Explaining roleplaying to a non-gamer is one of the hardest things we’re asked to do. We want to share this hobby we love so much, but we often find ourselves in a catch-22 situation: it’s extremely difficult to explain roleplaying to someone who’s never done it, but once someone’s done it, they no longer need the explanation.

Below are several posts that could help when you’re called on to do the impossible:

• Advice for a First-Time Player
• Explaining Gaming to Non-Gamers (Roleplaying, that is): from xkcd forums
• Explaining Roleplaying: from rpg.net forums
• Explaining the concept of a fantasy role-playing game: from Helium.com
• Explaining What Role-Playing Games Are: from The Journeyman GM
• Newbie’s Guide to Roleplaying: from Star Wars Galaxies forums
• Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games: the hardest thing to explain ever: from Wonderbread
• Please explain the appeal of roleplaying games such as D&D to me: from The Straight Dope forums
• Role-playing: from Wikipedia
• What is roleplaying?: from Ars Imagica
• What is role-playing?: from Negative Space
• What is Roleplaying (and why on earth would I want to do it?): from NoDDSoc

[Image courtesy of pasukaru76 via Flickr Creative Commons]

So How Do You Win? Explaining Roleplaying to Non-Gamers is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

Image via Wikipedia

Just a quick note this week to tell everyone that Evil Machinations is now available on your Kindle.  Just search the Kindle store for “Evil Machinations” and it should pop right up. And, as usual for Kindle blogs, you get a free 14-day trial subscriptions, after which you pay $0.99 per month.

I’m also looking into the possibility of making it available for the Nook, as well. Can’t say when that will happen, though…

Related articles

• Kindle Now Allowing You to Upload Your PDFs to Your Kindle Device via “Send to Kindle” (teechy.com)

Now on Kindle is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

I can’t believe the end of the year is on us already. It’s been a good year for me and I hope for you, too.

Here’s the eleven most popular posts this year:

1. Character Questionnaire: Just what the name says–it’s a character questionnaire to help GMs and players alike flesh out important characters. This has been the number one favorite page since Evil Machinations began in 2009.
2. “Where are we again?” Creating Unique Fantasy Cities and Towns: List of on-line resources that can help you create cities and towns for your game world.
3. February Blog Carnival: Worldbuilding: Check out the comments of this post for great links to blog articles about worldbuilding. This was the introductory post for when I hosted the RPG Bloggers blog carnival in February of this year.
4. Building Better NPCs III: Character Webs: What are character webs and how can you use them to help bring your NPCs to life. Also a perennial favorite post.
5. X Marks the Spot: 11 Map Making Tutorials: Another list of on-line resources, this one on making great maps for your game.
6. And *Then* What Happened?: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas: Ever come across an adventure seed you really wanted to use, but you couldn’t figure out how to turn it into a full adventure? This post is the first in a series that can help.
7. Creating the Adventure Outline: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 9: Another post in the above series, this one on how to develop you idea into game outline or flowchart to make running that adventure a little easier.
8. Handling Problem Players: A list of web resources with great ideas on how to handle problem players.
9. Finding Events: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas,  pt. 8: How to come up with the encounters and challenges that make up an adventure.
10. Campaign Worksheet: The campaign worksheet I use when creating a new campaign.
11. Beyond ‘Fred’: Russian Names for Characters: A list of Russian names for PCs and NPCs.

There they are: the top eleven posts for 2011. Thanks to all my readers–you’re the reason I’m still here and looking forward to a great 2012.

Top 11 for 2011 is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

In my continuing and irregular series of my favorite blogs, we come to Sea of Stars. This is great site for items and ideas to steal and use for your own games.

If your the kind of GM that gets inspiration by reading campaign logs of other people’s games, Sea of Stars has several for you to choose from. From Pathfinder to Legend of the Five Rings to Shadowrun, there’s a wide variety of genres and systems to look at.

Sea of Stars also has several good articles on game theory and gaming advice. For some solid advice on playing evil characters, check out Moral Dilemmas: Playing Evil (and I’m not just recommending it because he links it back to this blog ). Genre Resources is just what it says it is: a list of resources for various gaming genres.

But where this blog really shines is its collections of things–magic items, monsters, people–that you can use in your own games. I like to check the blog for it’s Tuesday Magic Items. The site’s owner, Sean Holland has described over 100 different magic items, from books, to rings, to wands, weapons…even a box of servants.

Sean’s also creating the Sea of Stars game setting and is a fellow member of the Gamer Lifestyle program. You can check out the progress of that here: Sea of Stars RPG

So if you’re needing some item to round out a monster’s hoard or a new monster to challenge your players (complete with 3.x/Pathfinder stats), this is a site to check out.

Related articles

• Tuesday Magic Item – Gouqua’s Bamboo Spear (seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com)
• Review – Comicworld Germany from Sea of Stars RPG Design Journal (seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com)
• Tuesday Magic Item – the Luck of Rognan Gosh (seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com)

Need Ideas? Check Out Sea of Stars is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

I know–it’s been over a month since a posted. Blame that on a computer that decided to completely up and die at the beginning of October, which took nearly three weeks to get fixed and rest of the time catching up from being off-line. But it did give me some time to think about games — the ones I’ve run and the one’s I still want to.

I think every GM has a “bucket list” — the games you want to play before you “kick the bucket”. I’ve had to chance to try many of the RPG systems out there, at least for a single game session, but there are still a wide number of games I’ve been wanting to try my hand at. In no particular order:

1. Call of Cthulhu: I’ve played a couple of sessions of this at conventions, but haven’t yet had the opportunity run it.
2. Werewolf: the Apocalypse (2nd ed.): I’ve run Vampire and Mage games and I’ve run garou in cross-over games, but I haven’t yet had a chance to run a pure Werewolf game.
3. Skyrealms of Jorune: An amazing game, with an incredibly rich game world, but one that requires a major time investment for the players as they learn an entirely new world from scratch–something neither I nor my players have been able to give right now. Oh, well, maybe after everyone retires…
4. Shadowrun: I have run this, briefly, but would really like to give it another go. I just haven’t had the time to make over the cumbersome mechanics. I don’t know if the newest edition is better, since I haven’t had a chance to pick it up. Hmm, I wonder how much time it would take to convert to Savage Worlds…..
5. Qin: This is also on my Amazon Wish List. I have an interest in ancient China and would love to get my hands on this one, I just haven’t felt like I could justify the cover price right now.
6. In Nomine: One of my absolutely favorite games. I’ve played it extensively at conventions and the occasional one-shot here and there, but have never had the opportunity to run an actual campaign of it.
7. Aberrent and Trinity: I did run a Trinity game for awhile, but I wasn’t at my GMing best during that time and would love to give it another go around with a campaign that ties both together.
8. Ars Magica: Another personal favorite. I really like the historical basis of this game, as well as the flexibility of its magic system. This is on the “to do soon” short-list.
9. Over the Edge: As you can probably guess from the rest of this list, I’ve got a thing for dark, occult conspiracy.
10. Mark Miller’s Traveller: While I would enjoy running it, this is one I’d rather play than GM. Liked the first, black box, version of the game and was impressed by this edition when I skimmed through it.

