Introduction

ou can write adventures. This book will to write something, Id find myself staring at a blank show you how. page for hours on end. I could come up with a basic This book is the culmination of thirty years idea, several interesting NPCs, and sense of what of gaming experience, both as player and as a GM. was going on in game world. What I couldnt do was I GMed my first game two weeks after playing my come up with a sequence of encounters and events very first RPG session. That was in 1980. Since for my PCs to run through. In desperation, Id turn then, Ive run many, many different game systems, to lists of Adventure Seeds. Id find an idea I found from 1st edition Basic interesting and intriguing and Advanced Dungeons and think Okaybut what and Dragons, to Castle happens next? Falkenstein, Amber DiceRewritten modules Adventure seed: a basic idea for a GM less, World of Darkness, worked well for several to build an adventure from. and Cyberpunk (to name a years until I began running few). I loved creating new both the Amber Diceless game settings, interesting NPCs, rich and complex Roleplaying Game and White Wolfs World of Darkgame backgrounds, but one thing always stumped ness. Suddenly I found myself in a situation where mehow to write adventures that my players would the few printed adventures for these games simply enjoy. didnt suit my players at all. I had to come up with In my earliest years, I stuck to printed adventure something original. But my adventure-writing skills modules. Most of these needed extensive rewriting didnt get any better. to make them fit my campaigns: usually the rewards What I did get was a group of players I could simwere too large, the mix of encounter types were wrong ply throw an idea to and theyd take off running. All for the party, or the modules contained elements that I had to do was keep up. Running those games really simply didnt make sense. Still, it was better than taught me how to GM on the fly. But while I got very not having anything for my players to do when they good at improvising NPCs and determining the outarrived on Tuesday nights. comes of PCs actions offthecuff, I didnt improve Id think Surely I can do better. But when Id try

Terminology

The Adventure Creation Handbook

Introduction
my ability to plot adventures. My players created the adventures, I just tagged along for the ride. I must have been doing something right during those times, since my games always attracted enough players to overflow onto a waiting list. Trouble came when a job situation forced me to move to a new area away from my wonderful players. I joined a new game group, but when I tried to run games the way I had for the last several years, my games fell completely flat. My new group of players needed more guidance. They wanted the GM to provide them with a sequence of planned encounters, something, frankly, I was terrible at. Around the same time, I began running games at conventions. Convention games need to be planned from beginning to end, especially if theyre introducing people to a new game system. In desperation, I started looking at how adventures were built. I took notes and analyzed games I particularly enjoyed. I started reading books on plotting fiction and screenplays. I broke movies and TV shows down into their sequences of events. Slowly, piece-by-piece, I put together a method for writing adventures that worked. The total method finally came together when I stumbled across a beginning writing book that stressed the 6 Ws: who, what, where, when, why, and how. I realized that if I applied those questions to an adventure idea, the answers would give me everything I need to write an original, custom-designed adventure. And the method worked. It worked when creating convention adventures; it worked when creating adventures for on-going campaigns. It worked when I wrote for experienced groups and groups of brandnew players. Best of all, each adventure I created with it was different from the previous one. vi

...with a pinch of practice and a dash of inspiration, you can cook up an adventure your players will talk about long after its over.

This wasnt a system for churning out formulaic cookie-cutter adventures, but something that produced scenarios my players found intriguing and engaging. Time and time again, I return to this method and its never failed me yet. This book is that method. There are many ways to write adventures. The method (I call it the 6 Ws method) in this book is just one of them. It maps out a path that guides you through the process of creating a customized adventure for any genre, any game system. It takes you through the entire adventure creation process, from generating an idea, to outlining the adventure itself. The method described here is a set of tools only: change, modify, delete, fold, spindle, mutilate to make them work for you. You have my blessingand encouragementto adapt these tools in any way to make them work for you. And if you find yourself stuck along the way, rpgGM.com offers three ways to help: 1. A webpage on the rpgGM.com website dedicated to this book. There you can leave comments and share ideas. I stop by the page periodically, so if you have any questions about this book or its methods and ideas, you can post them there and Ill try to answer them. And if I cant give you answer, its possible someone else can. The page is Adventure Creation Handbook (http://www.rpggm.com/products/adventure-creation-handbook/). 2. Free updates whenever this material is rewritten. This is covered in detail in this books Appendix C, starting on page 35. 3. A downloadable example of the process. When you purchased this book, you should have received a link to download a step-by-step example of an adventure made using this process. If not, please email The Adventure Creation Handbook
2011 rpgGM.com, All rights reserved


[email protected] and Ill be happy to send one to you.

Why Create Custom Adventures?

The Adventure Writing Process

Why Create Custom Adventures?

There are five basic steps to writing an adventure:

There are hundreds of adventures available, with more being created every day. You can find adventures in print at your local game store, in gaming magazines, and in the thousands of gaming websites. So why go to the trouble of creating one from scratch? Often, pre-made adventures dont fit your game world or your gaming group. Or the existing adventures for the game system youre running are poorly written, if you can find any at all. Even if adventures do exist for your system, they may rely on monsters, NPCs, or treasure that youve decided dont exist in your game world. Or maybe your players would have no interest in the adventures contents. Sometimes, published adventures can require so much reworking to fit into your game that it takes almost as muchif not moreeffort to adapt them than it does to write something from scratch. When you write your own adventure, you can customize it for your group. You can tailor rewards to things your PCs will find meaningful (read motivating). You can dangle specially-created incentives for each PC, incentives that will make their mouths water and make them say What are we waiting for? Lets get going! even before youve finished setting the scene. You can include the details of your game world, NPCs created by you or your players, items of special interest to your group. If thats not enough to convince you, the process of writing an adventure from scratch means that you know the adventure inside and out, making it easier to actually run. Whatever your reason, with a pinch of practice and a dash of inspiration, you can cook up an adventure your players will talk about long after its over. The Adventure Creation Handbook
2011 rpgGM.com, All rights reserved

1. Generate an adventure idea. 2. Ask questions about that idea. 3. Answer those questions. 4. Look for events. 5. Write adventure outline. Each step has its own chapter, walking you through the steps of creating your adventure. To help you, there are two worksheets at the back of the book (beginning pg. ws-1). One is a checklist of the adventure creation steps, the other is a worksheet with the list of questions (who, what, when, where, why, and how) that form the core of the 6 Ws method.

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Introduction

It maps out a path that guides you through the process of creating a customized adventure...

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The Adventure Creation Handbook