Image courtesy PublicDomainPictures at Pixabay.com rights via CC0 (Public Domain)

I’ve seen all sorts of ways to ignite your creativity, nudging your mental capacities into a completely different orbit to their usual.

I’ve even offered a few, myself, here at Campaign Mastery, that work best when you have some idea of what it is that you’re trying to create. They don’t work that well, however, when you’re looking for something as abstract and flexible as a concept for an adventure.

I call this technique “Buzzstorming” because it has two purposes: to get your brain buzzing with ideas, and to filter those ideas through a literary filter that churns out raw “nuggets” of Surrealist Adventure. These can then be refined using my old standbys, Iteration and Domino Theory until they fit any style that you want or need.

I actually have two variations of this technique, “basic” and “advanced” (though there isn’t a great deal of difference between them, as you’ll soon see).

Basic Buzzstorming

Buzzstorming works best with good old pen-and-paper, making it something that you can use just about anywhere under almost any circumstance.

It has three simple steps (not counting the refinement process, which I will deal with after discussing Advanced Buzzstorming)::
 

• Phrase,
• Mutate, and
• Curate
  

  Phrase

  Create a dozen simple phrases. The only restriction is the format: they must be structured,

  Noun – Verb – Noun

  …which means that they are all descriptions of activity. You can create these from looking around you at activity, from watching the TV, from reading a book, from ideas in music or songs, or from whole cloth and sheer imagination.

  Write these down.

  Mutate

  Starting with the first phrase, cross out the noun at the end of the phrase and write in the noun at the end of the second line. Keep going until you get to the end of the list; since there is no phrase under the last entry to steal a noun from, use the leftover one from the first phrase.

  Curate & Re-mutate

  Go through your list and note any that spark your imagination. Write these in a separate list, crossing them out as you do so. Re-mutate the rest, as above. If any phrase ends up with its original last noun, swap the first and last nouns in that phrase. Then curate the good ones again, and repeat.

  Eventually, you will end up with a list of as many ideas as you originally had phrases, or perhaps slightly less, with a couple of starting phrases that would not yield a good idea no matter how much you twisted them. That’s fine – throw them away.

That’s it. Easy, right?

A Quick step-by-step example

Let’s do a quick example with eight phrases – note that in reality, this would take up a lot less room:

Start

The sausage fries in the pan.
Two birds fly across the sky.
The critic complains about irony.
A dog wags its tail.
A moving pen writes on the page.
Sand falls through the hourglass.
Rain collects in the bucket.
Moon-rise banishes the dark.

First Pass

Mutated, these become:

The sausage fries in the sky
Two birds fly across the irony.
The critic complains about its tail.
A dog wags the page.
A moving pen writes on the hourglass.
Sand falls through the bucket.
Rain collects in the dark.
Moon-rise banishes the pan.

Curate: I like

The critic complains about its tail, and
Rain collects in the dark,

but the others leave me cold.

Second Pass

So, mutate the rest again:

The sausage fries in the irony
Two birds fly across the page.
A dog wags the hourglass.
A moving pen writes on the bucket.
Sand falls through the pan
Moon-rise banishes the sky.

I curate that last one, and mutate the rest again:

Third Pass

The sausage fries in the page.
Two birds fly across the hourglass.
A dog wags the bucket.
A moving pen writes on the pan.
Sand falls through the irony

Nothing there, so go again:

Fourth Pass

The sausage fries in the hourglass.
Two birds fly across the bucket.
A dog wags the pan.
A moving pen writes on the irony.
Sand falls through the page.

I can work with the last one, so I curate it, and then again mutate:

Fifth Pass

The sausage fries in the bucket
Two birds fly across the pan.
A dog wags the irony.
A moving pen writes on the hourglass.

Still nothing exciting. But observe that if I simply mutate again, the first phrase is back to where it started, while the third and fourth are variations that we’ve already tried. So it’s time to do the first-to-second swap in those three cases:

Sixth Pass

The bucket fries in the sausage
Two birds fly across the pan.
The irony wags the dog.
The hourglass writes on a moving pen.

