The first step is always the hardest. The first step involves to sit down and try. Sometimes you will have hundreds of possible ideas and none the following day. You cannot do anything against that. Even great authors had times where they could not come up with even an average idea. The best way to deal with a blockage is to do something else: Visit friends, go into a pub, watch TV, read a book, but do not try to force it. It would not work anyway. Discipline is of course another thing. When you really want to start writing an adventure, it is necessary to work on it. Work does not always involve pleasure. It also means sweat and tears. A good rule of thumb is to sit down once a week for a few hours to read what you have written, change it where necessary and develop the story a little bit further. Most adventures are not finished, because the authors just wanted to interrupt it for a while and never came back. To come up with a coherent storyline means that you need to have a more or less constant stream of thought in your head.

Some people want to have everything finished in their heads. Every encounter, every place, every character. If you are able to do this fine. Most of us, including myself, however start with little more than a rough idea.

Starting a story can be done in various ways. I guess most people start with a plot. They do have an idea what should happen. The danger of this method is that the whole thing is too much centred around the main plot. The author loves the plot so dearly that he does not want to spoil it with side plots. Adventures done in this way haven often the tendency to be too rigid, they lack flexibility. The biggest advantage of this method is that the story often has a nice climax. Since the plot the most important aspect, the authors pay much time on the progression and too keep a constant tension.

Another way to do it, is to start with a single character, generally a NPC. This often involves great clockwork like conspiracy in the background. This method has some big disadvantages. The one is, that the author becomes so fond of this main character that he/she/it appears to be omnipotent. No matter how hard the players try, it is impossible to kill or abuse him/her/it. The author often identifies himself with this character and some even feel insulted when a wit player points out some stupid action of the character. Another drawback is that the players may feel as if they are no longer able to manipulate the world. Although this feeling is fine in some scenarios, it is very difficult to maintain and most players will just get bored. A third handicap is that the mentioned clockwork conspiracies are never revealed. They may be grant and impressive, but they are worth nothing if no one is interested or if it is impossible to reveal even the tiniest bit of them. When you have built these great constructions of intrigue in the background of an adventure, the players should at least have an idea that something is going on or should be able to reveal a small bit and makes it impossible to fully comprehend it, but possible to have an idea that something is going on. The advantage of this method is that the main character is generally fully crafted, often paralleling the PCs. Unfortunately most other characters lack this complexity and are reduced to comic style stereotypes. The X-files TV-series are a good example of this method, James Bond movies are not.

A third, and in my opinion best, method is to start in an evolutionary way. A simple character or event is the starting point and they develop the story. Let the characters develop and make small events that may eventually lead to big ones. The biggest danger of this kind of method is that it gets boring. The plot progresses and everything is nice and fine, but nothing spectacular happens. The biggest advantage is that the characters, events and places appear convincing.

A fourth method is a singular event. Although this gives a big chance for the end of the adventure, it has the tendency to be rather blatant and exaggerated in the end.

Another possible method, although I have never seen anyone using it, are maps. Probably it is just me, but I have hundreds of roleplaying maps. When I read the names I always try to imagine the place and the people living there. Therefore it may be possible to start with a map. However I only find this advisable in cases where you plan a large scale campaign and not just a single adventure.

These are nothing than possible methods. There is no golden way or perfect solution. It not only depends on your personal preference, but also on the adventure. When the adventure should take place in a city it is better to centre around a character or plot, when it takes place in the wilderness an evolutionary process may be better suited.

The first thing you have to determine before starting is the place. Not so much the exact place, but the general places. Adventures can be set in dungeons, cities or the wilderness or any combination of the three. This is personal taste and of less importance to the general approach, although the possibilities are different. When I say place here, I mean the general character of the adventure, although such character is general combined with a specific place. Some people like dungeon-bashing, but it does not have to take place in a dungeon. City here represents a low-combat setting with much investigation. Wilderness is between the two. You can very well have wilderness adventures in a dungeon and hack-and-slay in a city. A nice thing here is to surprise the players. When you send them in a dungeon everyone
will be packed with extra arrows, spare swords and thick armour. Now confront them with an investigation and they will be surprised.

Which brings me to another issue: Surprise. In my opinion the most important aspect of any adventure. Clichés and stereotypes are good, but surprises are better. They are often what makes a good adventure a great adventure. Nothing is worse than an adventure that can be foreseen after the first ten minutes of play.

To be continued…

This article was written by Leif U. Schrader and originaly published by Strike to Stun in 2001

Tags: Writing Adventures

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 2:07 am by Server Goddess and is filed under GM-Aids, WFRP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.