Building a Game Start

A Game Start is the promise you make to the table before anyone rolls: here is the plane, here is who is on it, and here is why it cannot land. Build it like a movie's first ten minutes.

The project ships with one ready-made start — Flight 714, a red-eye to Honolulu with three playable passengers and a scripted opening. Model yours on it.

What a Game Start contains

A Game Start file holds the lobby card — the name, the image, and a description that sells the scenario in two sentences. The play configuration — where the players begin, which characters are playable, the opening beats — lives in the start's configuration, not in the file's text. When you make a new start, you're setting both.

The opening

A good opening has four beats:

1. The normal flight (BGS). Establish the plane, the passengers, the Stories. Let the players introduce themselves and state what they're trying to do. No rolls. Keep it short — the audience is waiting for the snakes.
2. The exception. Establish why this plane cannot simply land (see The Tube and the Clock).
3. The release. The snakes come out. Use every adjective. This is the moment the tone locks in: slithering, rasping, hissing, coiling, everywhere.
4. The clock. Roll for hours remaining, announce it, and let the players go to work.

Start with the characters already on the plane — mid-flight, seatbelt lights off, drinks being served. Do not start with the snakes. The five minutes of normal are what make the next three hours funny.

Playable characters

Your playable characters are your passengers: each with a name, five traits, one Story, maybe an item. Give the table a spread of Stories that will collide — the pitch, the witness, the honeymoon, the thief. Characters whose Stories pull in different directions give the SnakeMaster fuel (see The SnakeMaster's Toolbox).