I've been thinking of writing my own adventure path set in Ebberon for my own purposes, but I find it is much more challenging than it seems. I want to start off by writing a background and synopsis of each adventure, much like the Age of Worms Overload. Perhaps the staff of Dungeon could explain what process they use to create one of these APs.
Well, I'm not part of the staff, but here's my suggestions.
Start with a theme, with a clearly defined goal. Probably a one-page synopsis would work as you're writing it up. Make sure you've got a defined beginning, middle and end. Start to break your synopsis up in chunks and develop each chunk into its own synopsis. After you've got your initial "chunks", start developing each chunk so that elements tie together to make a cohesive story.
Add seasonings and agitate thoroughly, then bake until complete. :P
*edit* Darn double posts...
Anyway, you may want to jot your notes on some sort of wiki, which will allow you to cross reference NPCs, locales, and all that good stuff. Here's TiddlyWiki, which you can run on your computer without needing access to the internet. :)
Kobold Press
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Anyway, you may want to jot your notes on some sort of wiki, which will allow you to cross reference NPCs, locales, and all that good stuff. Here's TiddlyWiki, which you can run on your computer without needing access to the internet. :)
Tiddlywiki looks interesting. I was just discussing outlining with some of the Open Design patrons, and it didn't go over very well. They're understandably more interested in the contents of specific adventures.
But clear outlining is a crucial step to make HUGE stuff like Adventure Paths fly. And really, you're talking about at least one year of playtime. So, my recommendation is to pick your theme, and outline by level blocks that relate to a smaller goal. Such as, just for instance, Pirates & Rogue for levels 1-5, and, oh, The Abyss for levels 15-20. Then the interesting part of your outlining is connecting the starting point with the finale you have in mind.
The other advice I'd offer seems contradictory, but you can run an Adventure Path without plotting all of it out ahead of time. Just note the major milestones and turning points, and don't worry about what level they happen. My current campaign has a moderately detailed outline, but all the super-crunchy details are generated weekly.
But clear outlining is a crucial step to make HUGE stuff like Adventure Paths fly. And really, you're talking about at least one year of playtime. So, my recommendation is to pick your theme, and outline by level blocks that relate to a smaller goal. Then the interesting part of your outlining is connecting the starting point with the finale you have in mind.
The other advice I'd offer seems contradictory, but you can run an Adventure Path without plotting all of it out ahead of time. Just note the major milestones and turning points, and don't worry about what level they happen. My current campaign has a moderately detailed outline, but all the super-crunchy details are generated weekly.
What he said. :)
My GM mentor always tells me to have a beginning, a handful of mid-points and a multitude of endings ready, but don't stress the small stuff. Players can, have, and will throw a monkey wrench into any ideas that you may have planned.
In Dungeon 140, James Jacobs relates to us how his first "adventure path" was created. He simply made a module for his group, and soon realized that he needed to continue it.
I too have found that the easiest way to make a campaign is by writing a starting adventure and linking to that with new adventures, using new ideas as they arise.
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I started slapping something together, a few months back.
I first picked the bbeg for the end.
He was a lich; he was going to be the mastermind they fought for the final conflict.
He was a powerful necromancer that ruled a good-sized island, and who made the mistake of stealing an ancient wyrm's eggs for some purpose. The wyrm came and destroyed him outright.
With him gone, his children divided the island into warring fiefdoms. I liked the idea of a noble family comprised of close relations warring against one another, like in Zelazny's Amber books.
The secret of the campaign was that he was really a lich when the dragon destroyed him, and he was just uninvolved in politics for a few years. I hadn't figured out what he was really up to the whole time; maybe serving Orcus for a period as a general against demogorgon, at the completion of his time of service he would be granted an infernal army to reinvade his island and menace the campaign world as a whole.
Presaging his demise, he had gathered numerous monstrous forces to invade the mainland and increase his power base. The campaign would initially revolve around subduing and overcoming the remnants of these forces. The first adventure was to revolve around reclaiming a former gnomish village from the kobolds that the lich had granted it to. The displaced gnomes were interested in going home. The minor secret there was they had developed a flying ship, and they were sending a spy to reclaim it.The governmental factions of the island would also be interested in getting this ship and the military advantage it would provide. The spy would be a dmpc inserted into the party who would suddenly disappear and go after the flying ship. That's one reason I like dmpc's, so the party doesn't necessarily expect it when a dmpc decides to betray them.
