jhkimrpg ([info]jhkimrpg) wrote,
@ 2005-12-30 00:42:00
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Buffy Adventure Design Essay
So I have the draft of a new essay up, based on the Buffy campaign that I'm currently co-GMing. To be as concrete as possible, it is very specifically about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer game and genre -- but the advice should be of interest to players of other games. I've posted it at:

Buffy RPG Adventure Design

I haven't linked it in officially yet. Anyone care to give feedback?

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[info]ricmadeira
2005-12-30 12:48 pm UTC (link)
It reads very nicely! I found it had plenty of cool advice and I'm not even familiar with the BtVS RPG! I'm going to recommend it to my GM running a supers campaign with teens in high school; many great lessons would apply there (at least if he wants to take the game in a particular direction).

I would recommend you stress the point of the meaningful monsters with (at least!) a couple more examples from the series. I have only watched the first season (so my thoughts are only derived from that), but I totally agree with you and get what you're saying. In this case, the episode with the invisible girl was an eye-opener; it didn't even try to be subtle - there's a pun here, I'm sure - and I loved it for that, because it put a whole lot of things about the series in perspective for me. Anyway, what I'm saying is that I don't believe many people have discovered the meaningful aspects most monsters have... so you might wanna shove a couple more examples into their brains to make them realize how much this is an integral part of the show.

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[info]jhkimrpg
2005-12-31 07:40 am UTC (link)
Sounds good. I'll go through my favorite episodes and pick some more examples.

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[info]inkylj
2005-12-31 06:44 am UTC (link)
This is pretty much exactly the level of RPG theory in which I am interested. I imagine this is a little way away from the point of the essay, and possibly this subject is covered in the BtVS rulebook adequately (which I haven't read) but I'd be interested in advice on putting the episodes in a larger context, too -- how do you set up a season, what's a good mix of arc and non-arc sessions, etc.

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[info]jhkimrpg
2005-12-31 07:44 am UTC (link)
It's a good topic -- but I think it's a whole other essay. The BtVS book does have some advice on setting up a seasonal arc, but it's not very good (not as good as the episode advice, in my opinion).

I'll see about posting something on that. It's also a little harder since episode-by-episode I've had twenty or so episodes under my belt, but only one and a half seasons as co-GM.

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[info]tigerbunny_db
2006-01-03 04:22 am UTC (link)
This is really, really good, John. One thing I noted largely missing, though, that's significant about the BtVS game is how and when it's appropriate to hand out Drama Points to advance the plot. The advice in the corebook is frankly not very good - there's a real difference between yanking a character's chain at the beginning of the episode in order to set a conflict or theme in motion and doing it later on, in order to prevent a "premature" or "undesirable" resolution of a conflict.

Do you have any ideas about that? I seem to recall some comments about Drama Points in one of your earlier BtVS posts, but I'm hazy.

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