But I am getting to cross one game off my list. This coming Saturday I’m sitting down with my group to create characters for a Castle Falkenstein game. It’s been a few years since I’ve been able to actually run a game (I’ve been playing D&D 3.5) and I’m really excited. So unless you tell me stop, you’re likely to get regaled with game session reports.

How about you? What are the games you’ve always hoped to play or run? What’s been sitting on your shelf for months or years, enticing you, that you’ve never had a chance to actually play?

[Image courtesy of donjd2 via Flickr Creative Commons]

My RPG Bucket List is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

Those familiar with the Amber universe know one thing–everyone carries a deck of cards with them wherever they go. Granted, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill 52-card standard playing card decks. But gambling is a universal activity and card games are so wide-spread, I can’t image that the ultra-competitive Amber court wouldn’t develop ways to gamble with those ever-present decks.

To that end, my heart-sister and college roommate Romilly Mueller got together and created a set of scoring rules that allowed us to play poker in character during our Amber Diceless games. Poker is such a common game, I won’t go over the basic rules here (especially since the best way to learn poker is from someone else who already knows it). This scoring can be used with any of the multitude of poker variants out there. My group tended to play seven card stud.

Scoring Hands

Here are the scoring hands of Trump Poker, from lowest score to highest:

1. Highest Card: When none of the players has any valid combinations of cards, the player holding the highest value card wins the hand. Aces are high and beat all other cards except trumps (see Scoring Trumps, below).
2. Highest Pair: Two cards of the same value. This is a very common hand, since all trumps are wild. If two or more players have a single pair, the highest value pair wins.  If all players have pairs containing trumps, the pair containing the highest pip card wins. If all players have the same pip card or the pairs are all comprised of two trumps, the highest trump card (or card combination) wins. Hands of two trump cards lose against a “natural” pair (a pair made without wild cards).
3. Two Pairs: Player with the highest pair wins. If the highest pair is tied, then the highest of the second pair wins. If that pair is also tied, the player with highest single remaining card wins.
4. Blaze: Five court cards. If more than one person has a blaze, the highest pair in the blaze wins.
5. Three of a Kind: The highest three of a kind wins. Again, “natural” hands beat those made with wild cards.
6. Royal Blaze: This is unique to Trump Poker. A hand of only trumps, or four trumps and the Ace of Coins. If two or more players both have a royal blaze, then the hand containing the Ace of Coins wins. If no one has the Ace of Coins, then the hand with the highest trump or trump combination wins.
7. Straight: Five cards in numerical order. Aces can be high or low, but scoring doesn’t “wrap.” That is, page, knight, queen, king, ace counts, as does ace, two, three, four, five. But queen, king, ace, two, three doesn’t.
8. Flush: All five cards of the same suit, not in numerical order. If more than one player has a flush, the flush containing the highest card wins. If the highest cards tie, count the next highest cards and so on. In the event all cards tie, the highest suit wins (see Scoring Suits, below) Natural hands beat those made with wild cards. Note: the trumps aren’t considered a suit and any hand containing all trumps is considered a “blaze” and scores lower than a three of a kind.
9. Full House: Three of a kind + a pair. If more than one player has a full house, the highest three of a kind wins. If three of a kinds tie, the highest remaining pair wins.
10. Four of a Kind: Four cards of the same rank, plus any other card. If more than one player calls a four of a kind, the highest one wins.  Note: it’s possible, given the high numbers of wild cards in this variant to have a “Five of a Kind”. This is considered a four of a kind and scored accordingly, remembering that a natural four of a kind beats a “five of a kind.”
11. Straight Flush: Five cards of the same suit in numerical order. If there are multiple straight flushes, the straight flush containing the highest value card wins. This is the first of three hands that has to be made of natural cards. If the hand contains a wild card, it’s scored as a flush.
12. Royal Flush: Ace, king, queen, knight, page, all of the same suit. This is the second of the three hands that must be natural to score. In the unlikely event of multiple royal flushes, the highest suit wins.
13. Royal Hand: The final natural hand, this one is also unique to trump poker. This hand consists  of Oberon, Eric, Corwin, Random, and the Ace of Coins. (All the people who have ever worn the crown of Amber, plus the Jewel of Judgement).

Scoring Suits

Unlike normal poker where all suits are equal, each suit in trump poker has a ranking (from lowest to highest scoring): coins (pentacles), cups, rods (staves/wands), and swords.

Scoring Trumps

When combined with other cards, all trumps are wild and take on the value of whatever hand contains them. When compared against each other, they have the ranks given below. Combinations of trump cards score higher than single trump cards.

On PC trumps: Usually only the trumps of the Elder Amberites (Corwin, Random, Oberon, Fiona, Dworkin, etc.) are used; all other trumps are discarded from the deck before play. Sometimes they “younger” trumps are left in, but score like the jokers in a regular playing card deck: they’re purely wild cards and have a rank of zero when compared to other trumps.

Single Trump ranking

From lowest scoring to highest: [Ryalle]*, Sand, Delwin, Random, Florimel, Gerard, Julian, Llewella, Caine, Brand, Bleys, Fiona,  Deirdre, Corwin, Eric, Benedict, Finndo, Osric,  Oberon, and Dworkin.

This ranking is based on birth order (with the exception of Ryalle), from youngest to oldest, as I determined it for my game. Change the order as you see fit for your own game.

*[Ryalle is the full sister of Benedict, Osric, and Finndo in my game and is one of the "dead or missing" siblings Corwin mentions in Nine Princes in Amber. She's last in the rankings because she was exiled from Amber for supporting Osric and Finndo's ambitions. ]

Trump Combinations Ranking

Combinations are a set of trumps combined with each other or with other cards in the deck. The Ace of Coins represents the Jewel of Judgement when combined with trumps, thus its presence in the highest-scoring combinations.

Here are the combination rankings (from lowest scoring to highest):

• Osric, Finndo, and Ryalle
• Osric and Finndo
• Julian and Fiona
• Corwin and Deirdre
• Florimel and any cup card (governing love and emotions)
• Eric and Florimel (Eric’s spy)
• Caine, Gerard, and Julian (called the “Dark Trio”)
• Fiona, Bleys, and Brand (the Cabal)
• Fiona and any rod (which represents sorcery)
• Benedict and any sword
• Brand and the Ace of Coins
• Corwin and the Ace of Coins
• Caine and any ace
• Benedict and the Ace of Swords
• Random and the Ace of Coins
• Dworkin and Oberon
• Oberon and the Ace of Coins
• Dworkin and the Ace of Coins
• Dworkin, Oberon and the Ace of Coins

Final note: Any hand, no matter what the other cards in the hand are (even if it’s a royal flush), that contains both Corwin and Eric is automatically a losing hand. The only exception to this is the “royal hand”, which beats everything.

