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Message: <blockquote data-quote="simmo" data-source="post: 1096347" data-attributes="member: 9744">At GenCon the editors for Dungeon magazine gave a seminar on how to write adventures for the magazine and I've been using their process since then. If I remember correctly the steps to creating an adventure are as follows:1. villain, the main bad guy that the PCs fight at the end2. agenda, all good villains have a plan - something that the PCs are supposed to thwart3. lackeys, these are the lesser bad guys that the PCs interact with earlier in the adventure. Often it's good to flesh them out quite a bit as the PCs interact more with them than the main villain. They can also be good for injecting a bit of comic relief.4. lair, where are the adventures going to take place? These are the places that the PCs encounter the villains, gather clues and find treasure etc5. dungeon logic, whether it's a haunted castle, Abyssal tower perched on the edge of a bottemless ravine, sunken spelljamming vessel or other location - the creatures, traps and other things in each location should be planned with some common sense.For example:Villain - Merchant SorcererAgenda - secretly hunt mermaids for use in creating addictive potionsLackeys - Captain of shipping fleet and cleric of Sea deity.Lair - Dock warehouse, temple dungeon and Mansion belonging to Merchant SorcererDungeon Logic - The dock warehouse has secret doors leader to an underwater prison. The temple dungeon has tunnels leading to the docs and the graveyard is used to get rid of the bodies. The merchant sorcerer's house has several water filled rooms to restrict access to parts of the house.Plot synopsis: The fishermen of a village have been turned against their mermaid neighbours by the cleric of a Sea deity. The fishermen blame them for the drop in number of fish caught and have begun to trap mermaids in their nets. The captain of the shipping fleet has told his men that the mermaids will be held hostage until the ship stocks have been replenished, but is secretly handing them over to the merchant sorcerer. The sorcerer uses the mermaids to create potions that give wondrous dreams of travelling underwater, but the potions are also addictive. The cleric gets rid of the bodies and uses the tunnels under the village to transport them.I often have long term story-arcs and involved plots with lots of background information that are revealed slowly over the course of a campaign. But experience with my current group has shown that the players are more interested in dealing with immediate issues (i.e. short adventures) than convoluted plots that take months to unravel. Thanks,Simson</blockquote>

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