Oddly enough, the original adventure, which I ran at Origin's for the DFRPG release, was closer to the final published version than the final draft I turned in. I'll come back to that.
Very interesting.
As some of what's listed could be construed as spoilerish, we'll continue with the spoiler alert.
Where did you get your basic ideas for the casefile's plot? When I volunteered to write up an adventure, I started with the idea of how to do a good 3-4 hour game. I needed to work past my flaws and think ahead. I run very free form games and let the players drive the plot and pacing. To me, this meant reining it in and doing a closed-system game. The PC's needed to be limited in the amount of space they had to work with and given a set amount of time.
I see. I had the same issue coming up with
Truth & Justice and
Zorcerer of Zo demos when I went to Gen Con.
I also play by the seat of my pants, GMing from a outline/bulletpoint list of fragmentary notes, and I had to write up something so another person could run a demo if I wasn't at the booth. That was DIFFICULT.
So, we're on the same page by limiting space and time.
I game with theater nerds. Two have degrees in theater, a third is a set designer. Discussing things with them, it hit on me to place it in a theater. Not my forte (my degree is in video production) but I'd have enough help to give me an idea on how a theater works. From there, it was an extremely tiny leap to using Shakespeare. I wanted to avoid either the MacBeth or Hamlet cliché, so I took a look at the Tempest. It was perfect.
Once I chose the Tempest, things flowed for me. I decided that the play was a metaphor for the truth about Sycorax. It was so well written though that it established a link between the play and Sycorax. In the con version, Sycorax was an outsider. A force of nature so far beyond the scope of man that should it be summoned, it would put the world in danger. This made the con game an all or nothing, life and death game. Perfect for a 4 hour game.
I dig all that.
Sycorax as an Outsider works really well in matching up with the play-character as a Dresdenverse character.
How did you select/develop NPCs and Pcs? The NPCs came from again reading the play. Originally, I just used the names of the characters as place holders, but over time I just liked that the villain truly saw himself as Prospero and his apprentice as Miranda.
Prospero was over the top. Crazy is as crazy does. Willing to end the world to get what he wanted. And just powerful enough to pull it off. I wasn't looking for a tragic, sympathetic foil.
Miranda was his sidekick. Because of the way the spell worked, once Prospero got started with it, he'd need a magical heavy hitter to watch his back. The more I thought about her, the more I just realized she was a psychopath who'd do whatever was needed.
Arial (still a sylph) and Caliban (a flesh-masked bridge troll) were perfect as my sympathetic villains. Creatures of fea, bound to do Prospero's bidding. I wanted some second guessing with the PCs and using these two gave me that.
The chorus (the three goddesses), were there to just give the more physical PCs something to beat the living crap out of. They were flesh-masked ghouls in the con version.
Right. All that is pretty straightforward.
Personally, I'd still have an issue with Prospero summoning Sycorax, given them being almost antithetical in the play, BUT... making Sycorax an Outsider and Prospero supercrazygonuts insane, that, that could work with some judicious aspect selection and description of motivation beyond "I want MOAR POWAH!"
As for the PCs themselves. As this was an introduction to the system and universe, I wanted to have a variety of characters to choose from. On top of that, I am a fan of the disparate group of people forced to work together genre. To this end, I came up with the following characters. An irish mobster with sponsored magic, his pure mortal bodyguard, the shape-changing reporter, the scion of Dionysus actress, the wet behind the ears wizard and the half-demon cop. I gave each of them reasons to be in the theater and inter-personal relationships to explain why they knew at least one or two other PCs.
Each of these showcased something different in character creation. And they gave the players motivation to interact with each other, although sometimes not to the betterment of each other.
Here's one of the key differences, I think, between our drafts:
You wrote it as an intro to the system; I rewrote it as a "you already know the rules" scenario. That's because, in large part, because Neutral Grounds and Night Fears were already out. Benefit of hindsight.
Also, I think NG handled the basic investigative scenario slot really well, NF started pulling some different complicating factors into that sort of sceanrio, and I thought EA could continue developing along that line -- bringing more stuff in. That way, each casefile gives a different experience when played, outside of the different plots.
