The subject this week is adventure writing and structure. I have evolved a fairly functional process to translating ideas into ready-to-run plots over the years, and today I’m going to share it. This can be viewed as a companion piece to One word at a time: How I (usually) write a Blog Post, which has been where I refer readers who ask how I do it, at least until now.

This is a modified version of an Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke. The original is from Pixabay.

This article has come about because I started writing the next adventure in my Dr Who campaign during the week and paid attention to the process. If he’s reading this before we play “Ogrons To The Left Of Me, Daleks To The Right,” I’d ask my player in that campaign to exit the article NOW. I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers, but there are no guarantees.

For everyone else out there, even if you don’t run a Dr Who campaign using The Sixes System, this article is still for you. While it may have been prompted by adventure prep for this specific campaign, I’ve kept the advice general so that it will apply to any campaign, any rules system, any genre. At worst, there may be an example or two from a particular genre that will need some ‘translation’ to show their relevance.

Starting Point

I always make sure that I have three things lined up before I start – no, four. These are frequently products of my campaign planning, so it usually doesn’t take a lot of work, but their absence can cause long delays and interruptions to the planning / writing process.

These are always to be avoided if possible. Once you interrupt, you have to spend time at your next writing session getting yourself back up to speed, and recapturing the flavor and tone. Pacing and Intensity also get more difficult to manage, and none of these consequences are in any way desirable.

On the plus side, at the start of a session you can be more focused and can often come up with ideas that you would never have thought of. In particular, if I reach a plot problem that I can’t immediately solve, a substantial break while it’s percolating away in the back of my mind can yield solutions.

    Time & The Mental Energy to use it

    The first thing is a 2-for-1 deal. I generally operate on the principle of three hours writing / prep = 1 hour’s play; sometimes it’s more, sometimes less, but overall, that average seems to work out about right.

    The problem is always estimating how much more you can get done in the remaining time available and what to prioritize. Complicating that issue, always, is the factor of polish – work can be completed to different standards of quality, and the perpetual issue is always, how good is good enough?

    I’ve written a past article on that very subject – in fact, several. The most useful are probably:
     

    What, perhaps, none of them emphasize adequately is that it isn’t enough just to have time – you need to have the mental energy to actually use that time productively. In general, that means being well-rested, not hungry, and (sometimes) having done some sort of mental warm-up to get yourself primed. Everyone’s a little different in this regard, so find out as quickly as you can what will work best for you – but be prepared; sometimes the right answer for any given individual will vary from one session to another for all sorts of complicated reasons, so your usual answer might not be the right answer on any given day. You need to be able to recognize when that’s the case, and quickly shift to the right model for this particular occasion if necessary.

    Working Title

    I always have a working title. Sometimes, that might be all I have, but I always have at least that much. Campaign context can sometimes flesh out that bare minimum.

    Vague Synopsis

    I always have, or start by creating, a vague synopsis of what’s going to happen in the adventure. Wherever possible, this will gloss over player agency by generalizing – in general, it won’t say anything about how something is to be achieved, for example.

    Sometimes, the most important part of an adventure (from a campaign perspective) is not the main action of the adventure. When that’s the case, it always gets relegated to a “b” plot thread and something has to get invented for the “a’ plot thread, i.e. the main action of the adventure, which is really just a vehicle for the important development in the background.

    A given adventure may conflate several such ‘b” threads – there should always be something for each character, but not all of them will have the same campaign-level significance. The key point here is to simply note that something is needed for Characters X, Y and Z to accompany these important bits for A, B, and C, and to make sure that there’s an “a’ thread which either runs alongside these secondary threads or evolves out of one or more of them.

    Reference & Research Material

    I like to have any research done ahead of time. This may include small snippets attached directly to the rough synopsis, or the synopsis may simply have pointers to external documents.

    Never fool yourself, by the way, into thinking that this is all the research that you will have to do, it’s almost always not the case. Like the plot synopsis, this is a starting point.

    Other Resources

    While it’s not necessary, it can be both useful and inspirational to have as much lined up in other resources as possible. My GMing style revolves heavily around presenting images to the players – their environment, encounters, and so on. Having those on hand helps write descriptions, sub-narratives, and so on – and can save you having to write hundreds of words because it’s all there in the image. So the more image-gathering you can do in advance, the better.

    I try to do the bulk of my image searching at the same time that I generate the synopsis. It’s hardly ever everything, but it’s a solid start.

Having made sure that I’ve got that all on-tap, I’m ready to go. I give each adventure its own folder within the campaign folder on my computer so that I have everything at hand. Numbering these is also a useful tip!

Depending on how abbreviated my initial synopsis is, I may need to expand it and flesh it out before I can move on to the first stage of actual adventure writing. There are three possible conditions in which I’ll find a particular synopsis, plus some that are in-between these primary statuses:

  1. Nothing but a working title. Obviously, more is going to be needed.
    • 1a. A working title AND implied content from the campaign synopsis / context. It’s a starting point that can provide guidance, but there’s more work needed before the adventure can be written.
  2. A one-sentence summary of the plotline. Needs expansion before the adventure can be written.
    • 2a. As above but with additional context from surrounding one-sentence summaries. Same work needed, but better guided.
    • 2b. As above but with one or more Plot thread summaries from which context or even a synopsis can be excerpted. This is the tipping point between having more work to do and being ready to go, and as such, sometimes the balance will fall one way and sometimes the other.
  3. A synopsis, possibly with campaign-level materials providing added context and detail. Excerpt anything you have, make sure that the two are actually consistent, and get ready to write.

Do whatever needs to be done to deliver a rough narrative constructed of short, generalized sentences. Wherever possible, these should either focus on PC-related developments (PCs “do whatever” – replace “Do” with an appropriate verb – ‘learn’ is a common one) or on Antagonist-related developments from a PC perspective (PCs discover / PCs react to, etc.)

