umberhulk

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Writing Better Adventures: Barriers

Often, you will want to thwart player progress during the course of a campaign. If the players could walk to the end without any trouble along the way, it wouldn’t be an adventure! There is a pitfall here. Placing a barrier that can only be solved with one method can be boring. Imagine these scenarios: DM: You’ve reach the top of the tower. There is a heavy door inscribed with the sigil of…

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Writing Better Adventures: Budgeting Encounters

I talked about outlines used in other adventures previously. This post will look at creating an outline and consider some of the other factors that you might put into it. The ideas here will focus mostly on 5e D&D. They should be useful to other similar TTRPGs. Power Level When writing an adventure you need to consider the power level. In D&D this is determined by the number and level of…

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Writing Better Adventures: Random Tactics Examples

This post follows up the previous post about using random tables to determine a monster’s actions in combat. Using a random table might be good for the following reasons: Makes the GM less adversarial Makes combat more surprising Simplifies decision making for the GM Volatile Fire Elemental Like fire, Volatile Fire Elemental shifts unpredictably. d6 Action Blazing Strike: Multi attack,…

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Writing Better Adventures: Monster Tactics

Here is a new post in this ongoing series on Writing Better Adventures. This post is about working with monster tactics. The idea for this post came from DCC, and Operation Unfathomable. I had some issues with Completely Unfathomable but, it is full of creative and inspiring ideas. A feature that I like, like this: 5 | NUL PRIEST WITH TWO-HEADED APE MUMMY BODYGUARDNul’s master of intergod…

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Writing Better Adventures: Treasure

This time we will talk about treasure. How to keep it interesting and inspiring. Generally treasure is not so exciting. But it is usually described like these. I used the OSE Treasure Generator. Type A 1,100 pp Type B 1,000 gp Type C gem (50gp) 2 x gems (100gp) piece of jewelry (1,000 gp Type D 2,000gp Spell scroll (speak with plants, hold person, commune, know alignment, cure light…

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Writing Better Adventures: What do the monsters want?

In the last post I talked about wandering monsters and how they should be doing something. A wandering monster should not be ready to ambush the party but instead should be engaged in some activity that makes sense to the type of monster and the environment. Another post in the series on Writing Better Adventures. To write better adventures we can expand on this idea! Besides an activity, a…

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Writing Better Adventures: Wandering Monsters

Adventures often include tables of “wandering” monsters. These can make the adventuring area feel alive. The dungeon master rolls periodically, usually once every other exploration turn, or if the characters create significant noise or do something that might attract monsters. Usually a wandering encounter occurs on a roll of 1 in 6. Wandering monsters could be guards, monsters that live in the…

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Writing Better Adventures: Outline

Using an outline helps me plan adventures. Seems like the obvious thing that teachers have been telling you since grade school. My outline looks like this: Introduction Adventure Hooks Rumors Background Locations 1.0 … 2.0 … This gives me a good place to start writing. Now it’s about filling in the blanks. Introduction describing what the adventure is about, appropriate level. Short and…

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Writing Better Adventures: Organizing Encounters

This example came from Completely Unfathomable, which i review here. Overall I like the ideas presented in this adventure, it really is inspired, the art is great, and the layout is good. It suffers from poor encounter presentation and organization in my humble opinion. Completely Unfathomable is really two adventures: Operation Unfathomable, and Odious Uplands. The former is sort of an…

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Writing Better Adventures: Dialog

In this on going series of posts about Writing better Adventures, this time we will discuss dialog. Deciding what an NPC, and by this I mean any intelligent non-player entity, will say can be difficult for people. Giving a DM a couple responses might good for some encounters. Just a few words can give a DM using your adventure something to riff on. Again it’s important to avoid trying to cover…

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Writing Writing Better Adventures: Writing better encounters examples

In my last post I outlined how I think encounters should be written. This is a follow up post where we will critique and discuss encounters in adventures that I have read and run. We will look for what I think they are doing right and where I think they can be improved. Recently I have been running Out of the Abyss. This a long and epic adventure, with long and epic encounter descriptions. The…

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Writing Better Adventures: Writing better encounters

After my disappointment with How to Write Adventure Modules that Don’t Suck, I thought I’d write some posts about writing better adventures. What authority do I have to say that I can write better adventures? None! I figured I couldn’t do any worse than the book mentioned above! A lot of this post will be about me studying adventures that I think are doing a good job, and the things that I think…

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Knock! #1

Knock! is a magazine published by the Merry Mushmen. Knock! #1 is the first issue there were four issues published at the time I wrote this. Knock! is described as messy and stuffed to the gills with OSR bric-a-brac. It’s 212 pages A5 (about 6″ by 8.5″) full color well produced magazine. The quality of this product gets highest marks from me. After reviewing “How to Write Adventure Modules that…

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How to Write Adventure Modules that don't Suck (unimpressed)

I got this book hoping it would inspire some good ideas. I found the book to be uninspiring, the advice not very useful, and adventure examples weak. How to Write Adventure Modules that Don’t Suck is a collection essays on adventure design from Goodman Games. It’s black and white hard back book with some art, about $30. The presentation is very readable. The actual content seems to be more…

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The Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburg

An OES adventure from the Merry Mushmen by Liam Pàdraig Ò Cuilleanàin for characters level 2 to 4. I have not played this but I think it’s very good from reading the book. Looks like you can get a version of this on DTRPG, or from the Merry Mushmen in an expanded print form. The adventure centers around a situation. 1000 years earlier the evil Kryptwood Tyrant hunted the local peasants for…

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Blogs you should read!

There are a lot of great RPG blogs out there. Many of the best have few to now ads! But, it’s these that are the hardest to find. I needed a place to keep a list of my favorite. Come back to this page, I’ll update it in the future! https://worldofortix.blogspot.com – Great lists of interesting random tables. http://www.howlingtower.com – Blog of Steve Winter ex TSR from…

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Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow

Nightmare over Ragged Hollow is a an adventure written by R. Lewis and published by the Merrymushmen. This adventure has a good old school flavor but it misses the mark with me. While the writing is good the encounters in the main temple/dungeon leave asking what is happening before the players show up? Presentation and formatting? The book is good quality, well designed, uses bold text and…