Articles Zemanta Thinks May be Related

• Remembering Erick Wujcik (rpgblog2.com)
• My Gaming Hall Of Fame (rpgblog2.com)
• What are the hands you can have in poker (wiki.answers.com)
• Review: Runespell: Overture RPG combines poker-like play and adventure (macworld.com)

One for the Amber Crowd: Trump Poker is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

You want to be a better GM, right? You know you need to get better at things like improvising during a game session, creating more believable NPCs, and be better prepared for your game sessions. But how exactly do you do that?

Check out the Campaign Mastery blog, written by Johnn Four (of Roleplaying Tips and Gamer Lifestyle) and Mike Bourke. This blog is chock full of useful advice. If you’ve noticed in the “Article Zemanta Thinks May be Related” section at the bottom of my posts, you’ll find I often link to Campaign Mastery. That’s because I find so much useful information at this particular blog, I have to share it with y’all.

No matter what kind of advice you’re looking for, Campaign Mastery’s got a post on it somewhere. Need information about improvising adventures? Check out By The Seat Of Your Pants: Six Foundations Of Adventure. Want some information about how to handling things when the PCs do something totally unexpected? Try A potpourri of quick solutions: Eight Lifeboats for GM Emergencies. How about tips on using spells to develop areas of your game world? Look at How To Cast A Spell On Your Campaign And Polish Till It Gleams.

One of the best things about this blog (in addition to the incredibly useful information) is their “Print Friendly” button at the end of every post. It allows you print out the post without printing all the gagillion bits you don’t need to pring, like all the sidebar information. (This is something I’ve just added to both this blog and product excerpts in the main section of the rpgGM site. Check out the row of buttons at the bottom of each post–when you mouse-over, they expand and the “Print Friendly” button is in the middle of the second row).

And I didn’t write this just because Johnn likes my stuff.

[Image courtesy of Tom T via Flickr Creative Commons.]

Other blogs in this series

• Need RPG News? Check Out Game Knight Reviews

Articles Zemanta Thinks May Be Related

• Prep-Tools II: Encounter and Scene Planning (campaignmastery.com)
• Missing In Action: Maintaining a campaign in the face of player absence (campaignmastery.com)
• Taming The Time Bandits: Some time-saving combat techniques (campaignmastery.com)
• GM’s Toolbox – Introduction (campaignmastery.com)
• World Building Part I: Geography and Landmarks (campaignmastery.com)
• When Good Dice Turn Bad: A Lesson In The Improbable (campaignmastery.com)

Campaign Mastery is Exactly What It Says is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

This is the first of a new post series where talk about my favorite RPG blogs and sites. There’s no particular significance to the order I review things — it’s more of a “who’s on my mind right now”. And these aren’t intended to be reviews, per se–I’m not going to critique the sites. It’s much more like the old Pyramid Magazine’s “Gee, we wish we’d done that” column, for those of you who’ve been gaming long enough to remember Pyramid when it was available in print.

Today’s site is Game Knight Reviews. As you can guess by the name, this site focuses on reviews of game products. From print to e-books to game-related services, if you’re wondering about a specific product, you can probably find a review of it at GKR. If it’s not up yet, it will be sometime. In addition to game reviews, though, they have interviews with prominent members of the RPG community and (my favorite bits) news from the RPG world. It’s really nice to have game news gathered into a single source, since I simply don’t have time to read tons of the wonderful blogs out there, much as I’d like to.

Oh, and did I mention they’ve got some pretty cool art on their header graphic? [Hopefully Fitz won't mind that I also stole his logo for this post...]

Articles Zemanta Thinks are Related

• RPGNow Discounts – Through Mid-August (seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com)
• Announcing the RPG Herald from Questing GM (questinggm.blogspot.com)
• RPG Purchasing Habits: A Raised Bar (rpgblog2.com)
• You Pick It, I Review It – Gen Con 2010 (gnomestew.com)

Need RPG News? Check Out Game Knight Reviews is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

My first commercial RPG product–The Adventure Creation Handbook–launches on July 15th.  You can find excerpts from the it on the main section of this site. Now that it’s done, I’m starting to look ahead to what I want to create next. I’ve got several ideas, but I’d like some feedback from you about what you’d like to see. What product would be the most useful to you? What would you be willing to pay good money for? Please answer the poll below and if there’s something else you’d like that I haven’t included, feel free to leave a comment telling me about it.

And next post really will be the DI suggestions, I promise

Related articles

• Adventure Creation Handbook Ready (rpggm.com)

Poll: What Would You Like To See Next? is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

We’re finally down to the last post of our series on creating full-fledged adventures from adventure seeds. Up to this point, we’ve chosen our idea, asked and answered questions about it to flesh out the necessary details, and determined what events we need to create. Now it’s time to create our adventure outline.

Organize Events

Now that we have our list of events, we need to pull them together into a step-by-step plan. We need to take each of the events we created part 8 and put them together into a single adventure plot line.

For this step, you need to be able to move your events around. Index cards are extremely helpful for this. Write each event on a separate index card. Then lay the cards out on the table or floor (somewhere you have plenty of room to maneuver). What events logically belong together? Which events need to come first? What events are caused by other events? Shuffle events about until you come up with an order of events you like and that makes sense.

Write Flowchart/Outline

Write this order in an outline or flow chart format. To write a flow-chart, place your first event in a box at the top of the page. Draw arrows pointing away from this box, one for each possible action the PCs could take. At the end of each arrow, draw a box and write the event that will result from that action. Repeat for each event you have until you reach your final event.

Sometimes there are multiple actions the PCs could take to arrive at a particular event, or an event farther down the chart could lead back to an event listed earlier. Connect these events with arrows, labeling each arrow with actions the PCs could take.

With a flow chart, if your players miss an event, or skip to one further down the chart, you can jump to that point and see instantly if they’ve missed any crucial events or information You can then improvise a way to lead the PCs back to the events they missed Creating a flow chart can also help you see if there are any “holes” in your adventure. These usually come in two types:

1. Dead-end events that serve no useful purpose. Throw these out.
2. “Orphan” events that are important, but nothing leads to them.

You may find you don’t know how to get from one event to another. For now, just put an empty box in the flow chart to represent these missing steps. You’ve got a couple of ways you can fill this box:

1. Brainstorm until you come up with something to tie the events together, perhaps using a mind map.
2. Run the adventure and hope your PCs think of a way to get from one event to another.

Which method you use depends on how creative your players are and how comfortable you are with improvising. It often helps to wait until you’ve outlined the rest of the adventure, then come back and fill in these blank spots. Solutions may come to you as you work.