Check those: no inspiration, so Mutate again:

Seventh Pass

The bucket fries in the pan
Two birds fly across the dog.
The irony wags a moving pen.
The hourglass writes on a sausage.

I like the third one, I can use it. So curate it and again mutate the other three:

Eighth Pass

The bucket fries in the dog.
Two birds fly across the sausage.
The hourglass writes on a pan.

No joy, and the first two about to cycle back to something already rejected, so swap its nouns around:

Ninth Pass

The dog fries in the bucket.
The sausage flies across two birds.
The hourglass writes on a pan.

and then mutate:

The dog fries in two birds.
The sausage flies across a pan.
The hourglass writes on the bucket.

Nothing yet. Mutate once more:

Tenth Pass

The dog fries in a pan.
The sausage flies across the bucket.
The hourglass writes on two birds.

Still nothing. My subconscious is teasing me that there’s an idea involving the hourglass there somewhere, but the combinations are few enough at this point that I can quickly dismiss all of the ones involving the hourglass in first or last position. So I scrap the other two and save the “The Hourglass writes on two birds” for the next Buzzstorming session.

Results

That means that my final list of ideas is:

The critic complains about its tail.
Rain collects in the dark.
Moon-rise banishes the sky.
Sand falls through the page.
The irony wags a moving pen.

Advanced Buzzstorming

This works in almost exactly the same way, but there are three differences.
 

1. The Phrase structure is different: use Noun – Verb – Adjective(s) – Noun.
2. During each Mutation round, you take the adjective from the Phrase below and the noun from the Phrase below that.
3. During the Curate and Re-mutate step, you have an extra option:
    
   • Move one or more of the adjectives to before the first Noun, crossing out the original appearance.
   • Insert a comma after the adjective and insert one of the words “On, In, To, At,” or “When” so that the resulting phrase is grammatically correct.

Because the process is so similar, I won’t put up an example. However, thinking about one, and the remaining phrase on the original (mutated) list gives me,

When soft, the hourglass falls through time,

which I happily add to the curated list.

Refinement

The refinement process is one of making sense of the statement in terms of the campaign and genre, then tossing basic questions – who, what, why, etc – at the result until it is transformed into a sensible plot outline.

Let’s at least make a start on the curated ideas so that you can see where I’m going with this. I’ll do so in a high-level D&D/Pathfinder context:

