However, while more of us can create adventure modules than ever before thanks to the nature of modern day publishing and programs like DMs Guild and Storyteller's Vault, there are still a lot of hurdles to overcome. So if you're considering writing an adventure and putting it on the market, consider this week's tips from someone who had his share of rodeos under his belt at this point.
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| It's not as easy as it looks, I can tell you that... |
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Tip #1: Get The Art First
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| Like this one, if you haven't checked it out yet... |
I talked about this a little while back in the interview I did with Isaiah Burt, but it really bears repeating; before you put a single word down on the page, make sure you have ALL your art assets in place and ready to go.
Art is the most expensive part of most RPG products, and modules require cover art, interior art, and maps to make sure that you have all the resources possible to run your players through this adventure. And since getting custom art is expensive, it's important to make sure you have all the art assets ready to roll before you come up with the story you intend to write... assuming you want to stay under budget, that is.
The Price of Iron, pictured above, was the first time I did this, and it made everything go a lot more smoothly than previous adventures I'd written. Additionally, if you are working with the art assets you have access to, it can often make you more creative as a writer. For example, when I sat down to gather assets for the Army Men mission module Assault on Outpost 13 I was looking everywhere I could for a map of a modern (or at least semi-modern) jail. I couldn't find one, though... all I could find was a bank. Which gave me the idea to canonically write the jail the PCs have to enter in order to protect a valuable prisoner an old bank that was converted to a jail during the revolution that led to the Styric Republic, thus allowing the map to make sense, while still being an asset that didn't cost me (or my publisher) any extra money to use.
Tip #2: Don't Hide Necessary Advancement Behind Checks
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| So, I don't know... I guess just keep rolling till one of you manages? |
A method I've developed over the adventures I've written is to use "trap mentality" when it comes to designing the mechanical challenges in an adventure module. We all know how traps work, of course. A character looks for the trap, and if they meet the Perception DC they spot it before it goes off. This gives them the ability to try to avoid the trap, to disable the trap, or to knowingly set it off in some way. However, if they don't see the trap, then it goes off in their face and they have to try to save against it, or hope their armor and speed protects them.
The same logic should be applied to everything from gathering information, to Survival checks, to Stealth rolls, in that failing doesn't stop the players' progress going forward... it just means that progress is going to happen to them, instead of the other way around.
Put another way, provide ways for players to fail forward, or ensure that success gives them a boon, but isn't required for progressing.
For example, there's a section in my murder mystery module False Valor where players get to ask around at the bar to gather information. A local girl was murdered, and the circumstantial evidence says it may have been done by factions of an elven nation in a nearby forest who once fought a war across this region. While everyone who asks around gets a base bit of information, for every additional success on a Persuasion check, the players get another tidbit of information. Those who succeed really well find out that the leader of a local gang who seems to be champing at the bit to avenge the death on the elves has a lot of ideas in his head about what the war was like... mostly because his grandfather told him a lot of lies about the glory and honor of the fighting.
Now, players don't need that information to find the answer to the mystery. If they don't hear that piece of gossip, they can still go investigate the murder scene, and even talk to the girl's family to try to gather information about the events leading up to her murder. And even if they don't do that, the perpetrators are going to end up ambushing them to try to make the party look like more casualties in an escalation of hostilities.
The only difference is the more information the party successfully gathers, the faster they can put the pieces together about what happened, and the less taken off-guard they're going to be when the confrontation occurs.
Tip #3: Multiple Paths, and Multiple Ends
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| This was one of the first times I experimented with this... |
Let's get the obvious out of the way first... you cannot cover every, possible action the players might take. It isn't going to happen. The best you can do is set up the steps of the adventure, and how things are playing out for the Game Master, and then provide some suggestions for the most likely player actions.
What you can do, though, is create funnels to drive the players to certain events, and to provide a handful of descriptions based on these outcomes. A funnel is different from a rail. Rails are where players have to follow a specific course of events from A to B. A funnel is more like a particular event you need to get them to, one way or another, but which is more flexible with the journey overall.
For example, in The Curse of Sapphire Lake, the town is being terrorized by a massive figure in a bone white mask. Players will have a run-in with him, and whether it goes well or poorly, he retreats to his underwater lair. This funnels players to him, because waiting him out won't work; they have to go in after him. When they do they find a tragic situation at the end, and they're faced with a choice. Do they slay this figure, cutting him down? Do they allow him to live? And in either case, do they attempt to go back and tell the town chieftain what happened? Because depending on their actions there are at least 3 different ways the story could end... of course, GMs are free to add their own ending text, if the included ones don't cover enough options.
This can take some trial and error, and if you have the time (along with a dedicated playtesting group) consider incorporating some of these changes into the final product before you're ready to put it out to market!
Additional Modules
A last piece of advice I'll give is that if you want to write adventure modules you should study what other folks have done. Not just in terms of story and plot, but in terms of layout, how stats are presented, and even how maps are marked for certain incidents. Seeing what works, and what doesn't, is solid research for how to write your own modules.
And in addition to the ones I've mentioned above, I'd also recommend checking out:
- A Night At Breckon's Beacon (Army Men): Your squad is tasked with finding soldiers who went missing on patrol. Near the ruins of an old border fort, you find evidence they were here... but what happened to them?
- Ghosts of Sorrow Marsh (DND 5E): The town of Bracken is beset by something terrible. There's a bounty for those who save them from this lurking threat... but will you survive to claim the reward, or merely vanish beneath the waters of the Sorrow Marsh?
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I've been publishing for more than 2 decades. I cannot disagree more with the art. Some art up front is fine, but most of the art shouldn't be until after you've done layout. Based on layout, you'll identify those areas and sizes and content where art needs to go. If you only get art first thing, you'll end up with pages where you'll need more art and art that fits the content of the page it's on. And you'll find out that some of the art you got ahead of time doesn't fit anywhere and isn't used.
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