Vegepygmy
First Post
I prepare heavily, but plan almost nothing.
As for published adventures, I usually make some significant changes. I'm somewhere between option #2 and #3 (so I chose #3).
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How do you plan out your adventures?
- Thread starter fba827
- Start date
As for published adventures, I usually make some significant changes. I'm somewhere between option #2 and #3 (so I chose #3).
megamania
Hero
Generally I start with a tweaked premade adventure. Then I watch and learn what the players want and develop stories that combine the story I had created / plotted loosely and the player's wants. So its all of the above with the exception of using premade adventures as is. I generally always tweak them some.
EricNoah
Adventurer
Two main methods: 1) use a published adventure mostly as written, but removing pointless encounters and doing whatever I can to add some flavor and highlight anything special about the setting. 2) I start with a vague notion of how it ends, work on stats for the big bad guy and some minions, pick out some monsters, then slowly let it all percolate for a while. Eventually, I find a suitable map, place the bad guys, and have a plotline of some kind. The plot is the part that generally takes me the most time. I have no problem cranking out stats. If I have time, I will do a walkthrough of the adventure -- the story beats, the physical layout, so I have a bit of a vision of what is likely to happen.
Jan van Leyden
Adventurer
I use a published adventure as foundation in most cases.
I usually read it a rather long time before play - each group playing roughly oncer per month leads to the habit - so to have a rather condensed version of the thing in my head. Most of the actual tinkering happens on the fly: drop this encounter, introduce that NPC from a previous adventure, modify the opponents.
I usually read it a rather long time before play - each group playing roughly oncer per month leads to the habit - so to have a rather condensed version of the thing in my head. Most of the actual tinkering happens on the fly: drop this encounter, introduce that NPC from a previous adventure, modify the opponents.
Jeff Wilder
First Post
I start by looking about three or four levels ahead, and choose published adventures that (1) I'll enjoy running, (2) I think my players would enjoy playing, (3) fit in with the overall path down which the campaign seems to be heading, and (4) are within two levels either way of what the party's APL will be.
Then I do an actual outline, starting broad by sketching out the ties that bind my chosen adventures together. If needed, I insert bridging adventures (usually short, two sessions or less).
I continually revise this outline as the campaign progresses.
As the group moves toward adventures, I flesh the outlines out. I've found that it really, really helps me to understand exactly how an adventure designer intends for players to put things together in order to move from encounter to encounter, so I'm always explicit about that in the more detailed outline. This is also the point at which I make any modifications to NPCs, traps, or (if needed) to the overall plot. (For example, if an adventure is written for 7th-level PCs, but my PCs are 9th, I may need to account for teleport, one way or another.)
So, in my current Eberron campaign, so far:
I. The Forgotten Forge
II. Shadows of the Last War
III. Murder in Oakbridge
IV. bridging adventure, introducing a new PC and a conflict with Daask
V. Whisper of the Vampire's Blade
VI. bridging adventure, exploring the conflict between Daask and the PCs
VII. Grasp of the Emerald Claw
VIII. bridging adventure, escalation of the conflict with Daask
IX. Chimes at Midnight
X. Shards of Eberron (Crypt of Crimson Stars)
XI. Shards of Eberron (Temple of the Scorpion God)
XII. Shards of Eberron (Pit of the Fire Lord, heavily modified)
XIII. Quoth the Raven
From here (APL is 11) I have one more published adventure planned, then it will largely be my own stuff until the campaign finale at APL 16 or so. I'm looking into modifying some published adventures, but it's not promising. There are too many directions the party can go. There are four major threads hanging (Viktor St. Demain, a white dragon out for revenge, Daask, and an invasion of giants brewing on Xendrik), and while I can guess which order they'll take them in (Viktor probably has to be first), I can't say for sure.
Then I do an actual outline, starting broad by sketching out the ties that bind my chosen adventures together. If needed, I insert bridging adventures (usually short, two sessions or less).
I continually revise this outline as the campaign progresses.
As the group moves toward adventures, I flesh the outlines out. I've found that it really, really helps me to understand exactly how an adventure designer intends for players to put things together in order to move from encounter to encounter, so I'm always explicit about that in the more detailed outline. This is also the point at which I make any modifications to NPCs, traps, or (if needed) to the overall plot. (For example, if an adventure is written for 7th-level PCs, but my PCs are 9th, I may need to account for teleport, one way or another.)
