Scenes, Acts, and Flowcharts
By Nelson McKeeby
The Problem of an Adventure Without Corridors
When I embarked on the journey of running Negentropy in 1980, I encountered a unique structural challenge that distinguished itself from the task of crafting rules. While I could vividly describe a world, develop characters, create equipment, and meticulously prepare scenarios, a role-playing adventure still required a dynamic flow. Players needed sufficient guidance to discover meaningful actions, while their choices should retain the potential to alter the unfolding narrative. I firmly believed that resolving this issue by pre-determining the entire sequence before play commenced was not an ideal solution.
The initial Campaign 80 game presented this problem in stark clarity. I had six players who were newcomers to the world of role-playing games, and the opening session stretched for approximately twelve hours. These players lacked the familiar habits acquired from other gaming experiences, necessitating a novel approach to conveying the adventure structure through the very act of play. I sought a method to discern which material was ready, identify potential avenues of information, and ensure that multiple possible directions remained accessible without overwhelming the players with confusion.
Five Adventures Awaited
At the outset of Campaign 80, I had meticulously prepared five distinct adventure lines: Alpha India, Free Trader, Sacred Places, Chuhopi Carbine, and Rangers. I did not anticipate that the group would embark on a predetermined sequence of these adventures. These were merely potential developments within the future world, and I envisioned the characters’ actions as pivotal in determining which one would take precedence.
The opening sequence commenced with the scene titled “Wake Up.” One Troubleshooter emerged from a Negentropic Cylinder, grappling with the task of liberating the others. Upon awakening, the players made a logical decision: they utilized the radio to ascertain the nature of the world that surrounded them. However, the radio bands failed to emit the familiar pattern of signals they had anticipated, leading to an unsettling silence that served as a stark indication of a profound change.
One player then decided that a quick radio check wasn’t enough. The character conducted a thorough and intensive examination of the bands, and that decision led me to the point of connection with Alpha India. I hadn’t announced that Alpha India was the first adventure. The players selected it by investigating deeply enough to find the signal that led in that direction.
Preparation without a predetermined route
That initial radio search provided me with a model that I continued to use. Preparation didn’t have to mean a plot with a single entrance and exit. I could prepare various situations, clues, people, places, and pressures, and then let the players determine which of them became significant through their questions and actions.
The four unused adventure lines didn’t become wasted effort. Free Trader, Sacred Places, Chuhopi Carbine, and Rangers remained in the setting and eventually found their way into the campaign sequence between Campaign 80 and Campaign 86. The first game therefore contained more potential Negentropy than the players actually experienced, and their choices established order without eliminating the alternatives.
This was a crucial distinction for me. A prepared adventure could contain material that never appeared in one playthrough and still be valuable. The world had to be larger than the path actually traveled through it because that unused depth provided the Game Master with options when players acted unexpectedly.
What I learned from the Dungeon
I already had examples of adventure structures that efficiently controlled movement. I had purchased adventures like Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, where the dungeon itself acts as a canalizing force. Walls, doors, rooms, stairs, and passages restrict where characters can go, and this physical structure simplifies the Game Master’s task of managing the sequence of possible encounters.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that approach. When the Campaign 80 players eventually discovered Alpha India, a natural part of the experience became a dungeon crawl as they explored a place they didn’t understand. A ruined installation can evoke similar immediate questions as a fantasy dungeon: which entrance is accessible, what lies beyond a door, which systems still function, what has been moving through the building, and whether venturing deeper is safe.
However, I wanted to avoid relying solely on architecture to dictate the adventure’s control. Negentropy also needed to be applicable in open country, towns, political conflicts, trade routes, engineering challenges, and investigations where a party could easily change direction and explore different areas. The structure had to endure even when there were no corridors compelling the characters toward the next room.
What I learned from the City State of the Invincible Overlord by Judges Guild demonstrated a different approach to preparation. It contained an extensive amount of local material, including streets, shops, people, institutions, brief descriptions, and places that a Game Master could utilize when the players took an unexpected turn. While much of this material was only a thumbnail, there were enough thumbnails to ensure that the city could continue generating stories without requiring a predetermined route.
This approach was particularly appealing to me because it suggested that preparation could support improvisation. A Game Master didn’t need a fully scripted scene for every possible choice if the surrounding world had enough people, places, motives, and practical details to respond. The information itself became a tool for creating play.
Negentropy eventually incorporated both approaches. Physical sites could restrict movement when the characters entered them, while a sufficiently detailed surrounding world could support choices that deviated from the prepared path. The adventure required a central theme or spine, but the world surrounding it needed enough substance to remain playable even when the party stepped away from it.
