Sword Coast Legends

As my financial situation was tumbling down, I managed to pick up an inexpensive copy of Sword Coast Legends for PC. I spent most of my Saturday playing with the DM module editor/creator and here's what I've determined from my first foray:

• These quests include collecting a user-specified number of items, killing a user-specified number of monsters, and killing a boss
• There are three basic kinds of quests you can assign to characters which are all self-completing (you don't return to anyone to turn them in)
• You can define "custom" sets of enemies, which are really just modified versions of the existing lists and not amalgamations thereof; you do not have free reign over the stat blocks of these monsters (so I could not, for example, convert a Troll into a true Green Hag - somewhat of a necessity given the lack of monsters available)
• You can only have two sets of monsters on a map
• Maps must have their monster types defined before you begin to fill them out; changing the monster sets for a map will reset an entire map
• Maps consist of largely prefabricated layouts, with a slight exception where dungeons are concerned
• Dungeons are obligated to descend (so no towers)
• Dungeons are made up of automatically-laid-out prefabs based upon seeds that you cannot alter except to request a simple, moderate, or complex layout
• Dungeons are automatically populated with encounters that are often more complex than any encounters you can set up under your own power
• You cannot define certain items as quest rewards (in fact you have 0 control over player-related items except to establish vendors)
• Just like monster sets, you must have established quest types plugged into your maps before you begin populating them; adding them later will force you to reset the map (changing your dungeon layout if it's a dungeon) and removing any changes you've made
• There is no apparent control for player dialogue trees (NPC talks, dialogue ends)
• There is no limit on the amount of stuff you can pack into a map in order to give it detail
• You must place things on the ground, there's no stacking objects (ie. putting fire on roofs or books or bottles on a table), and there are sometimes just awful collisions that prevent you from placing furniture against walls (sending my OCD into overdrive)
• You can't put boss-type enemies onto a map anywhere at any time voluntarily. I'm not actually sure where the boss-type monsters truly live, as I've added one into a dungeon and I haven't found the bastard anywhere (though there is a big door at the end of the dungeon that I cannot activate)
• You can create NPC monsters whose faction is variable (friendly, will fight for you; neutral, will watch you die; hostile, will openly attack you). You cannot use any triggered events to *change* these states automatically.

Most of these are grievances. I don't really have any conception of how much control the DM has over the game while it's in play - since other players rate your ability to DM a game, I've been hesitant to jump in and DM anyone for the first time. Especially in a clunky system such as this one.

There's also no way to jump into your module to test out any of its actions or features - you do all your editing on the 3d map that the players will run around on, but you don't even get access to a larger map for yourself while you're editing (making travel around the larger maps slower and somewhat more tedious). If something doesn't work or looks weird, you won't know until you've gotten out of the editor, found a couple friends to playtest the game for you, and let it rip.

While that is usually okay for tabletop play, in my experience it's not so hot for virtual play.

I enjoy how beautiful the game is, and I'm even willing to work with the fact that it is by necessity all in the Forgotten Realms setting. The lack of monsters is a setback that I can work with largely because you can repaint and rearm monsters when you're creating a custom set of them. This means you can give your beasties spells and weapons they otherwise wouldn't have (as long as they can equip them). But you can't take away from the base model at all.

In my earlier example of turning a Troll into a Hag, my "Hag" can toss boulders as a default ability. I'm not thrilled about that.

There's also no scaling options for objects or monsters. This might seem like a small annoyance, but it's the difference between halfling skeletons and human ones, or twig blights and needle blights if you paint your skeletons green (that's about the closest I could figure to a blight with this engine). Your monsters are whatever size they are by default, and they will have whatever innate abilities belong to that archetype.

I'd be more forgiving if it were based upon species - for instance, all the Druegar having the same type of basic abilities. Instead, it's based upon specific monsters. A Druegar peon will have different inherent abilities than a Druegar berserker.

I get that there cannot be every monster in the Monster Manual available in the game, especially this early in its history. But what I cannot forgive is how limiting the monsters are, or how little narrative impact you are given the freedom to create with the world.

In my adventure module I was building, a digital remake of my Clouds over Stormbreak module (that has sadly been destroyed by a computer virus), a Gulthias Tree is causing blights to overrun a town. In the tabletop version, killing the tree will eliminate the blights. Sure, the tree is in the middle of town past a small army of blights, but it's still a satisfying and meaningful ending to that quest.

I can't allow players to attack inanimate objects - or even interact with them in such a way as to suggest the tree was cut down.

I believe the Forge in Neverwinter is more capable of handling my specific concerns than this program that was literally designed to let me DM a D&D game online.

The engine is capable of more, and I'd like to see what else I can get it to do. I spent a day delving into the program without documentation. Now it's time to read up and see what I missed, what I'm wrong about, and what workarounds might exist to let me game the way I want.

