Welcome aboard! It’s time for some practical adventure building with Angry. Excited? Great. Then, in the spirit of the Amazing Adventure Building Checklist that preceded this – and fully cognizant of the fact that adventure design is enough of a f$&%ing chore that I don’t want to prolong it – let’s skip the Long, Rambling Introduction and just make us some f$&%ing adventure, okay?

Please Keep Your Hands and Arms Inside the Website

Remember that Amazing Adventure Building Checklist thing I made a couple of weeks ago? And remember how I asked you all what the hell you wanted me to do next? Well, you – some of you – wanted me to actually follow the steps and build an adventure so you could see how it was done. The Angry Way. And that’s what I’m going to do. And I’m not going to spend a lot of time rambling and explaining. I’m going to bang this s$&% out. And hopefully, I’ll actually follow it all the way through to the end and design a complete adventure this time.

Maybe I’ll even polish that s$&% up and make it available for download or something. Who the f$&% knows? I sure don’t.

In case it’s not clear, I’m going into Turbo Angry Adventure Outlining Mode for this. Make sure your lap restraints and shoulder harnesses are locked. Keep your hands and arms inside the article at all times. And wait until the article comes to a complete stop before you exit and attempt to make your own adventure.

And for f$&%’s sake, don’t puke all over my comment section.

Oh, and pay attention to the following important safety precautions.

First, make sure you’ve read the Amazing Adventure Building Checklist and also the last section of my bulls$&% article about Building Adventures the Angry Way. The part where I clarify my adventure-design philosophy. I don’t want to repeat too much of that s$&%.

Second, understand that once this series is done – in a month or two – and I have a good, complete adventure designed, I might be convinced to go through the polishing process and turn it into a proper module. Or at least proper game notes. I ain’t promising that, though. Right now, I’m going through the design process. They are different processes.

Third, know that, at this stage of the process, it’s important not to worry about HOW you’ll do things within the game’s rules, mechanics, and systems. For right now, assume you can do anything and be ready to break the rules or write new ones when you have to.

Fourth, I’m starting this process with nothing. I’m pulling this s$&% out of my a$&. I’ve got no ideas. I’ve got no goals. Almost no goals. I have one goal. I want to come up with a fairly simple adventure because this is meant to serve as an example to people who have never done this s$&% before. While I want to make sure I include some variety in the gameplay the adventure offers, I ain’t going for a masterpiece. This won’t be Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter, it’ll be See Dick Slay; Slay Dick, Slay. We’ll get to William Shakesman later.

Okay, that’s everything. The ride operators are giving me the all-clear. Dispatch ready. Let’s go.

Atop the Lift Hill

As we climb the lift hill and get a good look around, I want to explain that making an adventure the Angry Way is a two-part process. And remember, we’re pretending I follow this process every time I design an adventure. We all know I’m lying. Pretend I’m not.

The first part is the design part. The outline part. That’s when you run through the first five steps of the Amazing Checklist. Including those fiddly intermediate steps for each scene described under step five. Once you’re done with those steps, you’re done designing and you’ll have a nice overview of the whole adventure. And if you plan to turn your design into good, polished notes or a published module, that s$&% helps you write the adventure summary at the start of the thing. And that summary ensures the GM has a good top-level view of what’s supposed to happen during the adventure and helps them keep the game running smoothly when anything goes wrong.

Don’t forget that the GM running the adventure and the designer building the adventure are two different people. Even if they live in the same body and use the same brain.

The second part is the build part. That’s when you actually do all the mechanical s$&%. That’s when you draw maps and plan encounters and come up with rules and fill in details. And that’s all covered by step six of my Amazing Checklist.

During the design part, your goal is just to get ideas on paper. To just write down s$&% that seems like it will make a cool adventure. Later on, when you’re building the adventure, you might find out there’s no way to make an idea work mechanically. Or at least that you can’t figure out a way to make it work. That’s fine. You can always go back and adjust the design. But don’t worry about how to make s$&% work until you’re actually trying to make s$&% work.

During the design part, you also don’t want to be too detailed. You can fill in all sorts of details and come up with backstory and all that other crap as you actually build the adventure. That’s all part of step six too. The design part just produces an outline. The basic shape of the adventure.

