Storytelling… There is power behind this word.
There are several ways to tell stories. From the ancient tradition of telling stories around a campfire, going through books, short stories, comics, theater plays or movies.
All those ways have one thing in common: the story flows from the narrator/actors to the audience. Whoever writes a book has total power. Which characters will live, which characters will die and what will happen in the story. This assumption is not true for an rpg adventure
Many RPG adventures are written in the traditional multi-encounter format. Although this makes things easier for the GM, at the same time it imposes an undesirable linearity on the adventure. Let's reflect for a moment: if everything that will happen is predefined, even if the order of the encounters is changed, then there is no story being told but only predefined story that players are obliged to follow. I can see two different approaches to solve this.
A tale of wits: An NPC-oriented story. An experienced GM's solution
The idea is simple: instead of creating a predefined story, start with the npc's. What are their motivations? What do they want? The best NPC's I have created were not bad-bad-bad-bad guys nor are they good-good-good guys. It's good to put flaws in your good npc's and put good behavior in your villains. A cruel villain who battles to save his abducted son is always more interesting than the one who's being evil for money or power.
From the npc´s you could draw places, and *other* npc´s. With that you could sketch what COULD happen but never what WOULD SURELY happen. Create your encounters, but link them to the villain's objectives and be prepared when your heroes turn tail or start digging in the wrong direction.
Remember that although you're not in control of the story, you ARE in control of the npc's and perhaps more importantly you can always add new places and new npc's to the story - The plot thickens…
A tool like Multiverse Designer is very desirable here in order to be able to create encounters in 1 or 2 minutes instead of flipping through the books.
A tale of endings: A distant goal oriented story. An easy solution
The idea here is to create a linear story but instead of planning everything, you just create milestones. For instance:
1) You have this hobbit and a wizard and a cursed ring
2) In the middle he will get aid from the good people of his world in a very beautiful elven palace.
3) To destroy it he needs to throw this ring into a pool of lava
What happens in between? YOU DON'T KNOW! Let the player's choose their actions. You always remind them that they´re expected for the (2) meeting and that they have to reach the (3) goal. That's it. Perhaps they will turn gollum into a friend, perhaps they will kill everybody and keep the ring for themselves.Instead of keeping them from doing it, Let them! They will suffer the consequences of course.
If they're too creative they will force you to be MORE creative. And all of this enriches the story and makes you a better GM.
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