Store & Event Locator

Stores

Events

The Adventure Framework
Craft (Adventures) #2


In Craft (Adventures) #1, Two Hundred Minutes and the Bonus Encounter, we examined the proper length for an RPGA adventure and also explored the concept of the bonus encounter, which can extend the length of a short-running adventure to give players their money's worth. This month, we move from theory to reality as we turn that skeletal concept into the framework of an actual adventure.

Structure

One of the most important issues to decide when crafting an adventure is your structure. Just as you can't figure out where to put the furniture in a house that has no floor plan, you can't decide what challenges to use before you have a framework for the adventure. Like houses, there's no one right way to build an adventure. There are, however, a few basic structures that work pretty well.

Single Climax

The simplest structure presents the characters with a series of ever-tougher challenges, slowly building up to a climactic final encounter. This format is popular in video games, and for good reason: it allows players to gauge the risk of each upcoming encounter, based on the ones before it, which contributes to
their sense of confidence. In low-level games, where characters possess limited resources and don't have a lot of room for error, this can be a very effective structure. It creates a building excitement, which keeps the game moving. If low-level characters don't know what they're likely to face behind the next door, they often grow very cautious, which can grind a game to a halt. It
also helps ensure that the last encounter of the adventure is a memorable one. No one wants to follow up a dramatic fight with
a dragon with a meaningless encounter with the dragon's kobold stableboy.

The drawback to this structure is its predictability. If players
know that they won't face the toughest foe until the end, they
tend to save their most important resources until that encounter. This drawback becomes most problematic at higher levels, as characters can often afford to save their best spells or one-shot items because they have so many other powers at hand.

This column assumes that you already know what character levels you're writing for. This may seem obvious, but you might be surprised how many authors neglect this simple step, and end up with a mishmash adventure that varies wildly in encounter level. Once you make this decision, work hard to stick with it rather than changing your mind midstream. This helps prevent unnecessary rewrites. If you put back-to-back EL 6 encounters in an adventure for 2nd-level characters, you must then reconsider the EL 1 and 2 encounters earlier in the adventure, possibly wasting hours of work. Until you become comfortable writing adventures, don't change your goals once you've started writing unless you feel absolutely certain you can't meet them. If you're writing a low-level adventure, it's better to save that great EL 10 encounter idea for the next adventure rather than trying to shoehorn it into this one.

Multiple Climaxes

You can guard against predictability in your adventures by adopting a multiple-climax structure. In an adventure using this structure, challenges build to a significant encounter just as in the simple single-climax structure detailed above. However, that significant encounter isn't the end of the adventure. Instead, this false climax opens the door to the remainder of the adventure. This might be figurative-the encounter provides clues that allow the characters to continue their investigations-or it might be literal, as the characters face a guardian who prevents them from delving deeper into the adventure. After the encounter, the adventure drops down a notch before building up to a second, even tougher, climactic encounter.

This structure preserves many of the strong points of the single-climax structure-players still have some idea of the risks they face in the next encounter, and the final encounter is likely to be memorable-while removing some of the predictability. Characters are hard-pressed to save all their resources for the final fight if the third or fourth encounter puts their backs to the wall. It also gives the players a strong sense of accomplishment even before the adventure is completed. Taking out the evil wizard's lieutenant is quite an achievement, which can contribute to the players' confidence for that final encounter with the wizard herself.

Variable Structure

A third option is to throw out any sense of predictability by mixing up the encounter difficulty entirely. In essence, this structure's hallmark is a lack of structure, as characters go from one encounter to the next without any idea what to expect. In the ultimate twist, the toughest challenge might come very early in the, putting players on notice that they shouldn't hold anything back in any encounter. Players of the 2001 Winter Fantasy event "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil" may remember a particularly deadly opening encounter, an excellent example of this structure in practice. This variable structure works well to challenge veteran players, who have often grown comfortable with single-climax or even multiple-climax adventures. If characters must expend some of their best resources early in the adventure, players quickly realize that they can't take success for granted. Variable structures may even leave out a traditional climactic encounter, but you should still include some note of finality to the adventure, whether that's an escape from a collapsing tower, the discovery of the stolen crown, or the physical destruction of the evil shrine.

This structure has its pitfalls as well. Unwary characters may not realize how tough your "surprise" encounter is until it's too late, which may bring the session to a quick finish. Particularly cautious characters, after running into a surprisingly tough encounter, may fall back to rest and re-equip. If the adventure depends on a strict timeline, or if the author fails to make allowances for down time, such as neglecting to include development entries in nearby encounters, the sudden disappearance of the PCs for one or more days of game time can throw the adventure for a loop.

