Tools to help writing adventures?

[Sean-Khan]

Hiya,
I'm trying to find tools or guides that help in writing adventures; Stories are usually built using one of a few (one?) different formulas, with introductory part, building tension, setback, climax & resolving elements, or something close to that. If there would be a tool that would suggest different elements for these phases, it would be even better. I want to have control in what is created, I generally just want to find tools to inspire and help my imagination, and possibly help automate boring/difficult parts (building maps & giving hints to players are things that often take awfully lot of time from me when creating adventures).

So, is there any good resources online (or elsewhere) that help you put together your adventures? Right now I'm starting a Cyberpunk game, but I also actively GM a 4E game and possibly some others too, so I'm interested in different kinds of tools.

 

[the Jester]

Well, there's shamelessly stealing from books, stories, plays, movies and tv, but that may not be entirely what you mean.

I also use stuff in the news as inspiration.

However, I don't structure stories per se for my game. The story is what happened after the pcs interacted with the situation, so it may not always have that kind of dramatic structure.

 

[Haxor295]

to be honest, browsing this site, clicking on EVERY interesting link has done me very well, in terms of writing encounters. i advise you not to write a full on story, i learned the hard way that your players will just as likely NOT do what you had written, then to actually do it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1) As stated above, you can get inspiration from all kinds of sources: stories & novels, mythology, music, pop culture, art and so forth. Just keep your eyes and ears open.

2) There are all kinds of threads here about plot ideas for encounters, story arcs and campaigns- look in my sig and you'll see a link to one.

3) For more formalized help, you might want to check out magazines targeted at the writing profession. Those are often chock full of ideas about character development, avoiding cliches, pacing and so forth. In a sense, they're like taking a course in creative writing without going to school.

4) There are all kinds of applications that can help you draw maps of dungeons, buildings, countries, or even whole worlds, and ENWorld has a forum devoted to Software. There are also numerous ads for those products that pop up from time to time. In fact, if you want to invest in it, there is even screenplay/scriptwriting software ranging from free to "How much money do you have?"

 

[Khairn]

Wolfgang Bauer of Kobold Quaterly and Open Design fame has published 2 guides for Game Designing that are excellent. Y can buy a hard copy or pdf HERE.

Hope that helps.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

I can't point to any formalized guides of writing adventures. But, I do agree that if you can save time by drawing upon other sources, do it! Case in point, I find that I can get a lot from my players from their character backgrounds/goals and the actions they take in game. It can save some time by getting them to contribute to the campaign and deciding where it goes.

As for maps, I'm with you. I don't like coming up with them myself. That's why I always try to pillage other sources for basic layouts at least. Todd Gamble's Cartographica (Green Ronin, 2003) is an excellent commercial resource if you can find it. There was a set of "Dungeon a week" map downloads done here on ENWorld by a guy named Phineas. Here's an old link- check the final page for an archived collection: http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-ga...23-phineass-dungeon-maps-o-week-100-maps.html

As for hints, I've tended to find it less laborious if the hints also contribute to the setting and atmosphere/story of the game. You can find a lot of in character sounding hints by drawing from philosophical texts and other literature. For example, one time I made some hints from a few passages out of the Tao Te Ching and put them into the ancient ruins of an ancestral race of elves. It provided an exotic feel to the wisdom of the ancients while providing several covert hints to the players.

On another note, adventure and standalone premade adventures can be good source fodder for looting individual encounters, maps, and other inspiration. I find using adventure paths in the order presented and whole cloth usually too restrictive, but recently a new idea struck my fancy. Building your own “adventure path” from unrelated adventures (both premade and homebrew) seems to have gotten my fancy lately.

For example, one idea I had was using the first module of Paizo’s Second Darkness to lead into my own campaign on falling comets and general Beyond the Stars weirdness. For example, I’m thinking about linking it with Malhavoc Press’ “When the Sky Falls”, “Hyperconscious”, and related modules. I haven’t tried this technique extensively. However, I suspect that “building your own adventure path” by building the links yourself and rounding them out with your own material may let you get the best of both worlds- the flexibility of home-brewing while saving time and getting inspiration from premade adventures.

Finally, if you’re like me, you have trouble coming up with character names. On this subforum there’s stickied thread for naming resources (if you haven’t seen it already). I find Baby Names | Name Meanings | Baby Boy Names, Baby Girl Names to be a particularly valuable resource. It allows you to type in words for either sex, and it will give you a list of associated names.

 

[Insight]

Please be very careful about using fiction writing magazines and websites to help your adventure writing. These sources are designed for people who are generally writing closed-ended stories (pretty much any sort of fiction is closed-ended), as opposed to the assumed open-ended nature of an RPG adventure.

Novels and other forms of fiction are necessarily "railroad"-y, which may be why the frustrated or aspiring novelist / DM has a hard time avoiding railroading his players. Novel writing and adventure writing are wholly separate exercises and should be conflated very rarely.

This is not to say that you should completely avoid fiction writing resources. There are plenty of good articles about developing characters, creating and developing concepts, and so forth. I would try to avoid too many articles regarding plot and definitely avoid anything about resolutions/third act stuff. This is the part of the adventure that is up to the players to resolve.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

Found some more useful resources.

First of all, the Expeditious Retreat Press has a series of world-building books (mostly useful for 3.x, although some of the fluff and advice might be useful for other editions) called a Magical Society, focusing on making a "realistic" fantasy world. Examples include A Magical Medieval Society and A Magical Society: Silk Road.

For maps, this discussion on rpg.net has links to several map galleries: Where to get generic floor plans.... - RPGnet Forums

There's a couple of random inn/tavern generators here (the first one will include floor plans):
Random Inn/Tavern Generator
Random Tavern Generator

This site has a number of different tools and random generators (including mercenary jobs, demiplanes, and towns). There's also a 3e bank of premade stat blocks and a random treasure generator for 3e
Home | DM Tools: No Prep Time, No Problem!


If you play Pathfinder (or maybe 3e), these links might be useful for statting up characters:
Pathfinder « Dingles Games (semi-random/interactive npc generator, includes monsters as base races as well as classes; there is also a 3.5 npc and monster generator here)

Monster Advancement Generator (monster advancement generator, includes templates and advancing by HD)

theGM.org - Home to Perram's Spellbook Perram's spellbook (randomly generate or choose spells in your spellbook)

 

[Hand of Evil]

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[Sean-Khan]

Thanks for suggestions everyone! I checked the forum a few times after posting this and then left the mailing reminder to let me know about replies, but for some reason I got no mails...

I've always been running more or less sandbox -type games, and it seems like my players want more or less railroaded games; In my current 4E/Ptolus game, when I've left things open for my players, they don't have too much interest to dig out things and if something doesn't happen soon, they decide to go delving in the dungeons below the city.

I want to be ready for situations where player(s) do something unexpected, but I've come to the conclusion that having a premade plot is much easier way to go. I want to minimize my work as GM and want to be advance fast and therefore I've chosen Savage worlds as my system - I still like solid rules and use of miniatures.

I'll check through all your links and suggestion with time. Thanks!