I imagine that a lot of people here have experience in planning and writing adventures. I'm finding that while dungeon writing is a quite straightforward, it's trickier to write up anything less traditional and more open, such as city-based adventures. I've written a few words on applying dungeon thinking and metaphor to non-site-based adventures, here:
http://d20.jonnydigital.com/2006/02/the-invisible-dungeon
However, that's just applying the dungeon model to something that's not in a dungeon, which is more to do with adding traditional structure where there otherwise isn't any. It's still a different animal to write up an adventure in a city as opposed to one in a dungeon. Much of what I've thoroughly read is Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and similar, so I'm finding it difficult to get out of the "dungeon crawl" mindset!
Long story short, how do you draw up adventures that are more than dungeon crawls?
Questions you might ask yourself in order to get out of the dungeon crawl mode and aid in your search for inspiration:
What class interests you? Focus on the strengths (or weaknesses) and class features of a particular class. Once you have those try to flip them on their head. How would a paladin who has lost her hands use her lay on hands ability?
Which skills do you want to focus on? Many times you can focus on neglected skills, or a non-standard way to use the same ol' skills. Handle Animal could be used to try to stop stampeding cattle.
Which attributes interests you? Usually the game is combat focused and relies heavily on the three physical attributes. Try to give the party a chance to use their mental abilities as well. Wisdom to notice their environment, Intelligence for memory, and Charisma for social interactions.
Also, the DMG has several environmental elements that a party might deal with such as forest fires and underwater combat. These open the door for several different challenges that might be non-linear or non-dungeon.
I don't know where you're going with handless paladins, but I get what you're saying about non-dungeon encounters.
What I have more difficulty grasping is how you go about writing an adventure based on such spread-out encounters. It's not like a dungeon where you number the rooms on a map and the adventure text is essentially a very detailed map key.
I don't know where you're going with handless paladins, but I get what you're saying about non-dungeon encounters.
What I have more difficulty grasping is how you go about writing an adventure based on such spread-out encounters. It's not like a dungeon where you number the rooms on a map and the adventure text is essentially a very detailed map key.
When I write non-dungeon based adventures, I usually work up a flowchart.
You know where the PCs start the adventure, and you know what they know at the beginning, so just logically branch out from there, thinking about you would do as a player in that situation. Be sure to give the PC's options to branch off, so it isn't just a railroad plot... or at least give them the illusion of choice.
Interconnect some of the branches unless you wanted them to be exclusive. ie. You can only do Event A or Event B, because they both occur at the same time.
You also know the endpoint you want as the climax for the adventure, so weave the branches of the flowchart back together near the end.
If it helps, take a look at an adventure that is a non-dungeon crawl, and try to chart everything together as if you were designing the adventure, and see how it looks. Chimes at Midnight by Nick Logos in the latest Dungeon is a good example of this. The party has several options at times, but it all comes back together for the critical encounters, regardless of how the PC's arrived there.
Or take a look at something like a Shadowrun adventure for ideas on how to flowchart like this if you play other systems.
The flowchart suggestion is a great idea, and Chimes at Midnight is a good example. The ultimate point is that every adventure is scripted to a certain degree, with a dungeon crawl being the most scripted. If you can come up with a few good events or encounters, even just a 'beginning encounter' establishing the PCs motives and the plot, a 'climax encounter' which could be the dramatic confrontation or non-combat challenge and an 'ending encounter' where it's tied up and resolved to some degree and make them somewhat modular so that you can spring them on the PCs when the time comes or conditions are met, that's a good start.
From there, add smaller encounters based on happenstance that may directly tie into the plot or just be there if your players get stuck and need a clue as to where to go or if there's a PC that seems to not be included and invested as much as everyone else. For example, if there have been a lot of combat encounters in your city adventure involving invaders or muggers, throw in an encounter where diplomacy or magic may be necessary to give the bard a chance to shine. It's a good idea to throw in things that aren't related to the adventure just to give the setting some life and maybe reward players for exploring and for being curious. It's also handy to have some pre-fabricated 'clue' encounters to get the group back on track if it's really necessary or if you need to make the adventure a bit beefier. One of the neat things about the Eberron adventures Shadows of the Last War and Grasp of the Emerald Claw was that the authors included a table titled "Someone kicks the door in" based on the Hammet and Chandler detective novels. Basically it was a list of adversaries the DM could roll on and use to attack the characters if the pace had slowed down too much and needed a jump-start.
