Roleplaying: Designing Good Roleplaying Adventures


I saw Nick’s post on LJ about how many adventures and other gaming stuff he’s written and ran.

It made me start thinking about my own work which is certainly not as prolific as Nicks. In all the adventures I’ve ran, I can count on one hand the number I think were good or successful and yet still have fingers left over. Not that I’m putting my GMing or writing skills down, but that writing an adventure is different from designing a good adventure.

Let me elaborate. I believe there are a number of components to a good adventure. I’m talking about tabletop roleplaying in the traditional model of one GM and 3+ players and a single “adventure”. That is, an adventure (or story) that has a definitive start and end and runs only over one to maybe two to three sessions. Part of my purpose here is for myself to define what those components are, not to criticise other approaches. By defining them, it makes it easier for me to handle and better design my own adventures along the lines I believe make good adventures. They may not be the only elements of a good adventure but I feel they are the most crucial (as in IMHO people!).

The four components, I’ve named “The Hook”, “Creative Freedom”, “Part Deux” and “Group Cohesion/Direction” and I will explore all four in this article. Of course, I may be coming late to the race in this and that most good GMs are pretty familiar with these ideas or they have their own concepts that encompass theses. Thats great, I certainly don’t mean to say there is only one way to design an adventure.

I have a number of caveats before I begin however. Players can make and break any adventure no matter how well designed or written they are. A destructive or bored player can not be solved by good adventure design. You’ll have to deal with such players on a person to person level.

I offer up the maxim: “Know thy players”. What is your target audience? If your designing for players you’ve known a long time, you’ll know the kind of games and stories they like. If your writing for a convention, make sure you know what type of players would (or might) enjoy your adventure and write your blurb to reflect that (if you can). A mismatch between player’s and GM’s expectations can be disaster. But simply being aware of the problem and heading it off early enough often solves this before it becomes an issue. Don’t assume the players know what to expect, no matter how long you’ve (as GM) have known them!

Now, lets say you have an idea for an adventure. Put it to one side. Write it on the top of your blank sheet of paper if you wish. Your idea is normally actually secondary to designing your adventure. Most of us who run our own adventures are inspired by books, movies and game settings. We come up with plots (or plans), scenes, characters, etc. This is great, this is the creative juice flowing through are gaming veins. But they do not necessarily make a good adventure. Now let me explain…

The Hook

If you take one thing away from this article, it is this: The Hook. It is the most important aspect of an adventure. You can be a shit GM, have a bad plot with implausible characters… but if you’ve got The Hook (either by accident or design), it doesn’t matter.

But be careful. Roleplaying games are very different to other media. A Hook in a movie might be the initial action-packed scene or the witty dialogue of the first characters on screen, in a book it must be in the first paragraph or chapter that makes you want to read the rest. A Hook in roleplaying adventure may have nothing to do with the adventure itself! While this is partly true for movies (i.e. the hype), if the movie sucks most critical people will realise quickly.

A Hook can be a new setting or a new system. Imagine one of your friends gets the latest White Wolf release and everyone is exciting to play… there is your Hook. They want to play, it’s not that important exactly what happens. But don’t depend on this type of Hook. Players get jaded quickly and you’ll have to come up with other Hooks to keep it going. You can’t depend on the system and setting to make The Hook for you all the time. As a teenager, roleplaying in itself, was more than enough of a Hook (sadly as an adult I’ve gotten more cynical and critical). Hell, a Hook could be just a group of old friends meeting up to play a few roleplaying games and have fun.

The Hook can be also, what I call the “what the fuck” (or wtf) and/or “wow” moment. Sometime early on into the adventure the players (not the characters) are surprised or excited by something that happens or is revealed in the adventure. This is where “know thy players” is so important. What will make them want to play the rest of the adventure?

The Hook does not have to be present in the first moments of the game. The Hook, as I’ve said, my have nothing to do with the adventure itself, however the Hook should be early enough in the game. The beginning may build up to it or it may become apparent at some point.