Efficient Adventure Design - Acts and Scenes

The first step in developing your story is to break it down into bite-sized chunks.  If you're still working at the campaign level, breaking your story into chunks will help you determine what your adventures will be about.  If you're working at the adventure level, breaking your story into bite-sized chunks will give you your encounters and events that will make up the adventure parts.  If you are working from campaign-level down, you're going to need to take your bite-size chunk that will be the adventure you're going to work on and break it into smaller, bitier-sized chunks.

For example, if my campaign is about choosing a new monarch for a domain, my first adventure might be to gain favor with one of the candidates for monarchy.  Gaining favor is too general, but it can very easily be broken down into an adventure (or perhaps several adventures, for something this complex).  All you have to do is go back to the first question: what is your story about?  If the treasure for the campaign is restoring law and order to the land, then the treasure for the first adventure might be to gain a powerful ally.  What obstacles would stand in the players' paths on their way to such a treasure?  How can the outcome of gaining that treasure backfire on them/the antagonist(s)?

There are volumes of questions that can be asked here, but the most important one is always going to be what is your story about?  Answering that question will give you focus.  Everything you write afterwards will relate back to whatever the answer to that question is.  If it doesn't, you don't need it.

To organize your story into more manageable segments, your adventure should be made up of a series of Acts.  Acts, like those in a play, will provide all of the encounters and information related to that section of the story.  These are larger than chapters, but still divide up your story for ease-of-use.  There is no need to adhere to the three-act-structure here.  Acts are, in this case, simply dividers.

An act might encompass a region or a period of time.  Ensure the acts flow logically, with the start at the beginning and the conclusion at the end.  Although your conclusion doesn't have to include the player's getting the treasure, you'll often find that your players feel more rewarded when they do get the treasure.

Just like your larger story chunks, each act should have a treasure.  Again, not a literal treasure, but definitely some motivating objective that allows the players to progress through your adventure.  Everything contained within your act is going to be tied to your act's treasure in some way or another, whether as an obstacle or as an aid to the players.  If you're looking at something in your act and you can't answer how it is relevant to the act's treasure, it needs to go.

When you're starting out, repeat the same process of paring down your acts into little miniature stories in and of themselves.  It is possible to have a one-act adventure, although it is likely to be short and less rewarding.  Acts are most effectively used to transport player characters to different regions within a reasonable space.  If you're employing extraplanar travel, for example, you might devote an entire act to visiting Carceri while another is devoted to the Material plane.

Scenes, or rooms, or encounters, are the subsections of acts that the players participate in.  These will be gone over in more detail later.

Efficient Adventure Design - Getting Started

What You'll Need

• Pencils
• Paper
• Competent word processor / publishing application
• RPG Source books (Player's Handbooks, Monster Manuals, Dungeon Master's Guides, etc.)

Typically you'll start with pencil and paper (or pen if you're brave!) to get your initial ideas down on paper.  Some folks like to use their computer for everything, and if that's your style then more power to you.  If you do use your computer, I recommend that you do not delete anything you write!  And I cannot stress that enough.  Even if you've decided not to use an idea, highlight it in black or strike it through or something.  Whatever you delete is gone forever.  Never trust memory!

Campaign Worlds

Dungeon Master's Guides or other Game Master reference materials can provide tons of useful information and inspiration for creating a campaign world.  What is most important for you to get down on paper first, if you want to build an adventure that is part of a campaign, is what your overarching story is.  Your adventures need to all add up into one greater story, like the collection of Harry Potter novels or the Song of Ice and Fire novels.  This can help you figure out where your adventure fits into the greater narrative.

If you're not using a larger campaign, then don't concern yourself too much with this step.  Either way, at this stage you want your campaign story idea to be vague.  It will include some elements that are key to all stories that will make them adventures.

(Note that this advice is largely pointed at role-playing games in which there are adventures, and is not aimed at role-playing games that are meant to be played differently.)

Story Elements

There are a handful of recurring story elements that you will likely see referred to repeatedly throughout this blog.  These are listed here along with short descriptions.  Your stories should contain some logical combination of these elements, if not all of them.

• Treasure - This is often, although it doesn't have to be, actual treasure.  Magical items, money, land holdings, power, glory... your story needs to drive towards some ultimate reward.  Smaller treasures can be found along the way, but it is the big treasure that gets the adventurers out on the open road.  Don't focus too much on the literal term, though: sometimes the ultimate treasure of your story might be restoring peace to a domain.  Know your players, and devise a treasure that will motivate them.

Treasure doesn't have to be real treasure, but it often is.

• Antagonist - There needs to be at least one - but generally there are lots of these.  From mooks to big bosses, there need to be characterized obstacles in between your players and their treasure.  An antagonist can be nature, or sometimes paranoia.  This is going to be based largely on the obstacles you want to place in front of your characters.  These can be the same as traps, but they are notably different from puzzles.

