 August 11, 2009 - 5:52am | In working on an article suggestion from Ascent I was checking for articles over at Treasure Tables and came on this suggestion: http://www.treasuretables.org/2007/07/cutscenes-one-simple-approach The basic idea is to use a cut scene in much the same way as a TV show or movie would. At an appropriate break in the action cut away from the main PCs and play out a "cut scene" with other characters. (the article explains it better) EXample Working up a salvaged and abandoned HS2 pirate ship in the desert to give the tech characters some opportunity early on to use their skill in the voluturnus mods. The cut scenes is this Pirate captain X has really displeased the Red Devil himself and combined with faillure to maintain his ship in good working order (it was forced to make an emergency landing in the desert) but now a sink hole has swallowed one landing strut and the ship is pretty much gonna be a loss. The REd Devil is sending out a up and coming 1st officer to retrieve the head of the offending captain with the implication that if successful the 1st officer could become a captain in his own right. The crew of the downed ship may fight for the captain or they may not (role play comes in here). But the whole scene gets played out then transitions back to the PCs they have a few desert encounters and find said ship at a time that is obviously in the future of that cut scene by many months if not a year or two. If anyone was killed (messily) you describe the dried blood stains in the locations where they died (actions by the players running the pirates in the cut scene can have an impact on what the main PCs find- lots of explosive was used and now there is massive hole in the hull allowing un the elements). You wouldn't want to do a cut scene with the pirates and the kurabunga if the PCs haven't met the kurabanga yet. you could play out scenes of intrigue and backstabbing among different ships crews of the red devils (I see them as fair cut throat types and the Red Devil himself as the type to view subordinates as pawns and playing them off against each other as a vallid technique for maintaining control). Value of using a cut scene: 1. It lets you tell more of the over all story that the players characters dont have access to. 2. Give the players a break from their characters and allows them to try something different. 3. developes more depth to the setting 4. allows for more death & drama (fun)- some players will play such scenes with a devil may care attitude as its not their character, just a pre-gen assigned to them. AD rules are great for this as you can work up a pre-gen character on an index card, give him some motivations and he's good to go. A whole series of cut scenes can be played out with the same pirate characters giving a view of the full extent of the pirate opperation. (the 1st officer mentioned above is detailed to take a captured freighter to the fence in the Dramune system, kidnapping an edestakai priest for the implant operation, tracking escaped slaves, etc.) PS. this idea lets me steal a shuttle load of Shadow's excellent ideas from his pirate campaign. and the characters involved can turn up latter as NPCs in other situations. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 August 12, 2009 - 8:34am | Interesting idea. Would create a lot of variety. If the adventure is getting stale or you are out of ideas, do a cut scene... At least I got to scare an alien rabbit thingy...... |
August 12, 2009 - 8:51am | Interesting idea. Would create a lot of variety. If the adventure is getting stale or you are out of ideas, do a cut scene... Depending on the group and the adventure you could even allow one of the players develope and run a cut scene. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
August 12, 2009 - 1:50pm | Very cool.. use different Gm's and different characters but tie in the story somehow... At least I got to scare an alien rabbit thingy...... |
 August 12, 2009 - 5:35pm | It would be hard to do with mulitple GMs without them learning to much and spoiling a scene where a GM becomes a Player. The GMs need a clear and constant picture of the SF universe, who runs what, which mega-corp is influential where, etc. so that there is some consistency when the scenes cross. Read a multi-author novel such as the Thieves' World collection. You will be able to see some of the positives and negitives of this type of experiment. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of
the strong. * Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi |
August 12, 2009 - 9:05pm | I see your point Georgie but on Volturnus you could do this easily with the pirates- just establish ground rules that what is supposed to happen in SF-1 is baseline and can't be effected by anything in the cuts scenes. Plus the purpose of the cut scenes is not to run a side campaign but to enhance the story telling you're already doing. so the cut scenes should just be windows to other parts of the story that do affect the PCs but not directly or give the players an insight into whats going on. Example: one could ask the question, "Just what are the pirates doing here? I dont get it." and the cut scenes could be designed to answer that. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
