I've been GMing for a while, and I'm comfortable with most things: making up stories, creating NPCs, setting challenge levels, winging it, etc. One place where I definitely need help is in crafting nonlinear stories.

Lately I've been using the 5 room model for both location and time based adventures. It works well, and I don't mind stepping out of the mold when the players find another path they want to follow, but it's all very straightforward if they don't: go through the forest, past the village, over the lake, and into the castle. I'd like to have the last leg of our Scion campaign be much more open than the last two have been, but can't just leave it completely to chance because a) there are things that have to happen if the campaign is going to wrap up nicely and b) if it's all in the players' hands and they show up without an idea of where to go next it'll flounder. Also, completely winging it with characters at that power level is difficult because what constitutes an appropriate threat isn't obvious (no CR system in Scion).

I don't have much experience with campaigns where the scenes are in more of a cloud than a flowchart. Any advice, links, or the like would be greatly appreciated.

My most useful advice> Listen to your players.

Which really is the key if you are trying to wing a non-linear story into a campaign and wrap it all up in a way that is satisfying.  Start listening to what your players are saying and the assumptions they are making.  Then build off them and let them help to flow the story.  You don't have to go along with everything thing they are saying but on occasion do so.  Even if what they are assuming is entirely contrary to your original plans.  Alternatively go the complete opposite of their suggestions or pick the least likely of the ones they throw up there.  Alternatively if you have a weaker player in the group use their suggestion.  This goes a long way into bolstering their confidence and also helping to humble the stronger players a little bit.

Right now the campaign your running is your best case scenario.  Listening to the players and working with their ideas will help turn the game into their best (or perhaps insidiously) worst case scenario.

Fortunately none of this means you have to throw out any prep work you've put in.   You just have to re-purpose it.

I don't really have a tried and true method. Even after all these years I still feel like I still figuring it all out and every campaign seems to be a very different beast to run.

That said, in my last two successful campaigns, my game prep/plotting was largely done from the point of view of the NPCs/villians. Rather than trying to map (figuratively speaking) a sequence of event the players were likely to go through, I sat back, tried to get in the mind of the NPCs and plan their next actions to further thier own goals or react to the players recent actions. For each of these little plot fragments I'd wrtie up a few notes with just the bare minimum detail.

Coming into the game I never quite knew which plot fragments I'd end up using or when. If the players decded to investigate one thing, I might use one fragment, if they seemed to be floundering and unsure about what to do next I might throw in a different fragement, something to draw them into the action and discover some new clues.  If they tried something I had not considered, I'd adapt another plot fragment.

Of course a lot of really cool plot fragments ended up discarded. They never got used because events in game just moved on and they became obsolete.
And it wasn't all quite so neat. Where the players had clearly indicated what they indended to do next I'd prep that in much more detail, and some parts were it seemed to make sense were a little more tightly scripted, but those were the exception and overall the games had a felt very alive and very responsive.

One thing  I should point out, out of the two campaigns one was a superhero game the other a post-apocalyptic bouny hunter game. What both of these have in common is that the in both cases it's the villains who have the grand schemes and master plans. The party's role is essentially to stop or capture the villians. Now in a lot of games the position is reversed, it's the party (or the patron that hired the party) that has the grand scheme (often involving getting your hands on a ot of treasure) and it's the villians who try to stop you. I don't know how important this distinction is, but I find this interesting distinction.

Quote from: James McMurray;388711I've been GMing for a while, and I'm comfortable with most things: making up stories, creating NPCs, setting challenge levels, winging it, etc. One place where I definitely need help is in crafting nonlinear stories.

Lately I've been using the 5 room model for both location and time based adventures. It works well, and I don't mind stepping out of the mold when the players find another path they want to follow, but it's all very straightforward if they don't: go through the forest, past the village, over the lake, and into the castle. I'd like to have the last leg of our Scion campaign be much more open than the last two have been, but can't just leave it completely to chance because a) there are things that have to happen if the campaign is going to wrap up nicely and b) if it's all in the players' hands and they show up without an idea of where to go next it'll flounder. Also, completely winging it with characters at that power level is difficult because what constitutes an appropriate threat isn't obvious (no CR system in Scion).

I don't have much experience with campaigns where the scenes are in more of a cloud than a flowchart. Any advice, links, or the like would be greatly appreciated.

I'm guessing they're ok with following your plot. My advice: Identify the "Key Points" that need to be hit. The CPRG (Yes, I'm going there) Morrowind has almost complete freedom. The only limit is, if you kill certain NPCs, you get a warning that you've broken the main plot, so you can go back to the last save.

To put those two together, if the players are about to "break" a key point, tell them. If they want follow your plot, they'll find a way to avoid breaking it. Or even make it better.

Quote from: James McMurray;388711I've been GMing for a while, and I'm comfortable with most things: making up stories, creating NPCs, setting challenge levels, winging it, etc. One place where I definitely need help is in crafting nonlinear stories.

Don't Prep Plots

Three Clue Rule

Node-Based Design

The stuff Justin has on his website is gold, but Kryyst had a great point too, feel free to steal your players' ideas.  When they get together for a brainstorming session to find out what the evil guy is doing or who could be behind the string of murders, etc. listen to them, some of the stuff they come up with might be better then yours.  Don't be afraid to change on the fly if you need to.

I'm not saying change all your prep work, but your players might surprise you.

Or you could just be lazy.

The Lazy Mans Guide to Gamemastering

Regards,
Chris

For the curious, this was cross-posted here and has garnered some good advice there as well.

Quote from: VacuumJockey;388923Or you could just be lazy.

The Lazy Mans Guide to Gamemastering

I read that thread awhile ago, and I remember thinking that about a third of it was good advice, and the rest of it was really, really bad.

The time will come, at some point, that these kinds of questions will be solved by the Politically Incorrect Guide to GMing, due out sometime from Precis Intermedia.

RPGPundit

Thanks for the tips, folks! that Node-based Scenario Design was exactly what I was looking for (and pretty much everything else was useful too). Now to go about crafting the goals and tools for the NPCs, plus some bare-bones frameworks for what the PCs can do (firm enough to be useful but bare enough to be scrapped at a moment's notice).