Some GMs can run with just the flow chart, others will need to write out their adventure in detail. No one way is better than the other. If you need to write out the adventure before you run it, by all means, do so. This step comes after you create your flow chart. Even a GM who runs well “off the cuff” will need notes on locations, monsters, and NPCs.

Use this flowchart as a guide. Be aware that your PCs will probably change the order of events. Still, it’s good to have an idea of at least one way through the adventure. This way, you can drop hints and add or subtract events to get players back on track, should they run off on a tangent that takes them completely away from the adventure.

[Flow chart courtesy of hahatango via Flickr Creative Commons 2.0]

Creating the Adventure Outline: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 9 is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

We’re down to the last couple of posts in our series of turning adventure seeds into full-fledged adventures. We’ve asked and finally answered all of our questions and now we’re down to the last three steps:

• Pull out events from the questions
• Put the events into a possible order
• Determine the outcome of success or failure

[Photo courtesy of Michael_Spencer via Flickr Creative Commons 2.0]

Pull Out Events

In this step, briefly review the questions we’ve answered over the last several posts. We’re looking for answers and ideas we can turn into actual events that our PCs can participate in.

When you’re planning events, you want a variety of them. Certainly, you’ll need to include some combat events, but you should also include events that can be solved by roleplaying and using skills. Often, PCs will find (or create!) these on their own, but it’s a good idea to include some planned events of this type, just to make sure.

Go back over the information you wrote on your worksheet and the information you determined the PCs absolutely must know to accomplish the objective. Think about ways you can impart this information actively—that is, what can the PCs do to find out that information?

By this point, you should have identified the central conflict of your adventure. It should have one over-all conflict—a sort of meta-conflict that all the other conflicts are pieces of. Star or highlight this conflict, because this will be your climax, the decisive event of the whole game. Everything else that happens in this adventure should lead the characters to this final, penultimate event.

One of the best places to start looking for events is the “What obstacles might stand in the way of the PCs?” question. Take those obstacles you brainstormed and translate them into real in-game people or items and plan an event around them. You also want to take a special note of the goals of the mission. How would these goals translate into PC and NPC actions

I’ll leave it to you to figure out the majority of the events. Here’s one suggestion:

• Princess Darya wants to meet Kyrill alone to ask him to get a private note to Roman that her father’s guards won’t be able to read, so she corners one of the PCs and tries talking him/her into arranging a meeting. The PCs could then use this time to try and get Darya away from the compound.
• Give the compounds guards a chance to become suspicious of the PCs and suspect they’re not really traveling players. They could corner one of the other actors and force him/her to talk about the PCs.

It’s also likely that just by answering the questions, you’ll have already begun to create encounters in your mind. Run with those ideas and flesh them out into possible events, challenges, and encounters. It’s also likely that you may not need to have many planned events. Map out the location, plan the compound’s defenses, then give that information to your players. It’s most likely they’ll come up with plans of their own that you can play off of.

When creating events, you want to make sure you have something for every player, as well as for every character. If everyone in your group enjoys combat more than anything else, make sure you have plenty of threats arrayed against the party, even if you want to present them with more roleplaying challenges. If your players are a mixed group, as is usually the case, you need to make sure there’s something for everyone. Do your players enjoy roleplaying? How about skill challenges or defeating traps? There are many articles on-line about typing players, so I won’t go into that here. The important thing is to pay attention to what your players enjoy and give each of them something that they enjoy best.

Other posts in this series:

• And *Then* What Happened?: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas
• Step By Step: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 2
• Setting an Example: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 3
• Answering the Questions: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 4
• Questions Continue: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 5
• Where and When: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 6
• Why and How: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 7

Finding Events: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 8 is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

First, my apologies to everyone who’s tried to access this site the last few days and saw nothing but a garbled mess. Second, thanks everyone who wrote me to let me know my blog was on the fritz. The problem was with my theme–I’m not sure what happened or why, but until I can get it working again, I’ve temporarily switched themes. Hence, the new look. Hopefully I can get some support from the site I bought the other theme from and we can get things back to normal again soon. Meanwhile, you should be able to read the site content now.

Apologies and Site Issues is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

New Year’s is a time to look back and to look forward. In that spirit, here’s a list of the top 10 posts and pages at Evil Machinations for the last year:

1. Character Questionnaire
2. 20 Unusual City Encounters: From Beg, Borrow & Steal
3. “Where are we again”?: Creating Unique Fantasy Cities and Towns
4. X Marks the Spot: 11 Map Making Tutorials
5. 27 Surefire Ways to Get Kicked Out of  a Game
6. Building Better NPCs III: Character Webs
7. Your Teacher Was Right: Creating Adventures Using the 6 W’s
8. Teaching the Game: August Blog Carnival
9. Want to Be a Better GM? Ask Your Players
10. Evil Does Not Equal Stupid: 8 Tips for Playing Evil Characters

And stay with me through 2011. I’ve got a ton of new ideas and some new products underway. First off, rpgGM.com will be releasing its first official product — the Adventure Creation Handbook — sometime in February. The plan from there is to follow that up with the Campaign Creation Handbook and the City Creation Handbook. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to post ideas to this blog and to the rpgGM’s company site. Topics I plan to cover include more on creating fantasy game cities and world building, as well as NPC creation and campaign construction.

Wishing you all the best in the new year.

[Photo courtesy of Eustaquio Santimano via Flickr Creative Commons 2.0]

Top Ten of 2010 and a Look to 2011 is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

Up to this point, in this series on turning adventure seeds into full-fledged adventures, we’re down to the last of the questions that will give us the background information we need for our adventure. So far, we’ve covered the who questions, describing all the people involved in our adventure, the what questions that tell us what’s going on with the adventure, the where and when questions that tell us about the adventure’s location and time it takes place in. Now we’re down to the very last of the questions: why and how.

[Photo provided by exfordy via Flickr Creative Commons 2.0]

Why Questions

In many ways, these are the most important questions of all, for they give us the reasons that the adventure and its events are happening. They’re also the most often over-looked. Have you ever played through an adventure that doesn’t make sense? That’s usually because the adventure’s creator never fully answered the “why” questions.

Why do the PCs need to be the ones to go on this mission?

This is the question that covers our adventure hooks — the reasons why each of our PCs would go on this adventure. For that reason, we need to know the individual PCs involved in the game. Since we haven’t created a party for this adventure, this is a question you’d want to answer for each of the characters in your game.

Collectively, however, we can posit the reason the prince would hire the PCs as a group, rather than using some of his own men. The reason here is that the PCs are outsiders–which gives Alexei and Fedor plausible deniability. They can always claim that the PCs are acting on their own behalf and have other, ulterior motives on the princess.

Why did the leader hire these entertainers?

