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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kiznit" data-source="post: 4217206" data-attributes="member: 3994">A good approach to engaging one-shot adventures seems to be to put together 3 to 5 encounters and have them follow a tight-to-loose-back-to-tight format in terms of railroaded linearity. You start with a solid well-defined starting set-piece - action-packed, we assume, since we're in the pulp genre here - that leaves the PCs with a clear goal to achieve but a little more vaguely-defined variety of options as to how to achieve it, just enough rope to give the players room to look at their character resources and decide how to go about it.Then one or two encounters that are either optional or have a reasonably open way to approach, which reveals something that is specific enough to lead the party towards its specific goal, which would close the adventure with a once-again tightly-defined end encounter, hopefully with an exciting twist or two, and resolution.Following this line of reasoning, it makes sense to map out the first and last encounters before filling in the middle stuff, since the middle stuff is going to be the most optional.So, Step 3c:First Encounter - Nazi agents invade the museum! Let's say our treasure hunter has recently returned from Shanghai with a maguffin (scrappy child sidekick in tow as well) and has contributed it to the Museum, and our curator makes a connection to some older mystery, some sinister force waiting to be unearthed in some distant part of the world, which might explain why he brings in the Swan and the Shaman in as well-traveled consultants.That's when the agents, clearly already well on the way to unearthing that very sinister force and needing the maguffin for some purpose to help with that, swoop in in force and steal it. Somehow the stealing needs to take place outside of the hero's control, but allow the heroes room to fend them off, maybe protect the professor (the agents may try to steal him first or kill him since he may know enough to follow/take the place of the maguffin). This provides the goal - Stop the agents from using the maguffin to unleash horrible power.Last Encounter - Deep in a lost valley, on the very verge of the Hollow Earth itself, Ancient African ruins give way to some sinister secrets from Atlantis itself. Baron von Horbringer is looking to activate the colossus/unearth the scion/open the cardinal gate/whichever, and needs the maguffin to do it.Hmm, already this is sounding a little too cliched and obvious, but at least we're getting stuff down on paper. What if we flip things on their head, and figure out a way to reverse what's going on, or change the set pieces around. What if things start at the Chinese dig site, among the ruins, with all the action that swinging from vines and climbing great stone walls can bring, and somehow ends up at the very museum of the curator (with a trip through the Lost Valley and/or air piracy somewhere along the way) or in the mausoleum and subcaverns thereof? What if instead of some small maguffin being the key to the great heavy half-buried Object of Doom, the maguffin is something massive and overwhelming and is the missing link to some incredibly dangerous but totally innocuous tiny object of Power?There may be much more potential for plot twists and PC revelations if we go that kind of route.This bears more brainstorming.</blockquote>

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