I want to reveal something I used in the past to generate RPG stories and then run them, which possibly almost nobody has seen. Here's a sample of what this looked like, all those years ago (big 4.5 MB files): <a href="http://downstat.homestead.com/files/Temp/TreeDiagrams/Cyberpunk_tree-diagram_notes_1.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://downstat.homestead.com/files/Temp/TreeDiagrams/Cyberpunk_tree-diagram_notes_1.jpg</a> (the main circle-tree) <a href="http://downstat.homestead.com/files/Temp/TreeDiagrams/Cyberpunk_tree-diagram_notes_2.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://downstat.homestead.com/files/Temp/TreeDiagrams/Cyberpunk_tree-diagram_notes_2.jpg</a> (a "zoom" page from a different game) Decades back I took speed-reading courses to cope with university, and these courses taught some related skills like note-taking. But you don't want to take prose notes or do little linear point-forms, oh, no! This course encouraged you to draw tree-structures, and enclose text in boxes of different shapes depending on what the function of the text was, and so on. For creative work, they suggested one note-structure was a "tree" structure. Take a sheet of paper, and in the center draw a small circle with the title of your adventure. What is the basic plot of this story, what are you being hired for? A personnel extraction? Finding a lost item? Stealing an item or data? Foiling a corporate take-over of a poor neighborhood? Note it in the circle. Then draw 5 or 6 "branches" evenly spaced, extending from the circle out to the edge of the pages. These are the "chapters" of your story. The "chapters" could represent events or tasks the player-characters (PCs) must do, but you don't want to lock them into a time-order of events. Making your characters follow a linear track is called "railroading". It is better if the chapters represent locations or non-player characters where the players have to find something or confront someone, that they can "visit" in any order, and hopefully have enough information and gear for some final "showdown" chapter. But if the players take too long, sometimes something in the world will change, making things worse. If you have played computer RPGs or JRPGs like Legend of Zelda, you already know how to do this. Your character runs around meeting NPCs, they each want something which you have to get from someone or somewhere else but you often have to agree to do something for that other NPC (or to that other NPC) and run around and have a merry old time. Do not forget to give each new place or NPC a particular "look", a short descriptive phrase or two that you can bring up and put in the notes, to bring out the other-worldliness of your setting. I happened to play in my Cyberpunked home-city of Toronto, taking a free subway map and "enhancing" it into the future date (more subway stations, more buildings, noting fabulous new bars and clubs and megacorps), with towers extending into Lake Ontario made of super-strong space-metals that extend the population of the city south. I also developed several "cybergangs" and their turfs. Break down each "chapter", add some notes. The way to do it is to draw branches extending ONLY TO THE RIGHT (clockwise) of the big radial branches. Rotate your paper around so that the chapter branch you are working on is always facing the top. Upon those branches, you can make a second branch ONLY POINTING UP from the horizontal branch. Never make branches pointing to the left or down. always write short notes BELOW a horizontal branch always write short notes to the LEFT of a vertical branch encase the name of each NPC or location in a small box draw a blank tick-box at every spot where an important player goal may be reached Build up your story, develop the points of a story. Let your thoughts flow, write it down, don't reject anything too hastily but leave it on for a while as you develop other parts. The boxes help you spot important NPCs or locations, and you can draw lines all over connecting one to another one far away on the sheet. If you start running out of room on a branch, take a new sheet of paper for a "zoom" view of that branch. Draw a line at the bottom, and a line along the LEFT side of the page at an 80° angle upward, and start branching again. After developing the story this way, why, I ran the adventure just from these sheets, ticking the tick-boxes as players succeeded at each stage, location or NPC involved. The only other thing I needed was scrap-paper prepared with boxes for NPC stats, to keep track of combat, or photocopies of the Fast and Dirty Expendables NPC sheet. This method, if you dare to start using it, is great for creativity, because the brain remembers geometrically where each section is, and you might at worst only need a few "zoom" pages. Try it out, even if you think you can't write a story! Branches, short notes and squiggles are much less intimidating than a blank note-paper page or computer screen!
