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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psychotic Jim" data-source="post: 5196216" data-attributes="member: 547">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: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-gallery-cartography-miniatures-painting/73423-phineass-dungeon-maps-o-week-100-maps.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/art-gallery-cartography-miniatures-painting/73423-phineass-dungeon-maps-o-week-100-maps.html</a>  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 <a href="http://www.thinkbabynames.com" target="_blank">Baby Names | Name Meanings | Baby Boy Names, Baby Girl Names</a>  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.</blockquote>

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