In Crook, the start of any story is our protagonist looking at their list of job offers and choosing one to pursue.
I have been thinking of this like a more focused version of the rumours a party of adventurers might hear while playing in a sandbox game. These are the hooks that lead them to interesting, potentially pre-prepared places (stocked dungeons, bounded explorable locations like forests or swamps, small towns with secret cults, etc). In Crook, because we're narrowing our focus to jobs that -patrons- offer, a way to still capture a similar sense of freedom, exploration and discovery like in a "true" sandbox game is to make a -really engaging- job board.
So what details make a job listing interesting?
The generator I detailed in a previous post provides details that allow the player to make some risk/reward decisions--the outcome literally tells you how risky the job is and what the reward will be--but aside from a very brief description of the type of patron and the kind of job, there are no evocative details to actually act as hooks.
I think the details that do the most work in this regard would include:
-the patron: their profession/occupation, and their relationship to the crook and any factions (and potentially their personality quirks).
-the job: the key people or objects involved, an interesting location, the obstacles, and a theme.
My instinct as always is to turn to random generators to create some inspiration for each of these factors that the GM can flesh out into details. However, that's not strictly necessary. In the same way that you can stock the rumour tables in your sandbox game with hooks leading to prepared dungeon crawls and encounters and other already-existing stuff, the crook's job board can have listings that would lead the crook to prepared adventures. Pretty much any "find this item" or "interact with this person" job can easily be fitted onto any existing adventure module.
BUUUUT it's pretty fun to create a whole adventure from just a few random prompts that then interact both the GM's setting knowledge and with the decisions of our motivated crook.
The structure I used as a starting point to make jobs for Penny was:
patron-type occupation; descriptor descriptor place; job-type; risk; opposition; distance; reward
A lot of this is provided by the job generator: ie patron-type is criminal/noble/merchant/etc and job-type is theft/smuggle/escort/etc--risk, distance, and reward are settled too.
Sometimes I would use the "Sample Crimes", "Location" and "Potential Foes" tables at the back of Scarlet Heroes to generate some of these details, but those crimes are more for the PC to -investigate- rather than commit (the list includes crimes like "forced marriage", "treason", "dark worship", and "rape"--I'm not going to include those as jobs for the PC to do in my games and I recommend you don't either).
But mostly I'd generate the details from scratch using several different tables:
The patron's occupation came from a list of "101 fantasy jobs and professions" made by Ennead Games (now no longer available individually, though it -is- part of a $500+ bundle)--which I liked not only for the huge list of occupations but also because each one included a short hook this kind of NPC could offer (ie a gravedigger mentions that bodies are being dug up, a blacksmith needs a rare alloy for a special weapon, a teacher asks for help locating a missing child...). This would combine with the patron-type from the job generator, ie "criminal lore master", "noble/merchant musician", and "military blacksmith". This provided a really good jumping-off point--you can already imagine the kind of work each of these combos might offer. The rest of the patron's details would come from numerous other generators that would provide personality quirks, names, ancestry/culture, etc.
The details of the job beyond just whether it's theft/smuggling/etc is a pair of descriptors, a place, and the opposition. Most of the time I would generate these using my favourite GM tool ever, Instant Game (another product that was -almost- not available anymore, as its creators and their publishing imprint Animalball Partners have vanished from the internet--but a copy of the original freely-available PDF is on RPGGeek). It had d100 tables for all the relevant categories and would result in evocative prompts like "gloomy ritual correctional system, opposition mythical legend", "steady tough government office, opposition mindless horde", and "awesome secret armoury, opposition invaders/outsiders".
These prompts about the job, in combination with the details of the patron, are enough to create a really evocative hook for our crook, and gets you about 80% of the way to what you need to run the session.
I would refine the results into a more specific job offer, using details of the world that were established through play in previous sessions. For example "awesome secret armoury" was part of a job offer that turned into:
"Maganak Five Names, elven diplomat, wants a wand delivered to a secret city defense armoury. but city is overrun by oozes. reward: some coin, and whatever you steal."
The city overrun by oozes was just an offhand comment in an earlier session of the game that I jotted down to keep for later. Meanwhile "gloomy ritual correctional system" combined with other prompts to become:
"Cotme Ower, halfling ferryman. smuggles contraband and people to/from island prison of Glama-worshipping cult of liars. wants help to con prison guards of a particular shipment. reward: standard fee and one set of enchanted armour"
Don't those sound like fun jobs to get involved in? Not only that but they give pretty clear direction for what the GM could prepare for the session if the crook chooses to do that job.
Now the question is, as I develop Crook into a Thing: should it have its own tables, or can I just recommend the use of these kinds of tables? I don't think I could do a unique job of filling a d100 table better than the tables I use, but also -none- of the tables that form the core of the job generator are widely available anymore. Should Crook include its own generators to provide prompts, or just include guidance on what makes a good job hook?
I haven't decided yet, and out of cowardice will put the question aside and work on something else entirely for the next several posts!
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