There's nothing quite like having a good villain.

• Supporting NPC's - These are hard to find, but always appreciated when they are genuinely helpful.  These characters fall entirely under the dominion of the GM, and they should be used only when they are relevant to the story.  Although it's great to have a backstory for every merchant in your settlement, your players may never even meet those NPC's or take the time to ask them about their wife and children.  Remember the goal is to keep your work efficient.  They can also be optional if you play hack-'n'-slash.

Make sure your NPC's are actually useful.

•  Puzzles - Puzzles are like supporting NPC's.  Good puzzles should challenge the characters, but not necessarily the players.  Puzzles must also be connected to the world they exist in.  Puzzles can be used as obstacles to treasure, but they also make excellent expository moments for hidden truths.  Puzzles of this kind are not typically locked doors to be picked or special artifacts, but rather tricky situations for your players.  These puzzles will enhance your game's storytelling, and give your players a chance to value their characters' abilities.  These are optional if you play hack-'n'-slash.

Puzzles should be targeted at the characters and not the players.

• Irony - This is the hardest concept to work into your story, but it is important.  You should set up situations where your players can figure out what's going on without explicitly telling them.  Despite its connotations, irony does not always have to be funny.  Sometimes irony can be tragic.  What is important is the reversal of intention that the players can catch and feel clever about.  Sometimes this might seem campy, but when it works well it will really ring true with your story.

Irony can apply to antagonists or player characters.

Don't feel discouraged while looking at the list above.  Writing stories is a skill, and one that has been discussed at great length.  Try to work in whatever of these elements make sense to your story, starting with the treasure, the antagonist, and the irony.  The irony might come later, but writing your adventure is a process so don't sweat it if you don't get everything on the page right away.

At this early stage, it is okay to put too much into your story idea.  Get something on the page, and then ask yourself what the core of it is.  Be difficult and honest with yourself.  Do not worry about originality.  If your story is about a group of friends that need to throw some jewelry into a volcano then focus on that story.

Once you've got a story idea, you're ready to start developing it.

Efficient Adventure Design - Introduction

Back in 2014, I began writing a blog for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition dungeon masters focusing on how to write adventures efficiently.  Or rather, I created a style guide which was intended to make writing adventures more efficient.  This was an age before the Dungeon Master's Guide had been released, and, although it was aimed at 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, could absolutely apply to most any RPG without a defined style guide for adventure writing.

In the interest of expanding Efficient Adventure Design, streamlining it and making it more helpful to Game Masters everywhere, I am moving the blog to this page and revisiting much of what I wrote in 2014 on the subject of Efficient Adventure Design.  I will expand on writing styles and techniques as well as further explore the style guide posted on the old website.

I developed the concept for Efficient Adventure Design when I encountered a reoccurring problem that I had when writing games for my players: often I would develop quite a bit of material that just wouldn't get used.  So often this material was left by the wayside, despite its presence to flesh out the details of my world.  Well, that's a big problem if time is something that you don't have much of, which many working adults don't.  Efficient Adventure Design is intended to be a process that helps you focus your work on the key elements of telling your story and writing it down so that you aren't wasting time writing about things that won't get used.

This style guide is a set of guidelines and not a set of rules.  There are two important things to remember when you're a GM for any game: Know your players, know your story.  If you know these things, then the specifics of what's written on your page can fall by the wayside and a fun time can still be had by all.  Group storytelling is not an exact science, and you shouldn't expect it to be.  Spontaneity is part of its charm.

Efficient Adventure Design is adventure-based instead of campaign based.  This will be covered in more detail later, but in general this is because while your campaign's story is important, it is made up of the smaller journeys contained within your adventure modules.  Well-written adventure modules interconnect to create fun campaigns.

Substance is part of your adventure design, but it is specific to you as a Game Master.  I will talk about writing strategies for developing and keeping track of your stories, but I will also talk about what you should include in your daily adventure writing routine.  It is too easy to get sidetracked on the history of a magical sword that gets picked up by your fighter and then sold because its bonus just isn't as good as one he can make himself.

I will talk about formatting your work in such a way that you can reference it more easily in the future.  This will build on choosing what to include in your adventure, and will develop into discussing the individual parts of the adventure.  I will discuss strategies for coming up with the different parts of your adventure and how to handle traps, puzzles, and encounters in a way that gives you plenty of information to work with but open-ended solutions that let the players feed you the answers.

It is my hope that, using this style, GMs will create games that they can share with each other freely.  Having a writing style will help make adventures easier to read, and train us to focus our stories on the most cinematic, relevant parts of our stories.  Efficient Adventure Design will, I hope, help us write better adventures.