allterion cities will make a good setting. If post-apocalyptic is your cup of tea, then the huge area surrounding the barrier collapse will do just fine.
Up Next: Adventure Elements
