Kaiser78
05-15-2005, 08:50 PM
So you have finally decided that it’s your turn to take a crack at writing a scenario/mission. Maybe your teammates found you could write in high school or that you were pretty creative. Or maybe they just said it’s your turn. In any case, you may feel overwhelmed or maybe even intimidated. Hopefully this manual will help you create games/scenarios that you and your teammates will enjoy by showing you some of the ways mission can be written.
Before I go into any specifics it must be known that there is no right way to write a mission. Also, there is no wrong way to write a mission. By being a writer you must be ready for people to criticize anything and everything you do. Especially if there opinion is not wanted. You have to understand that not everybody is going to like everything you have done. You will most likely stumble with writing good missions when you first begin until people become accustomed with your style. Writing scenarios is always a work in progress and you will never “get it right”.
You can breakdown any game into one of two parts. This is “One Sided” or “Two Sided”. When I say two sided, I am really referring to more then one sided missions. In a nutshell, the larger more intense games include two or more sides with specific missions. Then within each sided mission you have static or dynamic. Refer to this diagram…….
One sided Two sided
/ \ / \
static dynamic static dynamic
/ \ / \
scripted non-scripted scripted non-scripted
Most new writers use one sided missions because they are quickly written and not usually too involved. They can be simple capture the flag missions, eliminate the enemy, or rescue the downed pilot. I will be using these examples of missions throughout the tutorial to show you one way that these missions can be adapted to fit the specific part I am talking about. Now everything is dependant on how “MilSim” you want to get. Each person has their own idea of what Milsim is and how it should be implemented. Knowing your people/players will help you when you are writing to include things they like. For example, I have a guy named Burn on my team. He loves firing his gun. There is no doubt about it. So to fit with our level of milsim we make him the support gunner. By doing this he is allowed to carry more ammo then the rest of us but he is also weighted down more with extra gear. This works for us. We do not use box mags because we feel that 3000 rounds are excessive. This works for us and you will have to figure these things in for your games. To appeal to his tastes, I usually include at least one forced conflict like attacking the base or an ambush situation so he can let ‘er rip.
Let’s move on to One Sided missions. These are usually quick missions and are by far the easiest to write. I say quickest because you are only looking at the mission from one point of view. This can be applied to the capture the flag mission very easily. It would be like you saying that your objective is to take 3 guys and pit them against the rest. Their objective is to get the flag somewhere in the middle of the field. Or if you were doing the attack/defend type game, have the attackers know they are going to assault the objective while the defending team knows they are coming. This also brings into the other topics that I was talking about….these missions are static. Static means they don’t change in their shape or nature during any point of the game. If your mission is to assault the hill then that’s your mission. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now let’s take a different approach to the same topic. Let’s take a look at dynamic missions. Lets take the attack/defend variant and apply it to this topic. I will do this by example.
Team A is to Assault the hill and team B is to defend. You come up with whatever background you want and prepare both teams to begin the game. Now most people when the whistle blows know that the game is on and are ready to go. To throw in a dynamic element, have the assaulting team wait 20 minutes. For this to work, you have to make sure that both teams know there is no time limit on this game. I will tell you from experience that even waiting that little bit will throw the defenders off and get them tired and aggravated because things aren’t happening. Or as team A is assaulting you pull them off the line for more regens that they have to get from the Helo at LZ Papa. Basically having a dynamic game throws in elements to any team to change the pace of the game that neither side is expecting.
Now that is just one example of a dynamic mission. You can take this whole theme for the entire day/days of your event and include that in your writing. What I mean by this is that most games a clearly set for a start time and an end time. You can do this by time limits, or you can not do it all. An example was sure to follow; I know you know this by now. Take your situation that you have created….team A vs. team B. Give them things to keep them busy. Let me go into detail. Make sure team B knows they are there to wreck havoc on team A at any given chance. Team A is dropped into the mission with multiple objectives to achieve. They are to find a map, find the enemy, create a base, protect their base, conduct patrols, help local militia, or anything of this nature. These objectives do not have a time limit to be met except maybe one big one like find the virus and have it extracted. So team A’s whole mission is to find the virus and extract it. All the other objectives are there to help their story progress and help them in the game.
