The Driftwood RPG Story Structure

Summary of how characters and stories evolve through play.

Sessions

Driftwood RPG campaigns are played as a series of sessions: occasions when the players and the dealer come together physically or virtually for a handful of hours to roll the dice and advance the plot. Sessions can occur at whatever frequency works for the group as a whole; although playing less than once a month may make it hard to keep the story together, as what happened last time may fade from memory without reinforcement.

Narrative

The Driftwood RPG has a four-level narrative structure similar to the Leverage RPG, which in turn is based on basic screenwriting structure:

• The series is the top-level structure of the narrative, representing a collection of stories with common heroes, repeating settings, and re-occurring villains and secondary characters; this is equivalent to the "campaign" level common in many RPGs.

• A series is made up of stories, individual chapters detailing discrete cons, swindles, or other adventures undertaken by the artists. A basic story might be told in a single session; a complicated or extended adventure might occupy several sessions. Stories are the narrative units that are noted on the artists' records.

• Within a story, scenes break up the narrative into individual units of plot, and are traditionally defined as "action taking place at a single location and during continuous time." This definition can be stretched a bit, e.g. cutting back and forth between two different characters pursuing simultaneous related actions could still be considered a single scene.

• Individual scenes are composed of beats, small dramatic units that can be boiled down into simple summary sentences: "The ambush begins," "The artist plays a round of faro", "The gang regrouped at the railroad crossing". The actual passage of time for a particular beat is highly flexible, but in general each beat represents a chance for an action to occur, and dice to be rolled.

Note that in this structure is a bit different than in more traditional RPGs: time in the Driftwood RPG is in service to the pacing of the narrative, rather than the other way around.

Characters

The artists controlled by the players are created and then evolve through three distinct phases: outlining, recruitment, and growth. Throughout, information about the artist is recorded in their jacket: the official annotation of the artist's characteristics, traits, and criminal record.

Outlining

Outlining represents the basic process of defining an artist prior to beginning play, and can be done ahead of time, before the first face-to-face session, or at the very beginning of the first session.

Players should do the following in the outlining phase:

• Start with a blank jacket.

• Compose a brief concept for the artist, defining the following:

  • Name: The artist's legal name, or at least the one used by friends and family.

  • Aliases: Any nicknames or other aliases by which the artist is commonly known.

  • Background: A few sentences or a paragraph, establishing relevant details about the artist's life before beginning play: childhood, family, education, how they became involved in a life of crime, etc. Note that this is not meant to be exhaustive, it's just a starting point from which the artist can grow through play; it's perfectly fine to leave blank spots to be filled in later.

  • Description: A few sentences or a paragraph, describing the artist's physical appearance, general demanor, noteworthy characteristics, or other interesting details generally apparent.

• Select initial roles:

  • Choose a primary role, the role that will define the artist's place within the gang, what they're best at and known for. Assign a d10 rating to that role. It's probably a good idea at this stage to check with the other players, and make sure that you're not all picking the same primary role (unless it's that kind of game, of course).

  • Choose a secondary role, the complementary skill set that rounds out the artist's primary role: whereas the primary role might suggest what problems the artist generally tackles, the secondary role might be a clue as to the preferred solutions the artist applies, or where they wind up when their primary role fails them. Assign a d8 rating to this role.

  • Leave the remaining three roles blank; they will be assigned through play during the recruitment phase.

  • Also omit assigning any specialties at this point; they will be assigned during the recruitment phase.

• Decide if the artist is more focused or versatile, and assign attribute ratings as follows:

  • If focused, assign two attributes at d10, two at d8, and two at d6.

  • If versatile, assign one attribute at d10, four at d8, and one at d6.

• Pick one distinction for the artist and note it (distinctions are rated d8 when advantagous, and d4 when a hindrance). Leave the other two distinctions blank; they will be assigned through play during the recruitment phase.

• Finally, each artist starts play with one point of edge.

The players and the dealer should review all of the outlined artists at this point, discuss any possible changes with an eye toward theme and balance for the specific campaign being played, and then proceed with the recruitment story.

Recruitment

Recruitment begins at the end of outlining, probably at the first face-to-face session, and details the first story undertaken by the new gang of artists; some of them may have known or otherwise encountered each other in the past, but the recruitment story is the first time this particular set of artists have all worked together to take down a particular mark. Recruitment fills out the rest of each artist's capabilities, introduces them to each other, and sets the stage for everything that follows. This first story is intended to be fairly straightforward, a little more structured, and is used to flush out the details of the artists' jackets that were left blank during outlining.

During the recruitment story, each artist must fill in the following information:

• For the three remaining roles, one rating at d6 and two ratings at d4.

• For specialties within roles, either one journeyman specialty at d8 or two apprentice specialties at d6.

• Two distinctions (each at d8/d4).

The missing information is assigned using the following special rules:

• During the story, each player's artist should receive one spotlight scene: a scene specifically designed to highlight the strenths of that artist. Spotlight scenes take place as follows:

  • The primary artist is designated.

  • The player of the primary artist chooses one other artist with remaining unassigned roles to be in the scene as well, as the secondary artist.

  • The scene is played normally, with the primary artist focusing on their strongest role. During the scene, the secondary artist should take an opportune beat to attempt an action using one of their unassigned roles, choosing either a d4 or a d6 rating for the roll.

    • If the player chooses a d4 for the roll, they receive a point of pinch for their trouble.

    • If the action is successful, the role that was tested is assigned a d6 rating.

    • If the action is unsuccessful, the role that was tested is assigned a d4 rating.

    • If the assignment makes the distribution of the remaining ratings obvious, go ahead and fill them in.

• At any point during a scene, any participating artist with unassigned specialties or distinctions may declare an establishment flashback as follows:

  • The flashback must be triggered by a question or a comment made by another artist that sets up a moment of introspection, e.g. "Never seen shooting like that before," "How you'd learn to ride horses, anyway?", "Cheating at cards must be second nature to you," etc.

  • The artist describes the flashback scene briefly, which should answer or otherwise reflect upon the triggering question or comment.

  • The description of the scene should include enough detail to establish a specialty or distinction for that artist; note the newly-defined trait on their jacket and pick up a point of pinch for the effort.

Hopefully all of the artists' will have all of their unassigned traits set by the end of the recruitment story; anything left unassigned should be filled in at this point, at the artist's player's discretion and in discussion with the other players and the dealer.

Growth

Through all of the following sessions, characters grow by completing stories, establishing their record, and accumulating hustle.

At the end of each session:

• Each participating artist receives one point of edge.

• The players together may aware one extra point of edge to the artist who had the most pivotal, dramatic, or otherwise aweomse scene during the course of the session.

At the completion of each story:

• Each participating artist records the name and any noteworthy details about the story in their record.

• Each participating artist receives one point of hustle.

• The players together may award one extra point of hustle to the artist who had the most pivotal, dramatic, or otherwise awesome scene during the course of the story.

• Players may spend hustle to improve their artists per the rules for Hustle.