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Zoeb posted:How would people feel about a thread about the process of writing and planning adventures? Or is that already a thread? well i didn't see it so gently caress it i'll post it. There's setting, and there's system. Since i started doing threads i have a setting creation process that goes very roughly like this:
So, ok, there's a player who wants to be a dragonfolk. What makes them different from D&D or whatever? Tch, traditionally matriarchal society is what I'm gonna start out with. I don't actually know what D&D dragonfolk are like, but we'll start with that. And the breath attacks don't match scale color or anything rudimentary. Why? Uh, they get it from uh... well in the beginning they didn't ofc, until they got it from their ancestors. In this river there are sometimes huge freshwater sharks. This forest is giant ferns. This knife has mysterious etchings, who could say how it came to be in the possession of an old man like him? Things here can be more dangerous than they seem. I don't want kobolds to be fully dweebs, so they're not going to be. Lesse, in-system character size doesn't mean anything except what size door you can physically fit thru and what size weapons you can hold. Gender & race are aesthetic choices that also mean nothing mechanically. Kobolds are going to be like basal synapsids but we'll split the dif they are gonna have fur and scales and claws. Sometimes they show up, but usually not majorly. The second is to go back and interrogate the setting but also specific situations that occur. But why are kobolds not usually a big deal? Where do they come from? How do they live? What is their society like? These things interacting would explain why they're not usually a big deal, and why one that is a big deal could be odd, kind of mysterious, even suspicious. Dangerous. Because we already know what kobolds are like -- physically could be confused for a dog in some situations -- this is a good setup for the "vindication" curveball way back when Zlata first ran into the castaways. In order to do this the way I want Sevan will need to have a messed up face like Lemon does. This... is not great in retrospect. This is now a thread that has idk like 4 different women who gained the trait of "got her face kicked in" at some point. That's pretty hosed up. In fact this whole story of castaways being terrified of her and keeping her away from her stuff and all this really can easily come across pretty bad. Didn't do a super great job of conveying how things went down and what the situation is and I'm going to have to figure out how to fix this. Plenty of women in this are badass fighters but this is just p bad to have them get super hosed up all the time. Gotta rectify the way this is screen . The secret third thing is that I have a bunch of these running in the same setting at the same time. This forces a dynamicism because if one group is messing around doing nothing, the setting itself still advances. The castaways rip each other apart until someone can come along and save them. Goons accidentally release an ancient evil. Helmut's last desire is finally achieved and his spirit can move on. The rusted iris valve finally opens, revealing incredible riches and starting a deadly chain of events. I could do all these myself, but why bother when the players are already building half of everything for me just by playing? It doesn't always work, but if you don't have a gimmick like this you should be certain to keep things alive even if the PCs are not actively looking at them, imo. Part of it being even a little successful is trying to do some more that can help suspend disbelief. -- Another thing I try and do is make sure the setting is agnostic enough to fit into or at least be interpolated into any system the players are interested in. That's kinda the point. How different is a cyberpunk ripperdoc from a graduate from the college of chirurgeons? Not any different at all. By system what I mean is mechanics of actually playing. You have these prepped for you in a lot of cases, which can make things easier or harder tbh. You can also roll your own which is what I ended up doing. You roll d20s in the number of skills you can bring to bear on a problem, and it's either vs some other char's roll, or it's against a number I made up. Ties default to the players or in rare cases cancel each other. 1 is crit fail and something insanely bad happens, 20 is crit and something insanely good happens. It started off where players literally make up whatever they please, with the constraint that you pick like 3 skills and pick a class depending on how much magic proficiency you have, but this was clunky and kinda lovely. Magic proficiency was more like how much narrative control you have and not how many spell slots, you could choose to be a wizard with 3hp and levitate across the chasm, or you could be a bard with 4hp and need a better roll to get across, or be a thief with 5hp and have to abide the die when you try to swing across. Also every crit of every kind still happens, across every dice that rolls, even if you overall succeed. Over time this evolved into the basic concept that you still literally make up your character and their skills from scratch any way you decide, start with 3 skills. Hp is 2 + your level + each rank of a "fighter's" skill. When you get any skill to 5 it's capped and you get a capstone quest that gives you some rad and meaningful trait. If you have a magic skill you can roll a spell into some kind of book/staff/icon and have it activate later. Damage of weapons / number of spells in a tome is controlled by the value of it. A bunch of other stuff, there's mundane books that do things, other crap about armors and tools and stuff, but that's kinda what's working now. Honestly don't have a great idea of how to do systems and it's been rocky or fallen flat at times. It's also been loving amazing, so it does at least kind of work. Some other system you're going to have to mod to make fit in many settings, i think. -- tl;dr: the system fits into and gets bolted onto the setting, not the other way around. Usually the players provide the who when how, you provide the where what why. It's give and take and nobody does their side only, and you can cultivate things as if they were a garden, instead of building it all out at once. what do you think, is this fully bullshit or any merit or what? What's an alternate way? Advice or criticism?