• The critic complains about its tail: I had an immediate vision of a critic, one of those people who is never satisfied by anyone or anything, who happened to be a Dragon. With old-style glasses-on-a-stick. And a top hat. The personality and visual was so strong and unique, ripe with subtle implications (e.g. Humanophile) that I needed go no further. He needs only a name and a role in the adventure.
  • I get the first from thinking of Faust, and the love-hate relationship any non-human Humanophile must have for the human race as a Faustian Bargain, the source of equal parts pride, satisfaction, and frustration; so I choose a name that evokes that context without being too obvious about it: Thaust Draco Infernus.
  • What if our Draconic friend feels compelled to tell people what they are doing wrong – and, when sufficiently vexed, to instruct others to do something about a situation to which they should be paying attention, but aren’t (or not enough, anyway)? That means that he is the instigator of the adventure and the NPC giving the PCs the briefing. “Your mission, should I choose you to accept it…”
  • That last phrase, thrown in more to be cute than to be meant seriously, seems to fit so well that the nature of the Adventure immediately begins to take shape. An emergency situation of some kind that he has noticed, but no-one else has, in which he wants the PCs to intervene.
• Rain collects in the dark: This also inspired a visual image. It rains, and the drops collect unnaturally into pools, which animate as Water Elementals or a sort of Water Elemental Golem.
  • “The Water Elemental Who Fell To Earth” then lept out at me as a phrase, and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”.
  • Ideas from that point began to fall like dominoes: A deity-level Water Elemental whose machinations threatened to destabilize the Elemental planes, and who was exiled from reality, who has found a way to launch his minions through the inter-dimensional barriers into the Prime Material Plane, where they can work his will, eventually to bring about his return from wherever he has been exiled.
  • So now I have the kernel of the adventure. Details remain to be filled in – how these minions will secure the release of the Water Elemental, his identity, how the PCs can
    interfere, and the signs that the Critic has spotted but that humanity has not. Before I turn to answering those, I’ll look at the remaining ideas to see if any of them hold nuggets of gold to inspire further answers. But that’s enough to demonstrate the principal.
• Moon-rise banishes the sky: Again, a visual notion: the moon rising at night, and in it’s wake, no stars, no darkness, nothing but white or perhaps gray. But, that was before I had reflected on the two previous ideas; the new context inspired a new interpretation:
  • The moon rises, leading a solid band of clouds, internally lit somehow, that obscures the entire sky. When the moon sets, the clouds begin to reshape themselves, drifting this way and that, until they form a part of a mystic sygil of some sort, with nothingness in between.
  • That alone is enough to tell everyone that hears of it that this is an arcane effect if some kind. Mages who analyze the effect claim that it is clerical and not arcane in nature. Worryingly, the most powerful clerics and druids cannot dispel it, and claim that the Mages must be lying. Thus, petty squabbles distract humankind while the world continues to plunge headlong toward disaster.
  • A hexagon is the simplest shape that is reminiscent of a ring (a triangle’s corners are too acute, as are those of a square; a pentagon would work but is too closely associated with demons and devil-worship – it might be more accurate to say, “the simplest available shape”). So, over the next five nights, in widely-separated locations, this same pattern repeats itself. On the seventh night, the patterns converge, and the portal behind to open, either releasing the big bad himself, or a bigger, more powerful minion, or an avatar of the Big Bad.
• Sand falls through the page:
• When soft, the hourglass falls through time: These two go together, I realized. This is a visual for some sort of temporal spell – a sandstone rock is placed on the page bearing the spell, and erodes over a period of seconds into sand which falls through the page as though it were a sieve. This is visually reminiscent of the behavior of an hourglass, the seemingly solid aggregation of sand in the top become a thin stream of soft particles, which fall through time, opening a portal to the remote past, to a time before time itself.
  • This sounds like the perfect place to exile a godlike elemental creature. You could even be forgiven for thinking that the creature would be helpless, unable to affect the “modern world”. It fails to account for the divine nature of the proposed being; although greatly weakened, it is capable of generating it’s own temporal field. Not enough to permit it to break free on its own, but enough to create his minions and boost them into the future in an uncontrolled manner.
  • There is an obvious association between “soft sand falling” and falling rain. So that gives more information on what the minions are doing – and implies that the PCs have to recover a copy of the spell being used by the minions and ultimately use it to travel back in time to confront the imprisoned Big Bad. When they succeed, a rebound effect of the cessation of the Big Bad’s personal time field will permit them to ride its own spell back to their local time – each appearing within one of the minions, perhaps!
  • Bonus idea: What if it is the destruction of the Divine Elemental and releasing of his temporal field that kick-starts time in the universe? What if this is the D&D equivalent of the Big Bang?
  • In many mythos, Dragons have access to magics that are older and more powerful than those practiced by Human Mages. That suggests that maybe the Spell is Draconic in origin, and that instead of providing the hook, the Critic is the final step the PCs have to make before confronting the Big Bad, and that finding (and rescuing?) him is another of the preliminary quests that they have to complete on their way to solving the main problem.
  • This further suggests that it was the mythic dragons of the past who exiled the Water Elemental in the first place; this would not only be internally consistent, it would explain where the critic got the spell from in the first place, passed down through the generations of Draconian offspring. It also implies that modern Dragons don’t have the knowledge, power, or skill of the originals.
  • Which suggests another idea by free association: That it is the Draconic lust for Gold and other precious metals that has weakened them, poisoning their bloodlines through the generations, a form of addiction with an impact over multiple generations. Which is why the Critic needs the PCs. “It took you long enough. This is your world, now. You took it from us when you began to mine and refine Gold. Now, you must live up to that responsibility.”
• The irony wags a moving pen: There’s a certain irony in that last idea, given the situation, which makes this idea relevant as well. The interpretation that came to mind when I read it was the exact phrase given above, minus the initial “the”: Irony wags a moving pen.
  • That gave me the idea of a God Of Irony, but until I had done the earlier refinement work, I had no idea of his role. Now it’s clear that he sets the quest to find the Critic and rescue the spell that the minions have captured.
  • There is also a certain Irony in the notion of the death of the Celestial Elemental being the D&D equivalent of the Big Bang.

