It doesn’t happen to me very often that I have to create an encounter or an adventure on the spot out of whole cloth with no design prep.

In fact, many of the processes, practices, and habits that I have formulated and inculcated over the years are explicitly designed to ensure (as much as humanly possible) that this doesn’t happen.

Nevertheless, it can’t always be avoided. The players may have Zigged when I anticipated a Zag, or for some reason whatever I had planned has to be abandoned or delayed. Nevertheless, the players are all gathered around the table and looking at me expectantly.

When this happens, I have a very limited range of options.

  1. I can fall back on some fill-in that I had prepared for just such an eventuality.
  2. I can admit to be unprepared for this turn of events, and ask that we do something else for the day.
  3. Or I can come up with something off the cuff – with and optional warning to the players to lower expectations.

While the focus of today’s article is principally on the last of these choices, the others deserve at least some analysis. Part of the remit for this article is an analysis of how I choose between them, after all.

The Fill-in

This concept comes from mainstream comics in which the publishing deadline has to be respected above all else. To guard against the regular production team being late – real life happens! – publishers like Marvel and DC had two choices: they could turn the problem over to another production team, assembled of their ‘gun’ people, who could scramble something together at the eleventh hour; or they could have something kept on file for just such an emergency.

The latter means no panic, everyone can be quickly informed what the score is, and content can be delivered as scheduled and promised. There may be some effort to hide the reasons under a euphemism – ‘a special issue’ or whatever – or dirty laundry may be aired with reference to the “Dreaded Deadline Doom” (as Marvel used to call it – shades of Stan Lee!) or there may be no explanation whatsoever.

As a comics fan, the first used to irritate me, the second generated a level of sympathy and softened expectations, and the last could elicit either response – but with no allowance for lowered expectations. Often, these choices reflected the degree to which the plot ignored or advanced ongoing plotlines, which was often a reflection of a partial breakdown in the schedule – if the writer had turned in his script / story in time, but the art-team could not, for example. More than with DC, Marvel made a big deal out of trying to keep the same creative team on a series for long periods of time, and made a big deal out of changes to that team, and over time, the practice spread to DC. There’s been a lot of internal social change to such business practices since those early days, and much water has flowed under the bridge, but this is largely unchanged – if anything, the trend is even stronger these days.

The first requirement of a fill-in is that there be a ‘window’ found within the regular continuity, and the second is that an adventure be generated that will fit within that window. You can’t make major changes to the protagonists or their circumstances; no matter how strong your regular continuity, the fill-in (generally) has to be highly episodic.

Another key is that the prep time required has to be a LOT less than usual, and is often performed to a lower standard, squeezed into whatever gap in your usual prep time you can find.

But within those constraints you can be as creative and experimental as you like. The result is a more avaunt-garde adventure produced to lower standards than usual – but better than nothing.

In particular, we liked to develop fill-in ideas that could be thrown up when a regular player was, for whatever reason, unable to attend – assuming that we had sufficient notice, of course.

The problems with this concept are that fill-in adventures can grow out of developmental bounds, can date badly, and can steal prep time from the ‘real’ campaign.

It’s been some years since the last fill-in in my Superhero campaign. I am months ahead of the campaign in game prep at the current time.

The Adventurer’s Club is a different story. We started working on a fill-in called “The Benediction Interdiction” but when that threatened to get in the way of the main adventure we were working on, we shelved it. We then started working on another, called “Stalking Into Mystery”, which we almost got to a playable state – it needed just one map to come together – but then Covid shutdown happened, and the player whose character is at the heart of the adventure has not returned to the campaign. So it needs radical surgery if not a near-complete rewrite before it can be played, and there will be some lessening of the impact.

So, when we needed a fill-in after “#31 Zombies Over Manhattan” in order to get ‘#32 The Hidden City” ready to go (it still isn’t, I should add), we put together a fill-in as “#31a The Black Geese” (a dreadfully obscure title) – an Orient Express tale of International Intrigue and unlikely bit players interacting. One episode in, and it seems to be going well – and by the time we reassemble in January to resume it, we should have #32 ready to go. Which means that by the time we actually start playing it, we should be well-developed on #33. {You can get some indication of how much work has gone into “Stalking Into Mystery” by the fact that it was originally supposed to be a fill-in between Adventure #30 and Adventure #31).