The Hook does not necessarily have to dazzle, it can be very sublime or simply provide a goal for the players to complete. For example, in an Ars Magica adventure I ran recently, the Hook was that the groks of the PCs’ covenant were being mauled by a supernatural fish creature. The PCs leaped on this as a threat to their covenant that must be defeated. The Hook here was the supernatural threat to the players (note I didn’t say PCs) covenant or character’s home which only the characters could really deal with. It provided a goal for them, one they could achieve with some thought and effort. It certainly wasn’t a wtf or wow moment. Of course you can’t start every adventure with a threat to the characters home.

The important thing here is not to think about just the setting or characters. It’s the players that are important. What will get them going about your idea? In my opinion, it is rarely just the story itself that is the Hook. The story is what follows the Hook (see the section on “Part Deux”). Don’t get me wrong, the Hook itself could be a story, for example a build-up to a revelation about the plot. You can of course just fluff it and use your exuberant skill as a GM to get the players going, but not all of us are so skilled.

Once The Hook is in, the players are tied up in the adventure, they want to see it through. So when you design or write-up your adventure, write it around the Hook, not your idea. Sadly, you can’t always get The Hook right and all I can say is learn and try again.

An adventure needs a Hook to work. But if your running over a number of sessions rather than in one go, each session needs a Hook too. The players need to have a reason to continue in the adventure. Ending a session in a quiet moment is not a great idea. There is no Hook for the next session. The Hook should have the players wanting more. The Hook does not have to be something that starts the next session, it could be a cliff-hanger from the previous session or discussion over email about the adventure. Of course your initial Hook might be good enough to carry the adventure through the multiple sessions, which is great if you can manage it. Also, don’t over use or depend on the same Hook, players are (unsurprisingly) people and they will get jaded and bored if the same Hook is used every adventure (or session).

The second thing I’d like you to take away from this article, is that The Hook is about the players, not the PCs, the setting or the system. If the players don’t bite, your adventure will flop. I’ve learned this the hard way, more than once (in fact, more then I can count on both hands).

Creative Freedom (or Player Chaos)

A friend of mine would refer to this as “chaos” and argues that the system is there to control it. This is Bull. The players should have some level of freedom in your adventure. Even if most of your adventure is static or plotted out, you should still have room for the players to do their thing. If they can’t, they’ll get frustrated or worse… bored (which can lead to destructive behaviour). A good adventure design may give the players a direction or a goal and then you have a natural fence for the player chaos.

Without this freedom, I see no point in tabletop roleplaying. Players are clever and imaginative, let them use it and they’ll enjoy the adventure even more. Give them a goal and let them figure out in their own way. Do not depend on an expected result or path of actions. You may get it, but then your either lucky or you know your players very well. The Hook can be incorporated into this Creative Freedom. Their actions could reveal the Hook or the Hook itself is the freedom the players have. It make even take your adventure in a completely different direction. I don’t see any problem with this.

What I’m trying to get at is, that you can design your adventure to make use of this “chaos” rather than fighting against, unfairly restricting players or throwing systems at them. Going back to that Ars Magica adventure I mentioned earlier, they were given a threat, a supernatural fishy monster was attacking the local folk. I never planned how they would defeat it, only that they would try. They tracked it, they came up with a simple trap and executed it brilliantly. The players feel then they have an impact on the adventure. It’s not just them against some set pieces. It is a story that revolves around them (or their perspectives), their choices and their actions.

If you’ve got players that just cause trouble for the sake of it… well you can’t design that away. If thats what your players want, give it to them or deal with them.

Some people would consider “combat” to be a form of controlled chaos. I’d say it depends on the player(s). Know thy players!

Ironically, I’ve found that an adventure can appear more consistent and realistic if you give the players enough Creative Freedom and don’t put expectations on what they are going to do and how they will do it. Simply let your world react as you would realistically (depending on the setting) expect. Just don’t hold back (or “if they fuck, they fuck up”) and don’t put up barriers to protect your story (such as preventing the players from some action that might reveal a plot twist), let it happen.

