Putting Together an Adventure - Building The Basics
Being a Master of Dungeons (or Games) requires a lot of work.
I have found out, in more recent years, that if you want to play Dungeons and Dragons, you want to be one of the people who tricks your friend into buying the books and modules. Those people are called 'Players'.
The ones who get tricked, like me, are called Dungeon Masters.
Players get to rock up, eat all the snacks, destroy all the plans, eat more of the snacks, raid the dungeon, raid the fridge, and somehow crit their way out of every situation. For the sake of a metaphor, they get to just play the game of Football.
The DMs get to build the teams, the motivations for playing, the field, stadium, locker rooms, the other teammates, the opposition, the crowds, all their motivations for attending the game & the rest of the world around the game just for good measure. And they get to (initially) pay for this privilege. Then bring the snacks and drink. DMs spend hours putting together intricate madness specially tailored to their players, while the players just assume it 'happens'.
Now, you may be assuming this is coming from a place of some sort of feeling of superiority, but it doesn't. It comes from a place of having first been a player who greatly underestimated the work being put into the game by our DM, to learning what sort of and how much. I garnered a new-found respect for our DM, and all DMs out there, and tried to emulate them. And failed. I'm still trying to this day, and the day I start to feel comfortable or knowledgeable is the day I change to something I know nothing about..
Anywho, here's the first bit (in no particular order) of how I put together adventures, sessions, worlds and all the rest of it.
Like the weather, or rust, or food, or going to the bathroom (most things normally relegated to the background of a story, be it Dungeons and Dragons or otherwise), aren't important until they are.
Supposedly as a GM we're meant to make these big, sweeping decisions at the start of an adventure that will effect the outcome of how everything will function and play out in the world. Will everything unfold in real time, or will we just skip ahead to the interesting parts? If we walk for days without rest, do we get Disadvantage from chafing armour? If I haven't explicitly stated I relieved myself earlier, does the ambush make me wet myself?
But in the same way the big, sweeping decisions you make for yourself at the start of High School or College or during your mid-life crisis aren't set in stone, neither are these.
That said, when starting an adventure, or even just a single session, or a delve, we have to try and answer these questions. Part of this comes from your players, what they expect from the adventure (and what they'll put up with). Do they want to know exactly how many horses they have on their home property, & how to manage their holdings whilst on adventure? Do they want to focus on having to eat and drink? If so, what sort of food do they have, how are they storing it, and what time of day is it? That last one especially becomes important, if you're tracking food.
And a lot of these questions get answered when you realise what it is your party needs to keep track of. If it's food, then time is important. If it's armour, time and the weather are the main two. Knowing what you're focused on helps lend credence to any flavour text you've come up with.
Again, these are not set in stone. If you find your players, or yourself, gravitating towards one type over another, or certain details resonating more or less, feel free to start ditching the ‘deets’. Something about wheat and chaff, possibly involving separation. If no-one cares about the upkeep of their manor back home, and just want to go on a carefree hack-&-slash adventure, fine. Let's stop focusing on when we last ate, or if there's rust on something, or how a light drizzle with fog might obscure sight. This sort of campaign will never have one of the main player characters suffering from blisters as they break in their new boots.
However, if your players start to zoom in on such details, well now it's your job to keep them up, and keep giving them meaning. This is where some of the deciding has to come from you, from the start. If you know you hate having to keep track of certain elements, you either make it the job of the players to keep track, or you don't introduce them to begin with. If the players are never aware time could have been a factor, it never will be. If getting shot in the arm with an arrow only effects your total HP and not that arm, they won’t equate wounds with, you know, being actually wounded. No sewing-kits and gut threads are in their future. Of course, if you need it to be later, you can sneak it in for a few sessions before and after 'the event'. Players will be quick to pick up on when something has lost its relevance (unless you're an evil DM and were counting on that. Eventually they will trust nothing).
Any time you're just starting out an adventure, you'll want to have this clear picture of what strange little elements you are willing and able to have in your world, what your players want or expect, and how well each one plays out over those crucial first sessions. Once you've essentially play-tested them, streamlining the process as you go, you can really start to dig into the meat of an adventure, with the help of backgrounds of characters, which we'll talk about next time. Maybe.
Until then, flay the mind,
Morgan Jenkins (DM for Going In Blind).