And now we’re coming to the top of the lift hill. You’ve got a nice overview of the whole ride. Any second now, the lift chain will disengage and we’ll be on our way…

Step 1: The Goal

The goal is the thing the players have to do to win the adventure. It’s how they know they’re done. Our goal is simple:

Kobolds stole a thing from a town; get the thing back.

How did I come up with that? F$&%ed if I know. I just typed the first, dumb, clichéd idea that came to me. And I like kobolds. Of all the inherently evil, savage, uncivilized races, they’re one of my favorites. They’re thieving little bastards. They have an elemental thing going on. They work as sorcerers, alchemists, or trap-makers. And they’ve got a connection with dragons. Dragons are awesome.

Notice how simple and straightforward that goal is. It’s one sentence. That’s how you know it’s a good one. Complicated goals don’t make deep adventures. Adventure depth comes from all the crap that happens during the adventure. But simple goals make it easy for players to start moving in the right direction.

Step 2: Boring, Gamey Details

After the first big, exciting drop, every ride has a slowdown. And the boring, gamey details put the brakes on the process. And put the brakes on the adventure too. They provide constraints that you have to work within. They tell you how you’re going to build your encounters and how many you need.

This adventure is for three to five, 3rd- to 5th-level characters and should take three to four sessions to complete.

If you’re designing an adventure for home use, you just describe your home group here. If you’re writing for publication or if you’re writing an example adventure for your GMing advice blog, you can pick whatever details you want.

And here’s an important note: we’re building an adventure the Angry Way. And when Angry makes adventures, he plays a little fast and loose with the game balance. He balances his adventures around three-level tiers of play, not around precise levels. And not around precise numbers of players either. Even if he knows exactly how many players there’ll be and what levels their characters are.

Throughout this example, I’ll be using numbers that make a good adventure for four 4th-level PCs, but I’ll also be letting everything wobble a little. This doesn’t affect play at the table much and it makes it a lot easier to build encounters.

Step 3: The Central Conflict

The central conflict basically describes what’s creating the problem the heroes have to solve to win the adventure. It’s the one thing the players absolutely have to deal with by adventure’s end. It also determines what the climax of adventure will look like.

A dragonborn thrall of Tiamat sent the kobolds to steal the thing he wanted because he can do evil with it; the party must defeat him to get it back.

Now, I could have had some big, honking kobold chief or something for the source of the central conflict, but in the Angryverse, that ain’t how kobolds roll. Kobolds are a slave race. They were made by Tiamat to serve chromatic dragons. They’re compelled to worship dragons, to feed them, and to fill their lairs with treasure. Left to their own devices, kobolds horde wealth and raid and pillage, but they don’t pull off big heists or make complicated plans. They just gather wealth to gather wealth.

The goal of the adventure implies that the kobolds have stolen a specific thing with a specific value or use. So, the kobolds need a leader. And while it could have been a dragon, there’s no dragons weak enough in the Angryverse to be taken down by 5th-level PCs. So, I need something else that the kobolds will willingly serve. An evil dragonborn fits the bill.

Why does the dragonborn want the thing? What even is the thing? Who the f$&% knows? Who cares? We can figure that s$&% out later.

Step 4: Plot Points

Now’s when you outline the major steps in the adventure. How will the plot unfold? What will the players have to do to win? Those are plot points. And because each plot point will become a scene and because each scene usually takes between one-half and two sessions to play, it’s a good idea to have roughly one plot point per session.

Plot Point 1: Kobolds attack the town, causing chaos and destruction. While the townsfolk and the heroes protect the town and minimize the chaos, wily kobold thieves sneak into a specific place and steal a thing.

Plot Point 2: It’s revealed that the kobolds came from an abandoned mine in the rugged hills. The heroes will have to travel through the dangerous wilderness to reach the kobolds’ lair.

Plot Point 3: The kobolds have built their lair deep in the abandoned mine. The heroes have to explore the mine, deal with the kobolds, confront the dragonborn, and recover the thing.

Having decided in step two that my adventure spans three or four sessions, I need a minimum of three plot points. These ones seemed good because they add some variety to the adventure and they’ll make good examples of how to build different scenes.