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Oct 16, 2023 08:55
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Why thank you for posting this and making a good OP! I'll see if I can find examples of my notes and prep work, scan them and post them later. One thing I frequently use for more "story oriented" games are Icebergs, an idea I got from City of Mist, and flow charts. You probably already know what a flow chart is. Each node on the flow chart is a different scene and each scene could have a multitude of outcomes but one thing needs to happen in that scene to unlock something in a future scene. Planning this helps avoid situations where players fail an investigation or stealth or perception role and then the adventure stops in its tracks. You can't account for every possibility but where players do something novel, this also gives you tools to improvise. Icebergs are similar in that at the bottom of the iceberg is the solution to the mystery and then you work backwards building scenes in reverse until you get to the tip of the iceberg which is the hook. For a campaign, an iceberg can be made of icebergs, mysteries that lead to other other mysteries. The final model I have been doing more lately is the theme park, which is good for more exploration and location focused adventures. I build adventure locations and an overland hexgrid and the pcs can loot these places in any order. I put generic "bogeys" in the adventure sites and when we get closer to when the PCs get there I decide what specific enemy or stat block is in that location. Recycle maps of locations that they don't visit. Another tip is to minimize actually reading rules during a session to keep the game moving. I got that from the youtuber Dungeon Craft. Make poo poo up if you can't remember the exact range of magic missile. It's also why I prefer rules light or rules medium system rather than things that rely on builds. Things like OSR or Cypher rather than Pathfinder 2e or 5e. Get to be pretty good but not necessarily a master of the rules and failing that just master the core mechanic during prep.
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Oct 17, 2023 02:01
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One thing that really changed my view of planning adventures as a GM was Fronts from Dungeon World, which go by various names in various games. Basically, a front is a macro threat. (In LotR, the fronts might be Saruman, Orc Hordes, Corruption of Denethor, weakening of the elves, etc.) There can be, say, five or so active at a single time and they might or might not be related. Each front has a description, probably a leader and some key henchmen, definitely some stakes (whether PC-specific, party-wide, and/or larger scale), and maybe about three Dangers (things that the Front is trying to do, what will happen if the Danger succeeds, and a short list of actions that the Front will take to manifest the Danger). So, for example, one of your fronts might be Orez Ragus (sue me, I'm drinking a Coke right now) the necromancer. He wants to gain power to overthrow one of the BBEGs in the campaign world, possibly ascending to the level of a demigod or the like. He has a couple of more powerful free-willed undead serving or working with him, a familiar, and some groups of zombies and skeletons. One of his Dangers (he has two plans to gain objects of power and one to boost his power once he has the two artifacts -- or through a dangerous ritual if the PCs foil his shopping trip) is "Acquire the Ebon Amulet," an artifact that grants power over souls that died at night. To do this, he will:
If the PCs prioritize stopping Orez Ragus, then good for them, they've foiled or delayed one of the Dangers (or all of them if they somehow neutralize him, but he's a wily one). If they don't, then you write a new Danger ( or a new Front, if the revealed/instantiated threat is big enough) and the PCs can get enmeshed in that. Now, as to writing the adventures as opposed to planning them, that's a bit harder, especially as PbtA systems recommend playing fast and loose with prep and that's a whole other discussion; the fact of the matter is that you can't wing it nearly as easily with 5e, for example. But if your PCs are trying to stop The Blighted One from poisoning the village of Ulikram's water supply, then maybe they notice the magic chain in the shrine, or the pale lady who's skulking around and only seen at night, etc. -- mixing in elements from Dangers from the same Front or elements from a different Front to show that the world is still moving regardless of what the PCs are doing.
