Hi there, ChattyDM here. You know, that guy from that other blog ? Dave was kind enough to invite me to be a guest writer for the CH audience and for once I won’t be talking about Wii games.
What I will do today is build upon Dave’s groundbreaking concept: the 5×5 method.
In his post, Dave explained how you can build a multi-threaded campaign, featuring 5 interrelated plot-lines by planning your campaign on a 5×5 Grid. Each plot being broken up in 5 full adventures, giving you a 25 adventures campaign that could last you a few years.
When I read about that post, something clicked in my mind. I could feel that this seemingly simple concept had near unlimited potential as a game mastering tool. At the time I didn’t know what it would be, so I let that feeling simmer for a few weeks.
The 5×5 Adventure Method
Then, earlier this summer, while planning a short summer adventure, that dormant idea flourished…
What if I used the 5×5 method to create an adventure instead of a campaign?
What if, instead of having 5 long-term campaign plots, you would start with 5 quests/adventure hooks? For a D&D adventure, you could have one or two major quests and 3-4 minor quest or rumors as starting points. For example:
- The local baron asks the party to recover the fabled Shield of Eternal Valor from the ruins of Doom Keep to help him defeat bands of raiding goblinoids.
- The Church of St. Zwilek wants Divine Heroes to banish the leaders of the demonic cult of Gra’zok-Thousand-Eyes, responsible for enslaving gullible peasants.
- The son of a farmer was kidnapped by disfigured humanoids wearing demon-like tatoos.
- Rumor: Tales relate that an ornate legendary sword that talks lies lost deep under Doom Keep.
- Rumor: A Dragon used to lair near Doom Keep, its hoard was never found.
Each of those quests and rumors would in turn be broken in up to 5 scenes/encounter that move the story toward completion of the quest (or uncovers the truth about a rumor). You can use the 5 Room Dungeon model to create those scenes (a room and a scene are interchangeable in my mind).
Much like the original application, the trick of the 5×5 adventure method is to have some scenes connected by common elements like locales, NPCs, objects, etc. Maybe the party has to deal with a single NPC to obtain the necessary info for 2 or 3 of the 5 quests. Maybe they need to explore a single place to find 2 objects needed to complete 2 quests.
The more connections you make between the 5 plots/rumors, the more your players will link elements together, pulling their characters deeper in the story.
Rumors are an intriguing concept in that they don’t have to be true at all but must have a reason to exist. You can develop them into something completely unexpected.
For example, let’s take the legendary sword rumor and develop all 5 scenes:
- An ancient retired adventurers tells the party about a talking sword of legends abandoned deep under Doom Keep.
- In (occupied) side chamber of first level of keep, PCs find remains of adventurers. An ivory scroll case containing a depiction of sword and warnings about it’s evil nature is found.
- During negotiations with some humanoids living under the dungeon, they reveal that the sword is in possession of cult leader, deeper in the dungeon.
- Cult Leader turns out to be an animated corpse controlled by the sword impaled in it! As the cultists charge, the zombie draws it and attacks.
- After defeat of cult, the PCs must decide what to do with artifact, possibly leading to another adventure.
As you can see, the rumor turned out to be something unexpected while still being linked to the second quest (The Cult) and the first one (The Doom Keep).
Now one really interesting thing about using this method in regards to creating a D&D adventure is how convenient it is. Here’s how: take 5 quests and/or rumors and introduce each with a scene. That leaves you with 20 scenes/encounters to plan.
According to the D&D encounter algorithm, PCs level up after having played through about 10 encounters. This means that if you don’t combine too many scenes together, using the 5×5 method will give you an adventure that covers 2 levels, which puts them on par with a published adventures.
Neat huh?
Pacing of the 5×5 Adventure
One other concept I want to explore is how pacing of your game will affect how a 5×5 adventure plays. The way you set up your scenes and how far apart they are from one other (in terms of distance or timing) will greatly affect the feel of that adventure.
If all 20 scenes are spread over a multi-level dungeon, the adventure will take several sessions and feel like a classic dungeon crawl. If on the other hand, each scene takes place over a large area, including mini-dungeons, cities and frontier keeps, all with a backstory of war and intrigue, then your adventure will have a majestic, epic feel.
I tried to do the complete opposite with my summer D&D game. I had all plots be potential catastrophes that threatened the PC’s city and I had all of them occur one after the other. This created a sense of confusion and urgency similar to “oh crap” movies like Snatch and Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels. It was a hell of a blast to play but my players were convinced that I was out to get them.
So give the method a try, I know I’ll be using it as soon as I start playing again in September.
I loved your posts on your take of the 5×5 method, Chatty, and the adventures seemed to work really well.. even if your players are paranoid;) But players usually are when it comes to regarding their DM/GM.
The 5×5 method is really great and I tip my hat to Dave for coming up with something so easy and fun. I’ve actually started working on a 5×5 within a 5×5 adventure setting. And really, I think that it is working very well. Now we just have to play the damned thing!