I could have invented any plot points I wanted. I could have said the attack had already happened by the time the heroes arrived in town. Then, the first plot point would have been about the heroes picking through the town looking for clues about what happened. I could even have decided that the three plot points represent the heroes exploring deeper and deeper levels of the mine and trying to find the kobold warren.

Step 5: Scenes and Scene Details

And now our ride is coming to the most exciting part, a series of thrilling inversions where we loop around over and over. Each plot point represents a scene. And each scene needs specific scene details.

Remember, by the way, that in Angry’s CORRECT parlance, a scene is a segment of continuous action during which the heroes try to accomplish a specific thing in a specific place during a specific time period. As the scene plays out, the heroes deal with a series of encounters that they can move fairly easily between and that add up to the plot point in question.

So, let’s loop through each of our scenes in turn.

Step 5.1: Scene One: The Kobold Attack

In the first scene of the adventure, kobolds attack the town. They cause mayhem and destruction. The party tries to minimize the destruction. Unbeknownst to anyone, sneaky kobold thieves use the attack to cover their theft of the thing.

Step 5.1.A: Setting (The Kobold Attack)

Scenes take place in specific locations. These locations can be big or small, but they have to be defined clearly and concisely.

The town.

Obviously.

Step 5.1.B: Central Conflict (The Kobold Attack)

Every scene has a central conflict; a major problem that has to be resolved and that serves as the climax for the scene.

Chaos and destruction spread through the town (rampaging drake).

It’s okay to have abstract conflicts. It’s good even. In this scene, the players are fighting to contain the chaos and reign in the destruction caused by the kobold attack. When they’ve brought the chaos and destruction to a halt, the scene is over. But, in a role-playing game, it’s a good idea to have a proxy or stand-in for such a conflict. An encounter that embodies the conflict. In this case, we’ll say that, during the attack, the kobolds unleash a rampaging drake in the town. Confronting and defeating the drake will serve as a good climax. Though the drake will probably only show up for the climax itself. It’s just the final boss.

By the way, in the Angryverse, drakes are elemental lizard monsters. Basically dinosaur-like beasts with superficial similarities to dragons. Kobolds keep them as pets, guard animals, draft animals, and war animals.

Step 5.1.C: Stakes (The Kobold Attack)

When we talk about stakes, we’re talking about what the party has to gain or lose during the scene. How does the scene affect the heroes’ chances of success in the adventure?

If the party handles the kobold attack well, they’ll receive resources and information that will help them defeat the kobolds. If they handle the attack poorly, townsfolk will die and buildings will be destroyed. There will be fewer resources available for them and the information they receive will be limited.

The default assumption in D&D is that if the players ever f$&% anything up ever, the adventure is over and they lose. And, while there’s nothing wrong with a scene that determines the outcome of the adventure – the last scene usually does that – you need to consciously make that choice. It should never be the default position.

The success of the whole adventure doesn’t hinge on whether or not the party defends the town well. No matter what, the townsfolk will discover the theft of the thing and they will realize that the kobolds came from the abandoned mine. That information will get passed along to the heroes. But if the heroes prevent the kobolds from killing people and destroying things, the townsfolk will provide them gifts, support, resources, and information. How will we handle that mechanically? Who knows? Who cares? We’ll figure it out when we build the scene.

Note that the default assumption in D&D is also that the heroes’ lives are at stake. That’s as it should be. If the heroes get killed defending the town, they’re dead. So it goes.

Step 5.1.D: Structure (The Kobold Attack)

The structure of a scene describes how the encounters in the scene are organized and how the players will move from encounter to encounter.

The scene is structured like a game of whack-a-mole where people scream and die whenever a mole escapes getting whacked. The heroes will have to run around and try to deal with emergencies as they pop up.

Look, you can use phrases like ‘open’ and ‘branching’ and ‘linear’ or whatever to describe a scene’s structure, but I like to be more evocative. This scene is about minimizing chaos. I want the players to feel like the best they can do is mitigate the destruction swirling around them. Fun, right?

Step 5.1.E: Length (The Kobold Attack)

The scene should fill one or two sessions of play.

Step 5.2: Scene Two: Into the Hills

And now we enter the second inversion. We run through step five all over again for the next scene. The party has to travel through the rugged hills near the town to reach the abandoned mine.

