Flow Charts?

[Thotas]

The DC Heroes game put out by Mayfair a decade and a half ago used flow-charts for adventures extensively. Way too extensively. Their adventures were railroads with a couple of alternate tracks to try to hide the fact. That's because they flowcharted the plot of the adventure, though. To flowchart events at a locale or the behaviour of a given NPC when certain events fall into place is okay ... especially if you're open to the idea that if the PCs do something the chart doesn't allow for, you may have to throw the chart out and wing it after all.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

For setting-based adventures, unnecessary.

For setting-based adventures, the map is often the low chart. For example, a dungeon map is pretty much a flow chart.

DM

 

[MonsterMash]

One of the things I tend to do when I start looking at an adventure is look at the flows of possibilities (probably too much time as a systems analyst showing there) and draw them up, so that it limits the surprises that my players can throw at me. I do this particularly when I create my own adventures to avoid them being the classic railroad.