Initial Expansion: Plot Points

The first stage of writing is to break the plot synopsis down into individual scenes. That’s what the bulk of this article will be about, in one way or another, but at the moment I’ll just hit the high points. I always do this electronically so that I can insert lines and move them around. It’s usually premature to number them at this point, but sometimes that’s necessary, just so that one plot point can refer to another in a shorthand way.

Rather than trying to keep any such numbering sequential, I’ll quite happily let the vary all over the place so that I’m not wasting time simply updating the sequential running and and references elsewhere throughout – only to have to do it again with the next change made, and again with the one after that, and so on.

There are a number of things that I’ll pay active attention to. These follow a logical sequence, but that means that the one that needs the most explanation winds up in the middle, so I’m going to present these out-of-sequence.

    Initial Expansion 1: Internal Logic

    Every step in the story has to follow the previous ones in a sequence that is logical if you know what’s going on. In particular, you have to be careful with assumptions about what the PCs know and what the players understand, and what they may choose to do.

    If the players need to know something, make sure that there’s a scene in which they learn it or are reminded of it.

    If the players need to understand the implications of something that they know, make sure that there’s a scene in which someone can point out the bleeding obvious – or in which a PC gets the final piece of the puzzle to figure this out on their own. The latter is generally preferable but not always plausible.

    If there is a significant possibility of players choosing to do something else, you need a branch off the main plot to deal with that and guide them toward a satisfactory resolution of the adventure, even if these are only rough notes. The last thing you ever want is for the whole adventure to fall apart because you’ve made a flawed assumption. Waiting until later in the writing process often causes trouble because you can’t always see the forest for the trees.

    Initial Expansion 2: Transitions

    If two scenes are completely unrelated, there often needs to be a bridging scene in between them. See also 6, Gaps and Intervals, below.

    Initial Expansion 4: Options and Flags

    I’m always looking for places where I can require the characters to make a choice.

    An Option is a place in the plot where there is a significant decision of some sort (in terms of plot).

    A Flag is a place in the plot where the consequences of a decision impact the plot. Often, one will follow immediately after an Option, but sometimes Options can have a delayed impact.

    I pay particular attention to making sure that there is always a path back to the main plot, even if its’ inconvenient or difficult. NEVER have an Option that paints the characters into a corner with no way out.

    These usually come about because I didn’t pay enough attention to the three red flags in Initial Expansion 1.

    Initial Expansion 5: Tone & Pacing

    Although it’s far too soon to make final decisions in this respect, I always keep an eye on the Tone and Pacing, even at this early stage. Things need to get more dramatic, more suspenseful, and more exciting as the adventure unfolds and heads toward a climax.

    For contrast and the growth of these tonal factors, you need period catch-your-breath moments.

    If you can develop a natural rhythm of pace in the course of the adventure, it can pay dividends, but try not to let it become a straitjacket.

    You only have a limited window post-climax to deal with aftermaths – anything beyond that is usually best left for a scene in the next adventure.

    For more on Pacing and Emotional Intensity, see

    You can also get a slightly divergent take on the subject from

    Tone is somewhat harder to pin down in terms of what works and what doesn’t. You can juxtapose divergent styles for contrast, but sometimes this can result in mental whiplash for you, the players, or both, so it needs to be done carefully. At the same time, tone should never stand still – you can’t be unremittingly grim and gritty all the time, you need some relief along the way.

    I find that the length of the ‘relief scenes’ is critical. A very short one can be a splash of cool water to the face to wake everyone up; a longer one gives time for mental adjustment before returning to doom and gloom (or vice-versa). Most scenes are neither, not without conscious decisions by the GM.

    But some juxtapositions don’t work as easily or effortlessly as others, and some don’t provide sufficient contrast. There isn’t a lot of difference between “Ominous Developments” and “Doom And Gloom”, for example, and “Slapstick” and “Doom And Gloom” rarely place nice with each other.

    There are no hard-and-fast rules, or even good guidelines – it’s too individualistic and too dependent on content and character personality and player personality for that. You just have to learn what works, and the logical starting point is making sure that the tonal landscape feels right to you, then making allowances.

    Initial Expansion 6: Gaps & Intervals

    When the locations in which two successive scenes take place are widely separated in space, and the same character or characters are to be involved in both, you have a Gap that needs filling with a Transition of traveling from A to B. Sometimes, even when the party are divided, you may need a Transition, but that’s covered under Initial Expansion 2, above.

    Similarly, an Interval is a separation in Time. There are occasions when this can be hand-waved, and occasions when it shouldn’t be – and these decisions can and should be impacted by Pacing considerations. There have been occasions when I’ve had to throw in a whole mini-encounter or mini-adventure because pacing demanded a certain level of energy and there was too much time to fill for hand-waving to work.

    A lot depends on GMing style and what the players are used to. The more soap-opera daily-life you generally deal with, the more unacceptable a significant hand-wave becomes; instead you almost always need something in between to fill up the time AND something after that to re-establish tone and pacing. And that can mean adding an “A+” plot thread and splitting the “A” thread over two or more adventures.

    Initial Expansion 3: Infodump Placement

    The most complicated question of all is how and when to give the players the information and analysis that they need to make informed decisions and that their characters may need to experience in-game.

    I have four preferred approaches that I list below in sequence of preference.

      Initial Expansion 3a. Piecemeal Discovery

      If I can spread an infodump out over multiple scenes, and have players learn one thing after another with time to digest things in between, so much the better.

      The actual delivery method can be the same or different, but the keyword “Discovery” is critical – these are infodumps as something that the player (and character) find out in-game.

      The key is to then cut away (and, if necessary, back in time) to something completely different, that will occupy a similar slice of time (both in-game and at-the-table) or more – before resuming.

      But there is a danger in over-fragmenting the information – prior pieces can be forgotten if the interruption lasts too long, and the target size will vary from player to player, GM to GM, and even genre to genre.

      Sometimes, there are no good answers in terms of piecemeal discovery, and more often, this provides only a partial solution to the problem of Infodump Management. Time to move on to option 3b.