Well, at least that's what I was thinking.
How did you arrange your scenes? I arranged the scenes according to the acts of the play. The opening scene was set 10-20 minutes before the curtain rose. From there, I gave each act of the play/game 30-45 minutes. I'd then let the players do their thing, with time updates by letting them know what was going on on stage, in the front of the house and in the back of the house. They could then interact with anyone or thing of their choosing. By the climax, the players would know that something was definitely amiss and would be working to bring things to a halt.
Additionally, each character had a separate side plot. Most of these were set to bring them into contact with the other PCs or clues to the bigger plot.
Aha!
That probably explains why I personally was having problems with the connect A to B to C thing, because I couldn't understand how the clues to get to that opening scene worked into the scenario. I saw the opening scene as being when the ghouls started eating homeless people when they blew into town a couple days before the performance.
New insight: I has it!
How did it play at the con -- what worked really well in it and what didn't work as well? How did it play? Awesome! And I seriously don't think that's over-stating it. And it wasn't all me, it was the players as well. Hell, it was mostly the players.
What worked really well? The player interaction. The players really grabbed and ran with their inter-personal relationships. In most of the games, the cop, mobster, bodyguard and reporter had a great time manipulating and arguing with each other.
The build up to the final fight to stop Prospero also went amazingly well. As individual hints and clues started to come together, you could see things click in the players heads as they finally realized what was happening. The big clues were the hexing of any technology in the theater, the overly extravagant “special effects”, the fact that Arial really was flying and Prospero's single-mindedness to seeing the play go perfectly. The fight itself was fun to watch as well. By this time, the players had a handle on Aspects and maneuvers and declarations. One group took the brute force approach and just pummeled Prospero into submission and the other worked an on the fly ritual to counteract Prospero's own ritual.
What didn't work? The only thing that really stood out were certain players focusing on specific aspects and ignoring others thereby making their characters one-dimensional. The game itself otherwise worked. Of course, I play fast and loose and riff off of what is happening in the moment.
I'm gonna say that the awesome and the didn't work come down to the same thing...
Player issues. The interaction being awesome is up to who's sitting around the table; the monomaniacal focus on one or two things on a character sheet is the same. And I'm counting the GM as a player here.
I believe a lot of decent game-writing and game-design involves the designer anticipating both Legendary +8 and Terrible -2 players, and providing the GM advice and suggestions on how to deal with likely results at the table. (IMAO, GMs who play fast and loose and riff off of player actions are doing that instinctively.)
And that is the first manuscript I turned originally turned in. But, the editor felt it was too narrow and unbelievable. He thought it should appeal to groups wanting to play their own characters and have the potential to be part of an on-going campaign. From that advice, I added in a lot more investigating that could happen before the play happens. I gave the characters more clues to find before the show that would allow them to realize something was up and prepare for it. I stated up Sycorax and changed her from an outsider to a demon, as that was also suggested. I added all of that together and that is the version that was passed on to Chad.
In all honesty, I didn't feel as connected to the new stuff. I didn't feel it was bad but it wasn't what I'd ever had in my head.
Aha! 2: Electric Boogaloo!
So, the added investigative detail further explains my confusion about the pacing of my (assumed) opening scene versus (original) opening scene!
Changing Sycorax to a plague demon bent crazy Prospero's intent out of alignment, and also threw the Dresden-feel off.
And, now looking back, your lack of connection to the new/changed stuff compared to the older/original stuff (the what's happening when in the theater, which is more detailed and more interesting) had an effect, I think, on how you were writing, which made the whole scenario feel kind of lopsided. At least to me.
Now, writing for publication, that last bit is the hardest thing in writing, hands down. It's also where you find the region of good editors. Good editors will help you keep you energy up, by hacking through the underbrush of confusion, suggesting new ways to go, and gently trimming suck and infusing awesome into what you've put down on the page. (And sometimes, that gentle trimming feels pretty rough!)
I am now illuminated!
I hope I've shared some behind the scenes goodness, as well as whatever minimal advice I have in my back-pocket.
