Game Data and Player Engagement

[Leitz]

On storing and retrieving game data, I won't say my methods are the best, but they usually work out.

A lot of us keep game data on computer. The real issue is that computers aren't set up for correlations, and your brain isn't set up for text. My solution is to have a blurb about each person or thing, and it's usually a short blurb. Gerald Weinberg has the field stone method, just make a lot of notes about interesting things you see. For example, once I was sitting in a Dr's office and a lady was taking care of her child. She wound up in the common area of a large luxury starship. Short blurb, one line, bunches of them hand written on a notebook page.

When you want to give a scene depth, pick one or two of the "field stones". It makes the scene more real, more significant, even if the PCs never get back there.

Then you open yourself up to go past the data, and find the truth. What does that person or thing really mean? If you hand write (pen and ink, not type) the field stone, and say it out loud, it starts to sink in. As you think about it, what does it mean in context? If X, then what Y must there be? That will help you paint the scene, and the imagery is what sticks in your brain. You let the computer store a little bit of text as a reminder, but your brain stores images and builds correlations.

I usually play the players, and not the game. They come up with PC concepts and most players want to build, or deepen, their concept. If X, then Y relates to the PC via Z. So, let's take that lady with her child, look at a particular PC, and wonder what happens when he sees her running away, and leaving her purse. If he ignores her then you file that for later, and maybe bring her back. Or not, and you don't waste a lot of time developing data that you won't use.

Conversely, the more a PC interacts with a thing or person, the more detail you go into. The trick is to continue to use the field stones so that all of your damsels (or gents) in distress are different. Maybe one is the preacher's wife, but he ran off with the madame of the bordello. Game data doesn't evolve until the PCs interact with it.

Another way to keep things engaging is to put a field stone someplace two or three scenes out, and then presage it in the current scene. If the last gunfight is going to be in the church, have the church bell ringing when the characters come into town. The more senses you engage, the more real it will be, and when they get to the gun fight it will be even more powerful. In effect, the setting becomes a character that the PCs interact and become friends with. And that level of imagery will stick in your brain a lot more.