Basic Event Running Guide by Mikage
Currently a work in progress, posted to be available for commentary via discussion page.
Contents
Prologue
The Basic Event Running Guide is designed to be a practical guide to getting started running roleplaying events. The style presented is based on the primary author's personal experiences, spanning nearly a decade at the time writing started. This guide is geared primarily towards OtherSpace, but will attempt to offer general advice where possible.
What is an Event?
At its most basic level, a roleplaying event on a game such as OS is a situation where a scene is expanded beyond the location and the Player Characters (PCs) in it. With this definition, most players have at least a little experience with running an event, and it is this fundamental skill that comes into play when running larger events.
More generally, events are situations where one player takes charge and serves as a referee for a scene, providing NPCs (Non Player Characters) and description of the environment as needed. They may also supervise any needed dice rolls.
Through a combination of these tasks, players may experience things as simple as a NPC in a tavern all the way to epic adventures.
Why run Events?
Events involve work being done on behalf of fellow players. Some events take very little work to prepare and run, while others can be time intensive undertakings. So what motivates people to run events?
- It is a way to explore roleplaying beyond a player's own characters.
- Events can liven up scenes and engage PCs in unusual ways.
- Events can be used to create adventures and stories
- Events, while they can be work intensive at times, can be quite a bit of fun.
Concepts
The first thing needed to run an event is an idea. What are your players going to do? Simple events may take only a sentence to describe. More complex concepts may take a bit more. This is the focus of the event. There are two major kinds of events. Goal events and character events. We'll talk about goal events first.
Goal Events
- The PCs will explore an old cave trying to find remains of an earlier party that was in the area.
- The PCs will try and transport passengers from Point A to Point B and deal with an engine failure on the way.
An easy format to use for simple events can be summed up as: Goals and Complications. Goals are what the PCs are trying to get done, complications are things that make achieving that goal more difficult. Most short events can get by on one or two complications. Longer events may require more.
Stacking complications onto a goal can be used to add more detail, drama, or general interest in the event.
- The PCs will try and transport passengers from Point A to Point B and deal with a reactor failure on the way. They will also have to deal with unruly stressed passengers and potentially the dangers of a prolonged reactor outage, such as darkness and life support issues.
Notice how many of the complications can work together. They're still 'multiple complications' even if they all have the same source. Part of the benefit of this is that it provides several PCs things to do, not just the engineer trying to get the reactor up and running.
Character Events
Character events are simpler, since they usually result in using a character (one of an event runner's PCs or an NPC) to interact with PCs in some manner.
- A character running a bar or restaurant promotes a 'theme night' to give PCs an easy reason to hang out at that location.
- A NPC goes around to PCs in a landing bay trying to solicit donations for a charitable cause.
These don't really have 'goals' other than 'get PCs to interact with a character'. Some people who tie multiple events together may use them to link events together, but for starting out that isn't a major concern. Like above, complications can be added to add flavor.
- A NPC goes around to PCs in a landing bay trying to solicit donations for a charitable cause. Shortly after meeting the NPC, the PCs will learn local police are looking for NPC for question.
Notice even with complications, however, there isn't really a goal for the PCs. It's more about how they react to the scenario you've given them.
Creating Details
Once a concept is thought of, most new event runners find some benefit in doing some prep work on what kind of details the event could benefit from. Some experienced event runners simply think of details during the event itself, while others do more preparation work. Some kinds of prep work tend to have a better cost:benefit payout than others.
Some examples of common prep work with a decent benefit:
- Descriptions of areas you know players will see. For example, a description of all the passengers on a shuttle being taken from Point A to Point B.
- Short notes on a couple NPCs very likely to show up. Things like race, gender, age, and notable personality details. One of the passengers is a middle aged male Aukami that is scared of the dark.
Running the Event
The actual operation of an event can be generalized into four separate parts.
Preliminary
Briefing
In some cases, before an event, an event runner may need to set up information that is essential to players beforehand. Most often, this consists of a post in the +news system about a day in advance. For example if your event centers around a fugitive, you may write a news article about what the fugitive is allegedly wanted for and who wants the fugitive.
Another method for smaller groups are 'mission briefings.' These are similar to +news, but are specialized for a specific group that is the target of your event.
The benefit of doing this, if it is needed, is it saves time during the setup phase of the event itself. A mission briefing, for instance, can save an hour of time in the early part of the event where little more is happening than an infodump. This helps more time be spent on the focus of the event itself.
Getting There
The very first part of running an event is getting PCs to the place the event is being held. If there is time, the event should be announced on +calendar and on the +bboards. This will let people know days in advance that an event is coming up and if they're interested they can make time to be present.
On the day of the event, it is often common to make announcements on channels (usually the Public channel) that the event will be taking place soon.
Common times to do this are:
- 1 Hour before the event
- 30 minutes before the event
- 15 minutes before the event
- 5 minutes before the event
- A last call right before you begin the event
These calls will remind people of the event, or inform people who do not read +calendar or the +bboards that one is taking place. This is also a good time to tell people where they need to be for the event to take place, such as the Svajone's landing bay, for instance.
Introduction
This is where people in the scene pose in. The event isn't really underway yet, but people are posing. In some cases of public areas, people are already in a scene before an event runner arrives, in others, the event runner will be sceneposing first to present the beginning state of the event.
Setup
Once things are underway, this is where the focus point of the event is introduced. This can happen first thing, if you're running a character focused plot, where an event runner introduces the NPC that is going to be interacting with the PCs for most of the event. This can also happen later, when you introduce the first complication, such as a reactor failure on a passenger shuttle flight.
Resolution
Once the scenario is presented, the event runner's primary job changes to refereeing attempts to act on the scenario. If the focus is a NPC, this means playing as the NPC for a scene. If it is an event or goal, such as resolving a reactor failure, it means handling rolls to fix the reactor. Depending on the event, both may happen, you may play NPC passengers in the dark passenger shuttle while handling rolls for the engineer to try and fix the reactor.
New challenges or additional complications often mean a repeat of the Setup and Resolution steps, or new setups are added in the middle of a resolution phase, if new things continue to happen to change the scenario.