Week 4 Studio: Structure and investigation flow

Committing to a hook and a shape — linear or open — before any scene gets written in detail.

15 March 2027

Before any scene gets detail, two decisions have to be made: how the players get pulled in (something happens to them, or they choose to investigate), and how the scenario is shaped (one throughline that’s easy to run and hard to derail, or several branching paths that need more prep and more improvisation to hold together). Neither choice is more advanced than the other — they suit different session lengths and different groups.

Blase (source #5) argues the antagonist “should act while investigators investigate” rather than sit still waiting to be found, via an active timeline of three to five escalating stages tied to visible signals — a locked office or a frightened contact, then more guards or a disappearance, then strange weather or ritual signs, then confrontation. The clock advances on story time passing, on investigator actions that create visibility, on failed rolls, or on deliberate antagonist choices — never just because the players paused to think. An open structure only holds together if this timeline is doing real work in the background; otherwise “the truth unfolds whether or not players intervene” is just a claim, not something the players can actually notice happening.

Before the session#

Reread your Scenario Pitch’s truth. Ask which structure it actually suits: does the truth unfold whether or not the players intervene (which tolerates an open structure), or does it need a specific order of revelation to land (which wants linear)?

In the session#

Write the opening scene — the one that puts players in the story — and commit to linear or open on paper. Trade with a partner: they should be able to tell, from the opening scene alone, roughly how much freedom they’d have as a player.

Afterwards#

Everything from here — scenes, clues, puzzles, checks, NPCs — gets built against this commitment. Changing structure later means redoing most of it, so this is the week to be sure.