
Nicolas Quimby RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32 aka Hydro |

For a stand-alone adventure (the likes of which our winner will be writing), what do you feel makes a good hook?
My thinking is that there are "strong hooks" which really have to take center stage in your game, and then there are "agile hooks" which are very easy to slip into your game but might also be ignored. A lot of hooks can be one or the other (I would say that the classic "strong hook" is an encounter that you spring or an important NPC begging for help, while the classic "agile hook" is a clue to be followed up on or a note posted on a tavern wall), and the cleverest ones might be both, but sometimes you gotta pick one.
(For my money the "guy asking you to do something" and the "note on a wall" are easy to do but pretty stale. The encounter-hook and the mysterious clue/object/event are better, but hard to do right.)

Ziv Wities RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32 , Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7 aka Standback |

For a stand-alone adventure (the likes of which our winner will be writing), what do you feel makes a good hook?
An intriguing NPC makes a great hook for me. I like games where I get to interact with other characters a lot. By extension, political-type games, with factions and goals and maybe a pre-determined goal dictated to my character, is also something I find inherently interesting.
Being trapped somewhere is always a great hook - it's so unavoidable, and it's necessarily tied very directly into the nature of the adventure. Very straightforward, but effective. A more tricky version of this is being the object of a hunt, or a chase.
Any clearly-defined investigation is a cool hook, but that needs appropriate follow-up which can be very difficult to pull off well - mystery is a tough genre, doubly so when you don't control the protagonists. What you can do, though, is have a very well-defined question that will definitely be answered in the course of the game - "What is the secret of the Zamah-Zhuls' long life?" and whatnot. It's not investigation, but it lets a lot of the same juices flow.

![]() |

For a stand-alone adventure (the likes of which our winner will be writing), what do you feel makes a good hook?
My thinking is that there are "strong hooks" which really have to take center stage in your game, and then there are "agile hooks" which are very easy to slip into your game but might also be ignored. A lot of hooks can be one or the other (I would say that the classic "strong hook" is an encounter that you spring or an important NPC begging for help, while the classic "agile hook" is a clue to be followed up on or a note posted on a tavern wall), and the cleverest ones might be both, but sometimes you gotta pick one.
(For my money the "guy asking you to do something" and the "note on a wall" are easy to do but pretty stale. The encounter-hook and the mysterious clue/object/event are better, but hard to do right.)
Finding the right hook for a "throw-in" adventure is often the hardest thing to do for a GM.
Personally, most of the campaigns I run have a heavy meta-theme, and the hook for almost every encounter is pre-built into the campaign. It isn't leading the players by the nose at all, if some might think this is what is happening, but rather the arch-villain/nemesis is moving events along in the world and directly affecting the PCs. If they want it to stop, they gotta go kill/stop their nemesis.
The problem is, in a published stand-alone adventure, you can't really write hooks like this, so most hooks end up getting ignored by the GM, or end up being fairly stale.
The key, I think, is to write a hook for an adventure (especially a low level one, or that might lead to a couple GM written lower level modules to lead into the purchased one) that inspires the GM to run a campaign based around that adventure.

Nick Bolhuis RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16 , Star Voter Season 6 |

I'm sort of a fan of encounter-as-hook, but balancing this is hard to do. The encounter needs to be tough enough to grab their interest, but not so tough as to kill half the party from word go. This is doubly hard to do if the PC have been adventuring for a while, as they have worked out tactics and function as a team where the whole is more efficient that the sum of its parts. If they are anything like my group they often mop the floor with monsters was above their CR, and it's very difficult to keep anything from being "just the next encounter". Some groups bite at any chance for adventure, while others need some guy in a bar to spell it out for them, and unfortunately you need to appeal to both. Some groups don't respond well to being railroaded into an adventure.
Here's my thinking: Something happens, not to the PCs, but they do happen to be there when things go down. How, why or even if they deal with the situation is not as relevant as their presence at this triggering event. Now, when an NPC approaches them with an offer, it's not because they are his only chance, nor is he picking them at random. They were there, and he knows it. Perhaps he only knows that they survived, perhaps he has heard details of the event, but whatever he knows, they already know what he's talking about, and might already be on the right trail. Maybe they weren't interested, but now that he can give them some more details they are, even if only in getting paid. He has a reason to be talking to them, and they have a reason to be listening to him.
"I hear you were injured when the Red Fist stole the Scepter of lies. Are you interested in leading an expedition to retrieve it?" Is far more convincing than "Some guys stole a thing, here's fifty buck to deal with it."
"I understand you are the reason the Red Fist failed to steal the Scepter of lies. I would like to offer you a ridiculous sum to ensure they continue to fail, and perhaps to determine why they want it in the first place. There might be a bonus if you eradicate them all together." Is even better.
I think its more compelling for the PC's to want to fight a foe, and then learn that it is the adventure than it is to say "here is an adventure, this is the bad guy."

![]() |

For a stand-alone adventure (the likes of which our winner will be writing), what do you feel makes a good hook?
A good hook is one that makes players want to continue playing and that can be tricky. Some need the brass ring in their nose and I can't say how many times that "agile hooks" have been overlooked in the rush to kill things and take their stuff. On the other hand, with more obvious hooks, players run the risk of immediately becoming suspicious. I think that the best literature contains a blending of both types so that, if the "strong hook" does not get the reader to turn the page, perhaps they will turn the page for the more subtle ones.
I think it goes without saying (but I'm going to say it anyhow) that a standalone adventure should have a strong hook place on the front cover - it's title.

Charles Evans 25 |
The winning RPGSuperstar modules so far:
Clash of the King-Slayers
Realm of the Fellnight Queen
As of the time of my posting this, I haven't seen a copy of Cult of the Ebon Destroyers
So, the winning modules to date seem to me to straddle the hook range. However, loosely speaking they all have in common (or so it seems to me) an assumption that the PCs are in a particular place when a particular event (or chain of events) occurs. Looking across a lot of other published stuff, it seems to me that those two things (specific place plus specific event/events) are practically an industry standard.
It seems to me that after the initial event a lot of published adventures then either have an authority figure summon the PCs or NPCs whom the PCs may feel friendly towards prevail upon the PCs for aid, initiate the next stage of proceedings which is where they first start to become really involved in whatever plot happens to be going on.
I've generalised quite a bit here, but it seems to me that if you're looking for specific details of what makes a good hook for a published stand-alone D&D/PFRPG adventure, the answers are either a myriad or none. About the closest thing I have noticed to a universal thread is drama of some sort.

james knowles Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9 |

...Depends on what type of players you have. My last group were strickly hack and slash so anything that didn't lead directly to combat was ignored. A good DM knows, and gives in to, his players style and can either modify existing hooks or make up new ones based on said style.
For a published module, i'd try to appeal to the broadest audience possible without going overtly gonzo. That way more people will have less work adapting your hook to their style.