The Adventure

The basic idea of the adventure has now taken shape. It still needs some details and polish, but here’s the outline:

Act I

1. One night, it begins to rain. The rain pools unnaturally, forming dozens of Elemental Water Golems. The PCs encounter one, and (barely) manage to defeat it in a suitably-public confrontation. That marks the PCs out.
2. Over the next few days, they hear that a lot more of these Elemental Golems appeared at the same time as their encounter, but others who confronted them were not as skilled or lucky, and the Golems escaped. Where they are now, and what they are doing, remain unknown.
3. Given the seriousness of the situation, A King/ruling noble to whom at least one PC is obligated, summons the PCs to serve as his strong right arm during the crisis.
4. The PCs barely managed to defeat one, they will have no hope of defeating a group- not unless they can obtain some sort of advantage.
5. The night they arrive, the minions “steal the sky”.

Act II

6. The next day, they are sent to find out what a particular Mage has been able to determine about the situation. He claims the magic involved is not Arcane, it’s Clerical, and directs the PCs (and the royal representative who has accompanied them) to the Temple Of (Athena?).
7. The High Priest Of The Temple has attempted to dispel the strange clouds, and even begged his (Mistress?) to intercede directly, without success. Perhaps the Great Druid will have more success; weather magics are amongst his specialties, after all.
8. The Great Druid reports a similar lack of effectiveness over the phenomenon. He suggests a summit between the Religious leaders, Mages, and himself – “Perhaps if we all put our heads together, we can make some progress….”
9. The PCs & escort return to the city, and the King orders to convene the Summit the next day. He puts the PCs in charge of it.
10. The next afternoon, the High Priest challenges the accuracy of the Mage’s findings and the Summit devolves into a mess of accusation and counter-accusation. An early dinner break is eventually called to let people cool off.
11. During the meal, a breathless and exhausted messenger arrives from a neighboring city; he has ridden three mounts to death since midnight to bring word of a strange event in the skies over his city. The second part of the sygil has appeared, and if the pattern holds true, a third city will be visited by this phenomenon tonight.
12. After the meal, the King issues direct instructions to each of the factions: they are to use every skill at their disposal to learn everything they can, overnight, and report back to the throne tomorrow morning.
13. The next morning, the Summit reconvenes with grim news. The priests appear to have been cut off from all divine advice and interaction, and are in a deep Funk. Spells seem unaffected but have proven unable to learn anything more about the phenomenon, only that it appears to be incomplete. Any request for advice, guidance, or information from the Gods merely returns the phrase, “Tua quaestio est, leva planctum non sufficit ad respondendum irrisorie,” which is a language that none of the priests know. Even requests and spells to translate the message have failed. “The Gods have abandoned us.”
14. The Druids have learned that that the Magic appears to have some sort of Temporal Component, that the animals and plants within their domain have all expressed fear, but that a few brave ones observed men of water working a ritual of some kind near a third city, which last night suffered a similar phenomenon.
15. To the PCs, that should confirm paranoid suspicions about the Elemental Golems and their activities.
16. The mages fared somewhat better, using Scrying to observe the pattern which materialized over (third city) last night, and over the second event which began the night before. Combining the three shows clear overlaps and connecting lines. By their estimation, the complete pattern is a magical sygil of some kind being erected in six
    parts, and that they have been able to identify one word clearly, written in Draconic. Loosely translated, it means “The inevitable consequence of yesterdays and yesterdays” – Draconic is a very concise but flowery language.
17. That suggests to the King that the PCs should consult a Dragon. The nearest one would be the most convenient. “Does anyone know where to find one?” Once again, instructions are handed out by the throne. The Mages are to continue monitoring, compiling each new part of the magical construction and attempting to interpret it; perhaps more clues will be revealed. The Priests are to snap out of it and search through their archives for any previous occasion when the Gods fell silent – there may be a connection. In particular, they should search archives that were so old that their content is forgotten and anything deemed so incoherent that it was set aside – the smallest fragment might suddenly make sense in this new context and provide a valuable clue. The Druids are to send word out through their network of animal friends – where is the nearest dragon? The PCs are to accompany the Druids, and as soon as the nearest Dragon is found, they are to travel to it and bargain for its aid.