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Oct 18, 2023 22:12
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Here's my notes for tomorrows session so far. I still need to make a map and some stat blocks. I was going to lay out my grid board and throw dice at it to build a dungeon. Thanks to the GM advice thread for giving me an opener to build on. I try to keep as many of my notes on paper as I can because I get distracted by technology.      
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Oct 22, 2023 04:41
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I'm a novice at writing adventures and just know I'm gonna find this thread useful. Thanks for making it!!
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Oct 22, 2023 08:17
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I’m reading through Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master right now and enjoying it. Lots of great pointers, and I’m happy to be lazy. Also helps that the book isn’t a collection of advice but a specific process, so it makes GMing a lot less scary.
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Oct 22, 2023 15:20
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Fronts is a good one, i ended up using fronts all the time without realizing they even have a name. One group's front might be another's best pal tho. I tend to at least try and make sure npcs have some sort of coherent goal and the pcs can decide if they want to be for or against or ignore it (they usually ignore it).
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Nov 1, 2023 20:07
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I like fronts, but I've sometimes struggled to use them when dealing with competing NPC factions. In my last campaign, I felt like I basically turned each faction into its own separate questline that would boil over if left unattended, rather than an interrelated set of conflicts that affected each other in an organic and sometimes unpredictable way. Does anyone have experience with Mausritter and its "goal progression" system for NPC factions? It has mechanics for how NPC factions can affect each others' goals and target each others' resources, which sounds like what I want. But if anyone has experience running it (or other ways they approach factions interacting with each other), I'd love some insight.
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Nov 2, 2023 04:58
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I usually try to get a group to join a front and actually play it out. If that fails stack up the dice according to the advantages of each side and roll them against each other. If I don't feel like going through that I'll simplify it down to a set target value and just roll it. Sometimes things are going to be inevitable and are going to happen when they're going to happen, so  All my region maps are 1 month of normal travel to get across, and I also usually track things at monthly resolution to get em progressed. A front is basically a campaign i guess, and ex. my traveller game is a front in the same setting as everything else. Makes it kinda weird because time is different but it's not so far off that it matters, just recombobulate what a parsec actually is compared to the other kinds of settings and let individual systems be as malleable as needed. This whole thing could be crammed into Night City or stretched into an arm of the milky way, I just gotta fiddle with the knobs to keep things relatively correct. Zlata is a front in a sense, but she's also an asset of a front -- her aunt is a front and she's an asset in her king's agenda. Getting too fine grained all the time every time has not really paid off well, and I mostly up the resolution if PCs are there messing around. "Pruning the tree" is another way of thinking about "each block lifts the other," imo. I went in with an empty field and put down one block, and then built basically all the other campaigns from this single start. Or "crystals coming out of solution" is another way to describe progression, except you don't want some supersaturated brick of poo poo slogging out -- that's writing a book. Where the crystal faces interact is this kinda cleavage plane where things can get interesting, and having PCs come in to break things up or disrupt the way the crystal grows is basically the game. When I had some goons try to go get juice for anka I would arbitrarily add in events and just "stuff" depending on the situation and how things were going, and never bothered building it into an actual questline or anything. Nothing like if this happens > this happens > this happens. It's about what the goal is for any particular character and what they have at their disposal, so if they don't have what they need to get the goal, they will try to get what will move them closer to it. If a branch of the story is starting to look lovely, lop it off and let new buds form. I'm coming around to more harsh pruning is sometimes required. -- Who am I & what do I want? What do I have and how will I use it to get what I want?
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Nov 2, 2023 07:03
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What would you guys suggest as some good adventure hooks for the area around a idyllic cozy starter village that don't seem too intense, high stakes or high stakes?