      Initial Expansion 3b. Dialogue Delivery

      It’s almost always better to provide an infodump in dialogue form in a manner which lets the players stop and interrupt and back the speaker up to go over something, not understood, a second time. But this can’t be a long speech by an NPC, it needs to be more interactive.

      Avoiding that Long Speech may require the info-dump to be broken up into multiple sources and vectors – that’s the principle behind the Piecemeal Discovery, really.

      Sometimes, that’s not possible. If there’s no alternative but to deliver a long speech, consider using Option 3c. And if there’s no-one appropriate to actually put the information into dialogue form, then you need a higher-level solution – 3c or 3d.

      Initial Expansion 3c. Written Reference

      When it’s especially important for the players to be able to refer to information received at a briefing into the future, consider putting that briefing into the form of a written reference. Structure this to be as easily-assimilated and cross-referenced as possible. Give one or more players a hardcopy, and structure a scene involving someone else so that play continues while they have a chance to read the material – or even consider giving it to them in advance, or at the end of play so that they can read it between sessions.

      I want to sound one particular note of warning here: Be extremely careful of commitments to ongoing written references. These will almost always turn around and bite you at some point. Let’s say, for example, that a character has managed to get there hands on a rare book that is filling in a huge gap in their knowledge of the game world. You tell them that it’s going to take time to read it properly, and that to simulate that, you’ll provide a new chapter every few days, game time, for the player to take away and read between game sessions. The condition of the pages, dodgy handwriting and spelling, and some difficulty in translation, can be used to account for any delays in the process, for example if a chapter isn’t quite ready, the supposition can be that it took longer to read and interpret than usual.

      This is an ongoing commitment to supplying ‘translated’ material – a book, to be delivered one chapter at a time. For a while, all will be well – but eventually, you will find yourself falling behind. I speak from experience! In the future, I intend to only use this approach when I have the completed text already done for the whole book, and not just the opening chapter or two.

      The shorter the content, the better the chances of completing the project, and the less need there is to be really strict about this rule.

      I would use the following as guidelines, based on 1000 words per page:

      ♦ 0-1000 words:One document, don’t split it.
      ♦ 1000-1500 words:One or two parts.
      ♦ 1500-2500 words:Two-to-four parts.
      ♦ 2500-4000 words:Three-to-four parts.
      ♦ 4000-20,000 words:four-five parts, maximum.
      ♦ 20,000 words or more: Don’t start handing it out until the whole thing is complete.

      But, much of the time, you’ll only get 500-800 words to a page. Modern word processors seem to favor larger type and less-condensed fonts as defaults than those of past times – which, there’s no doubt, makes the text easier to read. Legibility always comes at the price of page count.

      My approach is generally to use the above as a guideline, and then format to fit the available space unless the size of the text gets TOO large as a result. My limits are about 14 point for body text and 20-point for headings, with sub-headings somewhere in between. I’ll work hard to try and fit a title onto one line, and if that doesn’t permit it to be larger than the heading size, I’ll make it the same size as the headings and do something to make the text stand out. Quite often, I’ll use a fancier font, as well – but I know what I’m doing in that respect, and a lot of people don’t. As a result, there have been some truly horrendous desktop publishing and websites over the years, especially in the early days of the web!

      Initial Expansion 3d. Substantial Infodumps

      The last resort is to have a substantial infodump delivered either as narration or as lecture from one or more NPCs in succession. No-one likes these – the players don’t like hearing them (they are there to play) and GMs don’t like delivering them because they can tell that they are boring the players – and too much of that and they will walk, or (at the very least) complain, or (at worst) not listen.

      You know your infodump is too long when players get out their mobile phones and start playing a video game, or responding to text messages. While sometimes the latter is inevitable, it should at most be a brief interruption for something important.

      So how do you do it?

      Hot Tip: Dialogue, Action, and Interaction as Punctuation

      Break the infodump up, especially if you can’t break it up.

      Sounds contradictory doesn’t it? But if you subdivide your infodump, and compress it as much as possible to the real facts that the PCs need, and intersperse these parts with dialogue and action and interaction with the PCs, you can deliver it a more-or-less continuous stream of a series of bite-sized pieces. It’s a far from perfect solution, but it works better than anything else that I’ve tried.

      In particular, try and separate analysis from information delivery. Give the raw information, then have a player roll to analyze it, or save the analysis for some other talking head down the track, or just give the bare-bones right now and leave the nuance for later.

    All of that means loading certain scenes with partial or complete infodumps, even breaking the delivery up into dedicated scenes within the plot.

    For more advice on Infodump Management, read 15 ways to Un-curse the Infodump.

You aren’t ready to begin writing, yet. Not by a long stretch. The goal is to structure the plot so strongly that if you have to, you can run the adventure from the structure alone, plus any characters needed.

Each scene should have either a name or a short, one-sentence description of its content. Once you have the basic story outlined, its’ time to add scene numbers if you haven’t already done so – starting with the first being listed as Scene 2.

Continuity I: From There to Here

That is done to create room for the next thing to do: to get from the end of the previous adventure to the start of this one. That can be a lot more complicated than it might seem, and it’s very easy to be complacent (or worse, overconfident).

In fact, there are nine different options. I choose between them largely on instinct, but deliberately try to vary the choices from one adventure to the next. A big factor is whether or not a particular choice gets the plot all the way to the start of the adventure proper, or if further scenes are needed.

I should add that everything in this section is part of “Scene 1: Introduction / Prologs” (or some other appropriate general name). Beneath that heading, there may be multiple sub-scenes.

A sub-scene is a partial or complete scene-within-a-scene. For example, you might have one sub-scene per PC just to touch on where they are and what they are doing. Or you may have the PCs in small groups, or engaging in conversations amongst themselves, or in conversations with NPCs, Or you might have everybody assembled in a group, with a single preliminary scene conveying the group to start of the adventure.

