Image by Peter Fischer from Pixabay

When you create an RPG adventure, what’s the first question you should ask?

This very issue became a factor when my co-GM and I set about writing Adventure 31 for the Adventurer’s Club Campaign a week or two ago.

The First question should not be how you get the PCs involved.

It should not be how the adventure will end.

It should not be what is going to happen in between.

It should not be who the villain(s) are, other than as dictated within the broad idea.

No, the first question should be “What role is each PC going to have within this story?”
Answering that question gives you the answers to several of those other questions.

In Adventure 31, the basic idea identified the major villain and one of the PCs as focal points of the adventure. That villain had a past antagonistic relationship with another of the PCs, but there was no certainty that the PC would bring that second PC into the story.

Making that a virtual certainty changed the basic plot slightly, increasing its’ depth and connections to past events in the campaign. It also highlighted a logical flaw in that basic idea, which required a further extension to resolve.

This extension plus the logic of what the villain would do under the circumstances gave us the key to involving a third PC.

Determining how to integrate a fourth PC required a further extension, one which made the ultimate outcome of the adventure take shape.

With four of the five PCs now actively involved, the likelihood of the fifth being called in by virtue of the bonds of friendship and alliance was sufficient that we considered it a near certainty.

As a result of asking the correct first question, the adventure itself was much more clearly defined, and ready to be broken down into logical plot sequences.

One of the plot elements that we have worked very hard to incorporate from the very beginning of the campaign was that each PC should have a pre-programmed opportunity to contribute to the outcome.

This has shaped encounters and NPCs in ways that we would not otherwise have even thought of, let alone contemplated.

It doesn’t matter if your campaign is a star vehicle or an ensemble cast, ensuring that each PC at least has a key skill or conversation – with backup plans in case they blow it, where there is a risk of that happening – and can lay claim to at least part of the overall achievements of the team, and that any spotlight rotates regularly and frequently, ensures that every player can engage in the plotline and take part in the fun. Creating that certainty is a critical part of the GMs job – flub it, and it doesn’t matter how technically brilliant you might be at other parts of the assignment, your campaigns will always only be mediocre at best.

Every player that you add makes this harder to achieve, week in and week out.

With one player, it’s easy; they are the entire focus of your attention. With two, it’s fairly easy, as well – you just have to ensure that one player doesn’t monopolize your attention.

The first real difficulties tend to emerge with three players, and at this scale, they are fairly minuscule. Four players makes things a little more difficult again. With Five players you really have to work at it, but it can still be done, and the same can be said for six players.

Seven players, and even with all the help you can get or give yourself, one person is likely to be a fifth wheel. What’s more, this only needs to happen once or twice for it to become a self-replicating rut.

Every PC brings something slightly different to the mix – different skills, different attitudes, different capabilities – and each of those traits is further distinguished from their neighbors by the skills, attitudes, and capabilities of the player controlling the PC. We have one player who hates mysteries and detective plots, because he doesn’t feel very good at them (even though he loves them in literature, especially Sherlock Holmes). It doesn’t matter what it says his character can do, the player struggles with them.

So we not only ensure that there’s at least some action-adventure element for that player to engage in, we never throw a mystery into that PCs life without orchestrating the involvement of another PC ‘just to lend a hand’ at the player level. With the occasional exception (which this player tolerates, because he knows it will be a temporary situation), this formula has kept the campaign vibrant and active for more than a decade.

The next time you are confronted with a problem in plotting the next day’s, week’s, month’s, or year’s play, before you start asking (and answering) questions, take a moment to ask yourself what the first question should be. Get that right and you not only save yourself a heap of trouble and barricade off a lot of blind alleys, you improve the end result while investing less effort.

As bargains you, there aren’t many that get better than that.