So, in my current Eberron campaign, so far:
I. The Forgotten Forge
II. Shadows of the Last War
III. Murder in Oakbridge
IV. bridging adventure, introducing a new PC and a conflict with Daask
V. Whisper of the Vampire's Blade
VI. bridging adventure, exploring the conflict between Daask and the PCs
VII. Grasp of the Emerald Claw
VIII. bridging adventure, escalation of the conflict with Daask
IX. Chimes at Midnight
X. Shards of Eberron (Crypt of Crimson Stars)
XI. Shards of Eberron (Temple of the Scorpion God)
XII. Shards of Eberron (Pit of the Fire Lord, heavily modified)
XIII. Quoth the Raven
From here (APL is 11) I have one more published adventure planned, then it will largely be my own stuff until the campaign finale at APL 16 or so. I'm looking into modifying some published adventures, but it's not promising. There are too many directions the party can go. There are four major threads hanging (Viktor St. Demain, a white dragon out for revenge, Daask, and an invasion of giants brewing on Xendrik), and while I can guess which order they'll take them in (Viktor probably has to be first), I can't say for sure.
I just run a giant random dungeon. I roll it up far enough ahead of time that I can explain what the various rooms and passages really represent (sometimes they end up looking like an open field in front of a ruined keep or a ship that dropped onto a forest from 10,000 feet) but that's about it really. Run the random dungeon, free-form it when you get to town, return to more random dungeon.
Jackelope King
First Post
For the most part, I come up with my adventures from scratch. I get a rough idea of what sort of encounters I want to create, get the skeletons of stats down for most important NPCs, and then let the players loose. They almost always find more interesting ways to get to those encounters than I could come up with.
I've only ever run one module, and only after very heavy modification (renaming almost every NPC, redrawing all but one map, restating every enemy but the final one, etc), because so much of it just didn't fit that well in the world my group had established. Pre-published adventures aren't worth the paper they're printed on to me, as the settings I tend to use are too far from "mainstream" gaming of whatever genre I'm playing that I know better than to waste my time and money buying and converting modules. I can't dispute their quality, but they just aren't worth it for me.
I've only ever run one module, and only after very heavy modification (renaming almost every NPC, redrawing all but one map, restating every enemy but the final one, etc), because so much of it just didn't fit that well in the world my group had established. Pre-published adventures aren't worth the paper they're printed on to me, as the settings I tend to use are too far from "mainstream" gaming of whatever genre I'm playing that I know better than to waste my time and money buying and converting modules. I can't dispute their quality, but they just aren't worth it for me.
Irda Ranger
First Post
I ask my players what they want to do, and we do that.
"Explore this corner of the map."
"Oppose the plots of the Evil League of Evil in the City of Bigcity."
"Recover the sword and shield of Sir Strong Paladin, who fell in battle in the lands of Mor."
PCs are then generated that are appropriate for a campaign of that nature. As the DM I adapt setting info from my library to sketch in some maps and NPCs.
To get an adventure rolling, whether we have a meta-plot of not (maybe a meta-plot is too big and hard decide on) we then decide on a Kicker. A "Kicker" is something that just happened and requires the PCs to respond. One I just used a week or two ago was "The Fighter PC's father's shop was just robbed in broad daylight; the thief left the money but ran off with a book." I then take a few minutes behind the DM screen to work out who stole it & why, and we're off.
<Speed>
Pop quiz, hot-shot: What do you do?
</Speed>
It gets things moving quickly. Most importantly though by allowing the PCs to pick their own quests I don't have to motivate them. No one writes a Kicker that doesn't intrinsically interest them.
"Explore this corner of the map."
"Oppose the plots of the Evil League of Evil in the City of Bigcity."
"Recover the sword and shield of Sir Strong Paladin, who fell in battle in the lands of Mor."
PCs are then generated that are appropriate for a campaign of that nature. As the DM I adapt setting info from my library to sketch in some maps and NPCs.
To get an adventure rolling, whether we have a meta-plot of not (maybe a meta-plot is too big and hard decide on) we then decide on a Kicker. A "Kicker" is something that just happened and requires the PCs to respond. One I just used a week or two ago was "The Fighter PC's father's shop was just robbed in broad daylight; the thief left the money but ran off with a book." I then take a few minutes behind the DM screen to work out who stole it & why, and we're off.
<Speed>
Pop quiz, hot-shot: What do you do?
</Speed>
It gets things moving quickly. Most importantly though by allowing the PCs to pick their own quests I don't have to motivate them. No one writes a Kicker that doesn't intrinsically interest them.
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