The princess wished for these entertainers because they’re the ones performing the most popular play around. Also, the wizard, who arranged for the performance in the first place, was an old adventuring buddy of Kirill, the head of the performing group. We can state that perhaps the wizard isn’t fully convinced about this marriage himself and is hoping that perhaps Kirill can turn the princess’ eye away from himself.

Why is (s)he holding the performance?

Entertainment is a traditional part of a princess’ confinement time. After all, she’s shut away from everyone else for six months. We could make part of the tradition for a princess’ betrothed to supply entertainment for her during her confinement.

Why is the mission taking place?

While we’ve pretty much covered this in earlier questions, it helps to spell it out clearly. The mission is taking place because the Prince Alexei views his sister’s marriage as a threat to his own inheritance of the crown. It would make the king’s favorite adviser a member of the royal family which could, potentially, threaten his inheritance. It would also give the wizard even more of the king’s ear. If he can somehow get the princess to marry his best friend, Fedor, he can put someone else into power who’s more loyal to him than to his father.

Fedor doesn’t want the marriage to take place because he’s been in love with the princess since he was a boy and he doesn’t want to see her married to anyone else, but particularly not an “old man” such as his master.

Do the PCs know?

The PCs are actually being given a false reason to go on the adventure–they’re being told that the princess is being forced to marry against her will. Alexei and Fedor hope that this will give the PCs even more reason to help them, hoping to engage the PCs’ on an emotional level, thereby making them more committed to the mission.

Why should the PCs go?

This goes back to our motive question, but with a slightly different twist. Instead of explaining why Alexei and Fedor would want the PCs, we explain why the PCs themselves would want to take the mission. Again, individual motives would have to be determined by the GM for each individual PC and for each individual group. For the group as a whole, though, one reason would be that Alexei and Fedor will pay very well for a successful completion of the mission. Also, it would place the future king of the country in the PCs debt–never a bad thing, since adventurers have a habit of causing trouble wherever they go.

Why are the entertainers taking this job?

Presumably the payment for the performance would be a huge incentive. But we can also say that the leader of the entertainers, Kirill, sees it as a way to thumb his nose at the king, using it as a way of counting coup against him. Also, perhaps Kirill owes the court wizard (let’s call him Roman) a favor from their adventuring days and this would allow Kirill the chance to repay it.

We’ve also brought up a couple more “whys” while answering the earlier questions:

Why would Fedor want the plan to fail?

Back in our who questions, we posited the idea that maybe Fedor wants the mission to fail. But why would he? Perhaps he’s having second thoughts about. Maybe he’s realizing the princess wants to marry Roman and that he wants her happiness above his own desires. Or perhaps he and Alexei had some kind of falling out and Fedor sees this as a chance to get revenge. The GM would have to determine the circumstances of the falling out.

Why does the princess want to marry Roman?

Perhaps our princess Darya has a crush on Roman–a May to December romance. Maybe her own father was cold and distant and she sees in Roman someone who cares for her and will take care of her.

Just to add another twist, let’s say that Roman doesn’t want to marry our princess. Very likely, he could see her as the daughter he never had. Let’s also say that he knows Fedor is in love with the princess and let’s say he thinks Fedor would make a very good husband for her. So perhaps Roman’s gotten wind of this plot on the part of the Prince Alexei and his apprentice and is actually hoping it will succeed, particularly if he believes that Darya and Fedor would actually be happy together. Maybe they were close friends growing up, which would give Roman a reason to believe that the marriage would be a happy one.

How Questions

Usually in an adventure, how to solve a mission is best left up to the players to figure out. Still, it’s a good idea to have at least one idea as to how to solve it. That way, if the PCs get completely stuck, the GM can drop some hints to get them moving again. We also have a few “how” questions  that need answers:

How are the PCs going to fit in with the entertainers?

Entertainment groups have their own culture and the PCs are likely to stick out like sore thumbs. I’d actually leave it up to the PCs to determine how they’re going to fit in, but they do have a week to prepare, so Kirill can do his best to give them a quick introduction to the life of a traveling player.

How might they prepare for this mission?

Obviously, their week of training would be the major way for them to prepare for the mission. It’s also important for the GM to remain flexible and incorporate the players’ ideas for preparation into the mission.

How might they succeed?

Well, given all of our plot twists, success could very well be in the eyes of the players. If they do manage to get the princess out to marry Fedor, they’ll have succeeded at the parameters of the mission as originally outlined. There are several ways to go about this. One way would be to disguise the princess as one of the entertainers, another could be to smuggle her out in one of the prop trunks.

How might they fail?

The main way the PCs would fail is to be detected and reported to king. That would pretty much ruin every plan they could come up with (now that I’ve said that, some group will come up with that as their actual plan and make it work).

How are the entertainer going to perform?

The confinement compound could have a central courtyard that would provide a space for entertainers to come and perform in. Since our group are traveling players, they’re going to travel pretty light, meaning they actually use few props and scenery. So their performance is going to be an acting one, with the play’s emphasis being on character relationships rather than scenery and special effects.

Now we’ve answered our main questions and we’ve got the beginning of an adventure forming. Using these techniques yourself, you’re most likely to move back and forth between questions as answers to one question lead to more questions that need other answers. Keep working back and forth until you’ve answered enough questions– “enough” being defined as “until the adventure takes shape in your mind.”

Next time we’ll go back over our answers and begin pulling this information into an actual adventure.

Other posts in this series

• And *Then* What Happened?: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas
• Step By Step: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 2
• Setting an Example: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 3
• Answering the Questions: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 4
• Questions Continue: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 5
• Where and When: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 6

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• Why Create Custom Adventures? (rpggm.com)

Why and How: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 7 is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

So far, in this series of posts on creating a full adventure from an adventure seed, we’ve written down the adventure seed and asked ourselves questions about it, then answered the who and what questions of our adventure, now onto our “when” and “where” questions. Once we’re done with the questions, we’ll move into creating the actual events of the adventure.

[Photo courtesy of Orin Zebest via Flickr Creative Commons 2.0]

When Questions

When is this performance to take place?

How much time do we want to give our PCs to prepare for their assignment? We want to let them have some preparation time, but we don’t want to slow down the adventure by giving them too much time so that they run off on tangents. Lets give them a week. So, the performance is going to take place one week from the time the PCs get their assignment.

What is the current date?

This is the in-game date. If we’re hooking this adventure into a larger campaign, the current date can be significant. If this is a stand-alone adventure, we don’t really have to set the current date. But it might be useful for us to figure out how much time the princess has spent in seclusion already (two months–so she’s definitely ready to talk to someone from the outside world) and how much more time she has left to go (four months, which seems like an eternity to her at the moment).

How much time do the PCs have to prepare?

We’ve answered this question above, but we’ll restate it here: one week.

How much time do the PCs have to complete the mission?