I was just going to go from there, and next create an orcish redoubt, or a giant stronghold, and sprinkle secrets into the adventures along the way to let the party know...ultimately...who their foe was. Then, there's the question of 5-6 nobles with a murderous ongoing sibling rivalry, jockeying for position as the campaign unfurls. And of course the party has to deal with these petty tyrants when their overall mission relies on them moving through their fiefdoms.
I just kinda create some npc's, a dangerous situation, and start the ball rolling and see where it takes me.
Thank you everyone, for your helpful replies. I think I'm going to start with a combination of ideas - first an outline, while establishing the BBEG, and then creating a one page synopsis. Here's my outline so far:
Lvl. 1-6 Exploring the Eldeen Reaches (mystical mystery)
Lvl. 7-12 Sharn adventures - intrigue, PC wanted by the law (think Fugitive)
Lvl. 13-16 War between several planar factions in the Eldeen Reaches
Lvl. 17-20 Trip to Sarlona to fight the BBEG, a powerful quori, and to recover the PC's possessed mentor and friend
I'll be holding off on the high level stuff until the Sarlona Sourcebook comes out.
Once again, thank you everyone. (Of course I'd still love suggestions.)
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Ive been working on a AP of my own that Ive dubbed Shadows over Sterich set in the World of Greyhawk. Basically I took the Istivin Trilogy from Dungeon magazines #117-#119 as well as the back drop article on Istivin from #117 and then brain stromed ideas with the various hooks and story seeds in the magazine. I also culled as much info from other sources that I could for addtional ideas. Im also using a few other adventures from Dungeon and possibly looting some other published works. Once I had enough material together I hammered out a rough outline of adventures at what levels that I needed to fill in and created a binder as sort of campaign bible to store notes on ideas, maps, NPCs and whatever else. The beauty in using some published stuff is that it saves you some time and effort in creating the whole campaign and gives you a solid foundation to build from.Right now Im still trying to work out my master villians plot so that I can weave it into the background and adventures and really create a solid theme for the campaign.One of the major reasons I find for my campaigns puttering out befoire the end is a lack of an ending and being able to provide a ending to the campaign that can be seen by the player's, and yet still offer a twist of surprise at the end. Im sort of a rookie at this so this is just my opinion from personal experiance and some ideas I wanted to bounce around. Wolfgang Baur is the dude to listen to though, he the "Man" of adventure design.
So any thoughts from James Jacobs or rest of the staff? I'd love to hear how you came up with the current adventure path - brainstorming as a group, etc. How did you get it solidified into the background, synopsis that you did?
Creative Director
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I've spent more or less the last 3.5 years honing the Adventure Path Writing skills. As a result, while I have a lot of stuff I've learned about the process filling my head, it's way too much to post on a messageboard. It's leaking out in my editorials in Dungeon now and then, though. And if you have a specific question, I'll do my best to answer it.
Hear, hear. I second the call for an article on "How to Write an Adventure Path" in Dungeon.
El Skootro
Dungeon staff does these things by tapping the time and talents of a dozen or more authors. I you want to do an AP yourself, it seems to me best to create a basic backdrop scenario and then use adventures from Dungeon and/or other sources to fill in most of it, altering plots and details but avoiding complete reworks. You'll be busy enough filling in the gaps as it is. For an example of how to do this, I highly recommend you review F2K's Greyhawk CY 576 campaign log on this website. You can skip past most of his player entries and just read his posts--if you've subscribed to Dungeon for a couple of years you'll recognize most of the adventures and get a sense of how he's cobbled them together into quite a long campaign.
