Scene Framing

A Protocol for Solo & GM-less Play

Sixty seconds before the scene begins. The difference between a story and a drift.

The Tradition This Draws From

Source
Dwight V. Swain — defines the scene as goal · conflict · disaster, and names the transitional beat between scenes
Alfred Hitchcock — "Drama is life with the dull bits cut out"
Syd Field / Robert McKee — every scene must turn; something must change from beginning to end or the scene has no reason to exist
William Goldman — "You always attack a scene as late as you possibly can"
Jason Morningstar, Fiasco — the establish/resolve structure; the clean cut as a designed, intentional mechanic
Trey Parker & Matt Stone — scenes must connect through "but" or "therefore," never "and then"
Shawn Tomkin, Ironsworn — "Prep is play"

I. Prep Is Play

Ironsworn gave the solo RPG community a gift when it named something that experienced solo players had always known but never articulated cleanly: prep is play. Building your world, your character, the relationships and tensions that surround them — that creative work is the game, not a prerequisite to it.

Scene framing carries that idea one step further. The sixty seconds you spend before a scene — deciding what your character needs, who or what stands in the way, what the cost of failure looks like — those sixty seconds are as much a part of the game as anything that follows. You are making authorial decisions, and authorial decisions are play.

The alternative is drift. You open a session without a frame and begin narrating: where the character is, what the space looks like, some ambient details. You follow threads of description hoping a scene will emerge from the texture. Sometimes it does. Often an hour passes and you've produced a simulation of nothing — no stakes, no tension, no forward motion. You haven't been playing; you've been waiting.

A few screenplay-like phrases written in your journal before a scene will do more for your solo game than any oracle table rolled after you've already lost the thread.

Screenwriters have been solving this problem for most of the last century. In 1965, Dwight V. Swain defined a scene as "a unit of conflict — an account of an effort to attain a goal despite opposition." Goal, conflict, disaster: his three-part structure holds up because it maps onto the fundamental shape of dramatic interest, which hasn't changed since Aristotle. Solo RPG play just hasn't had a practical method for applying it — until now.

II. The Protocol

Before every scene, answer four questions. Write one sentence. Then play. If you can do this in sixty seconds, you're doing it right. If it takes longer, one of the steps is stalling — and that stall is worth examining, because it usually points to something fuzzy in your setup.

We'll build the example as we go. Kael Rho is a salvager in a Starforged campaign. She has sworn a vow to recover her dead captain's final ship logs before a corporate faction — the Syndicate — strips the wreck and destroys the evidence of what happened.

Step 01 — Situation: What is the world doing?

Roll your oracle. Two words, a phrase, a random event — whatever your system offers. This gives you the world's state as your character arrives, something happening that exists independent of what they want. Hold it loosely; it's a seed, not an answer.

Examples:

"Ravage / Technology" — something technological is being stripped or destroyed
"Suppress / Commerce" — trade or exchange being shut down by force
"Escape / Legacy" — something old coming back to claim the present

Kael's roll: "Ravage / Technology." The Syndicate boarding crew is already on the derelict, pulling hardware. The logs are running out of time.

Step 02 — Want: What does your character need?

Reduce what your character needs in this scene to a single verb. Your active vow, thread, or ongoing goal provides the direction; the situation you just rolled gives you context. The verb is what happens when those two things meet.

Get · Escape · Convince · Discover · Protect · Reach · Expose · Survive · Deceive · Repair · Endure

If you're at the start of a campaign and have no active thread, skip the oracle and ask directly: what does my character most urgently need right now?

Kael's want: Reach. She needs to get to the ship's core before the boarding crew does.

Step 03 — Obstacle: What resists?

Ask two yes/no questions. You can roll for both, or simply decide.

Question A — Is the obstacle a person?

Yes — an NPC with a goal that crosses yours
No — a situation, a system, a secret, or a condition

Question B — Does it know I'm coming?

Yes — resistance is prepared; you're walking into something arranged
No — passive or unaware; the scene opens neutrally and turns

When the obstacle is a person, give them their own want. An NPC who is simply blocking your path is a wall; an NPC with a conflicting goal is a scene.