Should you choose to employ a variable structure, think hard about the players' likely responses to your challenges. If the characters must defeat a mighty dragon to enter the dungeon, they might well retreat from the fight quickly, then spend a significant portion of the session preparing for the fight. All of a sudden, two hours of the game have elapsed and the characters have only overcome a single encounter! While falling back from an unwinnable fight shouldn't penalize the PCs unfairly-retreat is a fine tactical decision, and often the correct one-you can ensure that the decision is a costly one. The dragon might recruit allies, or warn other inhabitants of the dungeon about the characters, making their next foray even more difficult. If the characters are operating on a timeline-and in general, characters should always have some idea if their success depends on speed-taking time off to rest and recuperate might put the mission in jeopardy. The dragon or its allies might follow the characters, ambushing them that night while they sleep. Alternatively, the challenge facing the heroes when they return might be completely different from what they expect. Perhaps the dragon left, and in its place lurk a half-dozen undead guardians or a black pudding. Now the characters' preparations are for naught! Whatever you choose, make sure that retreat isn't a "no-brainer" decision for the players; tough decisions are always more interesting than easy ones.

None of these structures are immutable. You can craft an adventure that builds gradually to a big climactic encounter, yet still throw in a random tough encounter somewhere in the middle that doesn't serve as an intermediate climax. You can write an adventure that keeps players on their toes while still giving them a big finish that lets them beat the bad guys in a fulfilling manner. Experiment with various structures or combinations thereof, and try not to fixate on any one format. Varying your approach keeps your adventure writing from becoming a chore.

For our adventure, we chose a multiple-climax format. This is a more challenging task than the single-climax format, but doesn't present as many pitfalls for the designer as the variable structure.

The Outline

Crafting an adventure is no different from any other sort of creative task-the better your idea of where you're going, the easier it is to get there. In this case, that means creating an outline of the adventure you intend to design. This helps guide your design choices, while also keeping you on target for an adventure of the appropriate length and difficulty.

Just like an author might outline a book by chapter, one good way to outline an adventure is by encounter. Typically, each encounter forms a discrete chunk of the adventure, with its own challenges for the players, the DM, and you, the writer. Encounters may end up linked or separate, but for now, consider each of them as a distinct unit.

Number of Encounters

When creating your outline, start by deciding how many encounters you want to include in your adventure. This decision isn't set in stone, but it should help set the tone for the adventure. An adventure with many short encounters feels much different from one with a few long encounters. The fewer the encounters, the tougher each one must be to provide the same overall challenge for the characters. Including fewer encounters also lets you write more complex scenes, as the DM doesn't have to familiarize himself with as many foes or sets of tactics. Conversely, short encounters should be simpler to overcome for the characters, and also simpler for the DM to run. An adventure with many complex encounters can easily overwhelm a DM, and often results in unfinished adventures.

The number of encounters also depends somewhat on the structure you've chosen to utilize. It can be tough to pull off a multiple-climax adventure with only a few encounters, since you don't have a lot of room to build to those climaxes. A single-climax adventure with a lot of encounters can seem slow-paced, and a variable structure adventure with too many encounters can seem brutally random to players, as the difficulty swings back and forth over several challenges.

Let's assume that we're writing an adventure for low-level characters (levels 1 to 4). Thanks to our determinations last month, we expect that a typical group of that level can complete anywhere from 5 to 9 encounters. We already decided on a multiple-climax adventure, so we expect to need a higher-than-average number of encounters to properly build tension toward both climactic encounters. We also want to provide a good variety of challenges for the characters, but not so many that they feel it necessary to fall back and recuperate mid-adventure. With all this in mind, we pick 8 as our target number of encounters, knowing that we can revisit this choice later.

EL Total

Next, set a target encounter level (EL) total for the adventure; the sum total of all the encounters you plan to write. This helps ensure that your adventure won't be too tough or too easy for the characters. A good rule of thumb is that the total EL of all your encounters should roughly equal the total character levels of all the characters taking part in the adventure. For instance, an adventure for six 4th-level PCs can have ELs roughly totaling 24, whether that's from eight EL 3 encounters, six EL 4 encounters, five EL 5 encounters, three EL 8 encounters, or more likely, some combination thereof. This rule of thumb balances the party's level and size against the challenges they face. The higher their level or the more characters participating, the tougher the challenges they can expect to overcome. If you're writing for a range of levels, pick a number in the middle. You'll be adding notes for customizing encounters to party level later on.

This guideline assumes that the characters won't have significant time to recuperate during the adventure. In particular, characters shouldn't have time to regain spells in an adventure of this difficulty. Otherwise, the characters could well find the adventure too easy to complete. If you choose to write an adventure that allows characters to regain their strength between encounters-either by retreating from the dungeon or simply because the encounters are spaced out in time far enough that rest is an easy option-then you can (and should) increase the difficulty of the encounters. You can add anything from 10% to 50% to the target EL total, based on the expected frequency of rest periods. The more opportunities the characters have to recuperate, the tougher the encounters you can (and should) throw their way. For example, if our group of six 4th-level PCs engage in an adventure with a built-in rest period (perhaps the characters must travel overland midway through the adventure, spending one or more nights resting between early encounters and late encounters), we decide to increase the EL total by 25%, from 24 to 30. Instead of a half-dozen EL 4 encounters, the characters now might face the same number of EL 6 encounters. Remember that every +1 EL increases the difficulty of the encounter by fifty percent-those six EL 6 encounters are twice as tough as the six EL 4 encounters.

