This is my first year of participating in the RPGaDAY challenge. According to David F Chapman (the creator of the challenge) this is the eighth year that the challenge has been run. And since a lot of people (such as Halls of the Nephilim and The Other Side) are participating in this, I was inspired enough to give it a try.
Unlike the Character Creation Challenge, I won’t be creating the posts the day of the challenge. Certain schedules will not allow that (and it created quite a toll on the CCC). So there may be some entries that are created the day of (such as this one) or I may write the blog post in advance and schedule it to be published on the required day. I will also be posting other blog entries as inspiration strikes or that were scheduled to be posted (such as the Star Trek Quote of the day). This should make for a very busy month.
Day 1: Scenario
There is only one suggestion for Day 1, Scenario. We all have them in our various role-playing games. I could have posted some memories of a past scenario that I’ve either ran or participated in. Or I could have posted about a favorite scenario that I’ve read about. However I’ve decided to talk about keeping notes for a scenario that I’m trying out.
My last Dungeons and Dragons game ended in 2019. I was thinking that another opportunity would come up to jump into a game. Then 2020 hit (we won’t relive that year of hell). I haven’t had a chance to sit around a table, eat unhealthy snacks and just roll some dice with friends. Yea the online gaming programs are out there, but I’ll leave my thoughts about them in another blog post.
So I decided to create a new world from scratch that a series of Dungeons and Dragons (or insert your favorite Sword and Sorcery RPG system here) games could use to explore. In my head I started thinking of the recent history, why things were bad, what allowed adventurers to explore but keep serfs tied to their master’s land, etc. Some was inspired by our own history (this part of the world is ancient Greece, here are the deserts of Egypt, Vikings are located in this portion of the world, etc.) and some was inspired by preexisting RPG scenarios that I’ve found from different sources (just twist this around, add a few more bad guys to add conflict and bingo).
Keeping it all in my head is a bad idea. A very bad idea. In the past I would use plain old pen and paper to write up some notes, draw some maps and more. While this was good, it has several problems. 1- If I lose this notebook, there goes a lot of time and energy. 2- I will not always have the notebook with me when inspiration strikes. I could be eating a meal in a mall food court or in the middle of a family event when ideas float to the surface. Ideas have come to me while watching a historical documentary or cheesy 80’s fantasy movie with bad special effects.
So I decided that I was going to keep everything in a soft copy. I’ve used Google Docs and Google Keep (think electronic post-it-notes) for various simple and detailed notes on other subjects. Both Google and Microsoft have online version of spreadsheets. While those are good for planning things out (such as what topics I want to use for each day of this challenge) it’s not what I was looking for. I eventually decided to utilize the Microsoft OneNote program. I could type things up like a word processor. The search feature really impressed me when I was quickly trying to find things. Uploading images and attachments are another feature that I found very useful. The program is free for anyone to use and connects to your Microsoft Office account (note: You don’t have to use an outlook.com email address to create a MS account). With the Office account, you can save the data in the cloud storage. This means that you can access it from the program on your computer, a web browser via office.com or an app on your smart phone or tablet. This way when I’m away from my computer, I can quickly write down a thought for the game and then expand it after getting back to the keyboard.
The only downside is that the free Microsoft Office account only comes with 15GB of storage space so you can’t upload a lot of stuff. But students and employees at certain large companies may get a discount for a paid version which comes with more space (1TB of space).
With my usage of the OneNote program, I’ve been able to compile several scenarios together with notes on how things might go. Before I know it, I’ll have enough notes to start up a campaign. Now if I can just keep project creep from affecting what I write down I’ll be good to go.
Final Thoughts: Scenario was a good suggestion for a day 1 RPG topic. I could see different possibilities for #RPGaDAY2021 posts by both players and game masters.