They basically have as long as the performance lasts to get everything set up. They should plan on actually getting the princess out as soon as possible after the performance.

How long is the performance to last?

Two hours.

Where Questions

What is the nation is the princess from?

If you’re using an already created game world, you’ll want to make her a member of a nation that already exists on that world. But let’s assume that we’re creating this game world from scratch as we go along. So we’ll call the princess’ country “Sunfall”, and place it in the eastern half of our new game world (where the sun seems to set).

Is the PCs’ employer from the same nation, or a different one?

The same nation. He’s her younger brother.

Is it the same nation as the PCs?

For maximum impact, lets make the PCs from a different country and call it “Seavale”, a coastal nation. Seavale borders Sunfall, but relations have been strained between the two countries (yes, I am making this up as I go along ). Prince Alexei deliberately looked for people from Seavale, so that if something went wrong with the plan, he could claim that Seavale agents were trying to kidnap the princess for their own ends.

Where is the compound located?

Near Sunfall’s royal palace, which is located near the middle of the kingdom. The compound is close by, in case relatives want to visit and so that the king and queen can visit and more easily keep an eye on who comes and goes from the princess’ seclusion location. But let’s say it’s between the palace and the Seavale border, which means that the far side of the compound is going to be well-guarded by people the king can trust.

Where is the performance to take place?

Let’s interpret this to mean “where in the compound the performance will take place”,  since we already know that the performance will take place in the seclusion compound. We’ll schedule to performance to take place in the compound’s inner courtyard.

What is the adventure’s starting location?

The prince will want to meet the PCs somewhere where they can talk freely and he won’t be recognized. The first thing that leaps to mind is the very much overused seedy tavern, just inside the Seavale border. Trite though it is, this location does have a lot of aspects in its favor. For one, if we posit that the crown prince has kept a very low profile in the kingdom, so much so that few people outside of the royal family would recognize him, he should be able to come and go from from such a place without notice or comment (unless someone does recognize him…). People in these types of places are used to minding their own business. Depending on how competent we want our prince to be, he can either dress down to match his surroundings (the prudent course of action) or he can flaunt his wealth, attracting every major pickpocket and cut-purse in the area, which could create some wonderful complications to the adventure.

What is it’s ending location?

That will depend on if the PCs get the princess out or not. If so, the adventure will end at a “safe house” the prince has set up on the border of the kingdom. If not, the adventure is likely to end in the princess’ seclusion compound. Either way, we should have the safe house location prepared.

What other locations might be important?

The castle, the wizard’s tower are all possible locations, but the bulk of the adventure should take place in the princess’ compound, so that’s the location we’ll spend the bulk of our location preparation time on.

What are the languages, customs, and practices of the entertainers? Are they different from the PCs?

We could go hog-wild on this one and set them up with a different language and some really unusual customs, making them originally from a very different culture than the PCs. But I don’t want to spend time on that aspect, so we’ll make all of them–the PCs and the entertainers–from the same basic area, Seavale.

However, theatre people tend to be a superstitious lot, so we can have a little fun with the PCs by giving our troupe of players a few quirks, but not so many that they take over the game session. So, first, we can have the actors begin their day with offerings to whichever god in the campaign world watches over performers and traveling players, followed by a couple of hours of vocal and physical warm-up exercises. So unless you’ve got a party full of bards, that should help push the PCs out of their comfort zone somewhat.

The day would continue with rehearsals of the current performance, as well as some stage combat practice (less deadly, but just as demanding as real combat practice)., finally concluding with some street performances to bring in needed money. The PCs will be expected to take part in these, so that they can learn what they need to know to preserve their cover.

We can also give the troupe a couple of superstitious habits, based on real-world theatre superstitions, the primary one being the practice of never wishing “good luck” to someone going on-stage (hence the real-world practice of saying “Break a leg”). Let’s say that actors in this world say “Crack your head”. Also, having a black cat in the theatre house prior to performance is said to bring good luck and a successful play. Since ours are traveling players, they don’t usually perform in theatres, so let’s say they keep their own pet black cats who travel with them as companions and that it’s a very bad omen if one runs away or gets harmed.

Next time, we’ll finish up the questions with “why” and “how”.

Other posts in this series

• And *Then* What Happened?: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas
• Step By Step: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 2
• Setting an Example: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 3
• Answering the Questions: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 4
• Questions Continue: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 5

Where and When: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 6 is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

This is part 5 of our series on how to develop a full adventure from an adventure seed.

Last time, we began answering the questions our adventure seed suggested. We answered the “who” questions; today we’re going to continue with the “what” questions. As before, none of these answers are set in stone–we can come back and change them at anytime.

Now, onto the “what” questions:

What are the exact goals of the mission?

Players need concrete goals that allow them to know when they’ve succeeded or failed in their mission. Let’s say the princess is in the secured compound because she’s been betrothed to the court wizard, who’s also her father’s best friend and 30 years her senior. We’ll call him “Roman” and add him to our growing list of NPCs to create. And let’s give the kingdom a tradition where a bride-to-be spends time in seclusion with only her closest female friends and (in the case of nobility) maids.

Our PCs are going to be tasked with the mission of smuggling the princess out of her seclusion so she can marry her “true love”: Feodor (that’s what Prince Alexei will tell the PCs). We’ll go into more detail about this when we get to the “why” questions.

What is the performance the players are going to do?

They’re going to perform a play that’s been popular in the surrounding kingdoms, a romantic piece about true love, high adventure, and daring-do. Given the fact that most PCs have little to no performing skills, Kirill’s, our troupe’s leader, plans to use them as stagehands. This will also allow the PCs more room to fulfill their mission, as they don’t have to be on stage at any particular time.

What kind of performers are they?

A troupe of actors, who travel around performing plays at various courts and festivals.

What security measures are in place?

We’ll come back to this question later. Once we’ve answered the other questions, we may have a better idea about what resources the kingdom has to draw on to create the security measures.

What maps do you need to create?

As of this point in time, the only map we really need is one of the secure compound where the princess is serving her “seclusion”–that is, a time before her marriage takes place. But we’ll go into this more in our “when” questions.

What special items might the PCs need to succeed?

So far, we’ve got nothing to tell us that the PCs will need any special equipment, but we may come up with some as we further flesh out or adventure.

What does the compound look like?

Given the fact that this is for the princess, it wouldn’t be odd for the “compound” to be beautiful and comfortable. It would be filled with the princess’ favorite things and probably display the wealth of the king, her father, and of the kingdom itself. So think soft, comfortable furnishings, artistically painted walls, probably with murals, perhaps even an internal courtyard with a garden and a pool.

What group or faction does the national leader belong to, if any? What group or faction does the PCs employer belong to, if any?

Our adventure isn’t shaping up to include factions or groups, so we can safely ignore these two questions. If we change our minds, we can always come back to them.

What obstacles might stand in the way of the PCs succeeding?