I should interrupt myself to mention three series of fill-in plotlines that we have come up with (and in some cases, played).

Elsewhen ideas are another steal from the comics, basically “What If…” stories / Parallel Campaign stories. We’ve played “Fine Upstanding Time-Traveling Rascals” and “The Beastie Of San Francisco”, and we have an idea for another entitled “The Green Revolution” that has received virtually zero development as yet.

Tales From The Silver Room are adventures in which none or more of our players get to play characters who are NPCs in the usual campaign. The “Silver Room” is a protected environment for containing artifacts and books that are too dangerous to be openly available – the concept is that each “Tale” would tell the tale of how one particular item (usually created for the purpose) wound up in the Silver Room. “The Benediction Interdiction”, mentioned earlier, is the first.

Tell Me A Story has had only one outing so far, “The Elevator Of Doom” – which had the PCs trapped in an elevator and telling tall tales on the spur of the moment to entertain each other. A number of variations on this basic theme are possible and will get pulled out of our back pocket under the most extreme of circumstances.

All three are significant because they violate the ‘ground rules’ laid down earlier for Fill-in adventures, showing the more casual and experimental approach that can be taken when you don’t need the outcome to be Canonical within the campaign.

The Fill-In Bottom Line:

If you have one on tap, ready enough to go, that fits the criteria of available players and available (real) time, this is a go-to solution. If you don’t…

The GM’s Day Off

This is usually my last resort. Every player who is present has made some effort to get there, and I consider it unfair not to have something for them to do. If there is enough (real) time notice, I am more likely to call off the whole game session and let people stay home, instead. But thirteenth-hour notifications that someone can’t make it can happen for all sorts of legitimate reasons.

It was for that very reason that the whole idea of “fill-in” adventures was devised in the first place.

My memory may be faulty, but in fact I can only think of one instance in which this was the option resorted to – but I am aware of it happening at other gaming tables, too. So maybe I’ve just been lucky.

The No-Game-Today Bottom Line

An option of last resort, and something that I am more tolerant of early in a campaign compared with late in the campaign – even though late in a campaign, when fill-ins are harder to come by (the best ideas have already been used), is when this option is more likely to be needed.

Graffiti On The Tabula Rasa

Which brings me to the primary thrust of this article, the ad-hoc adventure. This is my preferred choice when I have no fill-in, or the campaign structure precludes there even being one.

Restrictions

There are important restrictions and differences to fill-in adventures. These are normally considered campaign Canon (though they can be conveniently ignored after the fact if they turn into a train-wreck). All the other choices can be viewed as structured attempts to avoid these. At the same time, because plot-thread continuity cannot be maintained, these tend to take place outside the regular continuity, something that might not happen with a fill-in – much depends on the level of internal continuity within the campaign, for example, and whether or not you’re in mid-adventure when one of these is needed.

The “graffiti” metaphor is a good one, I think, because graffiti tends to be hastily sprayed on – there’s no time for carefully consideration, you need to come up with something on the spot.

Scope

Scope is another important issue – fill-ins are normally single-session but can be longer, especially if they are designed to integrate into normal campaign continuity at some point. “The Black Geese” is a fill-in, in that it was not a plot we originally intended to be part of the continuity at this point; but it is nevertheless part of that ongoing narrative (or could be seen as such). Off-the-cuff adventures are even more strongly single-session in nature, largely because of the question of scope. Either

  1. the off-the-cuff adventure lacks the depth and scope to be sustained for longer than that; or,
  2. the off-the-cuff adventure is very likely to be so half-baked that it can actually ruin a campaign.

Think about that for a moment. If you expand your off-the-cuff idea beyond a single session, you so increase it’s scope that it begins to flirt with making half=baked ad-hoc changes within the campaign that the campaign itself can be imperiled.

That’s a worst-case outcome, not something that will happen every time – but it’s a danger each and every time, and something that is to be avoided for obvious reasons!

The implication is that some ideas – perhaps the ones that come most naturally – can and should be censored. If you aren’t sure, make a note of the idea and spend a bit of time creating a formal fill-in from it. Only use it now if you are sure of it.