Another important element is the hook, which may be incorporated into this scene or be in scene 2. The hook is what is supposed to capture the interest of the PCs and players and propel them into the adventure. Problems arise when the players want their PCs to do something else, instead – i.e. don’t take the bait. Where you fear this may result, you can sometimes head things off that pass with a second round of scenes per PC in which they do, or start to do, something that they want to do – their choice, completely open but restricted to the choices that are available to them in whatever location they happen to be, unless they have access to a rapid-transit technology of some sort (including magical teleportation or flight). Once that’s done, if they are twiddling their thumbs and waiting, they will often be more receptive to your baited hook.

There have been occasions when it’s taken two or three rounds of “personal” sub-scenes or more to get everyone to that point of receptivity. In fact, as a general rule of thumb, it’s better to leave a sub-scene unfinished and return to it than it is to pursue it to a resolution – player gets briefed, player decides what to do, cut to the next player / character. The faster these inter-cuts, the more this will feel like a collage of simultaneous events, i.e. one multifaceted scene. It works especially well when one scene leads into another – scene 1g, character decides on a course of action, scene 1h, character knocks on another character’s door to make arrangements to implement that decision, scene 1i, second character contacts third character to fill in for first character, scene 1j, first character starts doing whatever it was they decided to do…

So, anyway, there are nine options to choose from as the starting point for this adventure.

    Choice 1: Right where you left off

    The most obvious choice is to pick up exactly where you left off. This is obviously the choice to make if you ended the previous session on a cliff-hanger of some sort.

    This choice can make for some tricky pacing, but there’s inherent drama in one problem immediately following another, or in taking the time in the introductory space to deal with any aftermath. Time is flexible here, and down-time doubly so; the premise is that you are hand-waving the time that doesn’t matter to get to the adventure that much more quickly.

    Choice 2: Logical Extrapolation

    Something similar is when your introduction extrapolates from the previous adventure. This is downtime/aftermath but more related to the headspace of the characters, and one of them reaching a conclusion about what has just happened that will lead the characters into a related adventure.

    The simplest example is when the PCs take down the apparent big bad in the previous adventure, and everything’s rosy until one of the PCs realizes that this apparent big bad didn’t have the resources to do everything attributed to him – he must have been nothing more than a lieutenant or flunky of the real big bad, who has had a free hand to recruit and reorganize while his enemies have been out there partying.

    Choice 3: Private Moments

    I’ve already described this approach as an example of Sub-scenes, above, so I won’t belabor the point. Instead, let’s focus on another issue that you have to deal with when adopting this approach: Spotlight time.

    I work very hard when taking the Private Moments approach to ensure that each PC receives a fair share of spotlight time. This isn’t quite as simple as it seems, because significance and emotional entanglement from the PCs point-of-view have to be taken into account.

    Although I never take the time to formally calculate it, what has to be equal across all PCs is

    Time x (Spotlight Intensity or Significance) x (PC Engagement – Group engagement).

    Because these scenes are normally played at the table in front of all the other players (thus facilitating the quick inter-cuts and conversations), there can be Private Moments in which the whole group becomes engaged.

    An example of that is the game show described in Deflection: A Game Show format for RPGs, (Part 1 and Part 2). While one character was the focal point, everyone got into the act because the scenes were devised to permit that, and the players got into the swing of things. You could actually picture them gathered around the (equivalent of) a TV set, shouting answers to the questions at the screen, even while at a metagame level they were helping the player in the spotlight simulate his character in the game-show situation.

    Choice 4: If Wishing Were Horses

    I’ve touched on this one, too – Each player in succession gets to state one thing they would like to do, the GM estimates how long each one would be, and then tells each player “You have X days more while you wait for Y, what else do you want to do?”

    “Y”, in this case, is whatever the slowest task is. But the GM can quite happily tell the player, “Y will take [so long] to complete, you can start it but won’t have time to finish it before the next adventure – and then select some value of less than Y for the ‘window’ available to all.

    The idea is that you want each PC to complete at least one personal project, milestone, or event of their choice in their ‘down time” or at least make significant progress toward it.

    This frequently then needs to be followed by choice 5, below.

    Choice 5: A Mini-adventure, or Getting The Band Back Together

    When PCs go their separate ways, or when they have a life beyond the group identity, it becomes necessary to then gather them up in response to the hook for new adventure, which may well have been delivered to a single PC as a natural outgrowth of that life beyond the group. This works so well for superhero, pulp, and Cthulhu genres that its almost ubiquitous, but I have also seen it successfully applied to the fantasy/D&D genre on more than one occasion.

    Used too much, it can be overdone; used semi-regularly, it can be a campaign feature; used occasionally, it can work in almost any setting.

    The concept often calls to mind Pippin in Gondor – after the initial confrontation between Gandalf and Denethor (climax of the previous adventure), Pippin is free to wander the city for a time, making friends and learning about his new surrounds. In time, though, he has to report for duty (rejoining the main plot), where he slowly becomes convinced of Denethor’s growing insanity.

    Choice 6: Action Stations!

    Especially useful when the previous session ended on a quiet or foreboding note is to start the next session in the middle of action, filling in the events leading up to “now” as a sequence of narrative flashbacks as you inform the players of the PCs current status.

    To work, you have to ensure that the choices you have made on behalf of the PCs are exactly (or at least, plausibly) the choices that the players would have made under the circumstances, so that player agency is not in dispute. You have to know the PCs very well to pull that off, but when you do, it can be a very useful and dramatic technique.

    When you aren’t so sure of that knowledge, you can backtrack just a little, to immediately after the start of action – “You were passing through a ravine when a patrol of Orcs swung down on ropes from above. Everyone except Dinor was surprised, giving the Orcs – except one who lost his grip and fell with a sickening thud! – time to get into position surrounding the party…”

    Choice 7: Teaser

    Any prolog that shows events that have not yet impacted the PCs from the perspective of someone else, in other words that is aimed at the players and not their characters, counts as a Teaser.

    Teasers can be difficult to use though – there absolutely has to be a payoff by the end of the day’s play (with one exception), or it will fall flat instead of raising expectations and anticipation.

