This Feature is part of my ongoing True Scenario Designery course. That’s my fancy — and grammatically incorrect — name for my ongoing series of lessons about encounter, adventure, and campaign design. If you haven’t been following from the beginning, use The True Scenario Designery Course Index to catch up.

This lesson’s the third in my three-part bullshit, conceptual introduction to how games be. I’m just introducing the basic elements that make a game a game. Every idea you read today will be explored a lot in future lessons.

When you’re done reading the Feature, be sure to check out Q and Angry: The What Makes a Challenge Follow-Up Podcast.

What Makes a Challenge?

This is the last foundational, conceptual, introductory lesson about what makes games games. I’m hoping it’ll leave y’all with enough of an understanding of the basic framework of game design that I can try to take you through laying out an actual scenario. A simple scenario. The skeleton of one, anyway.

But that’s next lesson — maybe — not this lesson. This lesson’s all about one of the four major ingredients of the game-design layer cake: Goals, Rules, Context, and Challenge. It’s the most complicated and misunderstood of the four.

Today is all about Challenge.

Capital Challenge

When I started this crap, I warned you that I’d be using specific words to mean specific things and that you could either buy into my definitions or get out of my classroom. Well, Challenge is one of those specific words. At least it is when I capitalize it. The word challenge has lots of meanings — and, confusingly, is used in a lot of game mechanics — but the word Challenge means precisely what I say it means. Nothing more and nothing less. And you are not to bring any of the stupid-ass baggage Game Masters always bring to the word challenge either. Got it, dumbass?

Capital Challenge is a noun. Hence, it ain’t Challenge, it’s a Challenge. Or several Challenges. What’s a Challenge? It’s just a gameplay element the players must strive against as part of achieving the game’s goal. In fantasy tabletop adventure roleplaying games, monsters and traps are Challenges. I know that suggests I could use a much less confusing and overburdened-with-baggage word like Obstacle, but I can’t. Because Challenges can be more than the single game constructs implied by the word Obsctale. Gameplay situations can also provide Challenges. Hostage situations and mysteries are Challenges. Gameplay dynamics can provide Challenges as well. Resource management, for example, can provide a Challenge.

Moreover, if I used the word Obstacle, I’d have to leave out the absolutely frigging vital concept of Macrochallenge which you ain’t remotely ready to hear about yet.

The point is, Obstacle doesn’t work. The only word that works is Challenge. A Challenge is a gameplay element the players must strive against in their attempt to achieve the game’s goal.

Emphasis Players

Remember that I’m extremely deliberate and picky about my wording. Except when I forget or fuck up or feel lazy. Thus, my phrasing is extremely important. When I say a Challenge is something that the players strive against, I mean it. Challenges test the players’ abilities, skills, deduction, perception, resource management, or whatever. Characters cannot overcome Challenges because characters do not exist. They have no abilities, skills, perception, or acumen and they cannot make choices. Players do that shit. Characters are game constructs. They may have statistics called Abilities and Skills and Perception, but that ain’t the same thing.

A Challenge is a gameplay element against which the players must struggle. They use their characters’ abilities to do so.

Dump Your Baggage at the Locked Door

Lots of you Game Masters pile a lot of stupid-ass baggage on the idea of Challenge. Lots of you get confused by all the different meanings the word challenge carries and try to cram them into the word Challenge. So, I want to clear some shit up before we proceed.

First, Challenge and Difficulty have nothing to do with each other. Difficulty is a way to talk about how much effort, skill, or risk a given player must bring to a particular Challenge to overcome it. A Challenge any idiot can overcome with very little effort is a Low-Difficulty — or easy — Challenge. Something that demands lots of skill, effort, execution, knowledge, or struggle is a High-Difficulty — or hard or difficult or challenging — Challenge. All those synonyms, by the way, are why this shit gets so confusing. Hence, I will use capital Difficulty to discuss the relative effort or skill required by players to overcome a Challenge and I will use phrases like Low Difficulty and High Difficulty instead of easy or challenging.

Unless I forget or fuck up or feel lazy of course. Sometimes, this careful language thing is a really difficult challenge.

Second, Challenges don’t have any kind of Difficulty floor for them to count as a Challenge. If something requires any effort or skill or knowledge or practice at all — I’ll be more clear later about this shit — it’s a Challenge. Conceptually anyway. If you ever find yourself thinking, “That really isn’t challenging enough to count as a Challenge; it should be harder,” you are to punch yourself in the g’nads. Twice.

