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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 5254323" data-attributes="member: 63">Skyscraper, I prefer a mix of the two ideas. For the longest time, Piratecat has been an advocate of the narrow-wide-narrow design for adventures. You prepare an adventure by saying, "This is where I want to start," and "This is where I want to end," and then, "Here are a bunch of things that are going on in the middle." The middle can happen in any order, but the rough shape of the ending is not going to change much. When I worked up the initial adventure outline for War of the Burning Sky, I tried to keep that structure in mind. For instance, the third adventure goes:[sblock]Beginning1. PCs approach the town of Seaquen, which is accepting refugees fleeing the 'evil empire.' The PCs are attacked by witches in the swamp, and probably rescue a prisoner the witches have taken captive.2. The PCs reach the town, and the NPC they rescued tries to nudge them to get involved with the fledgling Resistance being started up to fight back against the empire.Ending9. The PCs have a chance to thwart an assassination attempt, and in its aftermath (whether they succeed or fail) they get enough clues to figure out where the villains' base is.10. The PCs go to the flooded ruins at the edge of town, and stop the villains before the hurricane they're conjuring destroys the nascent Resistance.[/sblock] So we know pretty much how things are going to end, but the ultimate shape of things in the adventure's aftermath depend on what else the PCs accomplish in the meanwhile. For instance, they can:[sblock]3. Figure out that the NPC they rescued is a spy.4. Help unite factions of the Resistance by resolving a religious dispute.5. Earn the trust of the factions by stopping some criminals in town.6. Track down and kill a succubus summoned by the villains, who is wreaking all manner of trouble with her charms and illusions.7. Get on the good side of representatives from nearby nations who might ally with the Resistance.8. Bargain with a dragon in the swamp, returning its stolen egg in exchange for use of its lyre of building, which will help create housing for all the refugees.[/sblock]The middle is a sandbox, with different mini-adventure and sub-goals that interconnect in a web that is sturdy enough to stay up even if the PCs start going off in wildly unexpected directions. Even if the PCs screw up in the middle, they still get a chance to thump the bad guys great at the end, though they won't necessarily end up in as great a place. (And if the players miss the cues and are about to fail utterly, we include suggestions for how to steer them on the right course without it looking like too much of a railroad.) The new Campaign SagaE.N. Publishing is working on another campaign saga, and I assure you the last thing I want is to make 12 adventures that are each just a line of encounters that go in a row. Adventure 1's climax will point to adventure 2's beginning, but the in between will be filled with wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.With luck, we can even attract Russ's group 2 from above. Heck, I only ever ran 1 and a half Dungeon adventures, but I subscribed for a long while because I liked the inspiration. I stole the basic idea of Nic Logue's "Chimes at Midnight" trilogy set in Sharn, tore out the guts, and tweaked it for my own players, and I was still glad for the module because it was a genuinely compelling idea.That's what I hope to work on: adventures that are great if you run them as is when you don't have free time to make you own, but which are cool enough to make GMs who do have the time to tinker still want to take a crack at them.</blockquote>

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