Kael's obstacle: Question A — Yes: the Syndicate enforcer who denied her salvage claim is on-site running the boarding team. Question B — No: he doesn't know Kael is inbound. His want: complete the asset strip before his supervisor's deadline closes the contract. His goal and Kael's collide the moment she appears on his sensors.

Step 04 — The Frame: Write the sentence

Write it down somewhere outside your head. This sentence does two jobs: it tells you why the scene exists, and it tells you when it is over. Play until the tension resolves, then stop.

The Frame Formula

"[Character] needs to [WANT] but [OBSTACLE], and if they fail, [WHAT'S AT STAKE]."

Kael's frame:
Kael needs to reach the derelict's ship core before the Syndicate boarding crew wipes the logs, but the enforcer who denied her salvage claim is already on-site and his team is working fast — and if the logs are erased, the evidence of what happened to her captain is gone forever.

If the sentence form feels mechanical, try framing it as a yes/no question: "Will Kael reach the core in time?" Play until you can answer it.

When a Scene Breaks Down Mid-Play

Re-read the sentence you wrote. Ask whether the tension in it has already resolved — if so, cut immediately. Short scenes that land cleanly are not failures.

If the frame itself has turned out to be wrong, revise it. It's a working document, not a contract. What you can't do is keep playing with no frame at all, because that's how drift starts.

III. Writing the Frame

The sentence formula is the underlying structure of the frame — but it's not necessarily what you write in your journal. Most players find it more natural to write something that looks like the opening of a scene rather than a fill-in-the-blank template. Screenwriters solved this problem a long time ago with the slug line: a compact notation that captures setting, situation, and stakes in three or four lines of plain text.

The format is simply this: an all-caps header telling you where and when you are, followed by two or three present-tense sentences describing what's happening and what the pressure is. It takes about thirty seconds to write and does something the sentence formula alone doesn't — it puts you in the scene before you start playing it.

The Three Examples as Slugs

Kael — Starforged / Traveller (Obstacle: Person / Unaware)

INT. DERELICT FREIGHTER — DOCKING COLLAR — DEEP SPACE — TENSE

Kael cuts through the airlock seal. Somewhere deeper in the 
hull, metal groans as the Syndicate crew works. She has maybe 
twenty minutes before the core wipes clean — and the enforcer 
running the operation doesn't know she's here yet.

Senna — Ironsworn (Obstacle: Condition / No Awareness)

EXT. HALLOW PASS — THE OLD STONE BRIDGE — BEFORE DAWN — DESPERATE

Where the bridge should be, there is only a gap and the sound 
of the river thirty feet below. Storm took it. No other 
crossing before the garrison. The witness stands behind Senna 
in the dark, and neither of them speaks. Dawn is three hours 
away and the warlord's riders are somewhere behind them.

Vesper — Daggerheart (Obstacle: Person / Aware)

INT. CITY GAOL — LOWER CORRIDOR — NIGHT — URGENT

The lower cells are sealed behind a ward Vesper has never seen 
before. The warden knew she was coming. Two guards at the far 
end, not patrolling — positioned. She has until the morning 
bell, and every door between here and the prisoner is already 
locked against her.

Each of those took under a minute to write. Notice what they do: the slug line sets INT or EXT (inside or outside), the location, the time, and a single mood word. The action lines carry the want, the obstacle, and the pressure — not as abstract statements but as things present in the physical space. The stakes aren't announced; they're embedded in what the character can see.

Reading your slug back before you start playing orients you. You know where you are, what the air feels like, and what the problem looks like from inside the scene rather than from outside it.

Three Ways to Write the Frame

There's no single correct format. Use whatever gets you from the protocol to the first line of play with the least friction.

Journal — Full slug, best for campaign journals and longer sessions

Write the full INT/EXT header and two or three action lines. This works well if you're keeping a play journal or writing actual play. The extra thirty seconds of writing pays off in immersion.

INT. DERELICT FREIGHTER — DOCKING COLLAR — DEEP SPACE — TENSE
Kael cuts through the airlock seal. Somewhere deeper in the 
hull, metal groans. Twenty minutes before the core wipes clean.

Shorthand — One line, best for quick sessions, index cards, or mobile play

Compress the frame into a single line that captures location, character, want, and obstacle. No formatting required.

