Amazing adventure: The ones I write myself.
Maybe not the answer many were expecting. Right now my main focus is on Dragonbane because it’s a fun game to play solo. It’s a fun game to write for because it’s got that little bit of screwball mirth written into the setting. I love it so much I skipped right past the solo module from the core box and went straight into making my own adventures!
Alone in Deepfall Breach is cool. Make no mistake. I like it. However, several people have covered it and are continuing their playthroughs on YouTube. I want to go a slightly different route.
I have a series of adventures I want to build and put out as a sort of campaign. I often struggle when building one-shots because I like to link characters and adventures. Often I will use the same pregenerated characters from one convention game to the next but advance them as if they had survived the previous module. I think it’s easier to write adventures when I’m in campaign mode.
Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.
Adventures for profit are slightly different than those for funsies.
Okay, I should probably qualify that. Adventures are fun to play, create, and occasionally sell for profit. It’s why I love games with an Open Game License or some similar agreement. It all stems from d20 fantasy back about 24 years ago or thereabouts. I kinda got the bug back then and I’ve latched onto several games since that are all enjoyable with the potential to be published. Ironically, I’m just now getting around to maybe publishing some things here in the near future. (My goal is before end of the year.)
I was originally focused on a fantasy d20 game known as Shadowdark RPG, but I fell so madly in love with Dragonbane. It just works so much better on so many levels for me. Plus Mallards are cool. (Yes, I have a soft spot for anthropomorphic animals. I grew up on TMNT and Usagi Yojimbo.) While both games are great and basically built for short adventure content, I always want to do more. Dragonbane is a gem of a game. (I wrote a 6 part review.)
What does an adventure look like?
I’m going to get into far more depth in some upcoming articles. The ampersand game Dungeon Master’s Guide is coming in November (allegedly. I’m sure half of YouTube and thousands of others will have it sooner, but I’m not bitter.) I’ll be doing a lot of articles to help new Dungeon Masters/Game Masters. I was new once. I know how hard it is.
Adventures take many forms. I can turn one single page encounter into a session long adventure. Some GMs prefer that method. Others, including most new GMs, do better with a linear A-to-B-to-C adventure. Other adventures map out like a flow chart or a grid in terms of the way the encounters hook together. Some GMs run a “sandbox style” campaign, which is considerably trickier to create single adventures for since you never really know which part of the campaign area the players will show up in next and it tends to be a bit more random at times.
An adventure can just be viewed as a set of encounters strung together to form a story when the player characters interact with them. (*My definition.) An encounter is simply a character, creature, exploration feature, major event in the characters’ lives, or any other story moment where they are going to interact with something. A campaign is a string of related adventures.
Find a kitten in the road amongst a bunch of dead knights- encounter. Kitten eventually turns out to be a demon from the depths of the 10th layer of Heck- adventure. Stan, Lord of Heck, kicks the kitten-daemon out of Heck for being too evil, so kitty returns to wreak havoc upon the world again, leaving a trail of destruction that only the group can stop once and for all- campaign.
Back in ye olden days an adventure would be a dungeon. Basically the characters go to some long-abandoned underground locale and crawl around in a maze, killing monsters, and grabbing loot. There might be some interaction with the nearest townsfolk in terms of drinking, carousing, selling loot, and maybe trying to resurrect fallen comrades from a scrap of bloodied clothing recovered from a trap. (Too specific?) Over the last 40+ years things have grown far beyond the dungeon.
That doesn’t mean an adventure needs to be a massive, Shakespearean epic or Critical Role episode. The Lord of the Rings books are a series of adventures or one long adventure depending on how one looks at them. LotR can be a whole campaign.
Please understand, we’re not Tolkien. We’re not Matt Mercer. We can still make some adventures, for free or paid, that will blow the players away.
What da hook gonna be?
Every adventure starts with a hook. We have to have something to (attempt to) get the characters to interact with the adventure. If we’re making a one-shot, it can be a little more contrived than if we’re running a weekly campaign game. The trick is to get the Player Characters interested.
In a campaign game, it’s a lot easier to get them in because we can tie in a character’s backstory or even multiple characters. Maybe something happens in the characters’ immediate area. Maybe they find something posted on a village’s notice board. A hook just needs to signal, “Hey, the adventure is over this way.”
A lot of adventure series, including the ones in the Dragonbane boxed set, feature multiple encounters over a variety of areas on the map, usually ending in on climactic encounter against a final Boss villain. The Dragonbane core set even comes with a set of rumor cards to help the GM encourage the players to seek out the various encounters and locations. Those cards are marvelous hooks.
If we want to talk about publishing for a moment…
I have ideas for a series of adventures, some specific encounters, and maybe a way to make it into a campaign. I want to create the kinds of adventures I would want to run in a campaign. My only hindrance at the moment, as usual, is art. Obviously we’re working in PDF format as it’s what I have at my disposal. (I dream of making a boxed set campaign world someday. Free League is so inspiring!)
I’m kinda thinking about doing this old school ampersand game and making the modules a series that can link up and be a campaign or can just be some One-Shots if that’s what the group wants to do. I’ll probably use my characters as the pregens and advance them a bit in skills and items each time, that way if the group doesn’t have characters, they can use one of the pregens or one of the characters from the Dragonbane boxed set.
I’m going to try not to make the various modules depend exclusively on one another. That way if a GM likes Adventure D1, D2, and D4, the group can still play through without D3 for whatever reason. Maybe eventually I’ll even do a compilation book along with new items, spells, and character options.
My maps are going to be old school hand drawn graph paper maps. I may take a few photos of the Dragonbane standups for reference for some of the combats. I might have to hire a cover artist. I want to capture that look and feel of those old ampersand game modules that were so much fun. Even if the GM doesn’t run every single encounter and the group doesn’t explore every room of the dungeon, it should hopefully still be a fun 3-6 hour session.
Here’s hoping all of your adventures are a success.
No matter what you do, have fun with it. That’s why we’re here. I’m not trying to create my magnum opus for Dragonbane before the end of the year. My simple new intention is just to make an adventure or two that the GM can pick up and run his/her/their characters through in one night, maybe two. There might be some cool loot. There might be some character fatalities. Who knows?
The real secret to running an amazing adventure is for the GM and the group to have some fun with it. That’s why I create my own adventures. I do still sometimes grab an already published adventure and squish it into a campaign, but I consider that a filler as a last resort. It usually only happens if I’m short on prep time. I don’t foresee having to do that again any time soon, though.
Have fun with your adventures no matter what system, which world, or where they’re set. Get in there and explore that abandoned labyrinth. Climb that mountain. Talk to the mysterious cloaked stranger at the back of the tavern. Above all- Have fun!
Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.
*Editor Jeff here:
I struggled writing this article for some inexplicable reason. There’s a lot of ground to cover when it comes to creating adventures. I’m going to be exploring many tangents in the coming months because I can’t do it all justice here in one article alone. Entire books have been written on the subject and I have my own specific take on it. Maybe it works for someone else, or maybe not. We will see.
Thanks again for being here on this very strange journey with me.
Jeff's Game Box 