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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Vangarel" data-source="post: 54995" data-attributes="member: 223">Event based adventuresFor me events are the way to go. If you have a static adventure site with no background motivation for the pcs to explore I find it quickly becomes boring. What I try to do is think of why the pcs would be involved in an adventure.To do this I use the following check list before the time of the game.What location is the adventure set in? Do I have enough details about the location, does the location suggest any interesting things I can bring to the player's attention for either the current adventure or future plotlines.Do any of the player's have existing motivations? If any do and I can cater for them then the player's will have greater interest and therefore more enjoyment. Sometimes player motivations provide the reason for adventure.Do any of the npcs have motivations that affect the adventure? To have a location but nothing to do isn't my idea of an adventure. If the players don't provide sufficient adventure motivations then I try to make sure that the npcs do. The trick is to then get the pcs involved in the motivations of the npcs.Plan a sequence of events based on the motivations set in the location. This is often the tricky bit. Events have to be flexible enough to fit in with the pcs, why spend hours designing them if the players never experience them therefore some events are location triggered. Other events can be interesting if time based unless something else happens. What you have to be careful to avoid is building a sequence of time based events where each relies on the others. Pcs have a way of screwing these up and messing up the whole adventure.As an example in LotR the characters go to Moira. It would probably be a decent adventure to just have them go there looking for dwarven treasure, but it was so much better when driven by plot elements. The party has a motivation, they seek to reach a specific location. They have a choice of which direction to take and are forced to choose an obviously dangerous route by concerns over the actions of the npcs. If this were a module in an ongoing campaign the adventure has a location, the mines, it has player motivations, and the npcs also have motivations. Added into the mix the location introduces new npcs (the Balrog, the orc hordes) and future plot motivations - after the quest to destroy the ring perhaps some of the pcs would return to reclaim Moira or plunder its depths.</blockquote>

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