So, you're still writing a series of encounters for the PCs, but you're trying to make them a bit more loose. Not as tied to a specific room, but more set on circumstances in the story or a place on a timeline. You must also be more prepared to wing it and improvise, because there are more opportunities for the PCs to throw the DM a curveball.
I second the idea of flowcharting, especially if you're not good at juggling non-linear potentialities in your head. Heroes of battle has a pretty good example of how to do this, if you feel like investing in yet another WotC book.
Dungeon has been publishing a lot of adventures that are at least partly event-based, with non-linear elements lately. If you're writing for publication, I'd use these as models. (Nick Logue's recent adventure, cited above, plus two of the last three installments of AoW are excellent examples--earlier issues include the Styes).
The minute you get out of the dungeon, it helps to have both some scripted events (key to the plot) and some random encounters that aren't related to the plot, or are red herrings. Other encounters might be triggered by a first or second visit to a part of town, or by some preconditions being fulfilled. Random encounters should not be all combat--especially in an urban environment--but they should be something out of the ordinary enough that they aren't mundane or boring. They should be things you can keep in your hip pocket for a particular environment and pull out when it's time for some entertainment.
Another thing that's useful is to have a fairly well-mapped out context--a rough map of the town or region where the adventure takes place. This allows the DM to wing it a bit if necessary.
Finally, I think with non-dungeon adventures you just have to accept that the DM has to do more impromptu work--there's more roleplaying, and more possibilities for character action that cannot be covered in published notes (or even your own notes), so DMs have to be prepared to make things up on the fly. As writer, then, part of your job is to anticipate where the party is most likely to get off track, to provide strong back-story incentives to discourage that, and suggest ways for the DM to get them back on track. Ultimately, though, it's a much more open-ended world the minute you get outside the confining walls of the dungeon.
One thing to add--if you're not writing for immediate publication, you have the luxury of being able to think about the adventure between sessions, and plot alternative courses you think the characters might take based on what's happened. If you have time to play-test your adventure, you may discover that your players will enrich the final product by showing you alternative possibilities.
I'm struggling with this topic myself. When thinking about it I feel the question needs to be broken down as there are different answers depending on what kind of non-dungeon adventure we are talking about.
Many of them are almost literal dungeons except that they are not inside. Any adventure in which the players follow paths are essentially dungeons. This can be as clear as an adventure where the players move through a mountain pass - obviously there is more or less only one route the PCs can take and they bump into encounters along the way. The major change between this and standard dungeon crawls is that encounters generally start further apart and the PCs may have some means of circumventing the encounter.
Pretty much we have the same deal if players are following paths through the forest or even following a trade route through the desert. More or less you know where the players are likely to go and they will probably bump into your encounters along the way.
I'd say these are the easiest non-dungeon adventures to make but they are also probably the least exciting - the feeling of choice for the PCs is really quite limited, often more limited then actual dungeon crawls with their branching corridors, so there should be something else thrown into the mix to make things more exciting. A chase scene or having it so that the players don't so much have the option of sneaking around encounters but in fact must sneak past the obstacles in their path. Otherwise this kind of adventure is probably OK if used occasionally and the encounters are good or it advances the plot line or some such.
The next kind of out door adventure would be something akin to The Forbidden City or Isle of the Ape. This sort of wilderness adventure maps out a large area and probably provides some kind of a plot. Players can go wherever they want in this larger map (but the map should have some kind of natural boundaries) and at different locations there are encounters that have been described. Should the players go to these locations then the prescribed encounter takes place. With this sort of adventure I would think it would be very important to know what happens to the various people on a day to day basis - at least during the period when adventures are hanging around. If the players are skirting the region were the Bugbear tribe lives its necessary that the DM knows how the Bugbears patrol their area around their lair and how they react to sighting potential intruders.
