"Few days earlier..."

Few days ago I read a great article on slyflourish.com about strong starts of RPG sessions. Since this is merely a comment and one additional trick I came up with, I strongly recommend you to read the original article before reading this post. I am not going to retype anything what is in the article by SlyFlourish for two reasons: Firstly, the guy did a very good job and, secondly, that would be copyright violation in my personal view. So, read the article and come back to my comment.

I really wanted to introduce this pattern to my game, but the problem was I had the scenario ready and I did not want to change the beginning. I could have done that, but one of the main assumptions of the campaign is that the characters always start sitting in the kitchen of their house. Maybe it seems stupid but I have my reasons.

I came up with a nice trick how to bring these two goals together. Sly Flourish in his article gave examples of movies which have a cold open - the action starts in the first seconds. However, some other type of introductions in movies came to my mind. The movies I am talking about also start with a fight or other kind of a strong scene that attracts the audience's attention and gives no explanation what has happened before, but after this punch-in-a-face intro, the screen fades to black and we can see white letters: "Few days earlier...".

How to bring this idea to RPGs? Pretty simple: Describe the scene, the enemies, ask the players to roll the initiative and that is it! Let the fight go on for a few turns - I think playing the whole of it is not a very good idea since stopping it in the middle creates even more suspense.

The important part of the trick is to note all information about the fight, so, when the main story will get to the point before the few-days-earlier intro, you and your players will be able to start from the moment where you have stopped. I have even tried to remember the way in which I described the scene and the enemies just before the fight - I repeated myself to clearly state that this is the moment. After that I have summarised these few turns we had already finished and the fight could be continued.

the final word from me: I believe that the fight picked up for this kind of intro should not be the main fight of a scenario. The players will know the setting of the fight, so they will be able to prepare themselves in any way possible, and the point of this trick is not to make a boss easier to deal with, but to help them dive into the story from the very beginning of a scenario.

God, why?

Do you know the feeling when you simply exist and suddenly, out of nowhere, a flashback of something stupid what you have done several years ago comes to your mind and your reaction can be expressed only by classic 'God, why'? I had something like this related to RPGs few days ago.

It was at the beginning of my current D&D3.0 campaign. One of my player screwed up and told us that she cannot be at the session about half an hour before it. That was a pretty important scenario and we needed her and her character. The party needed her and everyone was pissed off. Sure, by all means we had every right to be mad at her. Sure, that it was her fault and so on and so forth, however, I, the Dungeon Master, did something what I should not have done. Basically I let the rest of the party do whatever they wanted to her character, who ended up being raped. 

I believe that every experience, even the one of the worst kind, teaches us something. Now I know that it was an awful thing to do. I should not have punished the character for what the player had done. The problem was even more serious, because the player is one of the best kind of players anyone can have at the sessions. She does not play the character. When the game starts, she is the character and she has a very deep affection for each character she has.

I am a lucky bastard. I apologised and after few sessions everything got back to normal state, but I know that I could destroy something wonderful in her that day. I could destroy her love to RPGs for ever. I am a lucky bastard, but not everyone is. Do not push your luck and never punish the character for the deeds of the player. A character is like a pet - you do not kill someone's puppy because the guy behaved like a prick once, do you?