Mike Shea of Sly Flourish and Steve Townshend, freelance WotC designer and trained actor, discuss the ins and outs of great adventure design in this most recent Critical Hits podcast. Listen in as Steve gives his three top tips for good adventure design, discusses how to draw players into the story, gives ideas on making your players love your NPCs, and discusses improvisation tips for being an active storyteller at your table.
Steve Townshend on Adventure Design (67 minutes, 69 MB)
[Download MP3 Version | Podcast Feed | iTunes Link]
Steve’s work:
I’m not usually big on listening to podcasts, and almost never all the way through, but I really dug this. There are some really great concrete examples for improving your game here. I especially like Steve’s suggestions for how to set up the beginning, middle and end of an adventure.
Thanks, Victor.
Since I’m always at pains to say what I mean, I’ve written up a more thorough explanation of the whole “Three Things Happen” approach here: http://stevesgamerblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/3-things-happen.html
Also, here’s an old writeup on that pirate port session as an example of why it’s fun to just go with it when the players do something unexpected: http://stevesgamerblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/critical-hit-vaenna-1997.html