"Kael — derelict core — reach logs — enforcer on-site, doesn't know she's here — logs wiping in 20 min"

"Senna — collapsed bridge — cross before dawn — storm / no other route — riders behind"

Spoken — Out loud, best for getting into character before rolling

Say the frame out loud before you start, as if you were pitching the scene to someone. This sounds strange until you try it, at which point it becomes one of the most effective techniques in solo play. Speaking activates something writing doesn't — you hear whether the scene has shape almost immediately.

"Okay. Kael is on a dead ship. The Syndicate crew is already inside and they're pulling everything. She needs to get to the core before they wipe it, but they don't know she's here yet. If she fails, her captain's last message is gone. She cuts through the airlock. Go."

The last word — "Go" — is optional but useful. It's a permission to start.

What you write is the scene's opening, not its outcome. The slug tells you where you are and what the pressure is. It doesn't tell you how it ends — that's what the dice, the oracle, and your character's choices are for. The frame is a launching pad, not a script.

IV. Enter Late · Leave Early

"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
— Alfred Hitchcock

A scene has two edges — where you enter it and where you leave it — and most solo players handle both badly. They drift in too early, before the tension has started, and they linger too long after it has resolved.

For this section we'll follow Senna, whose frame and slug we built in Section III.

Enter Late

William Goldman put it simply: "You always attack a scene as late as you possibly can. You always come into the scene at the last possible moment." Everything before the moment of engagement belongs to the world of the story but not to the story itself.

When you've written your slug, you already know precisely where "late" is.

Enter at the "but." That's where the obstacle engages, and that's where the scene begins.

Senna's frame reads: "Senna needs to get the witness through the Hallow Pass but a storm has collapsed the old stone bridge." The word "but" marks the hinge. That is your first line of narration — which is exactly what the slug captures. Everything before it is backstory you carry but don't play out loud.

	Example
❌ Too Early	Senna and the witness left the village at nightfall. The path into the pass was muddy and the witness was slow. The storm picked up around midnight. Senna kept them moving. The rain got heavier. And then they rounded the last bend and saw the bridge...
✅ Enter at the "but"	Where the bridge should be, there is only a gap and the sound of the river thirty feet below. Senna holds up her torch. The witness looks at her. Neither of them speaks. Dawn is three hours away.

The second version is already written. It's in the slug.

Leave Early

When the tension in your sentence resolves, the scene is over. Cut. One sentence of transition carries you forward:

"An hour before dawn, they came down off the ridge into the garrison's torchlight."
That is enough. Build the next sentence. Play the next scene.

Swain called the beat after the cut the sequel — the moment where the character processes what happened and forms a new goal. It doesn't need to be dramatized. One sentence usually captures it, and that sentence should carry the causal thread forward: the outcome becomes the next obstacle, the decision becomes the next want.

The resistance to cutting early comes from a belief that something important might happen in the gap. But you aren't skipping things that happened — you're deciding which things are the story. You hold that authority. Use it.

Before You Cut — The Scene Turn

"What is different at the end of this scene that wasn't true at the beginning?"

Something changed → The scene earned its place. Cut and build the next frame.
Nothing changed → Syd Field: "The purpose of a scene is either to move the story forward or to reveal character. If it does neither, it doesn't belong." Cut it anyway and don't carry the guilt forward.

The scenes you play are the story. Everything else is backstory.

V. But & Therefore

In 2011, Trey Parker and Matt Stone visited an NYU filmmaking class and described the rule that governs their writer's room. If the word "and then" connects any two story beats, Stone told the class, "you're fucked. You've got something pretty boring." The fix is to replace "and then" with "but" or "therefore." "But" introduces tension: something happened that cut against what came before. "Therefore" introduces causation: something happened because of what came before.

For this section we'll follow Vesper, whose frame and slug we built in Section III.

Vesper's frame — Daggerheart:
Vesper needs to break the prisoner out of the city gaol before his execution at dawn, but the warden has been tipped off that a rescue is coming and sealed the lower cells — and if she doesn't get him out before the morning bell, the resistance loses its only witness to the governor's crimes.

Notice how Question B — the warden knows she's coming — changes everything. She arrives to find her first plan already invalidated. The scene opens in crisis.

