Where to Begin...

Thoughts on where to start a game. Plus, a free giveaway!

Greetings!

As I promised last year, I’m going to play around with the format of this newsletter. I’m giving myself permission to compose a post on any given RPG-related topic, rather than waiting till I have multiple games played and/or design thoughts to share.

This time, our topic is: Where to Begin? That is—

How far along in the story do you start play?

There are some assumptions here, like the idea that “the story” can exist outside play. I’d say, depending on your game’s premise, it definitely can. Masks, for example, specifies that your teenage superheroes are already a team when the game starts, and have been for some time. It gives “When the team first came together…” prompts, so that you can fill in some details of your shared history at character creation. But (wisely) the game does not have you play out that first encounter, and instead begins a some unspecified later point in the story of your characters’ time as a team.

I am generally a fan of this approach. Several of my games “hard-frame” the player characters into a tense situation, and deal with their shared background or prior planning with out-of-character answers or flashbacks. The Great Soul Train Robbery opens with the Desperadoes already aboard the caboose of the train to Hell, resolved to rob it together. Secret Science Sewer Siblings begins with the titular family of mutants already well-established, and quickly puts them on a mission to rescue their mentor.

A recent gaming experience got me more interested in another approach. My friend Jesse ran a 4-session series of my game Vow of the Knight-Aspirants in which I got to be a player. It was a very fun time! And Jesse did something I’ve never done: he started the story with all our squires back at the king’s court, before we set out on the quest baked into the game, seeking the Tower Perilous.

I usually “hard-frame” Vow of the Knight-Aspirants so that the squires have already set out on their quest, and handle questions of how they were chosen for this quest or how they relate to the king and court through backstory questions. This works well, in some ways, especially for a one-shot.

But! I really enjoyed playing the game the way Jesse framed it, where our characters had time to interact with NPCs in the court, accepting and rejecting lessons from our mentors. We even got to narrate our vigils before embarking on our quest, with a custom move Jesse wrote for the series. It was a lot of fun, and very much captured key parts of the feel of the game’s media inspirations.

I think, as I run the game more and send out playtest materials to other GMs, I will see how it plays if longer series begin closer to court. Perhaps there will be a “starter” quest to bring the wizard Kestrel back from a hermitage before the main quest of the Tower Perilous commences. In one-shots, I expect I will still “hard-frame” further into the squires’ quest—but I may incorporate some version of Jesse’s vigil move to serve as a prologue!

(You can find the session Jesse ran, as well as many other playtests of Vow of the Knight-Aspirants, in this Youtube playlist.)

What do you think about this question? How do you feel about starting points in one-shots and campaigns? Sound off in the comments below!

Elsewhere

• I will be at Gen Con in less than a week! I’m excited to be back. I will be running Vow of the Knight-Aspirants and Back Again from the Broken Land. I’ll also be playing many games, some old favorites, some entirely new to me. If you are at the con and recognize me, feel free to say hi and let me know you’re a Cloven Pine fan. I look like this (though I won’t be wearing my Ennie all around the con, that would be tacky):

• I am doing a free giveaway of some sweet materials for Magpie Games’ Avatar Legends, a game I contributed to as a designer. Giveaway items include the Starter Set and Wan Shi Tong’s Adventure Guide.

Here’s how to enter the giveaway: send an email to clovepinegames@gmail.com with the subject line “Cloven Pine Memories.” In your email, share a favorite memory of playing a game I designed or contributed to (so, yes, Trophy, Brindlewood Bay, and Avatar all count). On September 8th, I will pick a few lucky winners from among those who entered, and ship them their Avatar prizes.

(And, of course, if you want to enter but don’t have a memory to share, you can play one of my games between now and September…)

Till next time, may you find the right place to begin your quests.

Gamefully yours,
Alexi