I think with the right plot and some thought on how the players will map the area this sort of adventure can be very rewarding. Players have a lot of choice but will eventually encounter things. A few good random encounters to spice things up and give more information about the area and its inhabitants are probably a good idea just in case things have started to drag out.
Then there is the sequenceal adventure. Often a Fair or some kind of Games. This adventure is essentially a list of encounters that take place in sequence and the players interact at each part of the sequence. The recent AP adventure in Allahaster was very much along these lines - the PCs attended a weird and wonderful party and as time progressed the players and other guests went through a series of encounters.
I said this was a sequenceal adventure but it does not have to be - if we envision some kind of wacky monstrous Underdark casino where the players are trying to win enough money to free someone the players may be allowed to play any of the games in any order they desire but the rules of the game and what happens when the players play it are all plotted out. Essentially this and the Players attend the Court Ball or plays in the games at the Fair are all similar in that they have a limited number of encounters that run either in order or when the players indicate which encounter they would like to participate in. What makes this type of adventurer easier is that the players choices are essentially limited and what happens next is easy for them and the DM to figure out.
The final kind of adventure I can think of is the one I am having the most trouble with. This is usually either some kind of mystery or a political pot boiler. It usually takes place in a city - but X10 Red Arrow, Black Shield was probably this kind of adventure with a large part of a continent as the playing area. Dungeon has had a number of murder mystery style adventures set in Sharn recently and I think they are good examples but maybe a little problematic as learning tools for DMs running their home campaign. All the recent adventures of this kind that Dungeon has run are murder mysteries and they are very short. The players don't really go very far off the beaten path and they are quickly moved back into the plot line. Nothing wrong with that but I'm interested in how to do this on a grander scale and it seems this sort of adventure just becomes exponentially more complicated the larger we make it.
The problem with this sort of adventure is that the players don't actually know what they can do. Somehow the options available to the players have to be communicated and I think thats the most difficult part of this adventure. Many years ago I ran my players through Of Nests and Nations and they ended up lost. The possibilities seem endless and players can quickly hatch their own theory and once thats done they are unlikely to let go of it easily.
So I think this sort of adventure has to start strong. We need an opening scene that outlines various options. Maybe a side kick NPC to act as a tour guide might be an interesting addition for this kind of adventure as well – some one who can tell the players about what is known regarding the seedy little hotel they are entering and also knows that next week is the Festival of Crows.
Players should have a number of options that can lead them further into this adventure right off the bat - there can be other hooks that they can follow up if they find the right clues as well but some way forward should be made clear to them from the beginning. Its possible that such an adventure should be strewn with encounters that move the plot forward as well. I like the idea of a flow chart but I'd consider working at it backward. Start at the end of the adventure and work backward to the beginning. I guess one might want to have multiple branches that can be taken toward the end of the adventure as well and also a number of ways the adventure can be driven back on track should the PCs wander off the beaten path and get lost. Murder in Oakbridge had an excellent means of getting the PCs back on track and moving the plot forward. Every so often another murder would take place and add clues and focus the Player attention. I'd consider something along these lines for any adventure without much inate structure – what happens if the players do not do anything? The plot must go forward even without them presumably so think on that and then add some time based encounters that take place and can refocus the players on events at hand and also provide more clues to leads so that the players can get back on track.
Of these sorts of adventures the ones I suspect are the hardest to do are political pot boilers. In a Mystery the players have a goal - solve the mystery! So they more or less know how it ends. In X10 Red Arrow, Black Shield the players were trying to convince other countries to join them in a war - so they went to the power brokers of various nations and then performed whatever tasks were required to get the nation to join – basically both are somewhat straightforward.
The political intrigue adventure though usually does not make the goal clear - and often everyone is lying to some degree or another - winning the adventure itself might not be all that clear and there might not even be a way of really winning – its possible that this sort of adventure just results in players making a choice on whose team they are on but there may not be a choice thats best – all could have advantages and disadvantages.
