How do *you* go about the process of making your own adventures ?
Kruelaid's MO
(How I make a campaign)
Make a flow chart of the BIG plan. Rape and pillage movies, books, and published rpg material and weave it together with my own fluff. Most recent pillaging victims: "The Lost Room" and Three Kings.)
Make outline of adventures with a flow chart or rambling late night composition.
Make necessary maps (Adobe Illustrator), lists, and charts. For example, make my own map of Port Toli on Illustrator, then re-label Sandpoint as a town in Greyhawk's Celestial Imperium with Photoshop.
Cruise Lilith's site for NPCs. Tentatively select monsters. Devise traps. Write up my own NPCs.
Label maps.
Start filling in locations on pillaged and custom maps with descriptions and details. Hone NPCs by having conversations with self while biking around the peninsula and listening to punk and electronic music.
Write up info for players such as town descriptions, NPC bios, maps, and weird handouts. For example, the last one was a poem I wrote out in fancy calligraphy, soaked in tea, and carried in my pocket for two weeks. Then I used some brown paint and made it look like guy had been carrying it between his ass cheeks. (...Three Kings, and yes the players found it.)
Make threatening phone calls to the players.
Tidy everything up during free time the week before play (I play every week).
Here is my rough run down.
The most important things are main idea & the scene 'feel'.
Usually three steps of monsters (easy/med/hard or med/hard/harder etc.). At least one cool scene. The Big Bad Evil Guy. Make sure a twist exists. Traps and puzzles. NPCs and non combat encounters (could be puzzle, person, monster or other). Finally treasure suitable to situation.
Recheck for proper foreshadowing, complete personalities and goals, etc.
EDIT: most important thing to me is the main idea or adventure seed (the DM hook) that made you want to write the adventure.
Oh and don't be afraid to change something especially if it doesn't fit. Whether a previous idea, published npc, pregenerated treasure, monster, map, even rewriting the adventure after finding a new seed.
The few adventures I have written have always been for specific characters within an ongoing campaign. This having been said, the plot line of the adventure takes priority, since it is tailored to my group. The monsters/ setting/ environment/ roleplaying are made to be challenging and fun for the PC's.
I try to throw one or two things for each character into the adventure. The thief has a cool trap to find and disarm, the monk has a particular fight where interesting acrobatics may help the group overcome the bad guys. A certain spell or knowledge check the wizard can perform moves the plot line forward... etc.
However, I should point out that I always make it possible to solve every situation in MULTIPLE ways. No problem you set in front of the party should only have one possible solution. That is a recipe for frustration and disaster for the players if they get stumped.
well, I start with an arch villian who has some world shaking scheme to destroy, dominate or otherwise change the status quo; I give him a goal and decide what type of powerbase he is going to have; is he a solo act; does he just use a few followers or does he have a large ungerground network of followers or is the the basis of a up front empire. Using one of these type paradyms, I will flesh out the goal of the arch villan, for example; say bad guy Babbadobad seeks to find all the pieces of Osiris' body which has been chopped to peices by Set and scattered throughout the world; Old Babba seeks to find all the pieces and have his network of cultists do a ritual that Babba can steal all the mystical energy from the body parts and become a god himself. In this case I would probably make Babba a Demigod that has a secret citadel and a gathering of open followers; he has a network of spies inside various sage and eygyptian pantheon agencies as well as some tabs on moves and shakers of art and old artifacts in the world; he perhaps has a small trained elite military; now old Babba would have some organizations that might be aligned with him and certainly some very opposed to him; I would make a list of these and flesh out a bit on why they are on either side and how committed and how easily each infiltrates the other; I would then start leaving teasers for the adventure group about mystical powers of the hand or Osiris or something like that and see if there are any bites; if so, the party might find a clue to a location of a part; start encountering npc's that are working for and agaisnt Babba; have a few successes and overcome conflicts; convelute the situation as various follower factions of babba do infighting and use various tactics to help or kill the party with the ultimate goal of finding the Hand and procuring it by hook or crook; force or outright buy it from the party; perhaps the party will get hints of Babba in the process; from this simple idea of a arch villan; I could make many dungeons, many city adventures; create all kinds of specialized npc to inform or delude the party and give the whole thing an Indiana Jones type feel.
I did this one right now of the top of my head; but most of my adventures start in this manner; just a guy; a goal add some flaws and the adventure starts to write itself. Perhaps in this adventure; the flaw would be all these Babba guys are evil; perhaps Babba is LE and none of them can physically touch a piece of LG Osiris lest they be destroyed; so they need intermediary dupes to bring them the pieces.