Well, first and foremost, there will be the security measures we’re going to detail out later. Other possible obstacles could be Kirill, if he discovers the nature of the PCs’ mission and doesn’t like it. Another obstacle could be the princess herself. What if she doesn’t want to be “rescued”? What if she actually wants to marry the wizard. Of course, the PCs won’t know this at first–they’ll have been told by Prince Alexei that Fedor, Roman’s apprentice, is her true love. And if, despite her love of sappy love stories, the princess is extremely competent, she could pose a formidable obstacle, indeed, particularly since she knows the compound much better than the PCs do.

What will happen if the PCs succeed?

First of all, they’ll have made a enemy of the princess. But Prince Alexei will be willing to pay a rich reward for foiling the official wedding plans. This is where having knowledge of your PCs comes in handy. What reward would they wish? Perhaps Alexei, not being the most astute of princes, will allow each of the PCs to name any reward within his power to grant.

What will happen if the PCs fail?

The princess’ wedding will go on as planned and the PCs will have gained the wrath of the crown prince and possibly the wizard’s assistant, as well. If we postulate that the wizard himself doesn’t want the marriage to go forward (perhaps he sees the princess more as the daughter he never had), they could possibly be granted a reward by him. We’ll hammer out the consequences of success and failure as we go along.

Next time, we’ll cover “when” and possibly “where” questions, as well.

[Photo courtesy of Vikki-Lea via Flickr Creative Commons 2.0]

Other posts in this series:

• And *Then* What Happened?: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas
• Step By Step: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 2
• Setting an Example: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 3
• Answering the Questions: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 4

Questions Continue: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 5 is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

Last time we set up the questions to our adventure seed-inspired adventure. This time, we’re going to begin answering them, starting with the “who” questions. This is where we start adding meat to the bare skeleton of the adventure seed. We’re still at the idea stage, so we can come back and change our answers at any time.

Who Questions

Who hired the PCs?

We’ve got someone who’s trying to infiltrate a high-security location. Normally, this would be a good point to back through PC backgrounds or past experiences in the campaign and choose an NPC from there. Do the PCs owe anyone a big favor? But in our sample adventure, we’re starting from a blank slate, knowing nothing about our PCs. We can think of this as the opening adventure to a campaign. In this case, I’ll come back to this question after I answer the next one:

Who is the national leader?

In a high-fantasy setting, such as we’ve stipulated, the most logical leader would be the nation’s king (Khan, emperor, whatever), but that seems too obvious for my taste. Instead, lets make this the kingdom’s eldest princess. Perhaps she is the oldest sibling, but the crown would fall to her younger brother, as the only male heir, much to her dismay. Let’s make her the most capable of her siblings–far more capable a ruler than her brother, the crown prince would be. Most of the court dismisses her because she’s female, but one king’s primary adviser–the court wizard–recognizes her ability and wants to completely discredit her so she has no influence over her brother.

Since I’m fond of Russian names, I’ll go back to my Beyond Fred: Russian Names list and choose one. We’ll call her “Darya”.

Who hired the PCs, take two?

Okay, given the little background we’ve cooked up above, the most obvious person to approach the PCs and offer them employment would be our court wizard, but that seems to obvious. I’d like to give the PCs to have to think beyond the immediately obvious. This would be another good place to call an NPC back from the PC’s past. But since we’re starting from the very beginning, we’ll have to come up with something “off the cuff”. How about the wizard’s apprentice, who we can give a crush on the princess to? It’s still obvious, but it’s one step removed. Or how about her brother, the crown prince? Perhaps the two of them, working together. Lets run with that idea.

First thing I usually do when creating NPCs is to give them names. I may change them later, but at least I’ll have some names to start with. Let’s call the apprentice “Fedor” and the crown prince “Alexei”. We still haven’t worked out why, but we can do that as we go along.

Who are the entertainers?

This we can bring back to the princess. What kind of entertainment does she enjoy? So far, all we figured out about her is that she’s politically very savvy. I want her to be an extremely competent character, all the way around, but it could be extremely useful to have the PCs underestimate her abilities. Perhaps she has a weakness for troubadour ballads. Lets make the entertainers the leading group of actors in the surrounding kingdoms.

Perhaps the current king doesn’t care for their repertoire and so has banned them from performing in the kingdom. That could make them all the more enticing for our young princess and explain why she would want them to perform in a high-security area. Let’s take it a step further and make the leading man of the entertainers a skilled bard (who could be a PC, if the party has one) and the play she wants them to produce a sappy story about forbidden love. Give the play a political undercurrent and you have a reason for it to have been banned.

Who wants the mission to succeed? and Who wants the mission to fail?

The logical choice for this would be the crown prince, Alexei, and the wizard’s apprentice, Fedor. But let’s throw another twist in there. Let’s say that Fedor actually wants the PCs to fail, which will throw an interesting hiccup into the prince’s plans. But then we come down to one of the most important questions: why? Let’s shelve this one for now and tackle it again with the “why” questions.

Who leads the entertainers?

We’ve already touched on this one a little. Lets make the lead of the entertainers a bard–a retired adventurer. We can even take it a step further and say that he was a companion of the current kings when both were adventuring in their youth. Perhaps the king actually won his kingdom during his adventuring years (we’ll figure out why and how if it becomes important to the adventure) and the two had falling out during that time, which explains why the bard and his troupe have been banned from the kingdom. Let’s call the bard “Kirill”.

Do the entertainers know about the PCs mission?

Not overtly, but Kirill is no dummy and has his suspicions. He’s been commanded by the crown prince to add this motley group of obviously adventurers to his troupe for the princess’ performance. It doesn’t take a great leap of thought to guess that they’re plants of some kind. He hasn’t come right out an asked the adventurers what they’re mission is. He’s enjoying the challenge of trying to figure it out on his own.

What does that leave us with right now?

We have several NPCs that need to be created:

• Darya: the extremely capable eldest child of the king
• Alexei: the king’s oldest son and crown prince who resents his older sister’s ability
• Fedor: the court wizard’s apprentice who has a crush on Darya
• Kirill: the bardic leader of the entertainers who had a falling out with the king when they were both adventurers together.

We also know that the king didn’t inherit his kingdom, but won it during his adventuring days; there’s bad blood between him and Kirill (we’ll figure out exactly what later); Darya would be the more capable heir to the throne, but being female, she excluded from the line of succession, and her younger brother resents her ability, putting them at odds; Kirill’s making it a point to discover the PCs mission.

Next time, we’ll cover the “what” questions.

[Photo courtesy of twbuckner at Flickr Creative Commons]

Other posts in this series

• And Then What Happened? Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas
• Step By Step: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 2
• Setting an Example: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 3

Answering the Questions: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 4 is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

In the last couple of posts we’ve discussed what adventure seeds are and outlined the basic steps to fleshing them out into full-fledged adventures. Today, I’m taking an adventure seed I found on a gaming forum and fleshing it out into a rough adventure.