Step 5.2.A: Setting (Into the Hills)

The hills.

Step 5.2.B: Central Conflict (Into the Hills)

Nature hates adventurers (a difficult climb down to the mine).

The central conflict here is the age-old conflict of ‘man against nature.’ If you travel into the wilderness, the wilderness will try to kill you. And because it’s an abstract conflict again, I need something to stand in for the conflict during the climax. In the final encounter of the scene, the players have to make a difficult descent into the steep gorge at whose bottom lies the abandoned mine. Basically, to emphasize that the forces of nature are working against the heroes, the heroes have to deal with the most dangerous natural force of all: gravity. And also rocks.

Step 5.2.C: Stakes (Into the Hills)

If the party handles the scene poorly, they will find themselves injured and exhausted and their resources depleted when they reach the abandoned mine. They will have to deal with the final scene in a weakened state.

Yes, I know there is literally nothing in the current edition of D&D that makes this s$&% remotely possible. I know some rules work directly against this. I’m going to have to invent some s$&% to make this work. Such is the life of an adventure designer who doesn’t settle for crap.

Notice the difference in wording between the stakes in this scene and the stakes in the previous one. In the first scene, I noted that the party gains advantages by handling the scene well. In this scene, the party is just trying to avoid f$&%ing up so badly that they end up at a disadvantage. It’s good to vary the stakes like this. Make some scenes about earning a benefit and make others about avoiding problems.

Also notice that I didn’t write “the party might get lost and never reach the destination.” While the party might get lost, getting lost costs them time and resources. If the party gets too lost for too long, they might CHOOSE to give up on the adventure. That’s okay. Forfeiting an adventure is a totally valid thing the players can choose to do. But it’s not good to assume forfeiture as a loss state. As long as the party can keep going back and trying again, the adventure isn’t over.

Of course, the party might get so lost for so long that they die in the wilderness and no one will ever find their bodies. That’s a valid ending too. S$&% happens.

Step 5.2.D: Structure (Into the Hills)

Mostly just a linear series of obstacles with maybe a branch or two. And random complications.

Step 5.2.E: Length (Into the Hills)

One-half to one session.

Step 5.3: Scene Three: Exploring the Mine

Last inversion and final scene. The party explores the abandoned mine, hunts down the dragonborn, and recovers the thing.

Step 5.3.A: Setting (Exploring the Mine)

The abandoned mine.

S$&% just writes itself sometimes, huh?

Step 5.3.B: Central Conflict (Exploring the Mine)

The central conflict in the final scene of an adventure is the adventure’s central conflict.

The evil dragonborn stole the thing to do evil and doesn’t want to give it back.

See what I mean?

Step 5.3.C: Stakes (Exploring the Mine)

And the stakes in the final scene are pretty much always about winning or losing the adventure. But if you want the party to be able to lose without dying, you’d better figure out how that s$&% works.

If the party defeats the dragonborn and gets the thing, they can return it to the town and win. But if the dragonborn escapes or defeats the party, he gets away with the thing and uses it to do evil. Maybe in a future adventure, the heroes can fight the undead dragon he animates or some s$&% like that.

Step 5.3.D: Structure (Exploring the Mine)

Dungeon.

There are times when a single, simple term is all it takes.

Step 5.3.E: Length (Exploring the Mine)

One or two sessions. Probably two.

Onward to Step Six…

Welcome back to the station. I hope you enjoyed the ride. Now you know what it looks like to outline an adventure the Angry Way. Especially if Angry is feeling impatient and just wants to tear-a$& through this stuff as quickly as possible.

In about two weeks, I’ll continue the series. Specifically, I’m going to start building the scenes and encounters themselves. Normally, I’d do that from beginning to end. And normally, I’d build the scenes and sessions about one session ahead of the players so I don’t have to build everything before I start running the damned thing. But, in this case, I’m not only going to build everything up front, but I’m also going to build it backward. I’ll start with the last scene because it’ll be the easiest and most straightforward of the three scenes. It’s just a dungeon. So it’s a good first step. And then we can work our way back to the first scene.

Besides, in this case, it’ll be easier to build the stakes in the first two scenes if we know what’s coming in the third scene.

And that’s it. See you in a few weeks for more of this s$&%.