Dynamic RPG Plotting Project

Image (cc) paganjesus

I'm the kind of person who likes to have a project, so I'm setting myself one right here.

For years I've been looking for a way to weave the player characters into engaging plots while still keeping prep low and flexibility high, and it finally feels like things are falling into place. My hobby project for the rest of this year [EDIT: now ongoing!] is going to be formalising my ideas and getting them down on paper. Electrons. Like so:

1. How I Learned to Let Go and Embrace the Chaos
2. Railroad / Sandbox / Other
3. Reusability and Separation of Concern 
4. Using a Grid for Plot Components
5. Populating the Grid 
6. Using the Grid for Planning 
7. Reshuffling Items in the Grid 
8. Example Campaign 

Sounds manageable, and by the end I'll know if it works or not. Hope you'll follow along. I'll be using this post as an index as I go and post a retrospective at the end, wish me luck!

(WIP) Playbooks for Stars Without Number

Image (cc) BiPiCado

Midway through my recent SWN campaign I started reading some "Powered By The Apocalypse" games and I really liked the ideas of a) tying the story to the characters and b) character playbooks to help flesh them out.  It reminded me of what I liked about Beyond The Wall.

I started making some "playbooks" for Season 2 of the campaign when one of the players talked to me about not being sure where his PC came from or how it fit in.

They're not complete - by any stretch! - but you can download my Stars Without Number Character Playbooks in their current state from Google Drive and adapt them to your game.

Screenshot below: