The Welsh Piper

The Quick-and-Dirty (and OCD-approved) way to write adventures

Gamers my age grew up with adventure “modules,” which were fairly extensive write-ups filled with all sorts of information needed to run a scenario. Juxtaposed to these multi-page volumes were Adventure Record Sheets—early forebears of the One Page Dungeon Template that’s gaining popularity today—which encouraged you to cram every piece of relevant scenario datum into little boxes slightly larger than your thumbnail.

Full, descriptive write-ups make for a good read, but they’re not practical for the busy GM. They take too long to write, too long to read, and (assuming you’re already familiar with your own campaign) provide more information than you actually need (or use) at the gaming table. Given all that, Adventure Record Sheets make a ton of sense for the GM who has a scenario in mind and just needs to organise his notes. But their truncated format isn’t always GM-friendly, and (with all respect to David Bowman aka Sham), the One-Page Dungeon Template is a little too free-form for my OCD.

Enter the Adventure Template, which provides a short-form outline for a scenario. This format captures everything you need to run an adventure. Use one template for each locale in a given scenario: a forest, a swamp, a tower, a ship, a village, or (of course) a dungeon level. String multiple templates together to form a larger adventure or a series of related scenarios. You can even use the template to organise your notes about non-adventuring locales, like the PCs’ homebase town, a city quarter, or a frontier stronghold.

A Tour of the Template

The template is divided into sections, which you can complete using the guidelines below. For illustrative purposes, I’ve provided a sample template based on the free Chimera RPG adventure, Highgrove Rescue.

Title
It’s helpful for each of your scenarios to have a title, mostly for organisational purposes. Add a brief note about the number and experience of characters it’s designed for. If you’re like me and save every scrap of RPG-related material you write, include the date—when you show your grandchildren, you’ll appreciate knowing when you first created this masterpiece.

Template w/square grid map

Hook
Every adventure begins with an adventure hook, typically a single sentence that describes a problem and motivates the characters to get involved. The benefit of including the hook is that it keeps you grounded as you run the adventure—while the scenario is bound to take unanticipated turns, the hook can help keep you (and the players) on task if you feel that things are running too far afield.

What’s Really Going On?
This is for the GM’s secret notes and things that the players aren’t immediately aware of. These details go beyond the hook (what the PCs know) and describe (for the GM’s benefit) what’s going on behind the scenes. This information usually defines NPC motivations, which drive the actual conflict that the PCs (knowingly or not) are trying to resolve. The characters might discover some or all of the scenario’s secrets during the adventure, but that’s up to you—for now, it’s important that you know the dirty details.

Monsters & NPCs
All good adventures are built on conflict, and all conflict arises from NPCs, whether as rank-and-file monsters or singular character adversaries. List the principle NPCs in the adventure, with whatever stats you need to run them, and take a moment to define their motivation. What role do they play in the adventure, and what drives them to oppose the PCs?

Map
The map section is provided as a 20×20 grid, in which you can sketch out the adventure’s locale (be it wilderness, interior floorplans, or a dungeon layout). Map only the area where turn-by-turn character movement is important. For most systems, this is anywhere between five to ten feet per square (making the map area anywhere between 10,000 to 40,000 square feet. Finally, map only what fits in the grid—if you need more space, use additional templates (you can also substitute the grid with your own map image; use pixel dimensions of 300 x 300).

Template w/hex map

You can also use the template for larger-scale areas, like a hamlet or small village, a group of city blocks, or even a wilderness area. Use a scale between 1/4 to one mile per square (making the map area between 25 and 400 square miles). While not as detailed, using the template this way captures high-level adventure hooks within a larger geographical area, and helps you define broader areas of your campaign, which you can flesh out later.

Encounters
Determine what the PCs will encounter during the adventure. Key each encounter to a spot on your map, then add a few notes about each location. Include only enough information to run the encounter: monsters and NPCs, general response to PCs, high-level tactics, any equipment or valuables they possess, and any particular bits about the map location that might be important to the PCs. To save room, use whatever short-format stat block your system uses for monsters. Most NPCs can be detailed the same way, unless they’re important personages, in which case, you might want to note them only by name and reference a more detailed description you keep elsewhere.

Outcomes
While not always necessary, it’s sometimes helpful to note possible outcomes of the PCs’ activities—what happens if they survive and how does it impact the setting and its inhabitants? You may also include “victory conditions,” which define the adventure’s conclusion (i.e., what do the PCs have to accomplish in order to finish the scenario?). Finally, it’s a good idea to consider possibilities for follow-up adventures, though I’d suggest not planning too far ahead.

Downloads

The Adventure Template is available in a single download package that includes both Word and PDF formats.

• AdventureTemplate_square – square grid (may be printed and copied for personal use)
• AdventureTemplate_hex – hex grid (may be printed and copied for personal use)

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