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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 6247714" data-attributes="member: 8835">welcome to the forums.Personally, my methodology is a bit like this:Determine the PCs current location/activity/goalsThis might be for the 1st adventure where I decide the location, or a subsequent adventure where I pick up where they left off either way.  Where's the game going to start, what goals did the PCs have?  I need to know that to decide what happens next.Determine an opportunity or prior action consequence to setupIf the PCs wanted to investigate the mayor, then that's the opportunity I want to setup.  If the last adventure, the PCs did something bad, then sending in cops to chase them is what happens next.  This step is basically choosing the hook I'm going to develop.  For my group, we all agree to bite the plot hook, but the GM has to provide a decent/plausible hook the party would believably bite at. For other groups, they might prefer more choices, but the process of consideration for this step is going to help you build better plot hooks because you built from what you know about the PCs, and didn't just decide to throw in a quest for some random princess.Build up places/NPCs for the adventure, based on the chosen hookThe PCs are generally driving this.  They need information, so they are going to go to places/people to get that info.  Then they are going to make their attempt to achieve their goal, so I'll need people and places to act as barriers to that.  I'd rather work from decent diagrams of places, and definitions of NPCs than have detailed flowcharts and time lines.  I can move the people to the places they are needed as appropriate based on what the PCs actually do, and how the NPCs would respond.At this point, I'm usually good to go to run a 4-6 hour adventure.  To me, TV can tell a whole story in an hour.  D&D takes a bit longer, but brevity is still king.  I plan for about 6 major encounters or so to get the job done, with the PCs toasting their success (or not) at the end of that game session.</blockquote>

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