D&D 5E Collaborative adventure creation?

[BoldItalic]

I'm kinda new to ENWorld, also. Do they have groups on here? That seems like it would be useful.
As for how to organize it, there used to be a weekly group meeting on AOL many years ago where a bunch of people would get together and create new monsters. One person would run it, sort've like an improv group and ask people for ideas. People would raise a bunch of ideas and the moderator would pick one and then it would go from there. Then we would decide hit dice and ac and abilities and such as a group.

So I imagine you could do a campaign like that. A bunch of people just get together, one person moderates and starts off with... okay.... what's the campaign this week? Anyone got ideas? A bunch of people throw out ideas, the moderator picks one (or maybe the group votes), and then we go from there. What's the basic story? What's the player hook? What kind of NPC's are involved? What kind of monsters?

What prompted this post for me was that I have a sort've basic, incomplete idea for a story, but it lacks some very important details, like how to hook the characters into the story and what kind of clues they follow. I could come up with some really lame ones, but I thought opening it up to other people with different perspectives would be really helpful.

I suppose, in theory, the whole thing could be done on a forum thread, but it would be hard to keep it organized and moving along. It would be better to have a chat room or even a Skype chat or something like that.

Top of the page, under the ENWorld logo, there's a row of tabs starting "What's New?". Under that is another row of tabs in smaller font starting "Forum Home". Sixth one along in that row is "Community". Pull that down and you get "Groups" and some other links including a chat room. If you like, create a dummy group and send me an invite, just for practice. As well as having its own forum, a group can be used for sharing files. I haven't use the chat room here but it might be useful too.

 

[S'mon]

I find the joy of sandboxing is that my players create the adventures with me, by deciding where to go & what to do. Of course there needs to be some pre-created content to give them a grounding for action, but it's a lot easier to create material in response to player decisions than to create a plotted adventure from nothing. Eg currently my PCs addressed the Altanian clan moot and decided to add them vs Neo-Nerath by embarking on a lengthy overland quest to reach the Gate Castle of the Black Sun and close the Gate that is the source of Neo-Nerath's vast Necromantic powers. They also decided on their route, from several possible. All I then have to do is detail the quest site (pretty easy when I have Dyson's Delves I & II, I soon found useable maps). Much of the overland journey is created through encounter tables with encounters rolled during play (last session a CR 17 dragon turtle attacked their ship!), in conjunction with the pre-existing set-piece locale notes.

 

[Imaculata]

I've been really struggling with maps. I just bought Campaign Cartographer, but the learning curve is pretty brutal. Is GIMP better for mapping?

All art programs have a bit of a learning curve, but programs like Photoshop and GIMP are easy to learn. You don't have to be a master at it. You just need to know how to work with layers, how to draw simple shapes, and make selections.

I use Photoshop for creating my maps, along with a ton of clip art. But you can accomplish the same effect with a program like GIMP to create maps such as this one:

View attachment 71841

Here's how it works in Photoshop. Create a new file (Pull down menu: File -> New). First I create two empty layers in the layers window (Pull down menu: window -> Layers). One is the background layer, which I fill with black by using the fill tool. The other is the room layer on which I draw all the rooms of the map. I use the rectangle selection tool to draw a rectangular room, and fill it up with white with the fill tool. You can enable the grid, and use snap-to-grid to make it easier to line up the rooms (Pull down menu: View -> Show -> Grid) and (Pull down menu: View -> Snap to -> Grid).

I then right click the room-layer in the layers window, and select "Blending Options". I then set the stroke option to the color black, size to between 3 or 5, and position to Inside. Next click okay.

You can now draw as many rooms as you want, and when ever you fill them up with a color, it will automatically receive a black outline.

I then use clip art from the classic board game Hero's Quest, to indicate the positions of tombs, doors and furniture. But I suppose you could use just about any RPG clip art that you fancy. You don't need to be an artist to create cool looking maps. Staircases and pillars are made with the stroke tool as well. But for the stairs I create an extra layer so that the stairs have a gradient from white to black, to suggest depth (also by using the blending options).

For creating world maps you can do the exact same thing, but obviously instead of rooms, you'll mostly be placing black dots where all the points of interest are. Download a couple of cool looking free fonts, and label parts of the map as you see fit. And before you know it, you have an awesome map.

 

[SheckyS]

All art programs have a bit of a learning curve, but programs like Photoshop and GIMP are easy to learn. You don't have to be a master at it. You just need to know how to work with layers, how to draw simple shapes, and make selections.

I use Photoshop for creating my maps, along with a ton of clip art. But you can accomplish the same effect with a program like GIMP to create maps such as this one:

View attachment 71841

Here's how it works in Photoshop. Create a new file (Pull down menu: File -> New). First I create two empty layers in the layers window (Pull down menu: window -> Layers). One is the background layer, which I fill with black by using the fill tool. The other is the room layer on which I draw all the rooms of the map. I use the rectangle selection tool to draw a rectangular room, and fill it up with white with the fill tool. You can enable the grid, and use snap-to-grid to make it easier to line up the rooms (Pull down menu: View -> Show -> Grid) and (Pull down menu: View -> Snap to -> Grid).