Third, Difficulty and Challenge have nothing to do with game terms like Challenge Rating and Encounter Difficulty and Difficulty Class. Technically, in games like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, the Challenge Rating — or whatever — of an Encounter has nothing to do with whether it’s a Challenge or how challenging a Challenge it is. The same is true of Difficulty Class or DC. All this shit is more about Probability than it is about Challenge or Difficulty.

When a player says, “I’ll pick the lock on the door,” and you say, “Roll a Finagling Check and add your Lockpickery Skill against a Difficulty Number of 15,” there’s no Challenge there and no Difficulty. It’s just a random outcome. The Difficulty Number — and the character’s Finagling and Lockpickery stats — determine the Probability of success, but to the player it’s all the same in terms of Challenge and Difficulty. It ain’t hard to pick the one skill and stat that opens locked doors when faced with a locked door and rolling a die is pretty easy to do. No amount of skill or experience or practice will change the random outcome.

This isn’t just me playing word games to make you go cross-eyed, by the way. This is super frigging important. You have to decouple this shit in your head if you want to design adventures like a True Scenario Designer. Challenges are in-game situations that the players must strive or struggle or work against in order to overcome, circumvent, mitigate, or bypass them. Difficulty is how much the players have to strive or struggle. Probability is the likelihood some random event will yield a specific result. Challenge Ratings and Difficulty Classes do not — in and of themselves — measure Challenge or Difficulty. They’re just Probabilities.

I am never, ever referring to game mechanical terms unless I very specifically am.

I suggest you read this section a few dozen times if that’s what it takes to cram it in your cranium.

The Locked Door

Pop quiz, hotshot…

Your Dungeons & Dragons players are exploring a dungeon. They come upon a locked door they’d very much like to get through. Are they facing a Challenge? Why or why not?

Don’t bother putting your dumbass answer in the comments. This exercise is purely for your benefit. Just think about it, okay?

Got an answer?

The correct answer is, of course, that there’s not enough information to go on. But the more correct answer is, “Very probably yes, they are facing a Challenge.” That might surprise some of you, but those of you celebrating your right answer should calm your tits because you probably can’t correctly say what information is missing. It ain’t what you think.

So let’s analyze the hell out of this shit.

Challenge is Choice

Tabletop roleplaying games are limited in the kinds of Challenges they can present. They ain’t sports or video games, for example, so they’re not good for testing coordination, manual dexterity, reaction time, and perception; though the complete inability of some idiot players to just roll dice properly on the table without losing the dice, knocking shit all over the place, or using bullshit training-wheels-for-babies tools like dice trays and dice towers suggests the need for some basic manual dexterity testing. Holy mother of fuck, it’s basic-ass dice control. How frigging hard is it?

Anyway…

Roleplaying games can only really test mental abilities. That primarily comes down to testing the players’ abilities to make the right — or best or merely good — choices.

Mostly, roleplaying games test a player’s ability to choose a good approach to a gameplay situation. That’s the core of the game. That’s why the Game Master describes situations and then asks players, “What do you do?” Of course, the mental abilities tested there vary from situation to situation. Such choices can involve strategic and tactical acumen, resource management, deductive or predictive ability, memory and recall, and so on and et cetera and nauseam.

Thus roleplaying games challenge players to answer the question, “What approach do you take to resolve this situation?” What attack do you make? What spell do you cast? What tool do you use? Do you negotiate or intimidate? Do you sneak your way in or fight your way through? The choices the players make determine the Probability the characters will succeed at any given action and also what costs must be paid and what consequences must be risked. That makes sense, right?

Roleplaying games also challenge players to answer the question, “How do you prepare your character for the Challenges ahead?” What weapons do you bring? What spells? What class do you choose? What build? How do you level up? What do you specialize in? What equipment do you buy? What do you spend your crafting resources on? How do you spend your time in town before the next adventure? Those choices determine what approaches the players will have available in the gameplay situations they find themselves in and affect the Probabilities of successful outcomes. I hope that also makes sense.

In the real, dirty-ass world of actual Scenario Design and gameplay, nothing breaks down that cleanly. It all jumbles together. Any given Challenge might involve either or both questions and every one has the potential to test several different mental abilities — including one mental ability I’m conspicuously not discussing until later — but the basic idea stands: tabletop roleplaying games Challenge the players to choose how to prepare for and approach gameplay situations.

