v0.9 of the workbook

Inspired by my struggles with developing scenarios lately, I created this workbook to help anyone else struggling. It goes over the two areas I find people (and myself) struggling when creating Delta Green scenarios:

• Structured brainstorming. It’s easy to come up with ideas, but it’s hard to come up with good, correct ideas when you don’t know how or you lack a structure to guide that brainstorming.

• First draft. The most important draft. Lots of shotgun scenarios barely make it to first drafts, yet they still feel like unstructured brainstorming but with complete sentences.

This workbook is supposed to help scenario authors brainstorm in a guided, productive manner, then take the best ideas and expand on them in their correct places in a pre-organized first draft.

I’m still working on this (I need to provide specific details for the types of nodes), but it is technically usable right now.

I also provided an example of brainstorming: my own brainstorming doc from when I wrote the shotgun scenario Return to Sender. Seeing the brainstorm notes and the final product (which was really just a first draft) should be illustrative enough.

Some planned additions:

• Horror-specific advice for brainstorming (possibly with rollable tables for inspiration),
• A .docx version of the workbook (to escape the tendrils of Google),
• A .pdf version of the brainstorming portion of the workbook, for people who prefer brainstorming on physical worksheets with pencil.