Dungeon Masters Class - Building an Adventure Part 1

Dungeon Master Class

Building an Adventure

  Welcome to Monkey Llama Games’ Dungeon Master Class: Building an Adventure.  This class seeks to help Dungeon Masters of varying experience understand the elements of a successful adventure and give best practices to improve the overall experience for players and DM’s alike.  While each DND group is unique, many of the difficulties of building a fulfilling and enjoyable DND adventure are universal.

What is an Adventure?

  An Adventure in the context of DND is a series of encounters or interactions, typically played through in a single session, with a single overarching goal or theme.  An adventure may be standalone, meant to be played without significant continuity to the overall lives of the party, or may be as part of a larger Campaign, a series of Adventures leading players and their characters to a more complex end goal.  If a Campaign is a novel, an Adventure may be a chapter or a short story.

  Ultimately, DND and all roleplaying games are collaborative storytelling.  As the DM, you provide the setting, the adversaries, the background characters, and the conflict that drives the player characters to action.  The best DM’s are flexible but remain rooted in the understanding that the game is a shared experience where everyone has a memorable, fun time.

  Since an Adventure is a short story, albeit with improv and collaborative effort, it should have all the elements of a short story.  You may be familiar with novel structure, but short story structure is typically more concise.  We recommend following the ABDCE formula.

    Action: This is your Hook and Call to Action.  Your Hook exists to draw your players in and give them clues to the tone, mood, and nature of the Adventure.  It’s often referred to as the “Promise.”  Think of Star Wars: A New Hope.  The Hook is the opening scene, in which we see the vastness of space, and pan down to a small ship trying desperately to escape an immense starship, complete with lasers and explosions.  The Hook tells us immediately that this is a epic space fantasy David and Goliath tale.

  The Call to Action is the iconic moment when R2D2 plays the holographic projection of Princess Leia.  “Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi.  You’re my only hope.”  With 8 words, Luke is sent forward into the broader world and the audience is invested.

  In roleplaying games, your players are the audience.  More than anything, they are already invested in their own characters.  Whenever you need buy in, as with your Call to Action, remember to tailor your plot points to your player characters.

  Background:  This is the context of your shared story.  With the Hook, you made a promise about what kind of story to expect.  With your Call to Action, you’ve induced the characters to move forward in the plot.  The Background is the information necessary to guide the player characters on which way forward is.  This is setting, dialogue, and all the little clues that your players need to figure out what the obstacle is and what the next steps are.

  It’s important to have multiple avenues to get this information to the party.  Sometimes, it’s as simple as having whatever character your party decides to engage with give the same general dialogue.  If you planned on having the innkeeper tell them about the spooky tower, but they choose to talk to the blacksmith’s apprentice, it’s perfectly acceptable to have the apprentice deliver the information.

  The Background portion of the Adventure is typically where your characters with high Charisma, Intelligence, or Wisdom shine.  Pacing is important, but remember that everyone in the party wants to have their moment.  In the same vein, your Dexterous character might find the information by lifting a map or note from an unsuspecting NPC, giving them a bit of the lime light outside of combat and disarming traps.

  In A New Hope, this is everything from meeting Old Ben, to the Cantina in Mos Eisley, and leaving Tatooine. 

  Development:  Your characters have figured out what they want to do, and what their first real step is to solving the problem.  Now comes the obstacles, the dungeon delving, the exploring of the unknown and dangerous!  In storytelling, we often refer to “Yes, but.  No, and” as an interconnected way of driving the story forward, either by giving your characters what they want with unexpected consequences (yes, but) or having your characters fail while encountering new challenges (no, and).

  Development is everything your party deals with while moving through your world that stands between them and the actual resolution event.  It’s the traps your Rogue disarms, the puzzles your party figures out, the skeletons wandering in the tower, and the giant chasm they must pass to get to the final boss.  This is the best opportunity for you to challenge your party members in ways tailored to fulfill their players’ desire to be recognized.  Be familiar with each characters’ feats, skills, new spells, and items, and give them fun ways to showcase these strengths.

  This is everything from the Millenium Falcon being intercepted by the Death Star, finding Princess Leia, jumping into the garbage chute, and the party’s subsequent escape with the plans for the Death Star.

  Climax:  This is the big fight scene.  The party makes it to the Ancient Dragon standing in the way of the treasury that would save the sleepy hamlet and its innocent people!  The stakes have never been higher.  This ends now!  This is the attack on the Death Star, will Luke’s X-wing be destroyed, or will he make the impossible shot into the exhaust port?!

  The problem here is balance.  If it’s too easy, the party feels unfulfilled and loses immersion.  If it’s too difficult, characters die and players lose trust in themselves, their party, or you as DM.  Sometimes the answer is asymmetrical goals - the party wants to save the hamlet, the Big Bad wants the MacGuffin buried under the hamlet.  Most of the time, the answer is experience and subtle adjustments throughout the encounters.

  Ending:  This is the resolution.  The Big Bad is defeated, at least for today.  The hamlet is saved, a festival is held, and all the party members get huge discounts at the shops!  We dole out experience and loot.  Your players are beaming and chattering to each other about the close calls and epic moments their characters had!

  A New Hope ends with Luke, Han, and Chewie being presented with awards, the crowd cheering and the audience feeling hopeful that the galaxy will be safe.

  If your adventure was meant to be completely standalone, you did it!  If you did really well, your players will be excited to go again, probably with the same characters, and now you’ll have to make the next adventure.  Congratulations, you are now the forever DM.

  So, we’ve covered structure.  There’s so much more to building and running a successful Adventure.  In the next installment, we’ll get more into the specifics of choosing monsters, Challenge Rating, and theme!