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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5108478" data-attributes="member: 58197">Further thoughts:Don't get too linear. Now, obviously there's a conflict here. The more possible branches your adventure plot contains, the more of those branches will necessarily go unexplored, meaning you're doing more development work for less return. So obviously you can't get too branch-y. The story does have to get from A to B in the end.But do offer some branches. The players need decision points and meaningful choices... or at least they need to feel that they have them. &quot;Red Hand of Doom&quot; had a clever approach to this, with a number of places we could go and things we could do, but a limited time in which to do them, so we had to decide how much we thought we could handle and what we wanted to tackle first. Similarly, &quot;Dark Awakening&quot; gave me a number of routes to take, though they all led to the same place in the end. &quot;Keep on the Shadowfell&quot; let the rails show a little too clearly.Proactive bad guys. The bad guy should be an active force in the game world. In RPGs as in fiction, it's usually the villain who drives the plot. So make sure the villain is out there doing things, changing things, messing with the PCs.&quot;Red Hand of Doom&quot; had this in spades, with the [spoiler]ever-advancing goblin horde[/spoiler]. So as not to keep picking on &quot;Keep on the Shadowfell,&quot; I'll switch to &quot;Bastion of Broken Souls&quot; for the opposite example here; the big villain of that adventure had a serious case of <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrcusOnHisThrone" target="_blank">Orcus On His Throne</a>. He just sat in the Bastion waiting for us to come to him.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 5108478, member: 58197"] Further thoughts: [B]Don't get too linear.[/B] Now, obviously there's a conflict here. The more possible branches your adventure plot contains, the more of those branches will necessarily go unexplored, meaning you're doing more development work for less return. So obviously you can't get [I]too[/I] branch-y. The story does have to get from A to B in the end. But do offer [I]some[/I] branches. The players need decision points and meaningful choices... or at least they need to feel that they have them. "Red Hand of Doom" had a clever approach to this, with a number of places we [I]could[/I] go and things we [I]could [/I]do, but a limited time in which to do them, so we had to decide how much we thought we could handle and what we wanted to tackle first. Similarly, "Dark Awakening" gave me a number of routes to take, though they all led to the same place in the end. "Keep on the Shadowfell" let the rails show a little too clearly. [B]Proactive bad guys.[/B] The bad guy should be an active force in the game world. In RPGs as in fiction, it's usually the villain who drives the plot. So make sure the villain is out there doing things, changing things, messing with the PCs. "Red Hand of Doom" had this in spades, with the [spoiler]ever-advancing goblin horde[/spoiler]. So as not to keep picking on "Keep on the Shadowfell," I'll switch to "Bastion of Broken Souls" for the opposite example here; the big villain of that adventure had a serious case of [URL="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrcusOnHisThrone"]Orcus On His Throne[/URL]. He just sat in the Bastion waiting for us to come to him. [/QUOTE]

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