That said my feeling is that many of these answers can become more clear with a flow chart - if you as the DM know how it, ideally, ends or at least what the final scene should be like then you can start there and work backward adding and adjusting everything as you go along. After that try and figure out what your players might do and try and think up what happens if they try and use various skills in each encounter - especially the diplomacy based ones and the knowledge gathering ones. Also consider the divination spells – having pat answers for all of these possibilities would be a very good idea for the DM
Sorry for the long post - I've been struggling with this question myself and yet I often find that things become clearer in my own head when I write a post about it.
One of the best wilderness adventures I've ever had the pleasure of running (and one I'd love to sequel) is the eye of the serpent - and as luck would have it you can buy the pdf here:
http://paizo.com/store/byCompany/w/wizardsOfTheCoast/byProductType/roleplay ingGames/dungeonsDragons/aDAndD1/adventures/v5748btpy7mc9
This low level adventure starts with an encounter with rocs which takes the heroes high onto a mountainside, and from where they must find their way back down via various routes and pathways. It ran extraordinarily well and my players still have fond memories of it. A fine example of a strong adventure in an unusual setting.
I'd also like to ring (aha!) the praises of chimes at midight - an annoyingly great urban adventure by Mr Logue.
Rich
Well, when I stared playing this game we all did modules like Keep on the Borderlands and such but, I have been writing my own adventures for about 20 years now so maybe I can help out a bit.
I find that many gms have trouble with non dungeon crawl adventures because they have no development of the scene for which they wish the encounter to take place. I dont use a flowchart per say as it is to stuctured and your pc's might do anything and it is a poor gm who railroads a group into a particular adventure if the group wants to do something else. Of course, this is for a campaign type setting not a gaming group that agrees to get together to solve a one time adventure.
Here is a basic low level model that you can add as much complexity as you wish; I find it best to let the players help develop your world as I will explain as we go.
First you need a setting.
Lets pick a village of about 180 people, mostly fishermen; on the side of a moderate sized lake. There are outlying farms and some forest nearby with the entire community at about 300 people.
choose the areas primary race; like human. They have a leader guy; decide how he why he is in office; do they vote him in; is he old; young; do a bit to flesh this guy out as the pc's might be dealing with him a lot. Humans like to have councils, but this village is to small and doesnt have the specialy to have guilds and such, but they probably have a strong belief in what is womans work and mans work. Lets pick a leader type voted in by the council who is about 50 years old; been on the council for 25 years before; give him a few details like his daughter is marrying a son of a coucilman; put one of them in farming and the other in fishing; give some rumors in your local tavern that some of the other councilers are grumbling about to much control of local resources; do say it like that, but make that the cause; have both families - remember extended families here with 10 or 15 kids and lots of cousins.
this leaves us with a village with a distracted headman who is deep in making sure his little girl has the best wedding party ever and most of the village and surrounding area is wrapped up in it.
Ok, now we need a problem; I like to think of pc's as problem solvers but mostly they create as many as they solve.
Its up to you as to when and why the pc's arrive; could be just a stop from point a to point b on the map for them, a shipwreck on the lake; making a delivery to this place to the mayor of something from the city; like fireworks which would be a big hit and novelty in a little village.
Lets go with the pc's got hired to protect a vendor bringing fireworks; they arrive 4 days early; lets say the vendor likes his beer; its inexpensive and good here so he makes his delivery and get sotted for the next couple days and wants to hang around for the wedding as he and the pc's have been invited and free food is aways good.
