Some thoughts about gaming or how to make platitudes more interesting.

Despite. that the igrostroy does not stand still, we regularly come across a few (or many) hackneyed plots. Go there - clean the dungeon from evil, go here - bring the ingredients for the great elixir. And so 30 times a game. I think this is familiar to almost everyone.

In this article, I will try to show ways to improve the hackneyed plot. The article is intended for beginners Game masters, and may be of interest to all who are fond of igrostroem. A request to experienced dungeon masters to perceive it not as an attempt to teach how to live, but as another look at where everyone started from.

So, we take the classic story:
During a difficult journey, the Hero's favorite horse hurts his leg. To his great happiness, there is a village nearby, in which, quite possibly, there is someone who is well-versed in treating horses or, at worst, another favorite horse of the Hero. The villagers advise the Hero to turn to the Local Witch Doctor. The local Wise Woman sympathizes with the Hero and is ready to help him, but the trouble is that she does not have the Very Important Red Leaves that grow on the Glade of the First Roses. The hero courageously squeezes the sword and goes to the Glade of the First Roses, where the Terrible Goblins are already waiting for him. Having defeated the Terrible Goblins, our Hero returns with a triumph to the Local Witch Doctor, who heals the Hero's Favorite Horse. Now our Hero can continue his epic adventures.
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How do you like this story? If you remove from it a hint of humor, then, in my opinion, it is simply terrible. Banned, boring, linear and not catchy. In an amicable way, this plot is easier to rewrite than to improve, but in this case this task is not in front of us. Therefore, we will mess with what we have.

The first step to saving our quest is to detail the place where our quest will take place.
Let our village go hungry. Now is the end of winter, food supplies have come to an end, the seed has almost been eaten. Nearby villages have the same problems, there’s no help waiting. On the streets, hungry children who see the hero and rush to him asking for food. The tavern is closed, villagers look at the arrivals with a mixture of fear and expectation.

See, we added only one paragraph of description to the quest, and how much has changed. Now our event begins to cause feelings, and this is the most important.

However, for now this is only a static picture. The world does not revolve around the hero as if he did not want this. The world lives by itself only interacting with the characters. Therefore, our second step is to create a number of events independent of the Hero. For computer games, the problem is because most events are triggered by triggers. But even in this case, the appearance of independent events will always please the player.

In our case, here they are:
• Villagers find out that one of them has a hidden supply of food. The crowd comes under his house, demands to give products. Hidden refuses, the crowd rushes into the house, takes out everything, the house lights up.
• A local resident returns to the village with groceries a month ago to purchase groceries (this is a finishing piece)
• Locals are looking for a witch, find her and burn for witchcraft.

Creating events you need to monitor their compliance with the style of your world and its logic. Adding a Mardi Gras holiday in a starving village would be ridiculous.

But events do not happen by themselves. They occur with people, and in our case with characters. Therefore, our third step is the creation of characters in our village. Here they are:
• Warden Will (50 years old, extrovert, feeling, bachelor, grumbler)
• Father Istrius (40 years old, extreme extrovert, thinking, hysterical, schizoid, fanatic)
• Witch Doctor Ithilda (introvert, thinking, selfish, deceiver)
• Older brother Stas (an extrovert who feels a younger assistant, Robin Hood, has a sick younger brother whom he loves very much).

Characteristics of the characters do not have to be comprehensive. They should force you to generate a whole and consistent personality. In fact, these are keys that remind you how a character thinks.

Now we know how our village will live in the next few days and who its main characters are.

Having done all the preliminary work, we can easily add additional events that will organically fit into the outline of the plot. And, now, we can test our quest without the main character. Thus, we will check the consistency of the plot, find gaps in it, better deal with the characters.