If you haven’t noticed I have broken down Dynamic into scripted and non-scripted and I have done this for a reason. Part of every game is the individual personality. Something that can be done is to play on that personality. Throw a spy into the mix. Set the game up so the person at a given time is supposed to do some specific task. That would be scripted. As for non-scripted I would like to show that with an example. I had two tangos in custody for interrogation. I searched them so they had no weapons. Unknowing to me they were from two different teams….there was a third team out there. I questioned both of them and a guy who was still alive from another team (3rd team) came and saved his buddy by roasting both myself and the other guy. His teammate went away unscathed. Even to me that was very dynamic (unsuspecting) and it was definitely not scripted. After the mission was over, everyone was talking about that point of the game.
So in general, One sided missions are geared toward one team with the other team there to be OPfor. Two sided is just what it says. Each side has their own set of objectives and neither side knows the others agenda. For example, you could have the police vs. drug dealers. The Police team would have to count bad guys, collect all intel, maybe get a man in undercover while the main objective is to capture one man. Now at the same time, the drug dealers could have their own missions to complete like creating the drugs to disperse and they do it at a rate of 3 baggies per half hour. There main objective is to complete and disperse 40 bags of “drugs” and have their leader (the one the police are after) escape to make more drugs another day. You can apply the same rules to allow for dynamic or static games as you see fit.
These are some of the things that I look for irregardless of your medic rules, fps limits, or anything specific. This was meant to be very general. Now adding on to what I have just talked about, you can add your own little bits to any of the types of missions. The first thing you have to do is choose the way you want the game to go and develop your story around that type of game. Now this is not to say that one side is better then two sided or vice versa. Actually these missions are all dependant on the players you have and their willingness to participate. What works for you may not work for me. I have seen some very interesting one sided story lines and games that would make some of the two sided missions look meek in comparison.
In conclusion, don’t be afraid to throw your ideas out there. Don’t be afraid to take criticism. Try out the ideas and see what works for you and your guys/girls. Then go from there. Hopefully this helped you out in some way to get those creative ideas flowing. Good luck.
Kaiser
Before I go into any specifics it must be known that there is no right way to write a mission. Also, there is no wrong way to write a mission. By being a writer you must be ready for people to criticize anything and everything you do. Especially if there opinion is not wanted. You have to understand that not everybody is going to like everything you have done. You will most likely stumble with writing good missions when you first begin until people become accustomed with your style. Writing scenarios is always a work in progress and you will never “get it right”.
You can breakdown any game into one of two parts. This is “One Sided” or “Two Sided”. When I say two sided, I am really referring to more then one sided missions. In a nutshell, the larger more intense games include two or more sides with specific missions. Then within each sided mission you have static or dynamic. Refer to this diagram…….
One sided Two sided
/ \ / \
static dynamic static dynamic
/ \ / \
scripted non-scripted scripted non-scripted
Most new writers use one sided missions because they are quickly written and not usually too involved. They can be simple capture the flag missions, eliminate the enemy, or rescue the downed pilot. I will be using these examples of missions throughout the tutorial to show you one way that these missions can be adapted to fit the specific part I am talking about. Now everything is dependant on how “MilSim” you want to get. Each person has their own idea of what Milsim is and how it should be implemented. Knowing your people/players will help you when you are writing to include things they like. For example, I have a guy named Burn on my team. He loves firing his gun. There is no doubt about it. So to fit with our level of milsim we make him the support gunner. By doing this he is allowed to carry more ammo then the rest of us but he is also weighted down more with extra gear. This works for us. We do not use box mags because we feel that 3000 rounds are excessive. This works for us and you will have to figure these things in for your games. To appeal to his tastes, I usually include at least one forced conflict like attacking the base or an ambush situation so he can let ‘er rip.