Environment

My gaming room is full of sources of inspiration (aside from two of the corners, which are full of cardboard boxes). There are bookshelves of fiction, and bookshelves with non-fiction, and boxes full of computer games, and stacks of videotapes in storage, and stacks of audio cassettes in storage, and bits of electronics (cables and video cards and PC power supplies, and so on). Most of my gaming stuff, in comparison, is actually not in that room – it’s outside, with the CD collection and the DVD collection and the board games collection, and the more commonly-used reference books).

I have only to glance this way and that until free association connects with something – the things that are most stimulating at a distance are all there.

Process

An example of the thought process that I go through is:

“The Hollies – Long Cool Woman In A Dark Dress – named Holly? maybe not – Rick Springfield, what was that lyric? – “Were we too busy looking at the left hand that we didn’t see the right”? So, the Long Cool Woman is a diversion of some sort, designed to capture PC attention. From what, and by who? – figure that out as I go. How’s she going to show up? The Golden Age of Hollywood – maybe a musical number while she descends a glowing staircase. Seductive, Marilyn Monroe type, maybe with a hypnotic voice. Lorelei Monroe. Silver Surfer – a herald of some sort?..”

Total time before I’m ready to play: 45 seconds (yes, I timed it).

Notice how this draws on a number of different sources, sometimes obliquely

  • A remembered song title from a cassette.
  • A remembered song lyric from a different cassette.
  • A remembered Hollywood era from a book of video reviews by Howard Moulton.
  • A remembered Hollywood star, free association from that Hollywood era.
  • A remembered iconic moment for that Hollywood star.
  • The title character of a comic book that I free associated with that iconic moment.

Whenever I need more inspiration, perhaps to figure out some of the parts glossed over.

Basic plot: A space warp opens somewhere over planet earth where the PCs happen to be. A thin, tall woman in a thin black dress – Morticia Adams? – emerges, descending a staircase of glowing panels of light, her mouth moving. TV crews are quickly on the scene. Males enthralled, literally laying in the street so that she can walk on their backs. Effect is carried over the airwaves. Male PCs get a saving throw. Females can make sense of the lyrics which announce that she is some sort of cosmic herald, come to announce the coming of The Redeemer. Males who failed their saving throw: ‘we must prepare for the coming of The Redeemer’.

This would be flirting with the ‘scope’ constraint if I hadn’t already decided that this was all a distraction, probably from something far more prosaic and mundane, a cosmic con-job. There is no ‘Redeemer’, but she’s got everyone focusing first on waking the men up and getting them protected from her spell, and second on who or what the ‘Redeemer’ is. Meanwhile, her confederate is stealing something they consider valuable – something we would want protected, but not of great inherent value.

So I’ve given the players a fairly strong visual impression, and something to focus their immediate attention on, and something to keep them busy after that. What about NPCs? They would probably attempt to act along similar lines, perhaps with less success than the PCs. So there’s a wave of violence. Some people would try to take advantage of the situation – looters and the like, wearing headphones of course. Choice of targets to be female-driven, and so a bit unusual.

Can’t you just feel the dominoes falling into place?

The middle part of the adventure – ‘Lorelei Monroe’ (named so by a female TV reporter) or ‘Siren’ (named so by another female reporter) would realize that women posed a threat to what’s really going on, and would whip the men into a frenzy, creating an instant war of the sexes. Lots of rescues while working on the bigger issue – finding some way of countering the effect her voice has on men.

Succeed in that, and someone (male) will spot some flaw in the deception, maybe in Lorelei’s powers. And if they are a fake, that gets the PCs thinking about what else in her performance is also a fake – which leads them to the real motive and what’s really going on. Maybe her partner creates the space warps (that was clearly not faked) – giving him a way past security systems and into secure locations.

Job done – a coherent plotline, self-contained, and likely to take a single game session, in three primary acts – a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The Tabula Rasa Bottom Line

Ultimately, what you spray-paint on your Tabula Rasa is less important than the process used to get there. That’s a process of knowing what you need (and what you don’t), and cherry-picking those pieces of inspiration that fit the bill. The example that I offered works for a superhero campaign; it would NOT work for a fantasy RPG (though it might start from the same premise and pieces of inspiration), nor for a Pulp campaign (same comment).


Discover more from Campaign Mastery

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.