    That exception is when you have a matching series – starting several adventures in a row with escalating variations or excerpts from the same (bigger) Teaser can compound the anticipation, building it up even higher.

    There is a limit to how much of that is permissible before it starts to fall flat, and that can be tricky to judge; and there is also a danger that the manifestation, when it finally comes, won’t live up to the hype. This technique should be applied with great forethought and planning to avoid these pitfalls – but it can be very effective when it works.

    You can get some more hints and tips on the handling of prologs from The Wandering Spotlight Part One of Two: Plot Prologues and the In The Beginning: Prologs In RPGs series, which analyzed no less than 18 types of Prolog!

    Choice 8: Unexpected Developments

    This is, effectively, choice 1, but starting with a plot twist which sends the (effectively ongoing) adventure lurching off in an entirely unexpected direction, or even the entire campaign!

    If the latter, it should be considered a signal that the campaign is rapidly headed toward a conclusion, because it will feel like that to the players.

    The December 2014 Blog Carnival, hosted right here at Campaign Mastery, was all about Twists. As part of that Carnival, I analyzed 11 types of plot twist. The Final Twist, the Carnival Roundup, has links to both that content (in two parts) and 15 other submissions relating to Plot Twists and Surprises in general.

    Choice 9: Something Weirder

    There are no rules that can’t be broken. This list is NOT exhaustive; sometimes, a ninth option will rear up and offer itself to you. I always pay close attention when that happens; occasionally, it doesn’t work out, but nine times out of ten, the idea or some variation can be made to work, breaking the mold of expectations.

    My superhero adventure, “Force 13” started with the Sun going Supernova and destroying the Earth (and the PCs), without warning. The action then shifted to a couple of days earlier, at the beginning of a series of events (Act I) that culminated in the same thing happening, again without warning. Act II, and the PCs found themselves back at the start of the same sequence of events, with no memory of having been there before. To the players, it was obvious what was happening, but the trick was that they had to think of a way for the characters to figure it out. Act III was virtually a repeat of Act II (with some variation from random chance), Act IV is when the PCs realized what was happening, and Act V is when they communicated this knowledge to themselves in time to do something about it.

    Of course, I’m sure that several readers will already know the primary source of inspiration for this adventure – The Star Trek The Next Generation episode Cause and Effect, plus a few bits from the Episode Disaster.

    Real World Example: Dr Who

    My first draft had the PCs in their vehicle (the TARDIS) deciding where to go next. Problem: the player doesn’t know everywhere that the TARDIS can take him, even though the character does. Solution: NPC reminds character of some information that he wanted to gather and suggests going somewhere where that information can be obtained (using strong generalities here). This should suggest one particular location to the player that he knows about and hey presto, we’re underway.

    While it can be fully hand-waved, there is an opportunity to provide a partial infodump through interactions at this location, rather than overloading with it and more, later in the adventure. Problem: this throws off the pacing.

    Solution: move the conversation and suggestion into the past and hand-wave the actual travel; start the adventure with the characters already at the obvious destination, with an appointment to gather the information through roleplay.

    Effect 1: the opening sequence is sped up markedly, permitting the infodump to slow it back down to a reasonable pace.

    Effect 2: instead of the focus of the introductory section being about a recap of outstanding plot points AND getting the characters to the threshold of the adventure, AND providing information that will become relevant to the adventure, it becomes about the recap and progressing the outstanding plot points. Instead of an irrelevant add-on, it becomes part of the adventure. The roleplay involved keeps player agency intact.

    Effect 3: It also alleviates the possibility that the character might exercise agency to go somewhere less obvious to try and get the information. Said information is obscure and hard to find, an alternative is likely to end in failure, creating unwanted frustration, and forcing a scramble to describe an un-prepped location. The ‘obvious’ location is one of the few places where the information can possibly be obtained. So the plot itself becomes smoother and more straightforward.

    This example shows how a good choice of opening can enhance an adventure without compromising its basic structure.

Continuity II: From Here to Here

When the next adventure is to start some distance removed from where the PCs were last active, there not only needs to be some transition (which may be multiple sub-scenes in length), but there needs to be some motivation for the journey, which will (in turn) define the urgency, which will impact on those sub-scenes and their content). This type of opening is at its best when the players themselves made the decision to travel in the course of the previous adventure; anything else messes with player agency.

The more significant the distances involved, the more essential it is that this journey is a player decision made in-game. A clever GM can contrive good reasons for the players to made that decision, but even that can be going too far, and needs to be handled with caution.

It’s the combination of this point of continuity with the choices in the previous section where things tend to get interesting. Bluntly, some of them will facilitate this sort of travel and some of them won’t, but there’s a strong element of circumstances involved in determining which is which in any given case.

Sometimes, sub-scenes from this continuity element will have to entwine with sub-scenes from the first section. That’s where the area of greatest flexibility can be found, but whatever the combination(s) you choose, it will be a challenge to your creativity.

In extreme cases, Scene 1 can be as long as the rest of the adventure put together, or more!

Selection / Creation of Plot Structure

The next step is to group the list of scenes into thematic Acts. These facilitate break-points within the adventure, as well as guiding the GM as to the content, style, and intensity of the group of scenes.

There are five major structures that get used regularly. Note that these are not quite the same as the analogous structures in literature!

    Four-Act

    A four-act plot essentially boils down to “Beginning / Middle / Struggle / Achievement-Resolution”. The beginning generally defines a goal or ambition, the middle sets the protagonists on a course to achieve it, in the struggle act characters have to overcome opposition both intentional and due to adverse circumstances, usually ending with little or no prospect of success, a situation which is first reversed and then carried through to completion / success / achievement in the final act. Sometimes, in the third act, a character can realize that they are chasing a chimera, and completely change course. This frequently cuts short the fourth act, as the opposition that was blocking the character melts away in the face of his changed desires.

    It’s often tempting to formulate this structure on the premise that the focal character is one or more of the PCs, but it can be an equally powerful structural device when the focal point is an antagonist. Consider the ultimate goal to be redemption, while the initial goal is something more venal, for example.