Act III

18. The PC’s accompany the Druids back to their grove and watch as clouds of birds and fast-running creatures are summoned and tasked with discovering the whereabouts of the nearest Dragon and returning, as quickly as possible.
19. That night, the Mages send word that a fourth city has been visited. They are working to assemble more of the completed message, but there appear to have been no great revelations.

.

20. The following afternoon, their winged agents begin reporting back to the Druids. Every Dragon in [name of Kingdom] appears to have gone to ground in hidden bolt-holes when the first sign appeared in the sky. Some abandoned half-eaten prey or turned aside from a raid. Their reactions indicate that they know something, that it’s not good news, and there are even suggestions that they were afraid. What could scare all the Dragons this way? The site where the nearest one was last known to live – all the local animals knew to avoid it – was not far away. The PCs could travel there and back again in less than a day, though it’s probably too late to set out now; if they leave immediately, they might reach it before sunset, but would not be able to return until tomorrow.
21. If the PCs dare to brave the lair of a missing dragon, with the intent to linger overnight, they can travel to it and discover that the Dragon has abandoned its hoard, and is something of a poet, scratching verse into the walls of the cavern regarding its love-hate relationship with the precious metal; “it shines with such beauty but gets into the blood”. This will probably be misinterpreted to refer to the love of collecting such valuables, treating “gets in the blood” as a metaphor. This is also the PCs opportunity to power up for their next encounter with the Elemental Golems, three of which appear to be guarding the hoard. With the power-ups, they should be able to again eke out a narrow victory. If they choose to ignore the Dragon’s Lair or the Hoard, they will barely manage to escape with their lives when the trio attack.
22. If they chose not to brave the lair, another opportunity for them to power-up will arise later.
23. When they return to the Druids, they find a message waiting from the High Priest, which reads only, “A Miracle has occurred! Come immediately.”
24. When they reach the Temple, they learn that in desperation, one of the acolytes undertook to ask the advice of each individual deity that he had ever heard of. This would normally be cause for severe disciplinary action, but the lapse will be forgiven and forgotten this time, because he got a response from one, an obscure deity named Momus, god of Irony, Satire, and Mockery. In fact, it seems that all the obscure responses received before they left were from him, it seeming amusing to him to communicate in a form that made communications impossible. It actually said, when he deigned to translate, “Your question is, ironically, not ironic enough to answer.” He won’t answer questions put to him by the Priests, because their task is to interface with the Gods, making his position ironic; he will, however, deign to speak to the people who have been charged with acting and not listening. That, in his opinion, is you.
25. Roleplay the encounter with Momus, who dresses like a medieval fool or jester. His avatar is always capering about, and telling jokes (often with a wry observation at their heart) [these may need to be prepped in advance].
    • When asked about the other gods, the PCs will be told that they are in hiding, in fear for their lives, and so unable to guide those on whom their survival depends. Ironic, isn’t it?
    • When asked about Dragons, he will tell them that the one they seek is not far from them; he is the Critic, the Dissatisfied, the Poet Of Critique, and heir to the Draconic Legacy; but before he can rescue them from their situation, they will need to rescue him; he is guarded by six of the minions of the enemy. This is no coincidence; it was his presence that caused the first appearance of the Minions to occur in and around the city of [name], and that, ironically, is what caused you [the PCs] to become entwined in this situation.
    • When asked outright what the situation is, he will answer that he could answer, because it would be ironic to get the aid they need from The Guide so that they no longer needed him, only to find from the answers that they needed him anyway, but there is, ironically, a propriety involved that inhibits him. All that he can do is to give them directions to The Guide; he is the one who would die to protect the information that he holds, even though it is worthless if he cannot give it to them. Momus will then fade out except for a Cheshire-cat smile, vanishing with a final, “Ironic, that…”.