And that’s pretty much all they Challenge.

So, Is the Locked Door a Challenge?

Given that crap above, does the locked door present a Challenge? Abso-frigging-lutely it does. Within the paradigm of fantasy adventure roleplaying games, there are basically two approaches to the Locked Door Scenario, right? Players can Pick the Lock or they can Bust Down the Door — and holy mother of crap do I want to write a whole damned screed on how Bust Down the Door exemplifies everything wrong with modern roleplaying games, but that ain’t a today thing.

Anyway, players can Pick the Lock or Bust Down the Door. There might be other options, sure, like searching for a key or an alternate path, but I want to keep this shit simple and also most Scenario Designers don’t consider those options so most players don’t either.

Clearly, the players have a choice between two approaches. Moreover, one of those approaches may not be available if the party hasn’t invested in the proper resources. If no one in the party has the Lockpickery skill and the right tools or else knows the Lockknockery spell and has it prepared, the Pick the Lock option is off the table.

That’s why I said the answer is very probably yes. Why did I suggest the answer might be different depending on other information? Well, let’s keep analyzing.

Making Different Choices Different

Let’s say you’re making a character. Based on your chosen class and race and background or whatever, you can select one of two weapons to equip your character with. They’ve got identical traits and abilities all down the line, but one weapon does two points more damage than the other. Which do you choose?

Unless you’re missing key brain lobes, if all else truly is equal, you choose the weapon that does more damage.

Did you overcome a Challenge in choosing that weapon?

Technically, you did. But the only thing Challenged was your ability to determine which of two numbers is bigger and your understanding that higher damage numbers are always better than lower damage numbers. As Challenges go, that’s pretty Low-Difficulty. It’s practically No-Difficulty. Any player who’s not a complete and total dumbass will make the same choice.

Here’s where we get into the idea of a Meaningful Challenge. If literally everyone playing your game would make the same choice, the Challenge is technically a Challenge, but it’s a Meaningless Challenge.

There are two consequences here. First, a Meaningful Challenge must present choices that are substantially different from each other. If the options don’t lead to different outcomes, there’s no Meaningful Challenge. Second, if different players given the same parameters would all make the same choice, there would be no Meaningful Challenge. If you give a hundred players the same character and present them with the same situation and they all do exactly the same thing, there’s no Meaningful Challenge.

Is the Locked Door a Challenge Now?

True Scenario Designers strive not just to create Challenges, but to create Meaningful Challenges. Mostly. You see, True Scenario Designers also know they’ve got to change shit up. Simple Meaningless Challenges have their place. That’s why there’s nothing wrong with an occasional Simple Locked Door Scenario and, if you think there is, you need to deflate your fat-ass head so you can get it out of your ass. You ain’t too good for a simple locked door. Get over yourself.

But this idea of Meaningful Challenge is where we need more info to judge the Locked Door Scenario. If we’re talking about a bog-standard, by-the-book game of Dungeons & Dragons the way most Game Masters run it, the Locked Door Scenario usually doesn’t pass muster as a Meaningful Challenge. But that’s more to do with the game’s mechanical systems than the Scenario Design.

Choosing between Pick the Lock and Bust Down the Door is usually just about whether you — the player — like your odds better with a Lockpickery Check or the Strengthy Check. Mechanically, D&D doesn’t differentiate between the two. You roll the check — either-or — and, if it succeeds, you get through the door. Otherwise, you can just try again. Or try the other approach. Most parties bring a strongarm and most have a lockpicker, so it’s rarely a matter of not having the right tool for either job. D&D’s core rules also don’t have built-in risks or costs of either approach. There’s no cost for time taken, no risk of noisiness or breaking gear or breaking limbs.

And so, players just pick whichever option offers the higher Probability based on the party’s stats. It’s just pick the highest damage all over again. Do you know which numbers are bigger? Do you know how that affects your odds? Good for you. Now generate a random number without wiping out the miniatures on the mat.

Differentiating Different Differences

In the biz, we call choices between options where one option is clearly and demonstrably better as determined by actual math a Calculation. Calculations can provide Meaningful Challenges, but generally, you need to test more than one’s ability to put numbers in order by size. Calculations aren’t bad Challenges, but they usually need some real meat to them.

There are lots of ways to add meat to a choice and turn it into a Meaningful Challenge and I can promise you we’ll be talking a lot about that shit. The most common meats to add to a choice include Obfuscation and Deduction, Costs and Consequences, Incomplete Information, Incomparability, and Dilemma. I ain’t going to go into too much detail about them today; this is just a quick and dirty survey.