I then right click the room-layer in the layers window, and select "Blending Options". I then set the stroke option to the color black, size to between 3 or 5, and position to Inside. Next click okay.

You can now draw as many rooms as you want, and when ever you fill them up with a color, it will automatically receive a black outline.

I then use clip art from the classic board game Hero's Quest, to indicate the positions of tombs, doors and furniture. But I suppose you could use just about any RPG clip art that you fancy. You don't need to be an artist to create cool looking maps. Staircases and pillars are made with the stroke tool as well. But for the stairs I create an extra layer so that the stairs have a gradient from white to black, to suggest depth (also by using the blending options).

For creating world maps you can do the exact same thing, but obviously instead of rooms, you'll mostly be placing black dots where all the points of interest are. Download a couple of cool looking free fonts, and label parts of the map as you see fit. And before you know it, you have an awesome map.

Nice map. Yeah, I'm kinda partial to Paint Shop Pro as far as raw paint programs go. I just thought Compaign Cartographer would make things easier. But I'm struggling to figure out how to do the simplest little things, like draw a curved road.

I'm sure I will get there eventually.

 

[SheckyS]

I find the joy of sandboxing is that my players create the adventures with me, by deciding where to go & what to do. Of course there needs to be some pre-created content to give them a grounding for action, but it's a lot easier to create material in response to player decisions than to create a plotted adventure from nothing. Eg currently my PCs addressed the Altanian clan moot and decided to add them vs Neo-Nerath by embarking on a lengthy overland quest to reach the Gate Castle of the Black Sun and close the Gate that is the source of Neo-Nerath's vast Necromantic powers. They also decided on their route, from several possible. All I then have to do is detail the quest site (pretty easy when I have Dyson's Delves I & II, I soon found useable maps). Much of the overland journey is created through encounter tables with encounters rolled during play (last session a CR 17 dragon turtle attacked their ship!), in conjunction with the pre-existing set-piece locale notes.

Yes, I agree that a DM needs to be flexible. And hey, you do whatever works for you.

But I'm talking about creating preparatory materials for a campaign / module. This way you can set up the encounters ahead of time, have an idea of the story, etc. That way, when your players go completely off the rails, you at least have some encounters and monsters all ready for them.

 

[SheckyS]

Top of the page, under the ENWorld logo, there's a row of tabs starting "What's New?". Under that is another row of tabs in smaller font starting "Forum Home". Sixth one along in that row is "Community". Pull that down and you get "Groups" and some other links including a chat room. If you like, create a dummy group and send me an invite, just for practice. As well as having its own forum, a group can be used for sharing files. I haven't use the chat room here but it might be useful too.

I was giving this some more thought, and I am thinking that a text-based chat might be preferable to speech, since that way there would be a complete record of the discussion and we wouldn't risk losing stuff.

This is great, though. What we need now is a name for the group.

I was thinking something along the lines of an homage to Dead Poet's Society.

Dead Bard's Society?
Dead Adventurer's Society?

Anyone got any other ideas?

 

[Miladoon]

I don't have a problem with starting a group here on enworld. I am uncertain about rolling dice in the group application here. That is why I suggest moving to something like roll20. It has dice and a way to copy the transcript of a session and post it to a thread. I mean, what kind of world making session would you have if a game didn't suddenly break out?

EDIT: I could also run a live tutorial for GIMP on roll20. I have been thinking about doing that for some time now.

 

[SheckyS]

I don't have a problem with starting a group here on enworld. I am uncertain about rolling dice in the group application here. That is why I suggest moving to something like roll20. It has dice and a way to copy the transcript of a session and post it to a thread. I mean, what kind of world making session would you have if a game didn't suddenly break out?

EDIT: I could also run a live tutorial for GIMP on roll20. I have been thinking about doing that for some time now.

I can't imagine a situation in which we would need to roll dice while creating an adventure. Unless we wanted to generate something random, which would kinda defeat the whole purpose of the group, IMO. But if we did have to roll dice, I suppose we would just have to do it on the honor system.

 

[BoldItalic]

I don't have a problem with starting a group here on enworld. I am uncertain about rolling dice in the group application here. That is why I suggest moving to something like roll20. It has dice and a way to copy the transcript of a session and post it to a thread. I mean, what kind of world making session would you have if a game didn't suddenly break out?

I'm easy, as long as the technology doesn't get in the way of having fun

No reason we can't try all the approaches and find out which works best. It depends, really, whether we are aiming to brainstorm ideas to use in our own campaigns, or construct a playable campaign ab ovo. Is it the process or the product that appeals?

 

[SheckyS]

I'm easy, as long as the technology doesn't get in the way of having fun

No reason we can't try all the approaches and find out which works best. It depends, really, whether we are aiming to brainstorm ideas to use in our own campaigns, or construct a playable campaign ab ovo. Is it the process or the product that appeals?

My personal goal is to create a Fantasy Grounds module for to DM for a group. But that doesn't mean it has to be specific to me. Ideally, someone (or several people) in the group could take on the job of creating a PDF and organizing the information into a module that anyone could use. From there, it's very easy to import into Fantasy Grounds, and again, that content could easily be shared.

And if the process is fun (and how could it not be) then all the better for everyone involved.