It does have a big fireworks effect.īut making them part of the same adventure as different stages offers a lot more gameplay and makes your adventure design easier. Alas, while this ritual will work, it results in the creatures’ energy merging to form a portal guardian the party must defeat.Īgain, you can make both World and RPG story conflicts end in the same encounter. But transmuting the demon creatures’ energy via the crystal via ritual will close the gate. But it’ll require bringing some of the demonic swamp creatures back and the crystal embedded in the cave floor.ĭestroying the crystal just keeps the portal open permanently. Perhaps cultists return to their senses once the demon’s gone, and they can advise. The party can close the portal with a counter ritual. So vanquishing the priestess serves as rising action. Once the demon’s gone, however, the party still needs to close the portal. This is an Achilles Heel villain, which you might prefer over a combat-kill resolution. Instead, the characters must whack the priestess by sending her back through the portal. But that cuts your adventure’s potential a bit short. If you structure your adventure so that whacking the priestess closes the portal at the same time, it’s a double victory. The fen grows daily, putting the party’s village in jeopardy. This gets you more gameplay with two encounters instead of one.įor example, the demon priestess opened a portal to a plane in Abyss, causing noxious water and terrible creatures to pour out. Then put the other one into the Rising Action or Falling Action stage. You can make the World Story end encounter or the RPG Story end encounter the Climactic Encounter. This feeds into our desired story structure: Example of simple adventure story structure Fix one, you solve both.īut fertile grounds lies in decoupling those so you get two encounters. But that becomes a bit stale after a couple times, and worse, a bit passive.īy passive, I mean you often need to tie both conflicts to the same root cause and resolution. You could put them both into a magnificent grande finale. It might feel counterintuitive, but make your RPG Story resolution a different encounter than your World Story resolution. Give the fen you just mapped out a lair for the priestess and her cult.Īnd in your encounters, add a way for the party to change the fen. Make your RPG Story Conflict the same as your World Story Conflict.Ĭan the party defeat the demon high priestess and her cult in the fen to save their village and become wealthy local heroes? The tutorial delves deeper into adventure design and how you can use the story structure I share in this article to improve your adventures. Wonderful Roleplaying Tips Patrons, download a mindmap and watch a 15 minute video tutorial I’ve crafted to accompany this article. The trick is how your RPG Story meshes with your World Story: When world plot and adventure plot connect, you get powerful adventure design. “Add depth to your campaigns with world events.” Lots of advice out there to make your worlds dynamic. In this way, the party changes the world. War, bandits, unholy ritual.Īt the end of your adventure, have the players and their characters change the World Feature.Ĭould be they overthrow the tyrannical monarch, discover or restore an astrological house, or drain the fen. Pick some cool aspect of your world you want to show off, playtest, or bring to the table for any reason.Ĭould be a kingdom you’ve just built, or an astrology system you’ve implemented, or a weird fen with terrifying creatures you’ve mapped out. We can rewrite this as a simple Dramatic Question starting with the Conflict and ending with Stakes to guide our adventure designs:Ĭan the party defeat the demon high priestess and her cult to save their village and become wealthy local heroes?įor World Story, we want World Feature meets Conflict meets Change. The Conflict you lay down is the villain doing bad things, for instance. “Let me survive this so I may save my family, please oh great gods.” They put their PCs in harm’s way for the bling.Ĭharacters want to save their village, become head of the thieves’ guild, or whack the villain. “Magic items and gold, please oh great GM.” Those are the pair of Stake bookends of your plot.įor example, in some games players want treasure. Your players want stuff and their characters have a problem. We’ve covered this before in different ways, so I’ll be brief. Think of RPG Story as Player Stakes meet Conflict meets Character Stakes. This tip is inspired by page 25 of the excellent book, Kobold Guide to Plots and Campaigns. Change the Players and Characters, Change the WorldĪ tip for you today about making your world feel dynamic and amping up your stories at the same time.
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