Our sample adventure is for six characters of levels 1 to 4. Using 2 as our average party level, we find that our target EL total should be about 12. Since we're writing a multiple-climax adventure with many encounters, we expect it likely that characters may choose to rest after the first climactic encounter, so we increase this total by 50% to 18.

Dividing it Up

Once you have this total, divide it up between the number of encounters you decided to include. Some encounters should be below the average party level, some equal to that number, and one or more (particularly climactic encounters) higher than that. Avoid simply dividing up the EL total among all the encounters-this creates a flat structure that can seem monotonous to players. You can start by setting your climactic encounter ELs and working backward from there, or at the beginning of the adventure and see where you end up. (Don't include the bonus encounter in this division-by definition, the bonus encounter exists outside your normal adventure structure.)

Refer back to your choice of structure to help guide your hand in dividing up your EL total. If you chose a single-climax structure, encounters should start well below the party's level and grow to a finale equal to or higher than their level. (Remember, a climactic encounter doesn't have to be a higher EL than the party to be challenging; if the party has already spent most of its resources, that climactic encounter can be tough even if it's no higher than the average party level.) A variable structure should include encounters of many different ELs to keep the players guessing as to what's next.

Returning to our sample adventure, we must divide our EL total of 18 between 8 encounters, with two of those being climactic encounters. We decide that we want the finale to be a challenging EL 4, and the secondary climax to be EL 3. Both of these are higher than the average party level, ensuring that they'll feel significant to the players. That leaves us with 11 "units" of EL to divide between the remaining six encounters. If we divided it up equally, we'd have five EL 2 encounters and a single EL 1 encounter, but that feels a little too boring. Instead, we decide on two EL 1 encounters, four EL 2 encounters, and a single EL 3 encounter. That EL 3 encounter is as tough as our secondary climax, so we should make sure its placement in the adventure doesn't steal the thunder of that climax.

For that reason, we choose to start off the adventure with a bang by throwing the PCs up against the EL 3 encounter right out of the gate. At full strength, the 2nd-level party should handle this without too much difficulty, but it should suffice to get their attention. We follow it up with one of our two EL 1 encounters as a breather, then add an EL 2 encounter. By this point, the characters may feel like they're running a little low on resources, but probably aren't ready to rest. That's the perfect time to challenge them with our EL 3 secondary climax. This encounter may well push the characters a bit harder than they'd prefer, but it probably won't prove deadly unless they really screw up.

After this climax, we expect the characters to rest. We don't know yet whether that's because they fall back to a safe position or if the storyline gives them a break in the action, and that's not terribly important at this point.

When activity resumes, we start the characters off with an EL 2 encounter. After the recent climactic encounter, this one probably feels pretty easy, but that's what we want. Again, we follow it up with an EL 1 encounter. We also add a note that this might be a good place to add the possibility of two encounters merging to form a single, tougher encounter-perhaps the EL 1 encounter consists of reinforcements easily called to aid the EL 2 encounter, or a trap triggered by characters during or directly following the EL 2 encounter. Added together, an EL 2 and EL 1 encounter make an EL 3 encounter, turning two routine challenges into a single tough one. For now, we don't have to worry about exactly what this entails. Next up is our final EL 2 encounter. Again, at this point the characters probably aren't pushing themselves too hard, and should definitely feel ready for another encounter or two. In fact, they might well feel too ready, and we add another note to our outline to that effect. Could this be a good place for our bonus encounter?

Last but certainly not least is our grand finale: the EL 4 climax of the adventure. The characters are likely a little bloodied by their previous encounters, but shouldn't feel overwhelmed by this climax, despite its relative toughness compared to the average party level.

Encounter 1: EL 3 (get their attention)
Encounter 2: EL 1 (breather)
Encounter 3: EL 2
Encounter 4: EL 3 (first climax)
[rest]
Encounter 5: EL 2
Encounter 6: EL 1 (combine with encounter 5?)
Encounter 7: EL 2
[bonus encounter here?]
Encounter 8: EL 4 (finale)

Now we have our outline, but it's still a long way from an adventure. After all, characters don't fight ELs they fight monsters, disable traps, infiltrate forbidden strongholds, and swing across bottomless chasms. You'll also notice that we still haven't decided what our adventure is about! In our next column, we'll cover how to turn your outline into a living, breathing adventure by choosing a theme and turning those numbers in the outline into exciting encounters.

RPGA Home



Bookmark and Share Printer FriendlyPrinter Friendly Email A Friend Email Discuss This Article Discuss



About Us Jobs Find a Store Press Help

©1995-2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Terms of Use-Privacy Statement

If you do not have Javascript or Cookies enabled you will not be able to fully experience the D&D website and D&D Insider.