Making Adventures

[Darksyde]

So in starting to gear up to get a campaign going I picked up a bunch of the published adventures. Lately this has led me to wonder if there was any generaly lay out for making one's own that other people had settled upon.

Is there a 'layout' of sorts that any of you use for setting up your adventures?

Do you use any sort of template?

Lose notes and a few importat stat blocks?

I am used to a bit more realastate to run a more free form game with Exalted but can't help but read through Earthdawn and have it feel a bit more 'traditional' as it were with dungeons, quests, traps, and boss monsters at the end then we come back for our bounty.

Any comments and/or advice is always apreciated.

[Flowswithdrek]

Most of the adventures I GM are homebrew and I tend to keep the published ones for when the gaming catches up with the writing or as a side show when a regular player may be absent from a few sessions. I guess if I were to break them down there would be some kind of structure, but that’s not how I write. Most adventures have some kind of foreshadowing of events to come, a hook to get the player characters into the adventure. If I’m running a game for a group new to Earthdawn I have a set scenario I run to get them to interact and mould them into a group that have enough in common to want to continue to adventure together.

Then there is the main body of the adventure where all the investigation etc happens. The ending of the adventure depends on what came before it. The linear adventure tends to lead to the big bad at the end; however I often throw the player characters into a complex situation and have a series of events that play on that situation that can be tackled in any order. The order the events are tackled by the player characters effect the outcome differently and often there is no big bad, the situation itself is the big bad and its how the player characters deal with the situation.

I tend to write the adventures out in detail and use the stat blocks provided in the Gamemaster Companion (I’m very slow at making characters). Adventures in Earthdawn don’t have to have dungeons (kaers) or () but if you need them Earthdawn provides a logical reasoning for their existence. Personally I like to throw in quite a few secret societies in my games. All my adventures start with a single thought or idea and then I build around them so I tend to build them from the middle out and some times from the end to the beginning, so i don't have a useful structure from that point of view.

Hope that helps some

[Ogolar]

The adventures in my campaigns are nearly all created by my own. I only use "Blades" and parts of prelude to war to create the future of my Barsaive.

When fleshing out a adventure I start with an idea. The rest is growing around in hours of planing an writing arond this "starting point". In the end often the idea with wich I´ve started is changed in many points.

All my adventrues are very flexible, because my players often have their own plans how solve adventrues. So mostly I only have the essentiel charactes, places and events of the adventrue writen down. The rest is coming how the characters and their players move forward in the adventure.
All my notices I keep in a forum with links showing the connections of persons, events, places, etc.

After every playing session I´ve to update my notices, change things because the players solve problems in way´s i didn´t expected bevor.

[crzydevil]

For the most part, I have to agree with Flows and Ogolar. I don't have any set ritual or layout process, necessarily. If you're putting together a fresh campaign, you really need to find a common thread that the whole party is going to latch on to. Personally, I ran Ardanyan's Revenge as a campaign starter a few months back for a new group. Dammi did a wonderful job with this, and all of the players seemed to be really caught up in the story. So, as far as starting out, that would be my suggestion.

As far as making your own adventures, have fun. It's about getting to know your players and what they like. If you have a ton of dialogue, and everyone seems bored, adjust for next time. My most recent game has players that are new to Earthdawn, so part of my "formula" is to get them out and about, exploring and seeing new things. Recurring villains, Horror marks, and contacts can make things a little more interesting for sessions down the road. Start with an idea that you really like, add a place, some NPCs, and fill in the blanks. One thing that you might want to keep in mind is that the players will never do exactly what you think they're going to. I usually have nothing scripted for this, but at least a few ideas in hand to get them back on track.

I don't really write much down. I tend to let ideas come together in my head. During sessions, I might take a few notes. I think Ogolar's way is probably better.

I guess in this convoluted post I got taken about 12 different directions, but I hope I gave you an idea or two along the way.

[Slimcreeper]

I generally write up a bunch of character sketches, occasionally with stats, so that I'll have a cast. I come up with a Problem and throw the players at it to see what happens. I don't think of much of a plot arch, typically.

That said, I am trying to be a bit more systematic about planning for legend points in the new online game.

[The_Gun_Nut]

I'm a huge believer in "the GM just narrates what happens" aspect of running games. Now that my PC's are 8th Circle working on 9th, I have more than enough back story and history to just have the world react to their actions, instead of the other way around. Occasionally, I will throw something new into the mix, but it is mostly just the effects of their actions upon the world.