Old-school D&D

Back in the early days of D&D the game was based around raiding dungeons and killing monsters. The idea of a continuous, unfolding narrative came later. The Dungeon Master was exactly that - master of the dungeons. The adventurers weren't too worried about their motivation - they were seeking XP, magic items and gold. Gaming has moved on from this to longer campaigns, world building and time spent travelling around the land to provide context around the dungeons and this, by and large, is a good thing as it makes for a more rich gaming experience and a feeling of belonging in the fantasy world. However, I look at my own writing and think that there are definitely places where I use ongoing narrative as an excuse to be a bit lazy. Why bother thinking about how long things are going to take? If the session runs out, the excess can be moved to the following week. Small, detailed environments can give way for broad-brush world building with a default expectation for any given environment. It has been a long, long time since I wrote adventures with the discipline of "this must last a single session" and while the above isn't entirely a bad thing I do feel I've let certain skills slide over the years.

Changes in circumstances in the tedious medium of Real Life means that a weekly RPG is increasingly difficult and even playing regularly with a consistent group is proving awkward. My previous game (two years in length, enjoyed by all) eventually came to an end because of these pressures and that group is, sadly, going to fragment. However everyone wants to keep playing so the question is, what can we do instead?

Organisation problems combined with a desire to try writing in a different way bring me to my one-shot project. Write a load of single-session adventures for low level characters. Fill them with detail and texture to keep them interesting, put together interesting challenges for low level characters, enjoy being able to run games without worrying about an overarching plot and having to have all players available. Over time I might stick these games together into a loose plot, but the adventures need to remain able to be run independently.

A key part of this is to make the writing of these sessions relatively simple. It takes weeks to write a full campaign world - I'm aiming to be able to turn out a good single-session adventure in an afternoon. For me, that will mean finding some tools to help laying out dungeon maps and design balanced encounters. It will also mean some playtesting before I get anything right. For now, here is what I'm using as my starting guidelines.

Have a strong dungeon theme

I want these adventures to feel like part of a wider, untold story, not a series of violent encounters with no purpose.

4 or 5 proper encounters

This should fill a 4 hour gaming session. They shouldn't all be combat!

Start at or near the dungeon mouth

For these games I'm just going to provide the party motivation. The players can fill in why their characters are part of the mission.

Two pages of notes

This is much more vague, but to avoid over-writing I am aiming to able to pull together everything I need in two pages of my notebook.

Tools of the trade

The cards you see are Dungeon Cards, available from Dice Shop. They are great for randomly generating dungeons very quickly. I deal a handful of cards and use them to stimulate ideas for a mini-setting and theme. Then I rearrange the cards until I get something around the right sort of size and turn it into a proper map which I can then fill with encounters.

The coffee is important.

Et voila:



I'm going to write a few of these and see how they play. If I'm feeling brave, I will also write them up and ask other people to try running them.

Map Quest 1

I find maps an important part of writing. I need to understand the space in which the story is taking place as the locale is an important part of the decision-making process for the characters, shaping their plans and stopping them accidentally doing something truly stupid.

A map is useful to the players for the same reason and can lead the story in new and interesting directions as geography may suggest a new solution to a problem. Imagine trying to defend a village - the enemy is marching from the east. We could defend the walls, however studying the map shows there are only so many routes one can march a body of troops. If they are not carrying all their supplies, instead living from the land a little that removes more options. If we collapse trees in these areas, we'll be pretty sure they will march through this pass in which there is another village which owes us a favour. How about we head there, take over the inn and fill the soldiers' ale with something poisonous? This kind of thinking can only happen if the players have enough information about the world to plan ahead but it can lead to the story taking a life of its own; one of the most interesting and rewarding parts of being a GM.

I'm not alone in my love of maps. Tolkien was a fan of letting a map provide a framework to his story as were C.S. Lewis and many others. Fortunately, I also enjoy drawing them. I've always sketched in pen or pencil and I find the act of drawing an area a good way to think about what might happen within it. Over the last few years I have been looking for a comfortable way to draw maps electronically so I can save, undo and print multiple copies easily. It is the reason I originally bought an iPad, and why recently I've been interested in the Pencil by FiftyThree. The Pencil is a lovely piece of kit, with a great feel and the closest I've come so far to using a pen and a sketchbook. I'm going to be using it to draw the maps I need for my Legend of the Five Rings game and I'm hoping that as I learn the tool I will get some good results.

In the meantime, behold the first map.



If you know your Rokugan geography it's in that big empty area in the north west Crane lands, east of Zakyo Toshi. The details are particular to my own campaign world although the scale matches at least some of the Rokugan maps I've seen.

I've used the original version of this map to calculate travel times, which has been important for helping the party arrive at Winter Court before the snow made travel impossible, and has helped me map out plausible troop and supply movements so enemies and allies do not suddenly have access to unexplained resources. Many of these things will probably not be noticed, but they help make the world seem credible and solid and they also help me keep track of who is doing what and why, which is important when it comes to improvisation.