Back to gaming soon

I finish up school May 5th. Done. Complete. Not one lick of homework left to turn in, not an exam in sight. (Considering that we've never had an exam, the latter is not unusual.)

I'm really looking forward to getting back to gaming and writing about gaming. I just wish I was more enthused about the campaign I'm going to be starting back up… I've got some interesting elements to play with, but I'm struggling with figuring out just what to do with them.

When I took my break from school, I was reading Syd Field's [[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0440582253|The Screenwriter's Workbook]]. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there that I can apply to gamemastering, and I'll probably write an article or two based on some ideas I'm developing.

But one of the most interesting things about the three-act Paradigm (I blogged about this earlier) is Field's thoughts on the middle act. The first act is easy… "here's where things start out." The third act is even easier, "here's where things (probably) end." What's most difficult is the second act, "here's how we get from act one to act three."

Looking at the two story arcs I'm trying to work out now, and looking back over previous campaigns and plots, I see that this is exactly what I experience. I find myself saying, "here's where we start, here's where we'll probably end, and I'll just wing everything in between." Except everything in between is the hardest part, and I've done the least preparation for it… in part because I was stuck and didn't want to put more preparation effort into it.

Now that I have been trying to put more effort into it, I'm finding it terribly difficult in some ways. It's the meat of the story, and I'm having trouble building believable and involving bridges between point A and point C… things that naturally lead our heroes from where they are now (they've discovered some clues, but don't have enough) to where they need to be (have found enough clues to reach the big bad). This being a mystery of sorts ("who is behind the big crime?"), it's hard to lay down just the right trail of clues that the heroes can follow without looking heavy-handed, or having NPC's hand them clues on a plate. The NPC police detective contact keeps slipping notes under the secret base door… "I heard something suspicious about this, go check it out."

Part of the problem is that the people behind this are rather smart and went out of their way to remain hidden… so I have to figure out just why their plan to stay hidden isn't going to work. But in a way that leaves the need for creativity and active play in the players' hands… I can't just lead them through a series of clues by their noses.

Field says that act two is hardest, and he isn't dealing with co-writers who are going to change the plot on the fly in the final draft. :)