D&D 5E I'm writing an adventure, what should I know first?

jamesjhaeck · Oct 17, 2014

I've been kicking around the idea of trying to get into freelance publishing for a while. I've also had an idea for an adventure that straddles the line between old-school adventures—like Village of Hommlet and Against the Cult of the Reptile God—and new-school story games. I want to take the classic oneshot adventure to the next level.

I talk about it more at a blog post here, but the gist of it is this: modules are good for oneshots, but only okay for inserting into larger campaigns. I don't want to reinvent the wheel, but I want to make the best damn wheel out there. I'm going to make a character- and story-driven adventure that follows old-school sensibilities. A village with a mystery, a vast wilderness to explore, and a final unraveling of the mystery in an ancient dungeon.

What are some good resources for self-publishing, or RPG publishers who hire freelancers? Does anyone have any experience doing this? And finally, are there any old-school/new-school features that I should look at for inspiration in creating The Temple of Shattered Minds?

Here's a little bit of information about the adventure, in addition to what's in the blog post.

This is for parties of 4-5 characters of 5th level.
I intend to have all the text and numbers on paper within a week, and a first draft, including maps, in PDF form within two weeks.
This is a single adventure that will take one to two sessions to complete.
There is a Mind Flayer, but he's earned some battle scars in the five years before the start of this adventure.

Astrosicebear · Oct 17, 2014

The first thing you need to know is if you will legally be able to publish it. If your adventure includes a Mind Flayer, you will not.

AT this point there is no legal standing one way or the other for 5E material. You could put all this hard work into it, only to have a cease and desist from WOTC.

Mind Flayers, and numerous other specialty monsters are copyrighted by WOTC and do not appear in the older OGL/SRDs. This means you cannot use those monsters and get away with it legally.

Without an SRD or license, at this point publishing anything but a 'free fan creation' is very, very sketchy, so be forewarned.

NEXT.

Read other modules and find out what works and doesnt work. Read reviews. Look at layout. You seem to have a large scope for your module, but one to two sessions is really small game time for a large scope. It may not have the impact you want. But keeping it small to start is the way to go.

I suggest you look into AdventureAWeek Games (http://adventureaweek.com). Right now they arent doing anything for 5e until WOTC announces publishing rights, but they always take pitches for adventures in PFRPG and 3.5.

Even a short one to two session adventure can take a long time to format, write, and edit. Dont rush through things, and get a good editor to really look your stuff over. Then get a mechanical editor to make sure you maths are right. Then get a legal editor to make sure you are within the bounds of whatever system license you use.

Be open to suggestions. When the editors look at your stuff they are going to see changes that need to be made, even story elements. Be open to those changes.

Writing for publication is a different animal than writing a plot out for your home game. The trick is to not let the process sap the creativity out of you, and just try to make the most fun session for the end players.

aramis erak · Oct 17, 2014

The most important element is to think of at least 4 different ways each encounter can be approached, and write a brief bit about each. The most common approaches my current group uses: Subterfuge (disguising selves as locals), Parlay (discuss it with them), Attack, Intimidate (scare the opponent off).

It also helps to know what the difficulty is for interrogating captures and what they know.

jamesjhaeck · Oct 19, 2014

Thanks so much for your advice. I'm still fleshing out the skeleton of this adventure, but I do know one thing for certain. This is going to be a 'free fan creation.' I'm going to make this one for the community and as a potential resume builder or free sample of my work to display when I create other RPG content. I'll be reading as many published modules as I can get my hands on and writing hard for the next week.

aramis erak · Oct 20, 2014

Good luck! It's easy to write and adventure. It's hard to make it ready for someone else to run.

meomwt · Oct 20, 2014

A great example of the style of adventure you want to write is The Lost City of Barakus, a 3.5E adventure from Necromancer Games - you should still be able to get it on pdf. There are plenty of city and wilderness adventures, plus a large dungeon in which Evil Lurks.

I played the start of it years ago, we got to session 8 before the players even got to the gates of the dungeon. There were a couple of additional encounters in the city which I added, but mostly it was as written.

I wrote a fan-made adventure called The House of Bones, set in the confines of another Necromancer Games product The Grey Citadel. The guy who wrote the module had his own webspace, and I offered the adventure. It needed knocking into shape rather more than I thought, and the writer helped me tremendously in getting it fit for public gaze: it took a while, and it is not that long a module. I can't link to it right now (firewalls in the office!) but if you are interested, I can add a link later (when I can get to the page).

I don't want to put you off, but there is a lot of effort involved in making such a thing ready for a DM to run rather than you running it. You need to cover eventualities which different players would think of, and add more detail than you would normally when writing for yourself.

meomwt · Oct 20, 2014

Here is the link to the House of Bones adventure I wrote. It took a couple of months to write, then about another month to six weeks to get it into the state you see.