I have a very nebulous process, which typically has me considering several plot archs simultaneously, focusing on small nuggets of inspiration and then building a web of connections to anchor them all together in a cohesive whole. These threads of thought typically fall in two groups: BBEG, and players.
My overall plan for a campaign is usually BBEG-centric. I start at the top, thinking about what the BBEG is, what the evil scheme is, what the history to this plot is, and work backwards from there. My BBEGs tend to be someone or something with a very long past; either the plans are just now being completed, or they've returned from presumed oblivion, or the status quo holding them in check has shifted).
Then I also look to the players, at what backgrounds they've created. I brainstorm up a rival or obstacle for them to overcome, then basically do the same thing as I did with the campaign's overall BBEG; identify the goals, history, etc., then work backwards to where the individual PC will start in the game.
I then try to tie all that together in an introductory adventure. My BBEG's usually have some intricate, overarching plan, but there's one little crack in it the PCs happen to slip into by chance in their first adventure. I also try to work it so that their reasons for being in that first adventure are background-driven, and believably thrust them together and into action.
For example, the players may be a rogue, a fighter, and a wizard. I might weave their stories together in the following manner, drawing on what the players gave me: the rogue has to prove his worth to a thieve's guild, or perhaps pay off a debt. He's out of options, save for looking in Dungeon X for the gems everyone say the old necromancer kept there. The old necromancer was slain by the fighter's father, but not before wounding the patriarch mortally. Now the son wants to find his dad's body for proper burial, and take up his ancestral blade. The wizard's master was also the old necromancer's master before the evil mage turned on his mentor, taking a spell book in the process. Now the current apprentice is being sent to recover it.
Unbeknownst to all of them, the old necromancer was working for the Lich Queen, performing research. Recovering his journal should be an easy task, simply walking in and taking it, so she just sends some of her lowliest servitors (goblins, likely) out to recover it. Of course, then the PCs enter and screw everything up.
So, each character has their own organic reason for going to Dungeon X which brings them together as a whole. Additionally, they find something that, apparent to them or not, propels them into the action of the campaign's overall plot.
I then work from low levels up, taking a sort of flow-chart/layer-cake approach. They start here, which leads there, and then they'll do this. I map out the overall adventure ideas several steps ahead of the party, keeping an eye on the nebulous stuff which still exists between the PCs and the BBEG, pulling on the threads as I go and weaving the tapestry far enough ahead that I'm prepared for the party, but not so far as to be unable to allow them free choice or be able to respond to changes they may unwittingly make in the script. At some point, there's usually a "click" in my head where a lot of the further nebulous material solidifies all of a sudden.
Also, while making these layers, I keep an eye on diversity. Let's have an adventure relating to the main plot, then lets do an adventure focusing on the wizard's backstory, then a totally random sidequest, then the fighter's story, now back to the main plot, and then the rogue's. I try to "complete" each character's own mini-campaign before about level 10. Thus, their past is completed and they can move on with the identity they've created into their further adventures. Because of this goal, I try to make the first part of the campaign very character-focused, with only sparse appearances of the main plot. Once they've gotten their identities and taken care of the self-interesting but, from the world's perspective, inconsequential personal stuf, that's when they can start really tangling with the BBEG and his plans.
This keeps up some mystery about what the game is going to ultimately be "about" at the very end (unlike AoW, which blew the secret right from the start), and it allows the BBEG to be really powerful, with lots of really powerful allies and minions, because the players will be powerful themselves by the time they get there. None of this "Why are we, a group of 3rd level characters, out trying to save the world? Surely someone else can do this better." By the time it's apparent they are out to save the world (though it's typically more like their nation or region), they're the best candidates for the job.
At least, that's how I design adventures (read: campaigns). Getting a game to run long enough to actually implement and play through all that, is another matter.
Buy or download a good adventure or create one but write it so later you can share it to the lazy ones (like me).
Tensor; am curious how you create adventures since you started the thread...
First I get real familiar with the setting. I pour over Monster Manuals and Campaign Setting books whenever I get the chance. I'll read them the way other people read novels, try to run them through my head when I sleep. Really get into the particular flavor of the setting.
Next get the characters in as soon as possible and talk with the players (one on one if possible) to explore and flesh out their characters.
Then I try to zoom in on some parts of their story and character desires that I really like, that seem full of possibilites, and I mull over what could be done with it to tie it into the beginning of a story.
Often I don't have lots of time for this--because the characters get handed in the day of, so I'll grab a bit here and a bit there from the various characters and throw them together as story threads that, while intriguing to me, don't have a full clear destination yet.