Scenes as Units of Play
I introduced the term “Scene” to represent the smaller units of an adventure. A scene was a manageable situation that contained something the players could encounter, investigate, decide, or alter. It could be a conversation, an engineering challenge, a perilous location, a clue, a creature, a road encounter, or a discovery. The crucial aspect of a scene was that it provided the Game Master with sufficient material to present a situation without assuming the players’ exact actions within it.
Therefore, a scene could be accessed from multiple directions. Players might hear a rumor before encountering the person who could confirm it, or they might discover physical evidence first and then seek someone who understood its significance. Alternatively, they could bypass an encounter entirely by choosing a different path. Regardless of the approach, the scene remained valuable as it represented a part of the world, not a mandatory step that had to occur for the story to progress.
As the sourcebooks expanded, this flexibility became increasingly important. A scene could draw upon local culture, equipment, weather, medicine, engineering, creature behavior, or politics. The Game Master could manipulate or alter the scene’s timing when the characters approached the same problem from a different angle.
“Acts” served as the overarching framework for the adventure. An Act represented a significant phase of the adventure and helped control the pace across multiple scenes. Players might enter an area, learn about the functioning of a settlement, leave its protection, investigate a dangerous site, and ultimately confront the source of the mystery. These phases could remain recognizable even when individual scenes were rearranged.
The act structure allowed me to consider what had to become possible before the adventure could transition into a new type of problem. While players didn’t necessarily experience every scene within an Act, they usually needed enough information or circumstances to make the subsequent phase meaningful. The transition could be driven by discovery, geography, a decision, or a change in the situation.
The current Alpha India still clearly preserves this method. Its Acts progress through Strange Messages, the People of Damhold, Finding Alpha India, the Alpha India Facility, and finally Master Control. Within these Acts, scenes can be skipped, reversed, replaced, or discovered through unexpected choices. The modern book explicitly states that the Acts form the adventure’s backbone, while the Scenes serve as flexible material for play, which essentially aligns with the solution I aimed for in Campaign 80.
Drawing the Adventure
To visualize the adventure, I created a physical structure using a computer flow-chart template and large sheets of chart paper. I would use the template to draw boxes and connecting lines, allowing me to perceive the adventure as a set of potential movements. The chart didn’t dictate which line the players would choose; instead, it provided a visual representation of the prepared content, showing where players might eventually reconnect with other paths.
This approach proved particularly advantageous during my writing process, as I was working on paper and moving between binders. I couldn’t access a digital campaign database or instantly reorganize a document during play. A large visual chart enabled me to hold the overarching structure in front of me while individual notes remained in their respective manuals. The chart effectively served as a map of relationships among scenes, clues, locations, and potential transitions.
The visual method also facilitated the identification of omissions. If a branch relied on information that players could only obtain from a single fragile scene, the chart highlighted this vulnerability. I could then add an alternative route to the same information or decide that the players didn’t actually need it. Consequently, the flowchart became a tool for testing the adventure before the players had the opportunity to engage with it.
Flowcharts Were Not Railroad Tracks
A flowchart can appear deterministic because arrows connect one box to another. However, I didn’t use the arrows to imply that players had to move from Box A to Box B. Instead, I used them to record relationships: if the team learns this, these possibilities open up; if they go here, they can encounter these people; if they refuse this offer, another consequence becomes available.
The first radio investigation is a prime example. The chart had several potential paths, and the player’s intensive search activated the Alpha India line. Another type of investigation could have revealed Rangers, trade, sacred places, or the Chuhopi instead. The flowchart helped me track the consequences of the player’s choices because the choices had predetermined outcomes.
This is also why I allowed lines to reconnect. Players could miss a clue in one place and later discover a different version of the information. They could approach a settlement from a different road, meet another person, or learn about a problem through rumor instead of direct evidence. The adventure became more enduring when information had multiple plausible paths through the world.
Pacing Without Forcing the Players
Acts and Scenes also provided me with a way to control pacing without pretending to control the players. I could decide that a phase required uncertainty, social interaction, physical danger, or a discovery before transitioning to another type of play. However, I couldn’t determine the exact duration of each segment or which scene would become the focal point of their attention.
Campaign 80 demonstrated how swiftly the tone could shift. The same adventure could transform into terror when the players discovered something they didn’t comprehend, become a dungeon crawl when they entered Alpha India, turn into politics when they interacted with a community, or become practical engineering when they decided to assist in maintaining the town dam. These shifts were easier to manage when I considered the game in phases rather than attempting to force every aspect of the game into a single genre.
An Act could represent a shift in the nature of the questions the players were confronted with. The Scenes provided concrete scenarios within that phase. Once enough had transpired to generate a new set of questions, the adventure could seamlessly transition into the subsequent Act.