Act IV:

26. The fifth night will come and go before the PCs can start their rescue mission.
27. Following the directions given to them by Momus, the PCs can find and rescue the Critic, who is chained in chains of hardened ice that cause his limbs to lose mechanical control, because he is a creature of Fire (a Red Dragon). To rescue him, they need to break his chains and hold off the six Elemental Golems until more than 200′ away or the PCs destroy one of them.
28. When one of the Golems is destroyed, or it becomes clear that they can’t recapture the Critic, they will merge into a larger Elemental Golem and attempt to kill him. Ironically, because the merged being is only about 3 times as powerful, though restored to triple the hit points no matter how damaged any or all of them were, and with some new abilities (stretchable reach, for example), the merged being is actually more vulnerable than the individuals were, and is slower-moving. The PCs may or may or may not be able to defeat it, that doesn’t matter; they will be able to (eventually) escape it.
29. The Critic will then critique their performance while leading them to his nearby lair, and learn their story. He will invite the PCs to help themselves to anything that might be of assistance when they get there, because things are about to get a lot more difficult. He will also discuss the ironic tragedy of the Draconic condition, because it’s relevant. NB: This is the same lair that they were given the chance to visit/loot in scene 21.
30. When the PCs get to the lair, they can power-up, and rest and recover overnight (night six; the spell’s parts will now be complete).
31. That evening, they will then be briefed on the history of the Elemental God, and his exile by the Greater Dragons, and the danger that his escape poses to all existence, and informed that it is their duty as representatives of their race to deal with the menace.
32. He will instruct them on how to use the unified spell being copied down by the Mages back in [city].(without their knowing that this is what they are doing) to launch themselves back into the Time Before There Was Time to confront the mad God while he is weakened and before he can escape.
33. The next morning, the PCs return to the Capital and report to the King and the slowly-unifying Summit what they have learned. Each of the participating groups – will offer the PCs anything further that they have which might improve their chances of success. The mages present a rendering of the spell that has been constructed by the Elemental Golems, and preparations are made in to invoke it; the PCs need to wait until the Elemental Deity does the hard work, because the more that he does, the weaker he will be when confronted.
34. That night, the six patterns are brought together and activated. The PCs activate their spell, and are sucked into the past…

Act V

35. The PCs travel into Pre-time. Describe the journey. Describe the Destination.
36. Meet the Mad God. He thinks it only appropriate that there are witnesses to his triumphant return, and will not initiate combat. However, he will be arrogant and condescending toward less life forces like the PCs.
37. The PCs realize (if they haven’t already) that the Mad God can succeed simply by waiting; he has no need (in his mind) to initiate conflict. The first move belongs to the PCs.
38. They attack, discovering that the Elemental God is like having one greater elemental wrapped in another, wrapped in another, wrapped in another, and so on – all kinds, not merely water. He is an undifferentiated elemental, just as the elemental planes
    were undifferentiated when he held sway. It was the creation of the Prime Material Plane that forced the elemental planes to differentiate, and that act is what he is intending to undo. Give the PCs the fight of their lives.
39. With the defeat and destruction of the Mad God, time starts, and reveals that contrary to the claims of every religion since the start of time, the creation of the Prime Material Plane – and of the Gods, and the Greater Dragons, and the differentiation of the Elemental Planes – took place spontaneously, triggered by the shock-wave created by the death of the Elemental God. And that’s the last thing they see, as they are rendered unconscious by that same shock-wave.
40. They awaken back in the Kingdom from which they departed, surrounded by the King, his advisers, and the newly-permanent Summit, which intends to meet weekly to discuss issues that may arise. End of Adventure.