Let’s move on to One Sided missions. These are usually quick missions and are by far the easiest to write. I say quickest because you are only looking at the mission from one point of view. This can be applied to the capture the flag mission very easily. It would be like you saying that your objective is to take 3 guys and pit them against the rest. Their objective is to get the flag somewhere in the middle of the field. Or if you were doing the attack/defend type game, have the attackers know they are going to assault the objective while the defending team knows they are coming. This also brings into the other topics that I was talking about….these missions are static. Static means they don’t change in their shape or nature during any point of the game. If your mission is to assault the hill then that’s your mission. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now let’s take a different approach to the same topic. Let’s take a look at dynamic missions. Lets take the attack/defend variant and apply it to this topic. I will do this by example.
Team A is to Assault the hill and team B is to defend. You come up with whatever background you want and prepare both teams to begin the game. Now most people when the whistle blows know that the game is on and are ready to go. To throw in a dynamic element, have the assaulting team wait 20 minutes. For this to work, you have to make sure that both teams know there is no time limit on this game. I will tell you from experience that even waiting that little bit will throw the defenders off and get them tired and aggravated because things aren’t happening. Or as team A is assaulting you pull them off the line for more regens that they have to get from the Helo at LZ Papa. Basically having a dynamic game throws in elements to any team to change the pace of the game that neither side is expecting.
Now that is just one example of a dynamic mission. You can take this whole theme for the entire day/days of your event and include that in your writing. What I mean by this is that most games a clearly set for a start time and an end time. You can do this by time limits, or you can not do it all. An example was sure to follow; I know you know this by now. Take your situation that you have created….team A vs. team B. Give them things to keep them busy. Let me go into detail. Make sure team B knows they are there to wreck havoc on team A at any given chance. Team A is dropped into the mission with multiple objectives to achieve. They are to find a map, find the enemy, create a base, protect their base, conduct patrols, help local militia, or anything of this nature. These objectives do not have a time limit to be met except maybe one big one like find the virus and have it extracted. So team A’s whole mission is to find the virus and extract it. All the other objectives are there to help their story progress and help them in the game.
If you haven’t noticed I have broken down Dynamic into scripted and non-scripted and I have done this for a reason. Part of every game is the individual personality. Something that can be done is to play on that personality. Throw a spy into the mix. Set the game up so the person at a given time is supposed to do some specific task. That would be scripted. As for non-scripted I would like to show that with an example. I had two tangos in custody for interrogation. I searched them so they had no weapons. Unknowing to me they were from two different teams….there was a third team out there. I questioned both of them and a guy who was still alive from another team (3rd team) came and saved his buddy by roasting both myself and the other guy. His teammate went away unscathed. Even to me that was very dynamic (unsuspecting) and it was definitely not scripted. After the mission was over, everyone was talking about that point of the game.
So in general, One sided missions are geared toward one team with the other team there to be OPfor. Two sided is just what it says. Each side has their own set of objectives and neither side knows the others agenda. For example, you could have the police vs. drug dealers. The Police team would have to count bad guys, collect all intel, maybe get a man in undercover while the main objective is to capture one man. Now at the same time, the drug dealers could have their own missions to complete like creating the drugs to disperse and they do it at a rate of 3 baggies per half hour. There main objective is to complete and disperse 40 bags of “drugs” and have their leader (the one the police are after) escape to make more drugs another day. You can apply the same rules to allow for dynamic or static games as you see fit.
These are some of the things that I look for irregardless of your medic rules, fps limits, or anything specific. This was meant to be very general. Now adding on to what I have just talked about, you can add your own little bits to any of the types of missions. The first thing you have to do is choose the way you want the game to go and develop your story around that type of game. Now this is not to say that one side is better then two sided or vice versa. Actually these missions are all dependant on the players you have and their willingness to participate. What works for you may not work for me. I have seen some very interesting one sided story lines and games that would make some of the two sided missions look meek in comparison.
In conclusion, don’t be afraid to throw your ideas out there. Don’t be afraid to take criticism. Try out the ideas and see what works for you and your guys/girls. Then go from there. Hopefully this helped you out in some way to get those creative ideas flowing. Good luck.
Kaiser