Ok. we have a setting and feel of the place; flesh out the tavern/inn as a small place the mostly the local come to enjoy some refreshment and gossip on tap. Add a few businesses; like netmaker; weaver; boatmaker - this guy would work with lumberguys so wood is available; a small market for fish, grain; nuts and meat from the forest; other products; just keep is fairly small and quaint.
now we need a problem. lets say the local cleric is old and died like a week ago; everyone is concerned; he had a acolyle, but he or she is young and afraid and mixed up a concoction to make him sick or appear sick so he/she wouldnt mess up the wedding; the mayor sent for a cleric from a nearby; say 30 miles village lets make it on the other side of a lake; but they guy hasnt arrived and the mayor is worried. He sent out some local guys to check the situation and they just returned to find out the cleric from the nearby village; give it a name, left two days ago. If the pc's have a ranger or barbarian or someone good at tracking; the mayor will ask them to investigate; offer some bounty or small amount of cash; remember the mayor is frantic. Good pc's should want to help; neutral or evil pc might take advantage of the guy and get more treasure; but not earn any friends and afterword probably get univited to the feast.
now decide what happened to the guy, the party cleric has to be the wrong religion of course, did somebody in the village who was jealous kidnap him; did the city councilers fearing the connection of two powerful families; has lizard men or some aquatic race just made its presence known and captured the guy who was walking on the beach. it could be all of them; two plots failed; they are nervous; but one succeeded; decide which; the ranger or such in the party might find some evidence of a struggle and direction. Remember some locals, like 2 or 3 are gonna come along; one might be working for a village group who is nervous and planting disinformation; he may or may not be subtle. Lets say the cleric and his entourage was taken by lizardmen who just moved into this area somwhere in the forest close to the lake; maybe some foresters are complaining out scarcity of game or some come up missing that no one has seen in a week; some guys in town missing there meat or need skins.
See, this whole thing is pretty easy and just off the top of my heads; just leave lots of hooks and threads for your pcs; develop villagers and farmers as needed; have players make interaction rolls as some will like them; others neutral and some will hate them on sight.
now develop your bad guys; how many, how strong; did they eat the clerics two guards or acolyes and are gonna sacrifice the cleric; they are just waiting for a holy day when the moon is right? go with that. everything will just fall into place.
If you want to expand this adventure it would be really easy; lets say that you decided on lizardmen in the previous example; why are the lizardmen there; on good reason is that this groups leader is an old cleric who had some prophesy from his deity that an army of kuo toa would emerge here and as this old lizardman has fought them before and they are blood enemies he is gonna make darn sure they the kuo toa get whipped so he badgered every family in his tribe and the cheiftan to give eggs for him to start a clutch of warriors here to combat the problem; he brought 5 females and 10 warriors with him; he is looking for a place to start a colony to battle this evil; his tribe is about 75 miles away so no immediate help for him to call on; make this guy a 5th or 7th cleric; his warrior level 1 or 2; he isnt really interested in the humans nearby; but the cleric he captured for sacrifice will make his diety happy and bless his mission; the pc's could attack the lizardmen and save the cleric; or they could make a deal with the lizardmen; offer them some cattle in exchange say 4 cows and a bull for the cleric to sacrifice; which would be acceptable; or some such; lizardmen are not evil so no evil intent is here; just need. The pc's should be able to learn of the kuo toa as the old lizardman speaks common pretty well. His intent is to bury and hatch the clutch of eggs; like maybe 60 eggs; and have the females care for them; half the warriors will return to the original tribe; half and the cleric will remain behind. You could add some stories told in the tavern about how the lake suddenly dropped in depth about 50 years ago when there was an earth tremor; eveyone would have stories about what they found in the mudd as about 50 of the lakebed was exposed; and took about 5 years to return to its current depth; some might have some treasure lost from some ancient time. After this 50 years, some kuo toa scouting expedition; their version of adventures have swum up through the undergroud caves and have found this lake; in a few wees some sorties against both lake villages will take place.
more plot thickeners for or little village with big trouble.
