When thinking about the Structure of your story, there are two things you should think about: Key Events, and the Flow of Information. TRPG stories don’t typically follow the normal story format of Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, and Falling Action due to everything being fluid and up to the players. Key events are specific events, situations, or scenarios that may or may not happen in the future of the story. You can use these as sort of checkmarks in the story, signifying a major decision by the players or a shift in the story. They are useful to build up towards in order to create a really memorable point in the story for the characters.
Key Event Examples
- Eventually the players come face to face with the leader of one of the warring military forces. Depending on the actions they have taken until now, they may be hostile or peaceful towards this person. Either way, it should be a memorable moment for the players where something important happens, be that more information revealed, or a shift in one of their dispositions towards the other.
- The players come across the direct impact of a mission the entity has sent them on, realizing what they have been ignorant about seeing.
- The untapped power of the Artifact is unleashed, showing the players what it can truly achieve. Be it a benevolent or malevolent force, how will the players respond to this? Perhaps they will think themselves the only ones capable of correctly using such a power, or perhaps they will seek to destroy it.
With each of these key events, it is important to note that the outcomes aren’t necessarily determined, as it is up to the players to respond to these events. Also, each is very general, as the when, where, and how will change with different paths and decisions that the players take.
Following a certain plan for the Flow of Information allows the structure of the story to be better developed and interesting for the players. Flow of Information is typically centered around a specific point in the story, beginning, middle, end. A mystery campaign, for example, will have a Flow of Information centered around the middle and end. Forming a campaign in this way, slowly giving the players more and more clues until they figure out what exactly is going on, can make the story far more intriguing.