Writing Adventures
Plot, structure and staying sane.
Style, pace and preparation are influenced by game session length, location and regularity. Longer sessions with a group of friends in a private home allow more involved role-playing and a more complex sandbox style. A pay-to-play or drop-in game at a store or convention will need to be much more linear with a quicker pace and tighter structure.
“Welcome, stranger! You’re here for heroic adventure, exploring mystical ruins and monster-slaying, you say? Well, if by mystical ruins you mean the marketplace, and if by slaying you mean shopping, then you’re in luck! After that, if we still have time, you can watch one of your companions embark on a solo side quest! Won’t that be marvelous?”
Don’t do that.
Be aware of the balance between familiar and strange. Some players will be reassured by recognizing traditional creatures such as ogres and trolls, while others will be excited by unique foes. Mixing up the two helps maintain a feeling of structure, with characters ascending a measurable hierarchy of power, whilst also keeping players guessing and dissuading them from metagaming. Similarly, it’s okay to use tropes as they can help define the genre of your campaign, but don’t be afraid to subvert them and weird it up occasionally.
When writing adventures, the core concept is simple: include a setting, a challenge, and a reward. The challenges can be overcome through role-playing, action, and problem-solving, with the balance determined by player taste. Ideally there should be choice and flexibility for characters, and if the adventure is an episode or chapter of a longer campaign, there should be opportunities to learn more lore of the world, and find leads to further adventure.
For longer campaigns, you have the luxury of establishing a layered plot. The initial idea for the primary plot can be simple as the party doesn’t necessarily even have to be aware of it to start with, and it can serve as a global backdrop rather than an immediate hook, with its mysteries gradually being unraveled until characters are capable of dealing with it directly.
With subplots and story arcs, include a number of linked adventures, either in direct sequence or interspersed with others, preferably with each having its own mini-conclusion. If you have a stable group of gamers (with infrequent shift changes, foreign military deployments or cult kidnappings) it’s possible to gear aspects of these adventures to a particular player character so they can have some personal goals, so player choice can dictate the order of events. Subplots should usually connect to the main plot in some way but they can be independent.
The more adventure hooks you provide, the more likely it is that players will choose to embark on them in a different order to that which you’d anticipated, or that they’ll ignore some altogether. In this case, you don’t need to prepare whole adventures in advance, as it’s just not feasible. Wait till players commit to a particular route before completing it in detail. Otherwise you’ll grow to despise your players, yourself, and whatever half-feral fur baby is knocking over your inkwell at three in the morning as you feverishly write intricate content that will never be seen except by your own crazed, bloodshot eyes.