Obfuscation and Deduction shroud the correct choice — or the better choice or the good choice or all the choices — so that the players have to reason things out. Obviously, mystery adventures and puzzle encounters generally land here.

Costs and Consequences are just what they sound like. Basically, the different options require different resource expenditures — differences in kind, not amount, or else that’s just a Calculation — or lead to different complications. If Lockpickery always wastes a lot of time whereas Busting Down Doors risks attracting trouble, that’s a Cost/Consequence Differentiated Challenge. The players have to choose whether to spend the time — which has consequences down the road — or risk attracting trouble.

Incomplete Information Challenges ask the players to choose between options without having all the information they need. If the players don’t know what’s on the other side of the door — could be a treasure; could be a trap — then it’s hard to decide whether it’s worth taking any risk or expending any resources to get through it. Then, too, if there’s a dangerous monster on the other side of the door, breaking it down might give the party the element of surprise if it works but it’ll definitely forewarn the beast if it fails whereas picking the lock is more likely to go unnoticed.

It’s easy, though, to render an Incomplete Information Challenge Meaningless. If the party hits a fork in the tunnel and they’ve got literally no information on which to base a choice, they’re just going to pick a direction at random, though they definitely won’t be quick about it. Meanwhile, choosing between two single-roll approaches — like Pick the Lock or Bust Down the Door — doesn’t become an Incomplete Information Challenge just because you withhold the Difficulty Numbers. The players are still going to choose based on which stat is better.

See how easy it is to think this shit in circles?

Incomparables are options that aren’t just hard to compare, but actually impossible. That’s not because of a lack of information, but because the two options are so different they can’t be meaningfully compared. What’s better, for example, a Trait that gives you a bonus to damage rolls with your primary weapon in certain situations or a Trait that gives you a bonus to tracking creatures across certain terrains? That’s comparing apples and suspension bridges which, by the way, is a much more apt phrase. Apples and oranges are similar enough that it’s easy to compare them. Incomparables come up a lot during character creation for obvious reasons.

Dilemmas force players to prioritize their desires. They ask players to choose which of several, desirable things to sacrifice for the sake of the other. Or which of several undesirable outcomes to suffer to avoid the others. Moral dilemmas are a classic example: do you save the cute little puppy or the priceless historical painting from the fire? Do you let the villain escape so the hostage goes free or attack the villain knowing the hostage will die in the process?

Note that the Trolley Problem is not a Moral Dilemma, it’s a Calculation.

Keep in mind that it’s easy to make a nice, clean, clinical list of Challenge types in the comfort of the virtual classroom, but in ugly reality, it all gets messy fast. Most Meaningful Challenges — especially in tabletop roleplaying games — have a mix of different Challenge types. Moreover, some come from the scenario while others are built into the system. For example, casting a Lockknockery spell has certain mechanical costs and risks that come from the game’s rules. Maybe you need mana or components or spell slots. Maybe all spell rolls have a risk of backfire. The Locked Door Scenario in a particular adventure might add other elements to the Challenge depending on the different approaches available, the proximity of dangerous creatures, the severity of wandering monster tables, and other shit like that.

The point is, do not ask me to merely list all the ways one can make a Challenge Meaningful because there are infinite ways to do it. And don’t try to build a Challenge simply by saying, “To make this choice a Meaningful Challenge, I shall Obfuscate the Options! Done and done.” That ain’t how this shit works.

Why Creativity Tests Suck

Before I wrap this up — yeah, I’m close to wrapping up — I want to talk about a specific mental ability that tabletop roleplaying games are not only really good at testing but which are actually kind of renowned for testing. And I want to explain why True Scenario Designers rarely — if ever — deliberately test it.

Tabletop roleplaying games are open-ended affairs. What does that mean? It means the players’ actions aren’t limited by game mechanics but rather by the game’s Contextual Framework. I assume you remember what that means. Actually, I don’t. You never remember what anything means. So what does that mean? It means the players should be allowed to attempt any action their characters would reasonably be capable of attempting if they — the characters — and the fictional world they inhabit were actually real.

That’s kind of a big deal for tabletop roleplaying games. It’s basically a selling point.

