Creating your own Adventures

[beldar1215]

I'm a fairly new DM and have only used pre-gen adventures. I would like to start writing my own adventures, but I don't know where to start. Does anyone have any good advice or know of any good sites with this kind of information. Thanks for the help.

Beldar1215

 

[EricNoah]

This website has some good advice: http://www.roleplayingtips.com/

My own advice would be: keep it simple to start out with. What seems like a straightforward plot to you can appear complex to the players. A to B to C adventures are straightfoward and linear, and they have their own "shape" that some beginning players will find helpful. A could be a town, B could be a dungeon, and C could be a different town or the original town, for example.

To add a little complexity, you can then weave in simple side-quests along the way -- between A and B, the characters might have an encounter that pulls them away from their main goal for a short while.

My other advice would be to maybe work on the general outline of the adventure (how you sort of "ideally" see it playing out), then make a list of resources you'll need (example: "guard stats, evil cleric stats, goblin stats, treasure for room 12, treasure for room 18, an interesting trap near room 21") and then you can do your "homework" a little at a time as you are able.

Then after the basics are done, if you have time you can go through and add details -- just some odds and ends, spice up the treasures, strange markings, give the guards names, find places where you could add a challenge or encounter that would maybe play to a character in the party that doesn't get as much attention, that sort of thing.

 

[s/LaSH]

Know what you want.

If there's a strong campaign plot, with a master villain or awakening Dark God or something, ask yourself how the adventure impacts on this. Do the PCs have to get a sword to kill a dragon? Do they have to interrogate an evil cultist to discover an important clue? Start from the goal and then throw obstacles at them. Put the sword in a dungeon with undead guards or something. Put the cultist in a townhouse guarded by silent assassins.

Have a theme, of course. Like 'long-forgotten temple' (undead, magic traps, that sort of thing), or 'goblin cave' (goblins, goblins, smelly refuse, worgs and goblins). Exceptions to the theme are not ruled out, but they should have a good reason and be very rare.

Build a dungeon to make sense. The people defending it should have a decent plan of defence. Try to kill the PCs. Then turn around and find a way for the PCs to not get killed. That way things should make sense but not be impassable.

That's all I can think of right now...

 

[ced1106]

Start small. Rip off ideas from other sources. In fact, I'd recommend that you instead edit adventures into a wider story arc:

1. Select two adventures you'd like to run back-to-back.
2. Create a backstory that ties them together.
3. Edit the adventures to better fit the backstory.

The easiest edit is the "bad guy" because adventures **always** have bad guys. You can easily rewrite the bad guys from separate adventures suchthat they're organized under one higher-level bad guy, whom the party meets in a later adventure. And so on.

Also nothing wrong with further developing part of an adventure. Most pregens with towns, for example, leave the town as a one-dimensional plot device that needs saving. Flesh out the town! Create a faction in the town that has an interest in **helping** the bad guys!

Then there's always the fallback: ask the players. Get their input, have them submit ideas. Edit.

Good luck and enjoy.


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

 

[Ghostmoon]

Hello,

If you get stuck with a plot or can't think of something for the players to do, the "Big Book of RPG Plots" can be very helpful.

Link: http://www.io.com/~sjohn/plots.htm

Hope this helps,
Ghostmoon

 

[Agnostic Paladin]

Think of a very simple plot. I think that having a simple plotline is the most important thing; adventures are not at all like any other form of story - player's have very limited information on what's going on, so side plots, massive plot twists, and surprise endings are just going to wind up either being lost on them or totally messing up the adventure flow.

Detail some characters and locations that are involved in your plot. This step will lead into ideas for further npcs locations and plot details.

Now the easy parts over. For the hard part, you need to collect the opponents and items and start statting everything out and organizing it into an easily useful manner.

 

[alsih2o]

here is a simple trick that may help, grab your favorite module you have run and ask yourself what should happen next.

the fallout from the last module can make for a greta runnign start

 

[Mark]

You can also find lots of ideas by reading through the threads in here-

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47525

 

[Deadguy]

I's strongly recommend that you chat with, and listen to, your players baldar. Their imaginations wil fill in lots of details and ideas that you, as one person, just wouldn't come up with! By co-opting some of those ideas into your evolving adventure, you can produce one that feels a lot 'deeper' than you alone would produce. Plus it also helps with the problem of your simple plot turning out to be far more complex from the players' perspective, since it will turn out that someone happens to have guessed aright already!

Also, and apologies if this sounds trite, listen to what they want their characters to do. For example, let's say that in the last adventure, you added as part of the treasure a curious statuette. It's not magical, but your description seems to have piqued the interest of some of the players. Well, run with that idea. Let it be known that someone collects those statuettes, and will pay handsomely for more of them. Right there you have a hook, and can apply some of the other ideas given on those websites suggest. Or if the cleric PC really wants to visit the Motherhouse of his Order, adapt an adventure idea to include travelling towards that place. By working in some of the things that interest them, you make the series of adventures feel less like one adventure after another, and more like an unfolding single tale, with many chapters.

I will also add that, like everything else in life that's worthwhile, creating adventures takes practise. The more you do it, the better you'll get. But accept that you'll make some mistakes, so try and get honest feedback from your players. And don't be afraid, if you do screw up, to cut your losses and move on.

Good luck mate!

 

[Fenes 2]

I usually start with the idea of an adventure ("Party needs to get misplaced scroll safely back to its owner with no one the wiser") , then add complications ("Scroll is stored in a noble's mansion who has other things to hide and will get attacked by local rebels or bandits just when the party is at work."), options ("party can infiltrate as wandering performers, snatch an invitation to a ball from some friends, or sneak in through an old escape tunnel if they listen to the right sage") and sidetracks ("Noble's fiancée is secretly having an affair with the captain of the guard and plans to poison the noble after the wedding.").
Then I tailor the adventure to the party. The owner of the scroll could be a mentor of a PC, the noble's family be rivals of a PC's clan etc. - but taking care not to overdo it.

After this is done I sketch out the NPCs, starting with descriptions, character and motivations. If needed (i.e. if generic NPCs from the DMG are not sufficient or if there is a great likelyhood there will be an important fight with them) they get statted out.

Any surviving NPC gets transfered into my NPC file, with short notes how the party met and dealt with him or her, for later use. After a few adventures, especially if in the same region, you have a staple of background plot hooks, loose ends and NPCs with ties, for good or evil, to the PCs, making it easier to build or spice up new adventures with that "personal touch" ("Hey! We know that knight from the assault at the city gate. How is he doing - and what is he doing here?") and making it easier to show the consequences of actions ("Well, we could just talk to the noble, if we had not crashed his ball last summer when we were chasing a thief, humilating his daughter in the process when we accidentally exposed her affair...").