This series will teach you how to build your own adventures for your favorite table-top role-playing games. It’s a mix of conceptual theory and practical process. For fans of the older series on adventure building, this is an update that mixes in some practical advice and a solid process.
Two weeks ago, I started building what I called Baby’s First Dungeon. I didn’t call it that because it was meant for newbie players, but because I was showing newbie homebrewer GMs how to scratch-build their own dungeon adventures. If you haven’t read that first article yet, go back and read it now. Because this…
Because of the way it was written, this article doesn’t have a Long, Rambling Introduction™. The whole thing was kind of written like a Long, Rambling Introduction™. It’s pretty stream of consciousness. A mix of me explaining s$&% and thinking through s$&% and showing you the results. I didn’t outline it. I just started writing.…
When it comes to designing a dungeon map, there’s more than one way to skin a kobold. The key is picking the right way to flay.
Homebrew adventures work so much better with custom-designed monsters. So let’s design some kobolds for my kobold adventure.
Come into my shower. Lather up. Rinse off. And let your bored brain do a bunch of heavy lifting to make your adventure and scene design easier.
All right, you asked for it. Let’s use the Amazing Adventure Building Checklist to actually build an amazing adventure. First step is steps one through five. It makes sense in context.
Before I use my amazing checklist to show you how to design an adventure the Angry Way, I have to explain what the Angry Way is and why it’s so much better than the Crap Way.
I’ve been dared to do the impossible: write a simple, adventure-building checklist AND keep it short. Can I pull it off? Do bears s$&% on the Pope?
Finishing my look at how I designed the first adventure of my new campaign, I describe how I designed the second scene of Flight to Elturel as a moving parts adventure full of humanity and conflict and s$&%.
Continuing my look at how I designed the first adventure of my new campaign, I describe how I designed the first scene of Flight to Elturel and the three encounters that made it up.
The D&D Level Editor that is the DMG would have you believe that an Adventure is just a string of Encounters that maybe all get placed on a map. But there’s something between Adventure and Encounter that good game designers use to great effect. And even though you’re probably not a good game designer, you can use it too.
Recently, I actually got to run a game! And that means I got to write an adventure! And since we’re talking about adventure design right now, I can use that adventure as an object lesson in adventure design.
Table-top RPG adventure designers can learn a lot from video games. But one thing they can’t learn from video games is how to cope with loss. That is, how to make loss and failure part of the game.
Without a goal, a game isn’t a game. And since D&D is a game without goals, that means it’s your job as an adventure designing GM, to set a goal.
How is an adventure like a cake? Both of them are delicious baked goods that I love to eat, except for the adventure. But they are alike in that they need the right ingredients to be any good. And this adventure is all about cakes, adventures, and ingredients. Except it’s not really about cakes. I wish I had some cake.
Much as I would love to sit here and describe the various elements of a homebrew adventure, you’re not ready for that crap yet. You don’t even know how to plan, I can’t tell you what to plan.
People keep asking me to revisit adventure building. And to make it clear and useful. Maybe spell out a nice, simple process. Fine. Let’s talk about building your own adventures from scratch. Again. Only better.