    Five-Act

    The five-act plot is very similar, but it separates “Beginning” into “Beginning” and “Discovery” – the latter being where the characters realize that there is an objective or plot that is directed either at them or at those under their protection, which they then have to stop or prevent. “Struggle” is frequently relegated to Act III in this structure, leaving Act IV free to be a plot twist, while the final act is more clearly defined as “Resolution”.

    Parallel

    This takes the basic principles of the “Personal Event” beginning and extends them through the entire adventure, so that there is actually a plotline for each PC, some of which entwine and come together at unexpected moments.

    Focal Spiral

    A refinement on the parallel structure is for everything to come together at the end for a group plot resolution, aspects of which have been impacting on their isolated lives for some time.

    Unconventional

    There’s always room for an unusual structure, especially in a strongly-serialized campaign. If it’s the most effective choice, why not start with the main setback, for example?

    It’s worth remembering the purpose of a plot structure – it’s to guide the writing and focus the content, especially in terms of the pacing. Anything that achieves this is acceptable. Don’t be afraid to pick something unusual if it will work – the novelty itself can be beneficial.

    As an example, take a look at the structure of If I Should Die Before I Wake: A Zenith-3 Synopsis – in a very real sense, it doesn’t have a beginning, using that absence as a jarring indicator that something unusual is taking place. Or you argue that the dream sequences are all prologs that do nothing but contextualize what follows. Neither is a complete description of the start of the adventure, which is intended to blur reality into a dream-like state so that you can’t tell where reality begins and where it ends. Was it all a dream? A Vision? Reality? How can you tell?

Sequencing Of Plot Points

Once you have a breakdown into acts, the next step is to go back over the plot points, tweaking their sequencing to operate within the parameters of pacing and intensity and logic.

In particular, I’m looking for Domino Sequences and Daisy Chains. These are so fundamental to the structure of an adventure that I literally named this entire article for them – from which you can infer that this is one of the most critical parts of adventure structuring.

Let’s start by asking what they are, and what are the differences between them. and why do they matter?

    Domino Sequences

    When the next plot point follows logically, with no gaps, intervals, options or flags in between when viewed as a linear plotline, it is a domino sequence.

    That means that if there is an option, either the next plot point is a matching flag that spells out the structure of the resulting narrative, or its something that will happen regardless of the choice made in the option (though there may be contextual differences or changes in the way the narrative is ‘spun’ incorporated into that scene.

    Think of the adventure like a choose-your-own-adventure book, with each plot point a separate numbered page or paragraph. If the book is properly written, it doesn’t matter what choices you make or when those differences have an effect on the plot, there is still a straight line from one entry to another (no matter how tangled that straight line may appear) until you get to the end of the adventure, an end that is the compounded sum of all the decisions made along the way.

    Daisy Chains

    As a general rule, if something isn’t a domino sequence, it has to be a daisy chain. A daisy chain is a coupling of plot points that needs one or more additional plot points to be inserted to make the daisy chain a domino sequence.

    If there’s a logical gap in the story, you need a plot point to fill it.

    If there’s a transition in time or space, you need a plot point to occupy and convey it, and anything that might happen before you get to the next plot point, even if the inserted plot point has nothing whatsoever to do with the main plot and is just there to “fill” time or convey travel.

    If there is an Option, there needs to be a flagged plot point that describes how that option impacts the plot, and all likely choices have to be covered. Note that they don’t have to be dealt with in the same plot point – in fact, it’s quite common for the different Options to point at different flags that are variations on the main flag for that Option.

    Daisy chains demand an answer to the question, ‘what do I have to add to this plot through-line to make it complete enough to play?’

The critical thing is that you aren’t just identifying the daisy chains, you are inserting the scenes that are needed to convert them into domino sequences.

Let’s look at another real-world example from “Ogrons To The Left Of Me, Daleks To The Right”:

    6 Dalek City
    7 The Gibbering
    8 Force-field Dome
    9 Scientist
    10 Revelation

That all sounds fairly straightforward; even if you don’t know what The Gibbering refers to, it’s obvious that it’s an encounter of some kind and that it happens en route to the Force-field Dome (which, it can be presumed, is to keep The Gibbering out), within which, you’ll find A/the Scientist, who will reveal something or be the subject or recipient of a revelation.

Certainly, that held enough fundamental logic for the above to be the first draft of this part of the outlined adventure.

But, when examined closely, and with the pacing and logic factors incorporated, it soon became apparent that these were high points or generalizations that needed further refinement and subdivision to become a playable domino sequence:

    6 Dalek City
    7 The Gibbering

      7a Glow, Inactive
      7b More
      7c Semi-aware, awakenings
      7d Psychotics

    8 Force-field Dome

      8a Choice
      8b Patrol, Conversation, Option
      (8c) 2nd Conversation (Flag 8b)

    9 Scientist

      9a Losing The Patrol (8c link)
      9b Ogron (Flag 8b Flag 8a)
      9c Reverie (Ogron Canon)
      9d Rider
      9e Dance With The Devil

    10 Revelation

If I lay this out as a flowchart-style diagram, I get:

This illustrates the dominoes and the inserted daisy chain elements (the latter with a shaded background).

  • You can see the Options of 8 and 8a, and the Flags.
  • Also depicted is the implied flag from 8a direct to 9 (because 8b and 8c are explicitly on the other flagged path).
  • I have sneakily noted the option to have the patrol encounter (8a-8c-9a) take place even if it’s not selected by the player because there is no direct connection between his choice and whether or not that encounter takes place; this gives me flexibility in pacing and padding time to fill the game session (and besides, I think that the player will find it interesting, regardless, even though it also telegraphs a plot twist (9b-9c).
  • Finally, I want to call attention to the ratio of inserts relative to the original ‘straightforward’ outline: 12-to-4, or three times as many, simply as a result of breaking down what I already had in my head into component elements.