The And Then Problem

	Example
❌ A List of Events	Vesper bluffed her way past the outer gate and then she found a guard's uniform and then she reached the lower corridor and then she found the cells were locked differently than she expected.
✅ A Story	Vesper bluffed her way past the outer gate therefore she had two minutes before the real guard returned — but the lower corridor was sealed behind a ward she'd never seen before, and breaking it would trigger every alarm in the building.

The False Therefore

There's a failure mode worth naming. It looks like causation but isn't. "Vesper reached the lower corridor, therefore she tried the cell door." That's still "and then" dressed in a connective word. Temporal sequence is not causation. The real therefore carries a consequence: "Vesper reached the lower corridor — therefore the warden's scrying mirror lit up, because the lower corridor is warded." When you write a therefore, ask: would this second thing have happened anyway, even without the first? If yes, you haven't earned the therefore yet.

Scene Chain — Vesper at the Gaol

Tag
Scene A	Vesper needs to break the prisoner out before dawn, but the warden has sealed the lower cells and knows she's coming...
Outcome	She finds a way through — but not before triggering one of the warden's alarms. She gets the prisoner. The gaol is on alert.
Therefore	They made it out of the gaol —
But	— the governor's nightwatch was alerted before they cleared the gate, and now there are riders in every street between the gaol and the safe house.
Scene B	Vesper needs to get the prisoner to the safe house before the nightwatch seals the district, but the most direct route runs through the market square where a nightwatch captain is already setting up a checkpoint — and if they're caught now, in the open, everything the resistance has built collapses.

The outcome of Scene A generated Scene B's frame almost without effort. This is why the But/Therefore test functions as a scene generation engine. When you cut a scene, ask what "but" or "therefore" its outcome produces. That answer is the seed of your next frame.

Before Building Each New Frame

"Can I connect this scene to the previous one using 'but' or 'therefore'?"

Yes → You have narrative momentum. Build the frame and play.
Only "And Then" → Drift warning. Either this scene doesn't need to exist yet, or the previous scene's outcome didn't cut hard enough to generate a real consequence.

On Starting Fresh

The first scene of a campaign has no previous scene to connect to. Instead, your opening scene is the "but" — the disruption that made the story necessary. What happened to force your character into motion? Establish that in your first sentence, and everything that follows will have something to push against.

VI. Using It With Your System

Scene framing is a layer you add to whatever system you're already playing. You build the sentence and write your slug before the scene; you play using your system's mechanics as normal.

Any System

You need three things: a two-word oracle (any action/theme table, two d100 columns, or a deck of cards), a yes/no die for the obstacle questions, and your character's active goal to drive the Want.

Ironsworn & Starforged

Roll Action + Theme for the Situation. Your active Vow drives the Want. Use the Yes/No oracle for both Obstacle questions. A miss or weak hit will often hand you the "but" that seeds the next frame organically.

Mythic GME 2e

Roll Meaning Table words for the Situation. Your active Thread drives the Want. Use the Fate Chart for the Obstacle questions. Run Mythic's scene interrupt check after building your sentence — disrupting a frame you've already constructed lands harder than interrupting a blank slate.

Plot Unfolding Machine

Use a PUM prompt for the Situation. Your Plot Nodes and Leads are natural fodder for the Obstacle questions. PUM deliberately left scene structure open; this protocol is what goes there.

Scene Unfolding Machine

SUM works inside scenes — NPC behavior, dialogue prompts, unexpected interventions. Scene Framing builds the stage; SUM tells you what the actors do once they're on it.

Three Frames — The Protocol Across Settings

The same four steps, three different genres, three different obstacle combinations.

Starforged / Traveller — Science Fiction
Obstacle: Person · Aware: No

Kael needs to reach the derelict's ship core before the Syndicate boarding crew wipes the logs, but the enforcer who denied her salvage claim is already on-site and his team is working fast — and if the logs are erased, the evidence of what happened to her captain is gone forever.

INT. DERELICT FREIGHTER — DOCKING COLLAR — DEEP SPACE — TENSE
Kael cuts through the airlock seal. Somewhere deeper in the 
hull, metal groans as the Syndicate crew works. Twenty minutes 
before the core wipes clean.