other than these two lakeside villages; there are two farming villages farther out and one ranching center; this entire area was once under the control of the local kindom that is far away; but since the not so local lord hasnt been around for the last 100 or so years; the towns have mostly forgotten about him; well, that is about to change; the not so local lord has been having a dandy little war with some neighbor and has some men to reward for valor and all that; he has made some veteran warrio a squire for his great service and has given him 5 warriors and title to this land. Well, this squire; lets make him about 45 and have one arm which makes him unservicable as a fighting man; he came to ranching center and set up shop; built him a fortified house and has been cowing the local ranching village and the nearby farmland; He has hire 10 mercenaries and has been at it for a while, like 2 years but hasnt gotton to the lake villages yet as he is currently makeing the third in our 5 villages submit to his will; and being a soldier his is none to nice; not to chivalrous and takes advantage of noblise obige quite a bit; see braveheart if you dont know what that is; The squire is married and has a 17 year old son from a previous engagement; that son has been using noblise oblige for quite a while now and has developed some venerial disease which he is forcefully speading everywhere. There is starting to be an epidemic as people start turning up blind; dying; and other symptoms; well, three days after the wedding; the squires son; his tax assessor and 5 mercanaries show up and say this village and lake is the property of the squire; they got papers too. things are peaceble for a few hours until the squires boy more or less has forcable relations with a town girl right in front of the pc's; who hopefully wont stand for that sort of thing; have a couple mercenaries hold the girl with the squire's boy; give him a name; uses bluff and bravodo and figures this whole thing is his right and he is gonna do it and kill as an example anyone who tries to stop him; there should be a confrontation with the pc's with some locals on there side; The family of the girl who was protected will pledge eternal freindship to the pcs; my house is your house kind of thing. any cleric or druid or anyone with healing should see the squrie's son is a lecherous pig and is very sick and is/will spreading this contagion; for more plot thickener; you could also make the local young cleric and evil guy; wolf in sheeps clothing so to speak; who has orders from a demon or evil god to either spread contagion or do murder or other evil; all with a smily face of niceness on the exterior which could be the true reason he wouldnt preform the wedding; he wants to offer their newborn as sacrifice or some such; in a perfect world; the squire would have to deal with the koa toa problem; but after his son gets killed he wants revenge; he makes things very unpleasant for everybody, hires more mercs; and posts a reward for the pc's; the pc's will have to flee or take him out. If they flee they should be aware that they will be leaving the two lake villages and probably the nearby villages in the hands of the much stronger and very evil koa toa; also the lizardman cleric has seen in a dream that if they leave that his clutch; himself and both villages will be wipes out and all captured peoples sacrifice to the koa toa evil god and there bodies eaten. yep; a sticky wicket for the pc's as if and when the squire is dead; the not so local lord is gonna send somebody to find out what happened; and probably some troops; like a company of 80 or so to restore order; its up to you at this point wheather to escallate with an evil commander who will grind everyone under his heel or a fair guy; or a kindly veteran tired of war and killing. Keep escallating the kou toa raids; fortifiy the villages a bit; the soldiers should arrive a few days befoe the koa toa invasion; make the forces about evenly matched so the pc's can turn the tide either way.
you could put this in any setting; just about any climate; change the protagonists; ect; but his his more or less how I write a not dungeon scenario. i could write these all day; any setting, any climate; just do you homework; after you introduce a character; write down his name; and a small blurb about him; most do need battle sheets though the mercs; 5 soilders, the squire and his son will need full npc sheets.
hope this sort of thing helps you out; like I said; this is a bit rough but it is just an illustration.
I have about a hundred more ideas on just these few little blurbs from prior posts. Like how to tune the model for various classes and races, tailor the model for a long campaign, fleshing out the npc's voices and backgrounds, I would suggest English or Italian type settting; No scandanavians for obvious reasons, might be ok in an oriental adventure with some tweaks. You could use this as the start of a Roman Empire in your game generated by the pc's as mediators. Remember Rome? It started from the seven hills of palantine; 7 rude small mountainous villages that banded together to throw off their Etruscan masters whom they hated so much that no one would even think of calling themselfs kings; to the extent that hundreds of years later even Julius Ceasar only called himself Princep or "first among equals". It wasn't until much, much later that you get and emperor; that is some serious cultural impact. Just think of it; the basis of our American political system is the result of hated to some Etruscan masters way back in the bronze age. Study some themes of history and read some classics and keep up with modern affairs of politics; crime; religion; and such and you will always have ripe, fun material for your games.
ps. I really am trying to shut up; but I love this game and really get motivated for this kind of stuff.
