![]() ![]() Most adventures take two sessions to complete, and have two or three main segments that last about four hours each. Believe me, no matter how many times the party fights the big old mutants in the abandoned mine, they are going to feel cheated if they can't make any progress in a matter of four or six hours. Four hours is not only the average time span of a tabletop RPG session, it is the average attention span of your players. Length is easy: an adventure shouldn't take much longer than 4 hours to complete, or if it is longer and more involved, it should be divided up into approximate four-hour segments. "The door appears to be weak" sounds much better than "the door has 10 hit points." Descriptions of anything game related should never, under any circumstances, include statistics. This is one of the main lessons of adventure writing and GMing - you have to tell the players what their characters are experiencing, not the numbers game that goes on behind the scenes, otherwise you ruin the mood of the game. In addition, statistics for enemies are much less fun if they are simply laid out for the players to browse through when fighting the giant, sadistic robot, it is much more of a challenge to the players if they don't know it has 100 hit points. ![]() Unless otherwise marked as a "player handout," the adventure is usually for the GM's eyes only not only would the players reading about the background of the bandit group spoil their characters' exploration of that for themselves in the game, it might give away some important information they would otherwise have to solve on their own. Usually, there is a section at the beginning of the adventure outlining the plot for the GM and gives some essential background information for NPCs, settings, enemies, and other information the GM might need to know. There are some other basics to keep in mind, too, and I'll touch on those first. The main things to keep in mind when penning a single adventure are setting, NPCs, and length. Like short fiction, there is usually very little room for character development and conflicts are usually very simple - people against nature, people against machines, people against people, or people against themselves (inner struggles). Writing individual adventures for an RPG isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. I will readily admit that I haven't had much experience writing adventures per se, but I have developed several plotlines for extended campaigns in Ravenloft and have studied the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre extensively in books and movies (just ask my future wife, who wishes I would give up that "silly obsession.") Like all the other advice in this book, you can take or leave what I have to say if I didn't think I could make some decent suggestions, I wouldn't be wasting my time (and yours). I am by no means an expert on these subjects I simply know what I like as a player, and what I've observed works well for players when I've been playing or GMing. I've divided this essay into three parts: a basic overview of writing adventures, some tips on writing multi-adventure campaigns (or overlying plots for a series of otherwise unconnected adventures), and some thoughts on writing post-apocalyptic adventures in general. Thankfully, there are a lot of post-apocalyptic novels, stories, and films to which we can look to for examples of what to do (and what not to do), and the elements of telling a good story aren't much different when writing for an RPG than they are for writing a novel or short fiction the only point of departure is that RPG stories tend to be a little more flexible on minor points, while still sweeping the players along as characters and participants in a larger plot. Writing adventures for the Fallout: PnP RPG essentially combines the elements of good storytelling with the necessities and freedoms of writing science fiction in the post-apocalyptic environment.
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