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.
Chatty’s Adventure Scaffold #1 : Words with Fiends
Where Chatty makes his triumphant return by being all cryptic about what he did these last few weeks. At least, you’ll get a cool adventure plan for your reading troubles.
The 5×5 Method Compendium
Consistently one of our most popular articles here on Critical Hits (for which I couldn’t be prouder), The 5×5 Method is a planning method for GM’s that sits between giving decisions for the party to make so that their choices matter, and at the same time, isn’t so wide open as to make it difficult to plan ahead for those of us who aren’t as great building adventures on the fly. Just in time for GM’s Day, I give you this collection of links about the 5×5 Method.
Blind Design, or How to Fail Better
Adventure design, whether for personal use or mass consumption, comes down to having a goal and heading straight toward it. And, of course, there are never pitfalls in the way . . .
Designing is Redesigning
Progress is only made through mistakes. However, recognizing those mistakes and fixing them are not always easy.
Re-examining the Dungeon: Section, Factions and Fronts
I think one of 4e’s problem is that the DM tools are now so structured, it becomes a hindrance for people with creativity issues to push through the proposed models and discover “new tech”. I know I’ve been having a hard time selling some of my weirder ideas like “Trap-Monster hybrids” and “The whole party stuck in the same body” because it seems people can’t see it done (or can’t afford the effort to squeeze the concept) in their 4e games.
What I Want from Published Adventures
With three years of weekly games, published adventures gave me the framework I needed when I wouldn’t have the time to write up my own campaign, but in some cases modifying them took as much time as building it myself. I’ve spent these three years seeing what worked well for me with these published adventures and what did not. Adventures, as written, do not give me exactly what I want.
The GM: Everyone’s Best Friend
When the GM is everyone’s best friend, no one has to get thrown under the bus.
On 4e Adventures: Part 1, Third Parties and the Freelance Writer
I’m a very instinctive type of guy, and lately my gut feeling has told me that some 3rd party publishers of 4e adventures have left the boat (or are thinking about doing it). For instance, I learned yesterday that Joseph Goodman of Goodman Games has been musing online about adding Pathfinder support to his DCC […]
Adventure Design Workshop Seminar (GenCon 2008)
Still working through our backlog of GenCon 2008, we stopped in at the Adventure Design Seminar, which Mike Mearls moderated (say that three times fast), and also included Rich Baker, Bruce Cordell, Chris Youngs, and James Wyatt. The seminar was advertised as both talking about adventure design for D&D 4e and actually designing an adventure, […]
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