Let’s talk for a minute about the encounter sequence 8a-8b-8c-9a. That’s there because if the player chooses the wrong path in 8, i.e. the option that doesn’t lead to the 9-sequence, I need a way to steer the adventure back on track.

That said, player agency is not violated; there are all sorts of options and flags not presented because they are unlikely to transpire – the character could attack the patrol in 8a, for example. These aren’t shown because they are unlikely to materialize; if one happens, I will have to improvise anyway because there are too many possible outcomes to predict the course of the adventure. And the Option in 8a gives the player the chance to bail on the whole encounter, if he prefers.

The final thing to discuss from this example is the whole 8a sequence – why isn’t it 8a, 8b, and 8c, and what’s currently listed as 8b shown as 8d and so on?

That’s because this reflects the reality after writing up this part of the adventure (subsequent steps in the process, described below). Originally, this was just the ‘first’ 8a, leading to 8b, and so on; but then the opportunity for the character to overhear some interesting dialogue occurred to me, and it seemed inevitable that some sort of dialogue would take place between the NPCs of 8a as result of the plot twist at 9b-9c.

Characterization mandated a conversation; the plot twist dictated the subject matter. That conversation became the second 8a, and finally, the mere existence of the encounter gave rise to an Option for the PC that wasn’t canvassed as either outcome of 8 itself.

The simple display of the indented list of scenes actually holds a surprising complexity of underlying structure – but it only takes a brief narrative notation at the head of a passage of text to signpost the path through the adventure, skipping what’s not relevant and ensuring that nothing relevant gets missed.

The Writing

Writing an RPG adventure isn’t quite like writing a novel. And yet, it shares elements of that type of creative process.

I don’t try to spell out everything. I explain what’s supposed to happen in the title / one-sentence summary as a memo to self; how I get that to happen is in my hands as GM on the day.

I write snippets of narrative and flavor text, especially those that will obviously be required. I list assets that may be relevant like images (and number these sequentially) so that – in the normal course of things – I need only show the next image and it will be the right one, most of the time.

If any dialogue between NPCs takes place of importance, I’ll tend to write that out in full. If any dialogue is to take place between an NPC and a PC, I’ll provide relevant / critical bits and pieces, but leave most of that to roleplay / improv on the day.

I want to have everything that I need to run the scene at my fingertips, and to leave out as much as possible that isn’t necessary so that what is there stands out.

Have you ever picked up a commercial module to find that it contains paragraph after paragraph of extemporization and text that you have to reinvent on the fly because the PCs don’t follow the script, or think of an option that the authors haven’t allowed for? Especially a bleedingly obvious one? I have, and it’s infuriating. Sometimes you have to scan half a page of text just to find the two or three lines that are actually relevant.

That’s something I try to avoid.

So that’s the general approach to the writing. But certain segments of the adventure have their own needs and demands, and have to be treated just a little differently.

    In The Beginning: Prolog Sequences

    The more comprehensive the synopsis, the more accurate it will be, and the better a resource for both GMs and players. This is also a perfect opportunity to patch any small plot holes that have been noticed after the fact, getting everybody onto the same page.

    But (and it’s a big ‘but’), the more material you have to wade through, the harder it is to find that one relevant detail.

    This tension makes crafting a great synopsis an especially difficult task and a skill that can pay genuine dividends to a GM – but it often flies under the radar. i work especially hard on my synopses, aided by copy-paste-and-delete of the previous adventure. The format of the adventures being described in this article helps, too.

    Still, it is not unusual for the word-count of the synopsis to be the equal of 2, 3, or even 4 expanded plot points, and for me to spend 2-3 times as much time on it, relative to its length, as I would on performing that expansion.

    That’s up to 12 times the usual amount of time that would be spent on writing adventure to the same rough word-count. Cut, Compress, Polish, then cut and compress again.

    Reducing each plot point to a single paragraph or less is the goal, while not missing anything important – and ‘important’ in this context includes PC / player contributions, decisions, thoughts and thought patterns, critical dialogue, and emotional states / reactions, none of which is a normal part of an adventure. Adding these can produce an uncut synopsis that’s twice the length of the original adventure!

    You can get technique, tips and tricks on compressing and polishing narrative (and the synopsis counts as narrative) from the series, The Secrets Of Stylish Narrative (six parts, some longish).

    And there are some great examples buried in the three-part series, A Long Road: Zenith-3 Notes for all (but some of them are extremely long, even by my standards, as I note every time I reference them here at Campaign Mastery; the total length is roughly the same as a small paperback novel).

    The Story Begins

    Four fishermen are more likely to catch something between them than any one fisherman operating alone. Similarly, its better to have multiple hooks or pathways into an adventure, if possible, tailored to appeal to both one or more PCs and one or more players.

    It’s also one of the points of lowest intensity in most adventures, which means that the players have more time to focus on what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. Any sense of repetition, of this beginning being the same as the last one, or the one before that, and you create an additional burden for your adventure to overcome.

    The more of them that you have, the harder it gets to keep beginnings fresh and distinctive.

    I work doubly hard on the beginnings of adventures because of this triple-whammy, and strongly advise others to do so as well. Too many GMs focus all the creative energies on the climax (which is important don’t get me wrong) without devoting enough attention to the opening sequences of an adventure.

    Domino or Daisy Chain?

    Do NOT be surprised if something that looked like a domino turns out to be a Daisy Chain, and possibly a quite complex one. Keep at least one eye on Scene length – I try to keep these reasonably consistent, at around 3/4 of a screen with the text editor occupying no more than half the screen horizontally. About the length of the “The Story Begins” section above, in fact.

