Basic Event Running Guide

Basic Event Running Guide by Mikage

Currently a work in progress, posted to be available for commentary via discussion page.

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.