Hehe, slightly derailed, but I like the line of thought.
My hope (I'm a newb at DMing) is that by making these forms, I can make a very unconstrained story, free of railroading. When I have tried to write them before, I end up righting paragraphs of what's happening and end up with all sorts of preconceived ideas of how it'll all play out. Instead, I'm hoping it'll be something like this:
I have X number of NPCs mapped out - Some are people who's plans are integral to the story, some are just mildly statted out mooks that I can throw at the party for fights, and the rest are talking heads - NPCs who provide clues, red hairings or simply depth to a scene. I can't control my players actions, but I can control everyone else. The bad guy has an agenda and a plan: it's his job to figure out how best to keep it on track, and my job to figure out how he'll do so.
Next up is the locations: these are essentially there to provide a setting for your plot. My hope is that by having a form, it'll force me to consider some best practices to provide locations that are a little more fleshed out and feel like the world is a little more real. This might provide clues as well (such as a crime scene) but even if it's mr. and mrs. Mook's house, I'd still like there to be something to describe, both from a descriptive perspective and from a tactical one (like a chandelier, or a secret passage, or even a steep hill that could provide a barrier in a chase scene)
Finally, the event form. This will be for major plotline events that I expect to occur - my reasoning for these is generally that although it's possible for the PCs to unravel them, they probably wont due to either having no idea that they're going to happen, or that one or more of the NPCs is actively working to make this event happen. These will likely be things like 'the kidnapping of important NPC A' or 'the sudden but inevitable reveal of the traitor' or even events the PCs have told you they're actively working towards - like 'standoff with X big baddy.' These forms are meant to help flesh out the actual story, but are meant to be flexible - suggesting possible locations to occur and alternate ways they might unfold.
My hope is that I can translate all the important plot points into these three forms: in this way I get away from describing how the players get from points A to point B and be ready to improvise that part, while still having a fleshed out world to do so in (as opposed to locations that get a brief description and are never taken into consideration again, or NPCs who'se personalities change more and more as they get less important.
I imagine using these by printing them out and sorting them into 2 binders - one for long term use (like NPCs and locations created in setting creation, or else added after the fact because of events) and one for the immediate story. Each will sort by type, with all the npcs lumped together, then locations and events at the back.