.-= wrathofzombie´s last blog ..Bragging Rights! =-.
I believe I will give it a try since our campaign has just started (five sessions so far). The locations and what has happened so far quite easily falls under the 5 x 5 concept even though this campaign is supposed to take quite a while.
I’m eager to see how everything unfolds! Maybe I will make a post of it after the campaign is over. If I remember that is..
.-= MkaY´s last blog ..About Immurements =-.
@wrathofzombies: Thanks man. It was a hell of a lot of fun to play. Paranoid players are part of the fun.
@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! =-.
I’ll definitely be using the 5×5 method throughout my campaign, probably not ever to the scale that Dave is but definitely on the smaller scale that you present here. Thanks Phil!
Very cool, Phil! I really need to start planning a campaign… it’s on my very long to-do list…
.-= Geek’s Dream Girl´s last blog ..Don’t Care Much About The ENnies? =-.
Hey, it’s always fun to see people from the gang liking my stuff! The check’s in the mail!
Seriously, it works really well. 🙂
.-= The Chatty DM´s last blog ..Dude, You Gotta Try Savage Worlds! =-.
I found it an interesting exercise (instead of doing work) To take my current adventure sets and subsets and build them onto the same 5×5 block.
I frankly realized quickly that I ended up making 5×5’s within 5×5’s. (Thanks…I’ll be doing this forever now). And the secondary block ended up 6×7. That particular level of detail necessitated it.
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.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..added Dramatis Persona-Steel Isle Town =-.
That is being yoinked! Purely for research purposes of course.
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!
.-= satyre´s last blog ..on the trail of tears: bribery and bones =-.
@LordVreeg: It’s interesting that you found out, at the analytical level, what my ‘big picture’ gut feeling was telling me about the 5X5 concept. Something deceptively simple, yet extremely useful. Thanks for checking it out!
@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! =-.
I really want to, but I just don’t get it.
Do I have to come up with 25 different encounters right off the bat? And if so, how is that “sandbox” like?
How does someone tie all of them together?
Or is it more of a “hand” looking thing, with 5 places to start from and then you travel down a finger for 5 encounters?
I almost exclusively use printed adventures and maybe I’m not a creative enough DM to use the 5×5, but everyone is raving about it every blog I read so I really want to understand it.
Pictures, campaign notes, scratch paper, examples, etc. would be appreciated.
@PinkRose: You can think of it as the “hand” analogy, except that several of the encounters along each finger should involve the same location/item/action, so that players could jump from one path to another easily and back again. I suppose the least efficient way to do it would be to go down one whole path before starting on the next and continuing that way. Hopefully that helps illustrate it a little bit better! I’m sure Dave and Phil will chime in as well.
@Pink Rose: The method acts more like a scaffold for you to build your adventures upon. It’s not only for Sandbox games although it can be.
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.
.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Gen Con Hiatus Update: Guest Post Galore and Critical Hits! =-.
If you are using this for campaign and adventure design, and also using the 5 room dungeon, does that mean your campaign is 5x5x5x5?
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!
A Planescape DM could use several linked 3×3 adventures to really play to the setting’s rule-of-three myth arc.
.-= The Chatty DM´s last blog ..Handling A Legion Of Padded Supermen =-.
I also recommend the Main Event’s post on his XIX campaign (focused around the number 19):
https://critical-hits.com//2009/03/25/pain-of-campaigning-actually-planning/
https://critical-hits.com//2009/04/03/pain-of-campaigning-xix-getting-my-hands-dirty/
I thought I would note that since the two films used to reference the method were both produced by Matthew Vaugn another of his films might be useful in describing the overall theory and process: ‘Layer Cake’ (excellent movie BTW).
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.
@HartThorn: Interesting idea and I agree that we should not be bound by set numbers. I like 5×5 because it’s simple and fits with the 5 Scene-Adventure model I’ve been using ever since I’ve read Johnn Four’s 5-room dungeon article.
The Layer Cake method of Adventure design.
Hmmmm… Cake!
.-= The Chatty DM´s last blog ..But my father was a blacksmith! – Crafting in 4E =-.
I also really like that it is probably the easiest method to creating a non-railed urban/social adventure. Alot of times I come up with ideas by wind up writing more of a movie plot than an adventure or have so much going on it looks like Wolfgang Bauer’s brain threw up on my game journal…
@HartThorn: Layer Cake is a great suggestion, but I think that presenting it as a method for DMs it’s important to keep it simple and easy to understand as the 5×5 method. Once any DM understands it and is using it, then it will naturally expand or contract to fit their needs and desires and become a less rigid structure. Also as Phil mentioned it happens to play quite nicely with the 5-room dungeon concept and the 5 encounter adventure, 10 encounters per level structure that D&D seems to be using these days. Obviously all of it can change and morph as needed, but it’s good to have a basic structure to build things upon in my opinion!