So, in theory, tabletop roleplaying games are excellent for testing the players’ creative problem-solving abilities. In theory, you — the Scenario Designer — should be able to fling situations at your players without any kind of in-built approaches or options to choose from. The players can just creatively problem-solve their way out of anything. All this crap about properly designing Meaningful Challenges is kind of a waste.

For example…

The Washed-Out Bridge Scenario

Imagine the players are crossing a forested wilderness. They’re following an old road that crosses a river. They reach the crossing and find the bridge was washed away in a flood months ago. Now they’ve got 200 feet of 15-foot deep water flowing slowly at a mile an hour between them and where they want to be.

“What do you do?”

Every Game Master and every wannabe Scenario Designer goes through this phase where they think that is how you make a roleplaying game scenario. Just create a problem and trust the players to find a solution. At best, some misguided dumbasses impose a rule on themselves like, “If I can imagine at least two solutions to the problem myself, that Challenge passes muster.”

Thus, every Scenario can be summed up as, “In this Scenario, the Challenge is for the players to creatively solve the problem any way they can imagine.”

But What If They Don’t?

Every Game Master and wannabe Scenario Designer eventually discovers the flaw in that genius approach to game design: if the players can’t come up with a brilliant, creative solution on the spot — as happens far more often than most Game Masters want to admit — the game comes to a dead stop. The players just stare at each other and stare at the map and stare at the Game Master and make noises like, “Well…” and “Uhh…” until the frustrated Game Master starts offering obtuse nudges toward what he thinks is the most obvious solution in the world.

Open-ended creative problem-solving tests are shitty game design. “Invent a solution from your own imagination,” is not a good Challenge. A Scenario Designer’s job is to create a game that helps the players play it. One that challenges the players in specific ways but also empowers them to overcome those Challenges. Open-ended problems don’t do that.

Players always have the option to invent creative solutions to in-game problems. Some players love that shit; some are really good at it. Others manage it only occasionally. Obviously, True Scenario Designers leave the door open for that shit, but really, it’s on the Game Master to handle the creative solutions. Roleplaying games give Game Masters the tools to handle the unexpected, out-of-the-blue, off-rails, off-script cunning plans and crazy capers. As a True Scenario Designer, it’s your job to make a game that’s reasonably playable even if the players can’t pull brilliant, creative plans from their collective asses.

Of course, True Scenario Designers try very hard to make the players think they’re pulling brilliant, creative plans from their collective asses even though they’re not.

Multiple Choice Challenge

As I said above, Challenges in tabletop roleplaying games generally come down to challenging the players to choose one of several approaches to an in-game problem. At least on the Microchallenge level, that’s how it be, but don’t worry today about what that means.

My point is, to build a proper, Meaningful Challenge, you — the True Scenario Designer — have got to build options into the Challenge from which the players must choose. They can always choose None of the Above and go their own creative way — and the Truest of True Scenario Designers will be ready for the obvious None of the Aboves too — but they need some basic approaches built into the scenario.

You can argue the Washed-Out Bridge Scenario has approaches built in. There are trees, right, and vines, so the option to build a raft is right frigging there! And fords are a thing that exist so it’s obvious the players can go looking for one. All the pieces are there; it’s on the dumbass players to put them together. And yet, if you throw a party of average randos at the Washed-Out Bridge scenario, you’ll get a bunch of blank stares and then someone will look down at their character sheet and mumble, “Can I Swim Check the river?”

Presentation is a big part of Scenario Design. A lot of Challenge Design is down to how you present the options. For example, you can instruct the Game Master to say something like, “If you can’t find a way to cross the river, you’ll have to walk along it looking for a crossing.” Of course, that ain’t really a Meaningful Challenge, is it? You can’t count on players pulling creative solutions from their collective asses so that just amounts to, “Pick a direction at random — upriver or down — and walk until I say you see a crossing.”

Thus, you — the Scenario Designer — must always present at least two visible approaches in any given situation.

If you can’t think of a way to cross, you know you could try to swim the river. Or else, you could pick a direction along the river and hike until you find a ford or bridge or something.

At the very least, that’s a Challenge on par with a Basic Locked Door Scenario.

For a Given Definition of Visible

So every Challenge needs at least a couple of visible approaches, right? Makes sense. But visible is a tricky word. It’s easy to see how spelling shit out in expository text — or instructing a Game Master to do so — makes things visible. But that ain’t the only way to reveal options. Hell, it’s often not the best way. Done too much, you end up with this clunky, contrived sort of choose-your-own-adventure or anime-visual-novel feel.