Ironsworn — Dark Fantasy
Obstacle: Condition · Aware: N/A

Senna needs to get the witness through the Hallow Pass before dawn, but a storm has collapsed the old stone bridge and there is no other crossing before the garrison — and if they don't reach the far side by morning, the warlord's riders will have them cornered with nowhere left to go.

EXT. HALLOW PASS — THE OLD STONE BRIDGE — BEFORE DAWN — DESPERATE
Where the bridge should be, there is only a gap and the sound 
of the river thirty feet below. Dawn is three hours away and 
the warlord's riders are somewhere behind them.

Daggerheart — High Fantasy
Obstacle: Person · Aware: Yes

Vesper needs to break the prisoner out of the city gaol before his execution at dawn, but the warden has been tipped off that a rescue is coming and sealed the lower cells — and if she doesn't get him out before the morning bell, the resistance loses its only witness to the governor's crimes.

INT. CITY GAOL — LOWER CORRIDOR — NIGHT — URGENT
The lower cells are sealed. The warden knew she was coming. 
Two guards positioned at the far end. She has until the 
morning bell.

Self-Testing Guide

Run three complete scenes using only this protocol alongside your existing system before you adjust anything. Write answers to these questions after each scene, not during.

The Protocol

Did the four steps take under 60 seconds? If longer, which step stalled and what made it difficult?
Was the Want verb specific enough to be useful once you were inside the scene?
Did the two Obstacle questions actually change how the scene played out?
Was the sentence written down before you started narrating? Did writing the slug feel like the start of the scene?

The Scene

Did you enter at the "but," or did you drift in earlier?
Did the cut feel clean, or did you keep narrating after the tension had already resolved?
What changed by the end of the scene? Can you name it in one sentence?
Does the next scene connect via "but" or "therefore"? Did the outcome generate the next frame naturally?

Quick Reference

The Protocol

Step	Action
01 · Situation	Roll oracle → what is the world doing right now?
02 · Want	One verb. No active thread? Ask: what does my character most urgently need?
03 · Obstacle A	Is it a person? (Y/N) — if yes, give them a want that crosses yours
04 · Obstacle B	Does it know I'm coming? (Y/N)
05 · The Frame	Write: "[Character] needs to [WANT] but [OBSTACLE], and if they fail, [STAKE]."
06 · Write the slug	INT/EXT · Location · Time · Mood — then 2–3 lines of present-tense action. Or say it out loud: "Go."
07 · Enter	At the "but." That's where the obstacle engages. Start there, not before.
08 · Scene turn	What changed? If nothing, the scene didn't earn its place — cut and move on.
09 · Leave	Tension resolved → one causal beat → build the next frame.

Slug Format

INT. or EXT. LOCATION — SUBLOCATION — TIME — MOOD

Two or three lines. Present tense. What's here, what's 
happening, what the pressure is. The want and obstacle 
embedded in the physical space, not stated as abstractions.

Shorthand version: Character — location — want — obstacle — stake (one line, no formatting)

Spoken version: Say it out loud. End with "Go."

Principles

Building the frame is playing — "Prep is play." (Ironsworn)
The slug puts you in the scene — Write it, read it back, then start. It's thirty seconds well spent.
Enter at the "but" — The "but" is the hinge. Everything before it is backstory you carry but don't narrate.
Every scene must turn — Something must be different at the end. If not, the scene didn't earn its place.
Connect with causation — The transitional beat carries "but" or "therefore." Not "and then."
Written beats unwritten — A few phrases in a journal before the scene will do more than any oracle rolled after you've lost the thread.

Frame it · Write the slug · Enter at the "but" · Turn it · Leave early · Connect with causation

Credits & Sources

"Prep is play" — Shawn Tomkin, Ironsworn & Ironsworn: Starforged (Tomkin Press, 2018/2022)
Scene as goal · conflict · disaster — Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer (1965)
"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out" — Alfred Hitchcock
"Attack a scene as late as you possibly can" — William Goldman
Scene turn — Syd Field, Screenplay; Robert McKee, Story
But & Therefore rule — Trey Parker & Matt Stone (2011 NYU class)
Establish/resolve scene structure — Jason Morningstar, Fiasco (Bully Pulpit Games, 2009)

Draft v0.7 — System-agnostic · Compatible with Ironsworn, Starforged, Mythic GME, PUM, SUM, and any solo or GM-less system