If you want to do all the work yourself, I recommend you start with a couple of first level adventures and some PCs and see what happens. You can generate ideas for mid-long term, but sometimes your players will give you hooks that can turn the campaign in a different direction. This kind of synergy is cool and is a bit different from the semi-railroaded feel of an adventure path. (Both have their good points--I'm not knocking the adventure path but merely pointing out that the flexibility of the homebrew has advantages). For example, my homebrew campaign I run with my son started out as a series of thematically unconnected adventures in and around a small frontier town--uncovering a small cult, slaying a baby dragon that was blocking caravan traffic over an important pass, and helping a village of halflings root out a tribe of kobolds that were harrying their community. In the last adventure, a likeable NPC ally that the PCs had cooperated with a couple of times was killed because the I rolled a serious crit against him. (I hadn't planned his death, it just happened). When my son suggested he wanted to see about getting him raised (his PCs were just 2nd level), the wheels started turning. I had more or less outlined the local region and the only cleric of appropriately high level was a dwarven theocrat. Some vague adventure ideas I had kicking around in my head crystalized as I realized that I had a perfect opportunity to use the old "perform three services for me and I'll raise your friend" trick to send the principal PC in directions that would allow me to develop several hooks built into the character's background and at the same time develop and reveal some of the history of the campaign setting that was kicking around in my head. A letter from the PC's father, an ancient prophecy, and a couple of long ruined Elvish cities, and presto, the PC found himself launched on a quest of epic proportions (he doesn't know the half of it yet). Things went from there. The campaign has a main quest and about a dozen significant side/background plots that just came out of the decisions made by PCs and the introduction of interesting NPCs. At this point I've already got some pretty high-level villains genned up and placed (they sort of sprang naturally from the ongoing interaction of the developing campaign world and the requirements of the plot).
So, to make a long ramble short--if you're just running it for your own crew, it's not really necessary to create an AP to end up with a long campaign. Start with a map, a few NPCs, and talk with your PCs about what kind of hooks they want to build into their character's background and what motives bring them into the place where the opening scene takes place. Then see what creative ideas come out of the synergy between you, the players, and the campaign world.
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I just thought I'd pipe up and say that I have pretty much thought in terms of adventure paths for as long as I have been DMing, which has been a long time. I have always run the long epic story arch with the big bad at the end. Just now, Dungeon has given it a name. I guess that's why i like them so much.
Also,I have used most of the suggestions in this thread in one way or another to create my campaigns. In the end it seems to work best to use a combo of whatever gets the job done, but they are all good ways to get going.
As a result, while I have a lot of stuff I've learned about the process filling my head, it's way too much to post on a messageboard.any way we could have an article after the end of the AP on the creation process?
Better still, how about a full-length book on the topic? I'm sure something like that would be a godsend for many DMs, and having the extra page count available would really let you do the topic justice.
Yes, an article would be awesome. A book would be cool, but probably not as realistic a request...but if an "Adventure Path for Dummies" came out, this dummy would certainly be interested.
I just thought I'd pipe up and say that I have pretty much thought in terms of adventure paths for as long as I have been DMing, which has been a long time. I have always run the long epic story arch with the big bad at the end. Just now, Dungeon has given it a name. I guess that's why i like them so much.
Also,I have used most of the suggestions in this thread in one way or another to create my campaigns. In the end it seems to work best to use a combo of whatever gets the job done, but they are all good ways to get going.
I'm the same as you robert in this regard. I've been writing up my own campaigns/adventure paths for decades now. The difference is though is that in the past, simply because of the length of time to reach the ultimate conclusion of these paths, my previous adventure paths have changed to suit the players and/or my own interests & whims.
The highests level I have ever taken a group is 16th and this was while playing 2nd Edition after 12 years with the same characters. So while I've never completed a Adventure Path I've always played my game using the same basic premise of one.
I think having a path or direction for a group to follow is essential to a long term campaign. Otherwise players quickly grow bored of meaningless adventures that have no relation to each other or them in general.
I'm currently using the Shackled City AP and have been doing so for a few years now. I'm hoping that for the first time I can actually play the campaign all the way through!
Delvesdeep
The discussion here reminds me of something I watched on the complete season DVDs for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Many of these DVDs include commentaries by Joss Whedon and the other Buffy writers regarding their processes for creating a "story arc" for an entire season of episodes. Anyone with access to those DVDs who's interested in how to conceptually plot a story arc (i.e., adventure path) might find it useful to watch these commentaries.