Creating Adventures

I thought I'd try something a little different this week. I've been trying my hand at some adventures lately and thought I'd share what I've been contemplating and what I've learned. As a head's up, I think there might only be a few more Sunday content drops before moving to a once a week schedule, just to free up my time to focus on completing some things. We'll see how it goes!

Creating Adventures

Writing an adventure can be a fun and rewarding challenge that can flex your creative skills while also giving others a way to enjoy telling stories around a table with friends. The following provides some general tips for writing adventures while focusing on a style to be used when writing for UESTRPG.

Choosing an Adventure

Something that could come to you easily, or be seen as the first challenge, is choosing what to write about. The best way to start is by picking something that excites you. Other media, like video games and movies, might inspire an idea that would be fun to translate into a game at the table. If you want to write a general adventure, pick what sounds best to you. If you’re looking at adding to a specific book from UESTRPG, it’s best to pick locations and creatures that are introduced or utilized in the same book. This helps tie everything together while showing GMs how they can use these creations in their own game. They might not use your adventure verbatim, but it might inspire their campaign.

Another thing to think about is what level the adventure should be set for. It’s good to have a general idea before starting writing, and the final level can get sorted out as you put it all together. You might have to adjust your encounters, possibly by reducing or increasing the CR or amount of creatures in each encounter. You might have a final encounter already in mind, which is probably a good starting point for determining the level. Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has a Challenge Rating list that lets you know what CR creature works best with a 4 or 5 character party. Most adventures should be written for characters between 1st and 10th level, as these are the most common levels for games. It’s okay to have an adventure beyond that, especially if multiple adventures are being written for the same book. For example, if a book has 5 adventures, none of those adventures should be written for the same level. A possible situation would be having the adventures be for 1st, 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 12th level.

Style

The next few sections cover some general adventure structure to follow for UESTRPG, or to consider when writing for your own publishing.

Adventure Length

Most adventures should be relatively short. These should be something that could be accomplished in a one shot, which could be completed in one to three sessions that are around three hours in length. Aim for around 3,000 to 8,000 words, as needed to fit the story.

Name of the Adventure

Give the adventure an evocative name that suits the story but doesn't give too much away. Something like Timefall, or A Beacon in the Dark. The name might not be obvious at first, so give it time. You might not have an idea for it until you’ve completely finished writing the adventure.

The first few paragraphs after the title should give a broad overview of the adventure and provide a brief description of the events. Adventures that are relatively simple could have a bit of background information in these paragraphs, where a more complicated adventure could have a Background subheading of its own, going into the important information in more detail.

Scaling This Adventure

If the adventure can be scalable, provide some ideas on how you could accomplish that. This could be by reducing the number of enemies, providing different creatures to replace the ones in the encounter, or by suggesting how to reduce the DCs of certain tasks. Consider the different tiers of adventure. If your encounter is suitable for five level 7 players (tier 2), you could provide examples of how to lower the difficulty to tier 1, or increase it to tier 3, or both. Not all encounters need to scale, however. If you think the encounter is exactly as it should be, you do not need to include this section and just move on to the next. The scaling suggestions could happen in a heading like this, or could be included in each encounter, depending on the complexity of the adventure.

Starting The Encounter

Next, describe how the players might start the encounter. It’s good to provide multiple ways to find the quest, so it can easily be worked into any campaign. For example, a quest to take care of some goblins that have taken over the local mine could be come across in numerous ways: a member of the Fighters Guild could be given the job at their guildhall, and a private in the Legion might be sent by the local guard captain. The Gold Coast Company might hire you to get their mine back, or you might hear rumors about the event from some miners talking about it at the local tavern.

The next paragraph in this section should give a description of what the players see and hear as they start the adventure at the location. This could include more in-depth descriptions of the rumors, or jump right into what the characters see as they approach the mine from the example above. You could include read aloud text to set the scene and get things started.

Headings as Required

After this, the adventure should have as many headings as is necessary. Look at how other adventures are written for inspiration. A small encounter might only need one heading and an accompanying section, while larger encounters could include headings for each room or event.

Conclusion

Describe the various potential outcomes that might occur, and how that might affect the world around the adventurers. If the adventurers fail an encounter, describe possibilities that don’t mean death. If the whole party dies, the adventure ends, so think of ways that could keep the adventure going. Perhaps the goblins kidnap the heroes. Or maybe when the characters awaken, the mine is emptied and everything has been cleared out. The failure should still be meaningful, but keeping the story moving forward is important.

Treasure

Include a heading for the treasure that could be found at the end of the adventure. As needed, do your best to use items that are introduced as part of this book, or from other UESTRPG books, or items that are a part of the SRD.

General Writing Tips

There are lots of things to consider when writing an adventure or an encounter. Here are a few general tips.

A Framework

When writing, remember that your job isn’t to write a story. It’s to write the framework of a story that the player characters will act in. The decisions that the players make are the story, you’re just providing a structure for everyone to play in. Be sure to create obvious goals or decision points for the characters to act on.

Options Options Options

That framework should include plenty of options to accomplish the goals of the adventure. Not every encounter or event needs to have multiple options, but the more options that are provided, the more ideas you give the GM to help inspire their creative thinking to keep the action moving. These options should cover multiple different play styles: for characters that enjoy the social aspects, or tactical decisions, or simply just smashing things.

Skill Checks

When making events that require skill checks, try to include more than one way to succeed. Sneaking past the goblin guards could require an Agility (Stealth) check, but a Willpower (Perception) check might discover a path that provides cover, and a successful Personality (Deception) check could convince the goblins that the heroes are meant to be there.

Try to avoid using events that require a single skill check, especially if a failed check would end the encounter. If the heroes need to pick a lock just to get into the mine, and the party doesn’t have someone with thieves' tools, or if the rogue fails their roll, the adventure could end before it even begins. Add things to prevent this like additional options on how to get in. A Strength (Athletics) check to break the door down. An Intelligence (Investigation) check to find a back entrance. You can even provide ways for the story to fail forward. If the check to pick the lock fails, instead of the door not opening, describe it taking a long time to do, and when the lock finally opens, the door swings open quickly, slamming into the sidewall, making a loud noise, or sending an empty barrel rolling down the entry tunnels.

Use Active Language

When describing the actions of the npcs, or even of the player characters, try to use active language. Use strong verbs and avoid using passive language. One of the most common passive words that gets used is “will”. The minotaur will barricade the door. The guild master will reward the heroes with gold. While it can seem like these sentences are obvious, the wording is vague and leaves a lot to interpretation. When will the minotaur barricade the door? When exactly will the guild master reward the heroes? Simply removing the word ‘will’ creates a stronger sentence that removes any possible uncertainty. Of course, this isn’t always the case. If you do use passive language, just take a second look to see if it’s needed.

Preparation Without Exhaustion

Think about the many different ways an event or encounter could be tackled and provide solutions for those tactics. If there are multiple ways an encounter could be resolved with vastly different outcomes, try to describe each of those options and how it might affect the remainder of the adventure. You don’t have to be absolutely exhaustive in your writing, but try to give two or three ideas to help the GM deal with unexpected outcomes. No matter how many options you give, the players might come up with a solution you never thought of. If you give 99 possible solutions, the players will find the hundredth.

Making Space

One important part of running games is making space for the players to play in. Even linear adventures should provide the opportunity for the players to make meaningful choices and use their agency. While making space is an important responsibility for both players and GMs, when writing an adventure, you should try to write encounters that help the GM create that space.