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Nov 29, 2023 08:36
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Fey creatures stealing sheep
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Nov 29, 2023 08:45
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Dr Swanson will give you like $40 for escort to the next town over, heard there might be bandits and that doc gear is costly. Yep would fetch a fine price on the black market. Optional twist: "oh no $40 TOTAL, not each, what's not to get?" Lights in the forest at night. Only some nights. And rumor has it the mine has been coming up low yield... might be ghosts (it's not) Something's getting at the pukins and the fences don't work and dogs don't.
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Nov 29, 2023 09:11
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So in my Stellaris themed Stars Without Number game the party has fought their way through some pirates and are about to land their space ship on the fabled ruined library planet of Akashia where somewhere out in the wild is a lost temple where there is a shroud entity, a genie who may or not grant one wish to approaching pilgrims who pass his tests. The villain is The Red Blade, a psychic warrior from a group called the Midnighters who venerate the various shroud covenants such as the Eater of Worlds, The Composer of Strands, The Instrument of Desire, or the Whispers in the Void (no GW lawyers were harmed in the design of the shroud covenants.) He is most associated with the Eater of Worlds. It is very important that he not get his wish. I think I can handle the wilderness adventure, the next one will be dealing with local book themed tribals, the simple and honest Joads who want to keep their land the Galts insist is rightfully theirs, the hedonistic Cauffields who want to kill someone named John Lennon for no reason, and the selfish and mercenary Galts who are seeking the fabled Rearden alloys. The territory has them fighting each other and promising to lead them to the hidden temple if they screw over the other ones or give them what the want in some other way. The temple itself will be a dungeon crawl, but the climax should probably involve them being given a test that takes them back out in to space to look for something. Plot coupons like the dragon balls maybe. Haven't worked that part out.
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Nov 29, 2023 09:55
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trapstar posted:What would you guys suggest as some good adventure hooks for the area around a idyllic cozy starter village that don't seem too intense, high stakes or high stakes? The harvest festival is coming up and all the pumpkins/spices/plates have gone missing. You could just not have the festival but c'mon, that's not really an option now is it?
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Dec 4, 2023 01:08
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trapstar posted:What would you guys suggest as some good adventure hooks for the area around a idyllic cozy starter village that don't seem too intense, high stakes or high stakes? A tribe of non-hostile orcs (or hill barbarians or whatever makes sense for your world, as long as they're brash and rowdy) is coming by for the yearly harvest festival, where they like to engage in tests of strength, skill, and mock combat with the village, which symbolizes the former conflicts both sides engaged in long, long ago, before setting aside their differences. The winning community gets to keep some form of trophy until next year. Maybe the trophy is cool and slightly magical, like it pours a keg of fine ale once every day or something. The orcs have won the last three years in a row. You can devise a bunch of fun festival games and design some over the top personalities for them. Play to the strengths of the PCs a bit, so like if there's a strong fighter, you can have Biter Blackeye, a hairy, musclebound orc with the personality of a pro wrestler, challenge them in the wrestling contest or hay-stuffed-sack combat on a narrow plank above mud. Have an archery contest with Eagle Eye Greentooth the braggart half orc, and a foppish, piss drunk elf that just happened through town and claims to be the greatest archer in three generations. Greased pig catching contests, pie eating, ale chugging, stone throwing, hay bale pitching, rope climbing, all kinds of fun stuff like that. Food, prize pumpkins, kissing booth, cozy poo poo. Tally up which community gets more points and have a little good natured celebration at the end where everyone celebrates and toasts the winners. Maybe they then find goblins stole the trophy when no one was looking. They track it to a newly formed goblin warren nearby via the splotches of spilled ale, only to find the goblins are already passed out drunk in the comically lovely treehouse they built. Finish it with an ambush by an owlbear or two which had come to investigate the goblin carousing. Depending on whether the party made friends with any of the colorful characters in the tribe, maybe they're assisted by them, like Biter considers the fighter his blood brother now. Then next year can have a new game based on that event, like a scavenger hunt or something, or maybe a reenactment of the adventure with bad goblin and owlbear costumes. If you concoct a reason to have the party come back next year and spring that on em, they'll love you.