The Seed

Your group is tasked to infiltrate a high-security national leader’s compound by traveling with some entertainers he has hired for a private performance.

This comes from the RPG Life Member Forums.

Write Down Questions

Here’s where we really get into turning this short idea into an adventure. When reading over our adventure seed, what questions come to mind?

• Which national leader?
• What compound?
• What nation?
• Where is the compound?
• Who are the entertainers?
• What is the performance they’re going to do?
• Why is the leader having the performance (what’s the occasion?)
• Who hired the PCs?
• Why does (s)he need the PCs? Why not hire someone else?
• What security measures are in place?
• Why these entertainers?
• Why does the PCs employer want them to infiltrate?
• Do the PCs know why?
• Why should the PCs go?
• What happens if they succeed?
• What happens if they fail?

Back to the 6 W’s

We can group these questions into our 6 W’s of Adventure Creation and add in some more standard questions that should be asked about every adventure:

Who

• Who hired the PCs?
• Who is the national leader?
• Who are the entertainers?
• Who wants the mission to succeed?
• Who wants it to fail?
• Who leads the entertainers?
• Do the entertainers know about the PCs mission?

What

• What are the exact goals of the mission?
• What is the performance the entertainers are going to do?
• What kind of entertainers are they?
• What security measures does the location have?
• What maps do you need to create?
• What special items might the PCs need to succeed?
• What does the compound look like?
• What group or faction does the national leader belong to, if any?
• What group or faction does the PCs employer belong to, if any?
• What obstacles might stand in the way of the PCs succeeding?
• What will happen if the PCs succeed?
• What will happen if they fail?

When

• When is this performance to take place?
• What is the current date?
• How much time do the PCs have to prepare?
• How much time do the PCs have to complete the mission?
• How long is the performance supposed to last?

Where

• What nation is national leader a leader of?
• Are the PCs from the same nation or a different one?
• Is the PCs employer from the same nation or a different one?
• If different, what nation?
• Is it the same nation as the PCs?
• Where is the compound located?
• Where is the performance supposed to take place?
• What is the adventure’s starting location?
• What is it’s ending location?
• What other important locations might be important?
• What are the languages, customs, and practices of the entertainers? Are they different from the PCs?

Why

• Why do the PCs need to be the ones to go on this mission (there should be a reason beyond ‘they’re the PCs’)?
• Why did the national leader hire these entertainers?
• Why is (s)he holding this performance (what’s the occasion)?
• Why is this mission taking place? (Why does the employer want the compound infiltrated?)
• Do the PCs know why?
• Why should the PCs go?
• Why are the entertainers taking this job?

How

• How are the PCs going to fit in with the entertainers?
• How might they prepare for this mission?
• How might they succeed?
• How might they fail?
• How are the entertainers going to perform?

Most of the time, you’ll be creating an adventure for an established campaign or you’ll at least have an idea of the kind of setting you’re going to use this in. Since we’re creating an adventure from scratch, we need to decide some additional details, such as what genre we’re going to create this adventure for. The seed itself seems imply a science fiction, superhero, modern day, or cyberpunk-style setting. Since I want to show you that you can adapt adventure seeds that may not seem to be a perfect fit at first, let’s not use any of those. I’m going to set this in a “standard” high-fantasy genre.

Next time we’ll begin answering the questions.

[Photo courtesy of Horia Varlan via Flickr Creative Commons 2.0].

Other posts in this series:

• And Then What Happened? Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas
• Step By Step: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 2

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Setting an Example: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, pt. 3 is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

There are basic steps to creating an adventure from the adventure seed:

• Read the seed
• Write down questions
• Answer your questions
• Pull out events from the questions
• Put the events into a possible order
• Determine the outcome of success or failure

We’ll go over these steps in detail in the next post(s), where I’ll provide some examples to make things much clearer.

One note here: The adventure seed is just a tool to jump start your creativity. If, in the course of developing your adventure, you find that your plot bears no resemblance whatsoever to the seed you started with, that’s okay. As long as you’re happy with what you’ve created and you think your players will be too, go with what you’ve written. There are no adventure police to keep you on the straight and narrow. (At least when you’re running for your own group, this is true. Published adventures can be another story).

[Photo courtesy of pj_vanf via Flickr Creative Commons 2.0]

Previous articles in this series:

• And Then What Happened? Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas

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Step By Step: Using Adventure Seeds/Hooks/Starts/Ideas, part 2 is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle

One of the main questions I (and just about every other writer/artist/creative type) has been asked is “Where do you get your ideas?” I’ve always liked the answer given by Wendy and Richard Pini of Elfquest fame–that they had a six-pack delivered to their doorstep every morning from Ploughkeepsie.

Most of the advice you’ll hear tends to be along the lines of “Ideas are all around you; just keep your eyes open.” While this is true, it’s about as helpful as the advice that to be a success you need to “get more creative.” Get more creative. Great! Why didn’t I think of that?

If you’re like me, your creativity comes in waves. Some days, idea after idea just seems to tumble into my brain, so fast that I can barely keep up with the pace. Other times, I sit down to write or even plan my next game session and … pft. Nothing. Dry as a bone. At those times, I turn to a tool I’ve been using for almost 20 years now … my idea file.

For me, the idea file is an index card box with one idea per card. When an idea hits me, especially if I can’t act on it right now, I write it down on a card and stick it in the box. I usually carry a few cards with me to catch ideas when I’m away from my desk. At the very least, I keep small notebooks and a few pens with me (one set in my purse, one in my game bag–which also subs as a portable office–one in my car) so I can capture an idea before I lose it. Then, when I get home, I transfer those ideas to cards (one idea per card) and stick them in my box.

My box has no order. I’ll often label the idea card with a loose category, such as “adventure idea”, “magazine article”, “blog post”. Not too specific, since that can kill creativity, but enough so that when I look back on it later, can job my memory as what I thinking. I’ve also found it helpful to write a sentence or two about the idea, if that comes to me. The exact nature of the file really doesn’t matter. As long as it works for you and you can find your ideas, it could be anything from a notebook to a computer file. I use index cards because I’m a very tactile person and I like having something I can physically handle.

Then, when the inevitable creative dry spell comes, I can pull an idea out of the box. I like my box because I can pull an idea out at random, or I can look through the cards and find something that inspires me.

When the ideas just don’t come, it’s important to remember that creative dry spells are a part of the natural process. Just because you don’t have any ideas today, doesn’t mean you won’t tomorrow. But when deadlines are coming (whether that’s a article deadline or your next game session) and ideas aren’t, it helps to have something you can pull out of the box to get you along.

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Barren Air: Preparing for Creative Downtimes is a post from: Evil Machinations
©2008-2011 by Cherie Arbuckle