So what other options exist?

What the System Reveals

First, note that the game’s rule system offers lots of pre-coded options. You can think of them as defaults. They’re options players always know are available. In combat, players can always attack with their weapons. The system makes that clear. And when it comes to locked doors, players know about Lockpickery and Lockknockery and Doorbreakery. When confronted with water, players know they can swim and they know the basic risks of doing so.

True Scenario Designers have to be experts with their systems if only so they know what options exist by default. Those options are the best ones to build Challenges around because they’re the ones every player has internalized. This is why, by the way, it’s always best to design Scenarios for specific systems instead of generic, system-agnostic crap. Well, it’s one of about ten thousand reasons.

A Chandelier Illuminates the Chamber From Above Where It Hangs By a Single Rotten and Frayed Rope Directly Above the Head of the Slavering Monster…

I’mma tell you a secret: most players aren’t genius problem-solvers. Most can’t pull creative solutions from their collective asses. That’s why actual open-endedness — in actual gameplay not in collaborative storytelling performance bullshit — is frustrating and often paralytic. That’s also why your players don’t pull clever, creative stunts in combat and just stick with the default options the system provides.

But…

Most players think they’re genius problem-solvers. They think — given actual, open-ended freedom — they’ll prove their ability to pull creative solutions from their collective asses. And the sense of agency most players feel from so-called open-ended games comes from the experience of figuring shit out, not from any actual kind of freedom.

You probably see where this is going. It’s going to an ugly, nasty, dark, icky truth about Scenario Design. It’s the truth that had half my readers revolting against this series from the get-go. Which is fine. The world needs lame-ass Mere Adventure Builders too. Who else will piss and moan online about how their broken-ass players just can’t seem to solve even the simplest of problems and never do anything creative in combat.

True Scenario Designers know how to present options such that the players don’t realize they’re being presented with options but at the same time don’t miss the options they’re being presented with. That’s why True Scenario Designers don’t tell the Game Master to say, “You could drop the chandelier on the monster’s head to create an opportunity to escape.” Instead, they tell the Game Master to use very deliberate, leading language to plant the idea in the players’ heads. They make it too obvious to miss without just outright saying it.

When you get good at this shit, you eventually learn how to use presentation to adjust the Difficulty of the Challenge. The day your players figure out an option at the very last minute or — better still — don’t figure it out until shit hits the fan and then say, “Shit, we should have seen that because of this clue and that clue and that other clue and also that clue,” is the day you can call yourself a True Scenario Designer. Provided you did that shit on purpose.

But that day — and the lessons that’ll get you there — are still a long way off.

The Challenge of Summing This Shit Up

So that’s it. You’ve got a broad, basic, conceptual understanding of Challenges in Scenario Design for tabletop roleplaying games. Mostly. Kind of.

You understand that a Challenge is an in-game situation that tests the players in some way and that, in tabletop roleplaying games, that usually means forcing them to choose how to approach the in-game situation. You understand such choices test a variety of mental skills such as tactical acumen, deduction, perception, recall, predictive ability, resource management, and risk mitigation. You also understand that to constitute a Meaningful Challenge, the various approaches from which the players choose must be different in some practical and substantive way, though you understand that not every Challenge needs to be Meaningful. You’re aware, as well, of some of the ways by which True Scenario Designers differentiate options when creating Meaningful Challenges.

You also understand that, while roleplaying games offer a unique chance for players to test their creative problem-solving skills, True Scenario Designers don’t deliberately build Challenges around such tests. At a minimum, True Scenario Designers ensure there are a couple of in-built approaches to every Challenge visible to the players. True Scenario Designers often rely on their system’s rules to spell out approaches to many Challenges. True Scenario Designers also strive, when possible, to present options so that the players have to make at least some deductive leap to recognize them, no matter how small the leap, to provide the players a sense of agency. The bigger the required leap, the more Difficult the Challenge, all else being equal.

At least I hope you understand all that shit. I hope you understand everything I covered in the last two lessons in this series too because, together with this one, they represent the basic foundations of the True Scenario Designery approach that will underpin everything else I write as I milk content from this series for years.

To make sure as much of this shit sticks as possible and by way of a super review of all the concepts I’ve covered to date, in the next lesson or two, I’m going to walk you through outlining the basic skeleton of an actual game scenario. A small one anyway. But bigger and more interesting than that Basic Locked Door Scenario.

Even I’m sick of talking about that one at this point.