Then in the next few weeks, over the next few sessions I'll dangle a plot hook here, introduce an NPC there, the ones that get followed I'll flesh out over the next week or so, weaving it in with what I've already got. By about the fourth or fifth session there will usually be a really eloborate and interesting (at least to me) labyrinth of connections and characters. At this point the game usually runs itself and I just sit back and guide things in the ways I think would be most rewarding, dramatic, and fun.
How do *you* go about the process of making your own adventures ?
I see you've emphasized process and yet I'm still not 100% sure I'm answering your question but I can't really think what else you could mean by process. If your essentially asking for something of a checklist - some way of taking the unformed ideas floating around your head and turn that into the mechanic laden mass called an adventure I suggest you take your lead from the pro's.
I'm not sure if Paizo still has this up somewhere but their Dungeon Submission Guidelines are the distilled knowledge of generations of frustrated Dungeon Editors who all where forced to deal with their writers handing in product that might be good but were not complete.
Their Guidelines cover all the bases in depth. I've found that in going through them and fulfilling their criteria step by step I can turn a good idea into a good adventure in a clear and methodical manner.
Now I modify this process slightly to fill in a few steps. After I finish writing the Adventure Synopsis I stop the writing process and I turn to doing the maps needed for the adventure.
When I've finished the maps I'll often have to go back over Introduction, Adventure Background and Adventure Synopsis because the process of map making itself is a way of envisioning an adventure that is fundamentally different from the written word. During this process some ideas are often added to the adventure and other ideas that might have seemed like good ones in ones head and even when they were written down just don't seem to work in terms of the map (and therefore in the mechanics of the game itself).
Once the map making process is complete I'll go back to the writing aspect. Now I personally keep the creatures separate from the main text and in their own little booklet with its own index etc. This is in part because my adventures are often dynamic and an encounter with creature A could result in creatures B and C getting involved depending on what the players do and the circumstances. Hence I've usually found that creatures and their specific tactics should have their own little booklet.
I also add a few stages to the end of the writing process. I'll make sure to include things like props and handouts in the adventures but I'll tend to write them pretty much last. Here I have found that the contents of the adventure just has too much of an impact on the handouts and if I write them first their never really accurate by the time I'm finished with the adventure itself. Handouts and props are usually meant for the players as well and, while the text should refer to them they need to be stored separately from the rest of the adventure so that you can hand them to your players.
The final thing I do that one did not normally find in the magazine was add a table of contents. Pretty much all word processors allow one to make such a thing and having a good table of contents is a great when you need to find an encounter quickly. I make a table of contents for both the adventure itself and for my monsters booklet.
After that I'm ready to play.
Method A: Do nothing. Wait until game night. Grab random minis and throw together some encounters. Surprisingly, this works well sometimes. When it doesn't, it does suck.
Method B: Flowchart the adventure. Look at various ways in which the PCs can approach what's going on and where they might go. Prep 50% of the options before I run out of time. At least one time in four, PCs go exactly where you never thought of. Two in four, they go after stuff you haven't prepped. One in four, they go right where you want. Then you really make them beg for mercy.
Method C: Make a map. Think up a few encounters. Read some books that might have some monsters I want to use. Jot down a few notes. Two days later scrap most of it. Start over. This time make some terrain or props to go in the adventure. Consult with a knowledgeable friend on a couple possible twists. Read a book instead of finishing prep. On game day, get a great idea, jot it down, and rush through the process of getting all the pieces of it together.
By the way, it sounds like I'm being a tad facetious, but I'm not....
Hone NPCs by having conversations with self while biking around the peninsula and listening to punk and electronic music.
I do this myself right down to the biking bit, though I don't have a peninsula and I'm usually listening to Goth, Dance or Classical music.
Method A: Do nothing. Wait until game night. Grab random minis and throw together some encounters. Surprisingly, this works well sometimes. When it doesn't, it does suck.
Method B: Flowchart the adventure. Look at various ways in which the PCs can approach what's going on and where they might go. Prep 50% of the options before I run out of time. At least one time in four, PCs go exactly where you never thought of. Two in four, they go after stuff you haven't prepped. One in four, they go right where you want. Then you really make them beg for mercy.
Method C: Make a map. Think up a few encounters. Read some books that might have some monsters I want to use. Jot down a few notes. Two days later scrap most of it. Start over. This time make some terrain or props to go in the adventure. Consult with a knowledgeable friend on a couple possible twists. Read a book instead of finishing prep. On game day, get a great idea, jot it down, and rush through the process of getting all the pieces of it together.
By the way, it sounds like I'm being a tad facetious, but I'm not....
Honestly, I've used all of these methods, and they all work... but are not for the "faint of heart" DM's. :-)