How long to write an adventure for publication?

[Bullgrit]

I found this and thought it was interesting:

It took about a week to write B2. The G series I write when taking a break after finishing the MM, so the three were written in a pariod of about a month. Then I did the D series between finishing the PBG and beginning the DMG, about six weeks.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/76849-gary-gygax-q-part-vi-5.html#post1440654

A week to write a module? I wonder if this was a 40-hour week, or an hour or two when I can over a week.

Bullgrit

 

[Mark CMG]

How long to write an adventure for publication?

Don't gauge by my progress . . .

 

[Niccodaemus]

I found this and thought it was interesting:http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/76849-gary-gygax-q-part-vi-5.html#post1440654

A week to write a module? I wonder if this was a 40-hour week, or an hour or two when I can over a week.

Bullgrit

I would imagine this was an entire week. Writing for publication is not an easy task. First comes the ideas, then the maps, text, statted monsters, all the i's dotted the t's crossed. I have a hard time writing an adventure Ii'm happy with in under 20 hours, and it is nowhere near ready for publication.

 

[delericho]

A week to write a module? I wonder if this was a 40-hour week, or an hour or two when I can over a week.

Either Gygax was absurdly prolific, or he's skipping a few steps. It's possible, for example, that when he says he wrote it in a week, he means the first draft, and potentially minus the maps and other associated material.

Simply put, I don't believe that B2, as I have it on my shelves, was basically done, start to finish, in a week. Well, unless they pulled 80+ hour weeks... but that's not conducive to good creative work.

 

[RangerWickett]

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written in three days.

 

[RangerWickett]

The latest ZEITGEIST adventure, by contrast, took me two months to write (on the side while having another job).

 

[IronWolf]

The latest ZEITGEIST adventure, by contrast, took me two months to write (on the side while having another job).

To write or from start to final layout?

 

[pming]

Hiya.

Honestly? To write B2 into a format that would be able to be run at a home game...10 hours, tops. To then flesh it out with more stuff that you (the writer) would have just ad-libbed and filled in as you played...probably two or three times that. So, yeah, call it 40 hours over a 7 day period.

What people are forgetting is that earlier "adventure modules" had *stuff* in them. The stuff that made a DM's life easy. You know, encounter charts, maps, a *quick* background, and a handful of bare-bones NPC's who were behind/involved directly. In those days, the major NPC BBEG of a module *might* have a half-page dedicated to him (that includes combat stats, spells, equipment, etc.). Compare that with todays adventures where you have, at most, two or three 4 to 8 room 'locations' and two or three key NPC's...each with a full write up usually taking an entire page or two...and then, for some gods-forsaken reason, pages and pages and pages of "story crap" that all fits together...and you have a recipe for multi-week creation. The maps that you see in B2 probably took all of a day to draw, key and finalize. The maps in something 'nowadays'...days and days, I'd imagine.

Anyway, the bottom line...modules in the good old days were adventures that DM's had written for their home games. They were loose, quick and packed with tid-bits for DM's to use, ignore or build on...*as the game was played*. The new stuff lately (post-2e, basically), seems to be written as if it was some kind of "creative endevour with artistic focus"; more like they are meant to be used as-is...and if you try and use it as if you would use an older 1e style adventure, well, lets just say the DM is in for a whole new world of hurt.

EDIT: I just re-read my post...I'm not trying to come accross as condescending to the 'new-age' stuff, honestly. I guess the expectation of what a 'module' is supposed to be used for is quite different now than it used to be. The bottom line is that comming up with a few plot lines, a story arc and a few sub-plots...is all dirt simple, easy, and usually better left up to an individual DM. What takes time? Drawing a 6-level tower with 3 levels of dungeons, filling it with traps, tricks, treasures and monsters, and writing up a couple of random encounter tables. Thats where the time-sink comes in. Story? Plots? Easy. A story and couple of plots as a backdrop to a tower with a 3-level dungeon? Really easy.

