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How to Design Better Urban Adventures
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<blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 3063513" data-attributes="member: 8835"><p>Another thing to consider, is to give the PCs clues, DM to player. Halfway through an dialogue encounter, if the PCs don't get it, break out of character and tell them that you'd planned this to be a source of clues encounter. Lifting the veil on how the adventure is assembled a little bit might help the players figure out how to navigate it. After awhile, you shouldn't have to do this, as they learn to identify encounters.</p><p></p><p>It might also help, before the session starts, to tell the players what kind of adventure you're about to run. Is this a dungeon crawl, killfest, mystery, diplomacy, or something adventure. Tell them, so they get into the right frame of mind. If I know we're playing a diplomacy adventure, I may be less hasty to draw a sword for every encounter.</p><p></p><p>Another thing to do, is to whip up a ton of little side trek events that you can use to spice up the city. A long time ago, I had a 1 page adventure thing I wrote up called "Thief's night out" I had a random table of all sorts of "opportunities" a thief would be looking for, as well as pursuit rules I whipped up. The file is long since gone, but the point is, in a city, a thief is interested in what's going on, so make lots of small things happen. Bar fights, police patrols, unwary pedestrians, busy markets, etc. I wrote it to handle side quests for a solo thief in the party, but this type of material would be useful for all the PCs.</p><p></p><p>On the advice of having lots of plot hooks, you might want not to have too many. When faced with 20 choices, the party might balk at choosing, or try to solve them all at once. When faced with a few obvious choices, they'll be more likely to pick one. Plus it's less material to write. What you do want to do, is lay the seeds for future adventures and plots. Thus in adventure 1, they meet a busy wizard, unrelated to their current problem. In adventure 2, the busy wizard hires them to do something (active plot). In adventure 3, PCs track down something, that ends up tied to busy wizard. In adventure 4, they confront the busy wizard. In all 4 adventures, you only had to have one active plot, but you have to lay out the material for the future plots. You don't even have to plan it all at once. Just introduce NPCs now, that show up again later.</p><p></p><p>In that same vein, planning all that intrigue can be hard. It may be easier to just to transform NPCs from being what you said they were to something different, when you need a plot idea. Don't overdo it, but keep that tactic in mind.</p><p></p><p>A big factor in devising plot hooks, especially in the beginning, is to come up with stuff that would involve the whole party. A plot that only one PC cares about is likely to split up the party, or get vetoed and ignored. A plot that the whole party cares about will make your job easier. In fact, you only NEED 1 plot that the whole party will pursue. You might have to use multiple hooks to get the whole party involved in. Giving thought to the motivations of each PC (and player) and figure out a plot and set of hooks that will get them involved would be useful. Then have a back-up plot if that fails... <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Janx, post: 3063513, member: 8835"] Another thing to consider, is to give the PCs clues, DM to player. Halfway through an dialogue encounter, if the PCs don't get it, break out of character and tell them that you'd planned this to be a source of clues encounter. Lifting the veil on how the adventure is assembled a little bit might help the players figure out how to navigate it. After awhile, you shouldn't have to do this, as they learn to identify encounters. It might also help, before the session starts, to tell the players what kind of adventure you're about to run. Is this a dungeon crawl, killfest, mystery, diplomacy, or something adventure. Tell them, so they get into the right frame of mind. If I know we're playing a diplomacy adventure, I may be less hasty to draw a sword for every encounter. Another thing to do, is to whip up a ton of little side trek events that you can use to spice up the city. A long time ago, I had a 1 page adventure thing I wrote up called "Thief's night out" I had a random table of all sorts of "opportunities" a thief would be looking for, as well as pursuit rules I whipped up. The file is long since gone, but the point is, in a city, a thief is interested in what's going on, so make lots of small things happen. Bar fights, police patrols, unwary pedestrians, busy markets, etc. I wrote it to handle side quests for a solo thief in the party, but this type of material would be useful for all the PCs. On the advice of having lots of plot hooks, you might want not to have too many. When faced with 20 choices, the party might balk at choosing, or try to solve them all at once. When faced with a few obvious choices, they'll be more likely to pick one. Plus it's less material to write. What you do want to do, is lay the seeds for future adventures and plots. Thus in adventure 1, they meet a busy wizard, unrelated to their current problem. In adventure 2, the busy wizard hires them to do something (active plot). In adventure 3, PCs track down something, that ends up tied to busy wizard. In adventure 4, they confront the busy wizard. In all 4 adventures, you only had to have one active plot, but you have to lay out the material for the future plots. You don't even have to plan it all at once. Just introduce NPCs now, that show up again later. In that same vein, planning all that intrigue can be hard. It may be easier to just to transform NPCs from being what you said they were to something different, when you need a plot idea. Don't overdo it, but keep that tactic in mind. A big factor in devising plot hooks, especially in the beginning, is to come up with stuff that would involve the whole party. A plot that only one PC cares about is likely to split up the party, or get vetoed and ignored. A plot that the whole party cares about will make your job easier. In fact, you only NEED 1 plot that the whole party will pursue. You might have to use multiple hooks to get the whole party involved in. Giving thought to the motivations of each PC (and player) and figure out a plot and set of hooks that will get them involved would be useful. Then have a back-up plot if that fails... :) [/QUOTE]
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