From Mr. MacDonald's follow-up post and several of the other postings here, it seems that we're collectively not sure about the scale of the "non-dungeon adventures" we're trying to create: are we doing single, discrete adventures, say for publication in Dungeon or a similar forum, or are we really doing campaign building. If the latter, the Monte Cook series in Dungeon's campaign workbook has put up a lot of suggestions similar to what have been made here.
I think I alluded in my earlier post to the fact that I have a combination of "artifact quest" and "political potboiler" going on in my homebrew campaign (PCs aren't yet clued into the latter aspect of things, because they are still in the initial stages of a series of seemingly disconnected urban adventures that will gradually reveal clues about a power struggle within the city's royal family that will ultimately involve the artifact they are looking for. (They think they are just passing through the city, but will find when they get to where the artifact is supposed to be that the city's ruler has seized the artifact and brought it back to the city.) But this complexity is at the campaign level, and I have a number of relatively short, discreet adventures that advance one or more aspects of the campaign level plot.
At the adventure level, I use flow-charting. If you set up the opening of the adventure effectively, there should be no more than 3-4 obvious paths that the party can follow, and then you can anticipate the possibilities from there and figure out how to work in most of the significant encounters you've designed without railroading the party down a specific track. Of course, the party could always spit out the bait--in which case you try to present it again in a more attractive fashion, or skip to another adventure and try to use that to set this one up more effectively for a future session. So in a sense, you always end up with a somewhat dungeon-like design, replacing masonry corridors with lines on a flow chart that channel players in certain directions. And like dungeon adventures, you have to prepare for the players to use an occasional "dimension door" or "ethereal jaunt" that negates or bypasses some part of the adventure--so you still have to be flexible about changing your design on the fly, even though you're trying to limit the players to a few likely channels.
At the campaign level, I don't bother with a flow chart, because it is a bit too early to do that kind of detailed planning. Instead, I keep some overall "campaign goals" (e.g. find the artifact, discover that the Pasha of Hattaan Mor is in league with the evil cult of the Assassins and plans to use them to conquer the PCs homelands, discover that the Pasha's mother is a Drow agent who is seeking to get ahold of the artifact and deliver it to her high priestess superior). At this point, the details as to how these goals are to be accomplished are somewhat nebulous--I have several adventures lined up that will reveal some elements of the plot in Hattaan Mor before they leave the city to retrieve the artifact, which is in a remote wilderness several hundred miles away. Beyond that, I have some ideas about how things will go, but these remain in the embryonic stage--in my head or in my notebooks, because it is too early to tell what decisions my PCs will make that might influence how, or whether, those adventure ideas are developed.
If you are good at coming up with things on the fly, you can run individual adventures the way you run a campaign--with some general goals but lots of freedom for PCs to pursue the paths they choose. There are some advantages to this, and I do things this way sometimes, but I've found it's good to have some better mapped out parts in the mix--these make it possible to introduce important details, scenes, and set-pieces that bring the campaign to life. Aimless wandering around the city gathering random rumors is not memorable. Having to locate two escaped prisoners whose testimony is key to exhonerating a framed caravan guard company head, breaking or bribing their way into the city prison to find out how they escaped, tracking them through the city sewers, using the leads they got to track down the crime boss who broke them out, eavesdropping on the boss's conversations to find out where the escapees are hiding, and recapturing them from the back room of a brothel--now that's a memorable adventure; and clues dropped in the course of the adventure can inform the players about local politics and set up future discoveries about the plots going on inside the palace walls, advancing the campaign.
It is also discreet adventures like these that are easiest to lift out of one's own campaign and publish--with the idea that other DMs can take the crunch of the adventure, insert their own hooks, replace a few of the NPCs with NPCs that are already established in their own campaigns, and tie the conclusion in to their own campaign goals in some fashion. If you get too broad with your goals, you might as well offer to write the next AP instead.