[Story Time Test]
Tower of Bones
"A century ago the mad necromancer Thrumlak raised an army of undead. He set them to build his abode from which he could carry out subjugation of the surrounding countryside. He did this in record time, as undead need to sleep or rest. Thurmlak, is is surmised, also utilized the aid of a fanatical follower named Breezbol, a half-orc warrior-priest. Breezbol had found the legendary Spade of Excavation in his previous adventures, but didn't know its value. Thrumlak showed him, and with Breezbol's help added to the tireless efforts of the undead, the complex was finished quickly. Thrumlak secreted his most valuable treasures within the dungeons, and carried out vile experiments. Eventually, activity around the Tower of Bones, as it was nicknamed, died down. It has been over 6 years since anyone has heard or seen Thrumlak or his half-orc lacky. And the nearby townsfolk are happy for it.

The mayor of Thistlethorp needs to quickly re-build the towns rampart and moat to protect it against the undead the still roam the land, years after Thrumlak as last seen. He has an offer for the PC's; if they venture into the tower and ascertain weather or not Thrumlak still lives, he will pay them handsomly. If they recover the Space of Excavation, and use it to rebuild the towns defenses, he will pay them more and they can obviously keep the spade...or sell it to the town, as they see fit."

---Just a test to see how much time it would take for me to get a base story down for something. Ten minutes. There are a lot of unanswered questions in the above story; where is it all? What did Thrumlak do to 'subjugate' the surrounding countryside? What did he do with his 'army'? What actually *did* happen to Thrumlak and Beezbol? ...those aren't, IMHO, "flaws" in the story; those are bonuses. This allowes individual DM's to fill in the gaps with their own campaigns flavor. In short, a DM gets to add in his/her own spices, he/she gets to be creative and really get into a module and make it their own. With the newer style adventures...the DM has to take stuff out usually. ---

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[steeldragons]

To write or from start to final layout?

Exactly what I was wondering.

Also, what kind of "adventure" are we talking about here? 8 pages? 16? 32?

I can sit down and in a single afternoon/couple of hours write an "adventure." Pick a storyline, a goal, a few story-relevant encounters, a few more non-story related encounters for fun/flavor, sketch out a map of the adventure area. Poof. Done. Is it ready for publication? No. Certainly not. But it would be playable.

One of my jobs is layout editor for a magazien that publishes every other month. Over the years it has run the gamut from 32 to 64 pages and back again. The past year or two, it has been fairly stable at 32 pages.

All told, laying out the magazine takes me about a "week". That is, a few hours a few days...probably not totally any more than 20 or 25 hours. That is JUST for layout and photo/image formatting.

There are are at least 2 rounds of editing/copy-editing/proofreading. So I'll wager, probably 10-15 hours for that...again, completely dependent on the length/amount of material that has to be read/edited.

Now, granted, in a published module, you don't have to worry about fitting in "advertising/-sers" and your amount of art, most likely, is significantly less than a magazine with 12-15 articles/stories and various recurrring columns.

That said, art is (imho) a necessary (and oftentimes underutilized) consideration for published modules. Even if it is just getting a decent/evocative cover image and a few black n' whites for a couple of interior scenes and/or NPCs. And, of course, at least one map (probably 2 or 3). So acquiring that, even with a devoted artist/cartographer/art staff takes time. You are easily looking at a week, maybe two, for a couple of maps, a cover (and, hopefully, a small back cover slice like the old TSR modules...just cuz I think it's cool to highlight an additional possible scene within the adventure) and a few (let's say even, only, 4!) black n' whites.

Working on an assumed 16 pages (including the exterior and interior covers, so only 12 pages of actual adventure text)...Overall length to prepare an adventure, completely, for publication, I am going to estimate (again, completely dependent on the length of the text)...you would need, to put/pull all of that together: written, edited, laid out, maps and art...in a decent/acceptable to you (the author/publisher) file to send off to a printer...a solid month worth of 20-ish hour weeks. Perhaps less if this is a primary "job"/40 hour per week scenario.

Of course, it also goes to how much of a perfectionist and/or nit-picker you are...how often you make (or just plain want) changes before the final file is done. One could spend an entire month with all of the elements just futzing around...That's why you need a GOOOOD layout editor to just pull it all together and know when to say "I think we're done."

Just my two publishing coppers.
--Steel Dragons

 

[delericho]

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written in three days.

Well, sort of. According to wikipedia (and yes, I know...) it was 3 days for the first draft, then a complete rewrite in 3-6 days, followed by about 4 weeks of polishing.

Which is much more realistic. Getting from 0% to 90% done generally only takes about 10% of the total time...