How to 'Set the Scene' for ANY scene in your roleplaying game of choice

Let's begin our process at the beginning.

Making Great Scenes at your Game Table — a series

1. Preface: Everyday gamers don’t always know how to make great scenes

2. Introducing: The Scene Kit

3. How to ‘Set the Scene’

4. Adding tension by introducing a Scene Partner

5. Ending out scenes with ‘Scene Breakers’ and resolving the scene

6. Adding ‘Minor Scenes’ to add action and movement to our story

7. The Scene Kit, distilled down to one page!

8. Activating the off-screen players in the ‘Support’ role

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Last time, I laid out a plan: Come up with a fool-proof, step-by-step process for adding great scenes of any kind to any tabletop roleplaying game, no matter your skill level or aptitude in drama or narrative. I also talked about what we need going in — what we need from the game we’re playing, and what we need to know about the characters.

Now, let’s start the process at the top: Setting a Scene.

This is probably the easiest part, since so many games do this well already. Most of this was inspired by Follow, and I haven’t done anything incredibly different than what’s done there, but it’s also a similar process to a game like Orbital or Tableau, some other narrative games I’ll look at in greater depth down the line. But I’m aiming for universality, perfection, and comprehensiveness!

Let’s begin…

The Focus Character

To set the stage for the scene, determine the FOCUS character – often, this is the person who calls for the scene, but your game might tell you who the FOCUS is. When in doubt: the FOCUS is the character who will be tested in the scene! So ask your players: Who’s up for it?

The player behind the FOCUS Character will quickly sketch out two things up front: the ACTION and the PLACE.

The Central Action

Here is the first question in our procedure:

• What concrete ACTION is the FOCUS character taking to address the challenge, related to their role in the group or quest?

The ACTION may or may not be important to the plot, but here in the scene, it’s just part of the set-up. It might weigh heavily on the scene, or it might just fade into the background. For now, it’s something to push our characters together and make them interact in important ways. What it is definitely not is the point of the scene. It is just what the FOCUS is doing while engaging with the scene, and gives the FOCUS a place to begin. Raise the stakes of the action, and you can raise the intensity of the scene.

Our current challenge is “Track the yeti to its lair and kill it.” Elga the Barbarian asks for a scene, and it’s still super early in the quest, so her ACTION as a barbarian is just to sharpen her axe.

Later, it’s Clyde the Rogue’s turn to be FOCUS. Since the quest is coming to a close, his ACTION is to sneak along at the front of the party into the dark lair of the yeti. Now that’s an intense scene!

Once we have that piece, we can ask them to describe their action, or we can move on and determine…

The Place

This is easy, because it comes naturally as a part of any RPG. What is the really cool, evocative environment where our scene takes place? It should be relevant to doing the ACTION, but it should also be rich — rich with resources or rich with struggles. This is one of many great places to invite everyone at the table to weigh in so that we can quickly load up the environment with toys to play with.

So here’s the next piece:

• Where is the PLACE the ACTION is happening?
  Choose one, ++positive or --negative, any player can riff on this:

  • ++ What about this PLACE makes it a rich, helpful environment to execute the ACTION? What sorts of things do we see?

  • -- What about this PLACE is hostile to your ACTION? What in the environment are you struggling with during your ACTION?

Now we have a character, doing some important task, in an interesting place. Perhaps they are struggling, or even thriving.

Elga makes up a PLACE she hadn’t thought of yet: She is sharpening her axe in her hovel. Her player decides she is surrounded by all of her well-worn, personal tools and equipment, with a spinning whetstone and the pleasing light of sparks. She feels right at home

Clyde’s PLACE is obvious: the yeti tunnel. He can’t think of more details, so Elga chimes in: Maybe the dark tunnel is full of broken bones that make a terrible crunch, and Clyde is struggling to stay silent as he sneaks forward. Clyde thinks this is brilliant, and agrees.

If we haven’t asked them to describe it yet, let’s throw this in:

• What does your character look like, doing this task? What do we see?

That’s it, the stage is set! We might even add helpers in the form of supporting cast, but for now, that’s enough to see our scene open. You might ask: Ok, how is that setting them up to be challenged? What the hell is going to happen? That’s the role of the next character, our scene PARTNER.

For now, let’s see what we’ve done so far:

ORANGE tells us who is making choices. GREY tells us what we’re doing. PURPLE asks us to make a decision. GREEN tells us to envision, or add detail.

Good start! 

You might think “Jesus, the PARTNER has a big job ahead of them,” but don’t worry, eventually we’re going to add ways that off-screen players can get in the mix to help the scene along and add challenges.

You might also think, “There are tons of little scenes where there’s no interaction, but also montages, or little asides, or solo scenes.” We’re gonna get to that too in “Minor Scenes” at the very end.

So, how does it look? Give me your thoughts and opinions! Am I missing something? What should I do next?

Thanks all, more soon.