The Layer Cake method of Adventure design.

Hmmmm… Cake!
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I think this might be a good moniker because it moves a little away from the hard-coded 5 paths going 5 steps assumption. You can decide your campaign is going to be 5x4x6x3 if you want, it’s still one big layer cake.

I’m tempted to craft a campaign to this exact level of detail and liberally sprinkle the number ’625′ around at meaningful locations much akin to the numbers in Lost. That could really play with paranoid players heads!

I like this idea of providing a framework to work to, it’s simple but gives you goals in your design, overcoming one of my biggest issues, that being knowing when you have done ‘enough’ and to stop thinking about it!

Your Hand example is perfect to illustrate the method. Now just imagine a few strands of spiderweb linking encounters from one finger to the other.

If you want an example, read my last 3 game reports found here used the method (Although I ended up doing a 4×5):

http://chattydm.net/tag/chattys-2008-2009-campaign/

In it I had 4 different catastrophe hit the same city at the same time. The PCs had to run from one to the other to try to prevent the city from being destroyed. Some elements they uncovered on one ‘finger’ gave them elements to help them solve elements on other fingers.

If you use published adventures, you’ll notice that there’s usually at least 2 or 3 quests. If the adventure features a Dungeon, there’s also a chance that there’s a story going on where 2 or 3 factions of the Dungeons are against one another. Each of those (Quests, Dungeon stories) are ‘fingers’ of your example.

The method could easily be 3X6 or 7X4. 5×5 just happens to be a conveniently cool number and works with Johnn Four’s 5 room dungeon concept.

Hope that helps.
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@Satyre: You can even one up it and use both Dave’s model and mine and create a 5X5 campaign made up of 25 5×5 adventures. Now that should last you a few years
.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Gen Con Hiatus Update: Guest Post Galore and Critical Hits! =-.

You might want to link these five by five blocks together in some kind of sequential chain so that adventure areas have recurring threads or relationships.

Maybe a five by five by five block; so some 125 events which if you break them down into a five room model is twenty-five areas. Split as you like for six months play and roughly twelve (and a half) levels for 4E.

Now that my friends is a campaign sandbox. Nice work Phil!
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One cool thing was the empty boxes that needed filling. Creating commections was interesting and enjoyable, as well as fostering the ‘interconnected’ feel a campaign has to have to gaine versimilitude.

The other was the time issue. I found myself drawing arrows (flowcharts within graph blocks…ouch!) to chronological imperitives. You know, “The Players will not know about the identity of the Great Wight of the Sheering Clan unless they have spoken with the BoneKnights of Orcus”. Geekspeak like that.

Anyway, a good idea in the first place, and one of the rare ones that is both a useful tool, applicable to all experience levels of GMs, as well as a high level analytical tool when you reverse engineer. Kudos.
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Seriously, it works really well.
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@MkaY: As Dave and I have said a few times. When someone tries an idea you wrote about in a blog, it’s like you just made a sell. Thanks! I’m curious to see how the method will help various types of GMs. Do let us know how it panned out.
.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Dude, You Gotta Try Savage Worlds! =-.