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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gilladian" data-source="post: 5144166" data-attributes="member: 2093">Yeah, essentially I tend to design in ministages. I'll decide I'm designing something with a thrown fight at the arena. I have a villain already who is behind the thrown fight (from a module I'm stealing from). So I decide who is throwing the fight and why. I write up that NPC. He has a handler. Who is he? Does he know about the thrown fights? What's his reaction? Then I need a place for the bookie who is behind the gambling ring to "be". The tavern comes up. I design the tavern, and give quick outlines to the tavernkeeper and the bookie. I decide the bookie needs some enforcers, so I remember that I have an NPC party of adventurers who were needing a new job after the PCs mucked with their careers a few weeks back. A couple adventurers are now enforcers, and this ties the rest of the PCs in, since they dislike these NPCs. I just keep spinning places and scenes. Some may not get used, but others will come into play multiple times.I timeline things first. and last, and in the middle. Just as I spin off each new location, I figure out what would be happening if the PCs didn't get involved. Ie the fighter-guy throws the fight. his handler discovers it and confronts him; the guy admits he's deep into the bookie's pockets. The handler goes and confronts the bookie. He gets warned off. He tries to visit the bookie's rumored boss, and the enforcers pay him a visit. The next day the fighter is found dead in his apartment. Did the enforcers do it? Or his handler? Or someone else entirely?Then I go back and do a flowchart of PC possible interactions with the timeline. If the PCs question the fighter guy before his handler, what are the possible outcomes? After? If they go after the bookie, what can they learn? Will the enforcers come after them, back off, or send word to their boss for re-enforcements? Will their boss do anything, or pull out of the situation? Will they be the ones to find the dead fighter? If so, what happens? Do the guards think they did it? If not, who finds him? Etc... Usually this is one or two pages of notes in boxes with DCs leading to other boxes...I'd never waste time flowcharting a module. I just flowchart their possible options on the route. For example, this flowchart 8 boxes. There are really only 2 dividing points. They start out in the undermarket, and move via a bluesteel door to Ghul's labyrinth. There they have a minor adventure of a tiny dungeon (5 room dungeon). When they leave there, they can either go via some natural caves down deeper, or via another bluesteel door to an elevator. Though they don't know it, both routes are a successful way to the next locale, a bridge inhabited by a xorn and a river ferryman. Depending on the PCs interaction with the ferryman, they may ride down teh river with ease, or have to make/find their own boat/route down it with much less comfort and higher risk. At the end, they may choose a dead-end cave system (another 5 room dungeon scenario) to explore or hit on the correct route into another cave filled with troglodytes (the module) that leads them to a hidden cave/wizard's school.Again, I have almost no DCs mapped for what happens, but I do have a set of jotted notes for the caves. I'd post them if they were typed up, but an example is:6. poison gas near water. puts out torches. odorless, but causes headache. more dead beetle swarm, big beetle carcass. no treasure.If I write more, in complete sentences, I start "composing" which is wayyyyy too time consuming.</blockquote>

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