So that’s it – an adventure in 39 scenes, somewhere close to being ready-to-play. From eight lines of direct observation:

The sausage fries in the pan,
Two birds fly across the sky,
The critic complains about irony,
A dog wags its tail,
A moving pen writes on the page,
Sand falls through the hourglass,
Rain collects in the bucket,
Moon-rise banishes the dark.

– and the power of Buzzstorming.

P.S. – A couple of final notes

That’s where this article was originally supposed to end. But while formatting it for publication, I was required to re-read sections of it multiple times, and had a pertinent afterthought or two.

First, even though the example is D&D-related, the process works with any genre. It’s all in the way in which the curated phrases are interpreted. You could start with the same phrases and end up with a completely different adventure, or with one that is more-or-less a direct translation.

Second, it’s easy to incorporate any metagame or big-picture campaign content by listing it in bullet-point form at the top of the curated list. For example, if one of the PCs – let’s name him Darvon – had announced that he wanted to get his armor repaired, cleaned, and polished at the end of the previous adventure, that’s easy enough to write into the opening scene, and gives some guidance as to where the PCs are and what they are doing at the start of the adventure. If there was some ongoing villain lurking in the shadows – one of the King’s advisers – it would be easy (once prompted to do so) for him to complicate various scenes that take place in the capital; all you need is the reminder of his presence as a complicating factor. Because there is none of that, this is a very standalone adventure.

Third, I wanted to call out the way the example incorporates big-picture campaign background and concepts. These may not make a whole lot of difference in terms of this adventure or any other, but if you can do that in virtually every adventure (even if it’s just a historical figure here or a famous landmark there), you keep expanding the game world in the eyes and minds of the players, keeping it and the campaign set within it, more fresh and exciting. The only trap to beware of in doing so is to make sure that you don’t introduce anything whose presence would (a) have made a difference to an earlier adventure; and (b) will contradict anything else already incorporated. For example, though no opportunity arose to bring it out in the plot outline, there was an implication in the adventure that the differentiation between the different types of magic – Clerical, Arcane, Druidic, and so on – is both profound and also a result of the “Big Bang” effect initiated by the PCs. This may yield insights that matter later in the campaign, but it seemed to be a distraction, one too many background elements for that part of the adventure to bear.

Another point to highlight: just because the tradition is for PCs to get most of their rewards for an adventure at the end, there can be advantages to handing them out in the middle. For one thing, where they represent a significant power-boost, they can bootstrap the PCs into a position where they are ready to face the challenges that were virtually impossible before that upgrade.

Fifth, it might seem like a lot of the adventure proposed is a railroad track. That’s because I always find it easier to draw a straight line between problem and solution through the story when planning; but just because that’s the optimum path to the solution, that doesn’t mean it’s the only one; it simply gives you a basis for comparing what the players want to do with that optimum so that you can assess the consequences of PC choices. Just because you’ve backstopped an idea into the mouth of an NPC, doesn’t mean that a player can’t make an intuitive leap and get the kudos for his insight. Where there’s one solution to a problem, there are usually several, and some may be even more effective than what you had thought of. Nothing wrong with that, in fact that’s half the fun for the GM. This sort of GM’s plan is nothing more than a series of best-guesses of how the adventure will turn out in the end. In fact, in a real campaign, I would have some idea of the capabilities and styles of both players and PCs and have incorporated that knowledge into the plan to “customize” it for that particular group, ensuring an even distribution of screen time.

And finally, I wanted to call attention to the most remarkable thing about Act II: that Act I sets the players up to expect a particular challenge and then completely subverts that into a completely different type of problem with completely different skills required. This is another way in which to enlarge the scale and interconnectedness of the game universe, showing that EVERY problem usually has multiple facets and approaches. This is the plan that assumes the least, leaving the maximum scope for player innovation and insight, nothing more.