    But if a scene runs more than 1 1/2 screens, look for a way to break it in two – and insert something in between, even if it’s a sub-scene that reads,

      “He leads you into a formal dining room with a throne like chair at the head of the table. Pulling a silken sash hanging from the ceiling produces a servant in remarkably short order, as King Ronald seats himself on the throne. ‘Burgundy and two glasses, immediately,’ the despotic monarch commands. ‘Your will, majesty,’ replies the servant, who scurries away and returns shortly after with a decanter and two exquisite wine glasses of the finest crystal. Pouring from the decanter, the servant first provides for the needs of his master and then pours you a glass of the rich red contents of the decanter. ‘Do please enjoy the Burgundy. My cellar stocks only the finest, and it would be a shame to waste it. Now, where were we?’ “

    As you might expect, this is all about pacing, but it’s an aspect of that attribute that hasn’t been paid much attention to date – because long scenes come closer to being infodumps than anything else.

    Flags & Wrinkles

    Another thing that is likely to happen is that you are likely to think of new Options that the PCs might select and new complications to insert into the plot.

    In the case of the former, take a second to assess just how likely the new option is, really. If it’s significantly less likely than the options already flagged, it isn’t worth including.

    There is one exception to that rule – if an Option is something that could potentially completely derail the adventure, no matter how improbably, it deserves some screen space devoted to it, and a plan for how to cope if the worst happens!

    In the case of the latter – very much the other side of the same coin – there’s a similar question to answer: Does this complication really improve the adventure or just confuse/extend it? Alternative #1 is clearly desirable – – I’ll even insert such things in the course of play if necessary; while #2 is less so (but might still be a valid ‘pad’ to the existing game-plan).

    My chosen plain-text editor is KATE, which I got used to while suing a laptop that was based on Ubuntu — hey, it was a gift (and became indispensable when my main system packed up on me). It’s free, open-source, faster than the Microsoft offering, and permits multiple documents to be visible at the same time, which can be incredibly useful. But it also has a HTML markup mode which does two things:

    • It color-codes HTML tags;
    • It permits text inside some HTML tags, if they are properly closed, to be ‘rolled up’ by clicking a blue arrow on the left of screen, permitting text to be hidden from view.

    Here’s a screenshot (reduced in size, unfortunately) showing an actual HTML file that I was recently working on (note that I can resize the horizontal size of the windows independantly):

    And, if I click on the little arrow to the left, it becomes:

    which enables me to see more of the main document.

    I use a surprising amount of raw html in posts here at Campaign Mastery, all of which has to be manually coded, and both of the above make it much easier. But I can also use this mode to permit me to hide text related to Options Not Chosen as I come to them, which can REALLY help in running an adventure.

    Tip: You can put anything you want into a HTML tag if you don’t intend to actually use it as HTML. So I can use HTML tags to highlight plot point summaries, for example.

    Plot Resolution(s)

    Plot Resolutions in my campaigns are generally about not only ending the current adventure in an emotionally-satisfying way, but how to use the events in the plot in the larger, campaign-level scheme of things. Both of these are critically-important, so I like to spend a little extra time ticking both these boxes.

    Afterwords and Aftermaths

    Sometimes there is one scene after the adventure proper ends to place events into context for the players, sometimes there are a couple of them – and sometimes, there are none. Each campaign seems to evolve its own distinctive style ‘fingerprint’ in this respect, and it largely depends on the way the next adventure is to begin – the presence of an afterword or Aftermath generally implies that there will be a time interval in between adventures.

    In my superhero campaign, for example, it is not uncommon for the aftermath of one adventure to overlap with the preliminary scenes of the next adventure, depicting the day-to-day lives of the characters and the (relatively mundane) life events that they experience.

    In the Pulp campaign, adventures are more episodic as a general rule, so it’s more important for adventures to be more fully self-contained. So there is less overlapping of adventures and an often-unstated time interval in between adventures, in which it can be presumed that various life-events have occurred that have been hand-waved. Beginnings are more about “where is each character and what are they doing at the moment” – which sometimes has more to do with prior adventures and less to do with the adventure just completed. Not always, and where events cast a long shadow, aftermaths can be folded into the backdrop of the next adventure.

    Doctor who is more serialized, with plot threads left dangling and picked up later. There’s far less exploration of aftermaths, though there can be some – usually related to the cross-connections to other pieces of TV Show canon that are forged as a result of the adventure. If there is an aftermath, it’s a pretty strong signal that those cross-connections will play no further part in the campaign, if all goes according to plan.

    The Warcry campaign, in it’s current evolution, hasn’t really had long enough to develop its own signature; sometimes it’s highly episodic, but at the same time there’s very strong character continuity, so the choice is generally more strongly related to whatever best serves the adventure just completed.

    The Zener Gate campaign is worth mentioning – I consciously evolved the use of aftermaths / beginnings as the campaign progressed from virtually none / strongly episodic to strongly continuity-affirming as the finale approached.

    Mechanical Cleanup

    There’s almost always some game mechanics to clean-up at the end of an adventure. Characters may be injured – make notes on how long injuries are expected to impact the character. PCs (and some NPCs) will be awarded experience. Characters may have new abilities from loot given out that seems likely to impact future adventures – that should get called out so that when writing subsequent adventures, a quick glance at the past adventure serves up a reminder.

    I have to admit that I’m not good at doing this. It’s too often an afterthought, or not done at all at the time. Part if the reason is that subjective impressions of how the actual game sessions unfolded are often the foundations of XP awards, and its easier just to issue them on the spot.

    I’m trying to improve in this area :)

    Alternate Outcomes

    The plot outline generally deals with the plot the way the GM wants it to run for best integration into the overall campaign and his future plans, but there’s no certainty that things will turn out that way – not if the GM has any support for the concept of player agency, anyway.

    I make it my business, at the end of an adventure, to at least make some notes on the other ways that things might go, and what to do about it.

Wrap-up

this and then have that happen, which gives the players the choice of doing this or that,, which will solve one of the resulting problems but make it more difficult to solve the other, which will have gathered momentum in the meantime…”

You don’t have to follow my process, you may have an alternative that works better for you or for your specific campaign. But I think every GM should at least consider a formal process of some kind, and this is a good place to start – you can always vary it or evolve it at need. What’s your adventure planning process and how does it take an adventure from blank page to ready-to-run?


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