Part Deux

Part Deux is about structuring your adventure. You may do this naturally already. Actually I find this a tad unnatural as it feels like it goes against the flow of the story. Yet it doesn’t and provides a much more rounder feel to the player experience.

There are lots of ways of structuring a story such as the Heroes Journey or Trilogies. If we take a movie, it is generally broken down into three parts. The beginning or act 1 which sets up the problem and ends with the “point of no return”, the middle or act 2 which faces the problem and the end or act 3 which resolves it. I believe this is probably too complicated to use for running adventures. Players get bored with the middle part, wanting to get onto the end and GM’s are trying to keep up with everything in Real Time. It’s not as if you can do a second draft to get the structure right.

Instead I split the adventure in two parts (often with a squishy middle or glue that forms the Creative Freedom for the players). You’ve got your Hook, the players have their Creative Freedom and then “Part Deux” starts. Suddenly things change, the pace increases, the threat is bigger or different, an external or unexpected event happens propelling things forward, etc.

Part Deux is like a twist in the story but it doesn’t have to be a plot twist. It’s kind of hard to explain what I mean. It’s the introduction of some new element by the GM. It may be a plot, a bad guy, a consequence, etc.

Going back to this Ars Magica adventure I ran, the PCs managed to trap and destroy the supernatural fishy monster. The villagers took the carcass, cooked it and celebrated the victory of the PCs. Thats when the mother of the supernatural monster appeared and wanted to kill the people that killed her child. To make it worse she was Godzilla-like in proportions. Again the PCs were given free reign in how to stop this monster but the threat is much, much larger.

Another example, this time the PCs were supernatural heroes of a pseudo-Celtic fantasy village. Viking raiders were discovered and the PCs went off and fought them. Part Deux entered and on their return to the village they discovered some of the Viking raiders pretended to be traders and were then protected by the “custom of invitation”. The PCs had to think up a much cleverer plan to get rid of them.

We always say “railroading” (forcing players down a particular path whether they like it or not) is bad. That’s not true. It’s only when the players feel frustrated and bored that “railroading” is bad. It’s more the perception of the players than the technique. Constantly forcing your players with unexpected twists and threats is head-wrecking and not necessarily fun. If the players are given no Creative Freedom, they’ll tire of your “railroading”. Give them enough of a rope and they’ll take it as an unexpected twist.

Part Deux is distinct and separate from The Hook. This is where you can actually use your original idea but you may find you end up only using part of your idea, particularly if you give the players a healthy dose of Creative Freedom.

Group Cohesion/Direction

You would think that the direction would be provided by (or is) The Hook in many cases. Still I think it is worth it to consider the dynamics of the PCs separate from The Hook, Part Deux or the idea itself.

Why do we have a group of PCs here in this adventure? Why would their direction or motivation be? A lot of the time this answer is quite obvious. The setting or the system may describe what the group of PCs is all about or this adventure is part of a long running campaign so the group of PCs is already established. Even in this last case, it is worth thinking about what motivates the PCs or players. I’ve seen adventures fall over right at the beginning (before even getting to The Hook) because the GM didn’t appreciate the motivations of the PCs, players and/or the group. Setting a bunch of warriors in the middle of a royal political scandal probably won’t work and this is pretty obvious mistake. But it’s the subtle misunderstands that really frustrate both the players and the GMs. For example a GM expecting the PCs to find it alright to trust an NPC who will give them The Hook but instead the PCs are instantly suspicious of this stranger in their home.

If your designing the PCs, life is a little easier and you can design your adventure to much better accommodate the PCs or vice versa. Even in this case you need to consider the purpose of the group of PCs. What binds them together that prevents them from fracturing and heading off in multiple directions? They may be friends, allies, trapped, family, sole survivors, bound by plot links, etc. It depends on the players themselves if the bonds can be made in-play or are required before play.