After everything is checked, completed and completed, we are ready for the implementation of our Hero in the quest. The problem is that the hero may not want to go through our quest at all. In role-playing games, the hero may simply declare that he is leaving the village leaving a horse and belongings. Computer games solve this issue head-on, mostly of course. If (! Quest) Location.Close - until the quest is done you will not leave the village. However, this method does more harm than good. Firstly, it renders violence against the player. Secondly, you deprive yourself of an incentive to create an interesting motivation. So, the whole project suffers. Therefore, we need to motivate our Hero accordingly. May our hero be kind. At night, to the place of his sleep, the child will sneak - Stas. He has a sick younger brother who needs to be cured. But there is no one to heal, because the healer is gone. And everyone is looking for it and they want to burn it. And if it burned then the brother will die. Subject to good character, this is sufficient motivation.
And again we are forcing the Hero to react emotionally.

Now we enter the finishing part.
It is necessary to determine the place where the healer is hiding. Let it be one of the shepherd's dugouts on the pastures near the village. In the village, everyone knows about these pastures.
It is necessary to give the player tips that are sufficient for him to find the healer. The wise woman often collected herbs in the northern pastures, the wise woman took food and basic necessities from her home, but left tools, jars, bottles, clothes. The house has a cache with packaged clothes and second necessities left obviously to pick up later. The wise woman will return for him in one of the nights.
You need to choose what the healer wants for solving the problem of the Hero. Based on my vision of the character of the wise woman - her main value will be her own life. Accordingly, the hero can get what he needs only by effectively guaranteeing her inviolability.

Oddly enough, the quest is almost ready. Of course, the places to improve it are just the sea. For example, add to the quest folklore, communication with the outside world, the influence of religion. But, you can write and edit endlessly, therefore, simply summarizing what we have done.

Moving along the not very well-groomed tract, the Hero's horse twists his leg. Fortunately, not far away, you can already see a small village. Having entered the village, the Hero sees that things are much worse here than in the previous one. Everyone is extremely hungry, the children beg him for food. Having distributed some of his stocks, the Hero finds out where the headman lives and sends there. Warden is called Will, after a heated discussion, agrees to take the hero to wait and talks about the problems with food. At the request of the Hero to help him with the horse, the elder reports that there was indeed a healer in the village, but already a couple of days she was gone. The local priest Istrius accused her of the crop failure, and the crowd he had brought went to burn the witch. However, that house was not there, and for a couple of days no one had seen it.
At night, a boy named Stas sneaks in through the window of the Hero's bedroom. He considers the Hero a great hero and asks to save his brother, who is burning in a fever. The hero agrees. In the morning they go to the house to the healer. A thorough examination reveals cached items. The hero concludes that the healer is hiding somewhere. Returning to the village, Hero sees the crowd in front of the headman's house, which requires giving away the hidden headman's reserves. The crowd is led by Istrius accusing Will in collusion with the witch. The hero tries to convince the peasants to leave the headman alone, but they push him aside. As a result, Will is beaten, stocks are really found and carried away. The priest commands to take the horse to his church for preservation. The house lights up. At the same time, Istrius says that the Witch Doctor was often seen on the northern pastures. One of the shepherds cries out that the witch often slept in one of the shepherd's dugouts. Stas tells Hero that he knows where it offers to warn the witch. However, trying to move away from the crowd, our hero draws attention to himself and the chase begins. Having escaped from the crowd with difficulty, he meets Stas and together they run to the dugout, where he finds the healer. By warning her Stas asks for help to save his brother. The wise woman agrees and invites him to meet at night on the other side of the village, near the old barns. The hero returns to the village in a roundabout way, convincing the mother of the child to go with him to the witch. Having come to the old barns, the hero waits all night for the healer, but she never comes. At dawn, the child dies. Coming out of the barn, the hero sees three loaded carts moving to the village. There are products.

That's all. As a result of the modification of the banal plot, we received a completely suitable quest passage, which is easily implemented in desktop gaming systems and computer games. In addition, the quest leaves ends for garters of other events / quests, introduces significant characters that can later be reused.
With all due respect,