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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 5418600" data-attributes="member: 7006">One of James Wyatt's Dungeoncraft articles on the WotC website called 'Building Block Adventure Design' I thought was a very simple, easy and actually cool methodology for new DMs to creates compelling "story arcs" without needing massive experience in plotting.It's basically "The Rule Of Threes" as state above... with three short delves that each end with three similar McGuffins... which when taken as a whole make a simple but engaging "plot".  Some of his examples included:* The heroes might quest after the three items in a set (a rod, crown, and scepter), three pieces of a broken relic, or three components for crafting a unique item.* Kill three hags, three ogres, or the three shadar-kai who lead the bandits in Raven Roost.  They might be three agents of the same greater lord (who will be a villain in a later adventure) -- or two lieutenants and the master himself. They might be three otherwise unrelated monsters each infected by a shard of corruption that produces a similar pattern of behavior in each one. * The party travels to three similar outposts and carries the same important message to them, or three shrines to the same or related gods and perform a ritual to reconsecrate them.* They might have to deal with the repercussions of the same event in three different places. They might have to secure the aid of three disparate groups to accomplish a greater quest. They might have to save or protect the baron's three sons.If you follow the advice above and make each delve about five encounters (3 combat, 1 skill challenge, 1 roleplay), you now have a 15 encounter cohesive plotline, at the end of which the party should have earn enough XP to go up a level or two.What's also great about this building block method is that once you've become comfortable running this first building block plot of three delves... you can take it further by building two more of these 15 encounter blocks... thereby giving you an even bigger overarching plot when all is said and done.  Before you know it, you've "plotted" a storyline that takes players through 45 encounters over half a tier of play.  And by this point, you'll hopefully have become more comfortable and can begin playing around with things (by changing the number of encounters per delve, the numbering of delves per block, the necessity of blocks at all, etc. etc.)</blockquote>

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