The World Must Contain Information
This method only functions when the setting encompasses sufficient information to support alternative approaches. If there is only one individual who possesses the knowledge of the location of the old installation, eliminating or evading that person could render the adventure futile. Conversely, if multiple communities harbor rumors, a ranger possesses physical evidence, a trader is aware of the quieted road, and the characters can directly detect a signal, the Game Master has several legitimate avenues to connect the players’ curiosity to the overarching problem.
This is one reason why Negentropy adventures became sourcebooks as well as scenarios. A settlement cannot accommodate flexible play if it only has one innkeeper with a quest. It requires various elements such as work, trade, authorities, local knowledge, infrastructure, customs, outsiders, conflicts, and ordinary people whose information is incomplete. The more the setting behaves like a living entity, the less the Game Master has to force an adventure back onto a predetermined path.
The modern Alpha India employs Damhold in this manner. The village comprises elders, Watchers, Rangers, dam engineers, traders, a hospital, Imperial interests, farmers, and ordinary public spaces. Different characters can reveal different aspects of the same situation because each is familiar with the part that pertains to their own work. This density embodies the modern manifestation of the principle I first encountered in City State of the Invincible Overlord: a world rich enough to address an unexpected question can continue to generate play.
Scenes That Do Not Provide Complete Explanations
I also discovered that not every scene should directly advance the central mystery in a straightforward manner. Real exploration involves unrelated evidence, misunderstandings, false assumptions, and discoveries that hold significance for reasons the players are unaware of yet. An adventure becomes overly mechanical if every object points directly toward the final answer.
The current Alpha India deliberately incorporates an unrelated skeleton during the approach to the facility. This discovery can create tension, provide valuable information about the region, or simply serve as a reminder that people have lived and died there for reasons unrelated to Master Control. The scene belongs in the world even though it doesn’t solve the central problem.
This type of material became increasingly important to me because it safeguards investigation from becoming a mere puzzle trail. Players must decide which evidence warrants attention. Their knowledge helps them distinguish between coincidences and mechanisms, and their conclusions can evolve as new evidence emerges. The Game Master presents a world filled with facts; the players decide what those facts mean.
Failure Had to Leave Another Route
The structure also had to accommodate failed attempts. If the players missed a signal, offended a witness, failed a roll, or chose not to enter a building, the entire campaign shouldn’t collapse. A failed action could alter the situation, but it should usually create a new situation instead of ending the possibility of play.
Flowcharting helped me identify where an adventure relied too heavily on a single success. I could ask what would happen if the players never found a clue, refused an invitation, lost a piece of equipment, or concluded that the obvious lead was too dangerous. Another scene might present the problem from a different perspective, or the world might progress without them, leading to a new consequence they could respond to later.
This approach became a fundamental part of the general Negentropy philosophy. The Five Rules addressed uncertainty at the level of actions, while Acts, Scenes, and flowcharts tackled uncertainty at the level of the adventure. In both cases, I aimed to allow consequences to accumulate without requiring a predetermined answer to every possible choice.
The Adventure as a Reusable Structure
One advantage of this method became evident when I began replaying adventures with different groups. A scene-based adventure could withstand a new set of players because it wasn’t dependent on replicating the original sequence. One group might reach Alpha India via a radio signal, another through a journal or a buried marker, and another through rumors gathered in the region. The underlying situation remained the same, while the route through it changed.
This realization made adventures valuable beyond mere records of what one party had accomplished. The essential elements were the setting, the people, the pressures, the clues, the facilities, and the relationships among them. These components could support another campaign without requiring the second group to replicate the first.
This is one reason why old Negentropy adventures continue to be revisited. The adventure wasn’t a script for a single performance; it was a structured collection of possibilities that could yield a different outcome when another group entered it.
Why I Still Use Acts and Scenes
While the modern books are significantly larger and more detailed than the chart-paper adventures of Campaign 80, I still employ Acts and Scenes because the underlying problem remains unchanged. A Game Master needs sufficient structure to prepare confidently and enough flexibility to respond when the players decide that the seemingly insignificant radio signal, engineer, trader, skeleton, road, or rumor warrants their full attention.
Acts serve as the driving force behind the large-scale movement, while scenes provide the situations that can be altered, omitted, expanded, or approached from unexpected angles. Sourcebook material offers the backdrop that enables improvisation. Flowchart thinking connects these elements by illustrating the flow of information and consequences throughout the adventure.
This method originated from a very practical initial problem. I had five adventures waiting, six new players, a radio filled with silence, and no assurance that the group would choose the line I preferred. One player delved deeper into the bands, Alpha India responded, and the adventure unfolded. Since that moment, I have been designing adventures based on this approach.