One-shot Adventures versus Campaigns

Much of my thinking has been focused on the single or once-off (sometimes called the one-shot) adventure, so perhaps not really relevant to campaigns and particularly those that don’t have strong distinctions between one adventure and the next. But I still think my ideas are applicable.

A campaign is made up of adventures even if they flow into each other, therefore I feel my advice in this article is still valid for campaign based tabletop roleplaying. If it’s still not clear, just consider each session being an “adventure” as it’s a delimited experience for the player.

I’ve also been wondering if what I’ve described here is useful at the scale of campaigns (or any series of adventures). I would say yes but I’ve never done it and the concepts would change as you scale them so your mileage may vary. I can imagine The Hook for a campaign could be spread over a number of adventures using foreshadowing, hints, unresolved mysteries etc., the Creative Freedom then is probably more about character building, world building, character based plots, etc. and the Part Deux is the delayed kick-start into your “grand plan” for the campaign.

LARPs, Writing and other uses

Can my ideas be applied to other than tabletop roleplaying? Possibly. I’m not into live action (LARPs) so I don’t know what kind of Hooks you would find in those games but I certainly think the way of thinking is very useful. For example such as for writing fiction or blogs. Thinking about your audience, what grabs them and how to keep it going. But most other medias already have well established ideas about these things. I think I must leave this as an exercise for the reader. :)

What does this mean for RPG systems design?

There is some considerations for RPG system design I would hazard but nothing I would consider hard rules. They would be more guidelines or “things to think about”. I don’t think you can or should try to make a system that would encourage good adventure design but if you do, I’d love to see your efforts and there certainly is a vast number of innovative RPG systems out there that I have on my to-do list to explore.

There are a number of systems and settings that have build-in Hooks. White Wolf’s Vampire is a prime example, the Hook here is not justing play a Vampire (which is really a weak Hook) but playing a character who has become a Vampire and must struggle with the balance between the beast and his humanity.

Sure the setting provides lots of other potential Hooks about politics, art, combat, etc. and a GM is free to use these as he sees fit. But a vast amount of the system is dedicated to this balance between a PCs humanity and beast and it impacts so much of the system including the powers. It even going so far as to define what it is to act humanely. This isn’t as such a bad thing, but every adventure or campaign won’t be about this Hook, players get bored of the same thing. But when it’s not about this Hook, you end up with a whole chunk of system and baggage that is irrelevant to your adventures.

Also, having such an explicit Hook might end up putting people off your RPG in general. One of the major Hooks provided by White Wolf games, at least for WOD1.0, was the story (also called the “meta-plot”). I didn’t like it but others did follow it and enjoy it.

White Wolf’s “Mage: The Awakening” tries to model itself on Vampire and I found (personal opinion!) that I don’t like the explicit Hook it presents, putting me off the whole thing. White Wolf’s original “Mage: The Ascension” did not have such an explicit Hook and I found I’m drawn to the old game because I do not have to crawl over any major built-in Hook in the system.

Does this mean you shouldn’t have explicit Hooks in your system? No. I think you can, if it makes sense, but just to be aware of it and it’s impact. A setting or a system with no major Hook might have a wider audience but it might be harder to get them in while a good Hook might not have such a large catchment area but it would certainly generate a more loyal user base.

Systems and settings can easily handle Group Cohesion and Direction by simply giving the PCs a reason to be a group and giving them potential direction. Also various different RPGs out there already offer a huge range of levels of Creative Freedom, from playing a mortal with no hope (Call of Cthulhu) to play demi-gods that change fundamental aspects of reality (Nobilis). There are even games that remove the power of the GM and give it to the players (Universalis or Capes).

So where does that leave everyone?

Hopefully, you’ll have agreed with some of my thoughts. If not, I’d like to hear your disagreements, at least once (you can comment below). :) I certainly don’t think I’ve sown it all up and this is just a snapshot of my current thinking. I am allowed to change my mind in the future. :)

If nothing else, I hope you’ll take away something about The Hook and “knowing your players” and that is not a bad thing.