Espynwislyn
2008-01-16, 09:51 PM
Greetings, fellow forumites and various oddities of the playground. I have been a dungeon master for quite some time, and I find that naturally the same old adventures eventually get boring. I've recently been trying to find new and interesting ways to spice up adventures and campaigns by trying to figure out what really goes into creating them. I found the Giant's articles on "Play Theory" quite helpful, as were the "Adventure Builder" articles found here, on the Wotc site http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ab/20060728a. So, my question to you is how do you, personally, go about creating exciting and origonal adventures and campaigns for your players? I mean, how much preparation do you really need and how much is desirable? There's a fine line between good preparation and a railroad plot. Do you have any interesting stories about things that made the game better, worse, or just weirder? Please, share!
As for me, I've generally always just gotten a vague idea about the type of game I want to run and the winged it from there. Eventually, though, even the handy tricks start to become cliche (I mean, the first bits of NPC betrayal and deceit were interesting, but now the players have grown to expect them around every corner). Lately, I've been preparing games modeled after published adventures that I've enjoyed, but have yet to find any conclusive results. What works best? What are your thoughts?
As for me, I've generally always just gotten a vague idea about the type of game I want to run and the winged it from there. Eventually, though, even the handy tricks start to become cliche (I mean, the first bits of NPC betrayal and deceit were interesting, but now the players have grown to expect them around every corner). Lately, I've been preparing games modeled after published adventures that I've enjoyed, but have yet to find any conclusive results. What works best? What are your thoughts?