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Dec 4, 2023 07:01
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SlimGoodbody posted:A tribe of non-hostile orcs (or hill barbarians or whatever makes sense for your world, as long as they're brash and rowdy) is coming by for the yearly harvest festival, where they like to engage in tests of strength, skill, and mock combat with the village, which symbolizes the former conflicts both sides engaged in long, long ago, before setting aside their differences. The winning community gets to keep some form of trophy until next year. Maybe the trophy is cool and slightly magical, like it pours a keg of fine ale once every day or something. The orcs have won the last three years in a row. bbcisdabomb posted:The harvest festival is coming up and all the pumpkins/spices/plates have gone missing. You could just not have the festival but c'mon, that's not really an option now is it? SniperWoreConverse posted:Dr Swanson will give you like $40 for escort to the next town over, heard there might be bandits and that doc gear is costly. Yep would fetch a fine price on the black market. Optional twist: "oh no $40 TOTAL, not each, what's not to get?" Angrymog posted:Fey creatures stealing sheep Wow, these all sound like lots of fun! I'm definitely going to note these down for inspiration!
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Dec 4, 2023 09:13
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SlimGoodbody posted:Maybe they then find goblins stole the trophy when no one was looking. They track it to a newly formed goblin warren nearby via the splotches of spilled ale, only to find the goblins are already passed out drunk in the comically lovely treehouse they built. Finish it with an ambush by an owlbear or two which had come to investigate the goblin carousing. Depending on whether the party made friends with any of the colorful characters in the tribe, maybe they're assisted by them, like Biter considers the fighter his blood brother now. If you can previously establish the goblins (by having a few of them drift into town while they’re casing the joint or whatever) and use an accent you’re terrible with for them, this will be even better. (Idea stolen from a half-remembered old Car Wars supplement about Australians stealing the America’s Cup of Sailing.)
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Dec 4, 2023 10:00
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trapstar posted:What would you guys suggest as some good adventure hooks for the area around a idyllic cozy starter village that don't seem too intense, high stakes or high stakes? In Pathfinder I opened with a tooth fairy kidnapping a kid to harvest his teeth from the comfort of their nest where they could start a litter of tooth fairy babies.
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Dec 4, 2023 16:40
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If you're looking for a starter adventure I really love The Harvest. The final fight probably needs some down-tuning (two imps with 3d6 poison damage save-for-half at the end of a Level 1 adventure?) but the flavor and stakes are just about right. It was in one of the big itch bundles so you might even have it already.
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Dec 5, 2023 01:00
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Now that the players have a spaceship and some options for which spaceport to go to I find myself in a position where I have to plan two parallel adventures. I was however able to benefit greatly from a book called so you want to be a game Master by Justin Alexander which explain the concept of point crawls to be. Even though my game is a science fiction game this book is still very relevant. They've assisted the local security corporation in breaking a pirate fleet and could land on the pirate stronghold which would be a dungeon crawl. The fortress is an old mining facility that has a large civilian population there who is it necessarily on board with the pirates. There is also a rival faction of pirates who are nicer than the pirates they were fighting and less stuffy than the corporation that they're working for. The corporation wants to completely take over the mining facility and will use extreme violence to make that happen. Finding a peaceful resolution could be an interesting story so I built this as a dungeon crawl where there are multiple factions fighting over the dungeon. However I did not carefully or extensively map the dungeon because the dungeon is also essentially a city. I downloaded some maps of some interesting encounter locations and I'm going to play that one by ear. The other possibility is the players ignore that lead and continue on their original destination which was the library planet of akashia where there is a genie somewhere that grants wishes. And the leader of the pirates, who is basically an off-brand sith Lord is also looking for the corridors of time which is where the genie lives. I built a wilderness point crawl to represent this part of the adventure if they choose to go for it first.
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Dec 10, 2023 07:55
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i might have to look more into point crawls if traveller doesn't peter out completely, i think that's basically what my campaign already is e: basically all between-system travel in traveller is like this, you just jump. Then each system is a crawl between interesting planets and stations, then each planet etc etc it's all the way down lol SniperWoreConverse fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Dec 13, 2023 |
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Dec 13, 2023 17:21
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