D&D General Writing adventures for today's audience

aarduini · Jul 22, 2019

How many of you writers out there, do research and get opinions before publishing or running your home brew adventures. In my journey writing the Mother of Monsters adventure, I had to rethink a lot of old tropes.

I wrote about it here
https://www.zagoragames.com/post/writing-a-greek-themed-adventure-for-today-s-audience

Sacrosanct · Jul 22, 2019

I don’t actively do research, but I’m active in the gaming community, so I’m aware of how trends change. For example, I’m much more sensitive to cheesecake art, cultural appropriation, gender fluidity, and other social issues that I probably wouldn’t have given much thought to 30 years ago.

robus · Jul 22, 2019

Interesting. I thought this was going to be more about players wanting more coherence in the adventure design, rather than the somewhat random assignments in days of old. Good that you’re taking advice to heart.

Umbran · Jul 22, 2019

Research and gather opinions before *running* my homebrew adventures? That would be more work than my content is worth, to be honest.

Plus, my homebrew is designed for the half-dozen or so people at my table. Unless I am going to a person specifically chosen to match my players' preferences, outside opinions are, statistically, apt to be misleading.

Publishing is another matter entirely. There, yes, you should do your homework, playtest, and get feedback.

aarduini · Jul 22, 2019

Well, sometimes homebrew is advertised locally with people just trying to get a group together. You may not know the people playing in your game.

jayoungr · Jul 22, 2019

aarduini said:
I wrote about it here
https://www.zagoragames.com/post/writing-a-greek-themed-adventure-for-today-s-audience

Interesting article!

I'm curious, though: I can see your initial line of reasoning about the child hostage and the doppelganger trophy wife. But what was your reason for starting with the assumption that the Amazons had to be oppressed and Ares had to hate them? I know a lot of ordinary women were fairly oppressed in the source material, but Amazons always seemed like the exception to that rule. And in the original myths, Ares actually fathered some notable Amazons.

aco175 · Jul 22, 2019

I publish adventures on DMsGuild that are pay what you want. It is mostly for adventures that I made and ran for my home game and think others could use them and save some time making their own. I do not set out to make an adventure that I think others would like, only my table. I do add some elements that make things clearer or add some options that my table may not have thought of or went through.

A lot of each adventure is tailored to my table and written as we go along and follows their choices and limits the railroading. This may mean that some of the subject matter may not be what I would think of if I would just write the whole adventure before playing it. I do try to make it things that are nor controversial or deal with themes like racism or that deals with drugs.

I think it would be hard to make adventures for a certain audience. Several on DMsGuild deal with the current adventure line from Wizards. This has the basic plot from the main story and adds to it or details and expands something not finished in the main story. These are fine, but coming up with something from scratch that appeals to a lot of people without putting some people out may be hard.

aarduini · Jul 23, 2019

jayoungr said:
Interesting article!

I'm curious, though: I can see your initial line of reasoning about the child hostage and the doppelganger trophy wife. But what was your reason for starting with the assumption that the Amazons had to be oppressed and Ares had to hate them? I know a lot of ordinary women were fairly oppressed in the source material, but Amazons always seemed like the exception to that rule. And in the original myths, Ares actually fathered some notable Amazons.

Well, I wanted my story of the amazons to be one of revival. It was a learning experience for me. I actually didn't intend for the Ares analog to hate just the amazons. My Ares hates mortals, and I was advised to make that clarification.

Mistwell · Jul 23, 2019

Generally speaking advice from successful authors tends to be "write for yourself." Writing what you want out of the story, as opposed to what you think others want, tends to work best for the authors I've seen comment on that issue.

aarduini · Jul 23, 2019

Mistwell said:
Generally speaking advice from successful authors tends to be "write for yourself." Writing what you want out of the story, as opposed to what you think others want, tends to work best for the authors I've seen comment on that issue.

Interesting, I've never heard that. I am writing for myself. I take the advice from published authors and editors to tailor my writing to appeal to a broader audience.