Adventure Building

[Jaxilon]

I would second the idea of story. For starters, if we put some ideas into a hat for concepts we might vote on them and go from there. I would also suggest starting out fairly small as it would be nice to complete the project and I'm sure there will be bumps we don't expect. Maybe in round 2 or 3 we can expand and go ape nuts.

One other thing to consider, is this something we want to connect with the already existing Community World we have? If so we might need to break that baby out and brush the dust off. Of course, if we keep it generic it will be more useful to a greater audience.

Another way to go about this is to have whoever wants to lead one of these submit a 'Project plan' and we can decide which one we want to go with. This would make it possible to have more than one idea going on at a time as well. Especially if we have more than enough man power. The other advantage to a project plan approach is that we can decide ahead of time if it's something we want to help with or not.

The order I create adventures for my home games is typically:

1. A plot (story) for the adventure (I currently have a huge epic story arc as well as small adventure arcs. The adventures arcs are what my players are involved with now and they are barely even aware at this time of the overall Epic arc they are involved in).
2. The main NPC characters of the world or at least the area involved.
3. Maps
(Sometimes # 2 generates more # 3 and vice versa.)

Of course, if we are going to bundle this up into a nice deliverable it needs polish and that might include cover art and other fancy stuff as well as someone who can edit everything to make sure it's made with good grammar and so on.

[Jaxilon]

The first idea that came to my mind is the typical Caravan story. It could include an overland map at least of regional scale as well as a number of towns along the road. Then we could add maps for bandit attack and other heinous shenanigans. Plenty of maps in that idea but it needs more story. There could even be an attack that leads them back to an underground lair of some type. The sky is the limit unless we are going Science Fiction in which case there is no limit

[geamon]

I'm very interested as well. I think we need to come up with a generic name for the project or an abbreviation to add in titles to be able to organize people and the threads if its not a part of the CWBP. I think we need to draft a list of people interested and organize teams as projects are being detailed. I.E. Let's say with Jax's caravan concept (which I like) a bandit raid along the path would have a story writer/concept writer, cartographer and a publisher/content assembler. It would be the job of the "publisher" of arbitrating any disagreements between the other two and each one doesn't extend beyond their scope. Each member can be a player of a different game system which allows the mini project to be versatile in end result. Additionally as the mini project progresses, people with a certain responsibility can collaborate with other people of like responsibility to establish a standard of style and content. So I'm thinking two to three sub groups at one time working on mini-projects. This is where a main supervisor or team keeps a standard and ensure cohesion in the project with the ability to edit other peoples work. Just some thoughts on structure.

[industrygothica]

There is nothing that says that we can't use the CWBP as a backdrop of sorts. Any town town we create can be dropped wherever we want it, really. Strange lights and noises coming from a ruined keep atop a fog-shrouded hill in the Thrubmorten Fens? Fey-Gone-Wild in the Beastlands?

Now, while we may use the Thrubmorten Fens as a backdrop, I'd still suggest that the adventure be adaptable "to any swampy region in your campaign." With a link to the CWBP, of course, for those DM's starved for a campaign setting.

And I do agree with starting small... maybe 8-12 encounters or so?

[Jaxilon]

LOL. Now, let's face it, 8 to 10 encounters equaling "starting small" is pretty amazing when you think about it. And it just goes to show the amount of raw talent power we have at our disposal.

Thinking of modules I bought back in the day, I doubt they had 8 to 10 encounters unless you count each room of a dungeon as an encounter. You just don't seem to get that many maps ya know?

If we do the caravan thing we might want to do some research on something like the Silk road. It might give us some ideas. It seems to me the story will be the harder part.

[Gamerprinter]

Considering I've been working on adventures intended for publication (I don't have time to get involved in this - I'm just talking here...) I'm working with professionals who write and design fairly quickly. We're creating a full adventure every 25 days, which means 16 encounters. I wrote the intially adventure (all 3) in outline format, so it was loose enough that if development took a turn somewhere it could be accomodated as long as major points in the story got met despite the turn in events. Plus we've tried to include multiple plot hooks so a adventuring group isn't locked in to a linear track of point A to point B. The second adventure in fact (in my trio of adventures of The Curse of the Golden Spear arc) is more sandbox with a region to explore, but one site the party has to be by the end of the adventure. Where they go in between is up to the GM and their group.

Its not easy, though it is fun.

Plus I think its difficult to stay generic - which system is the game intended. What works for D&D/Pathfinder won't work for a magic light system and issues like that. I am also involved (with different publishers) an adventure location that works with OGL 3.5 and Pathfinder - which some would consider to be the same, but its taken a year to make the publication and its not even an entire adventure. Though I think its group dynamics that may have slowed that project down, but trying to accomodate a more generic usable 'adventure' for more than one gaming system has greatly increased the amount of time to develop it.

[tilt]

I believe that Wizards at some point mentioned 13 encounters as the aprox number of encounters to take you to next level - that of course also include non-combat encounters.
I'd be glad to help as much as I'm able with anything that goes in to the guild coffer ... and although my english is not good enough to be an editor, I have worked as a publisher for several years and a graphic artist making print design (and handling print companies) for the last 15-20 years (who's counting)

[Jaxilon]

What seems to make it so hard to build for a generic audience? I remember back when D&D first came out there wasn't a lot there, you had to specify what monsters you wanted to plug in where and create the treasure to be found. That was a lot of hack-n-slash back then but I never felt hassled by having to load up my own monster stats into the adventure.

Maybe because I have used almost exclusively generic modules (when I bothered with any modules at all) I don't see it? Mostly I have built all my own stuff and so maybe I'm leaving out a ton of stuff because it's all in my head anyway? I wouldn't plan to create a cross reference for gaming systems as that would tend to be hard to do. Instead I would expect Game Masters to know how to stat out an elite guard or whatever as opposed to a grunt. Hmmm, see, now I'm starting to think about audience and that might make a difference. Maybe people are less with it than I would guess?

[tilt]

I think a lot of people expects everything to be present in the scenario so they don't have to look up stuff in books on the side. So when you're attacked by a dozen skeletons and a wight their stats are right there on the page for you to use. But I don't know how the rules are concerning publishing that stuff in 4e (if that should be the system used).
But then again, just because its what some might expect doesn't mean that it has to be so.

[ravells]

Count me in, this sounds exciting!