On People-Centered Adventure Design
with special thanks to Nick L.S. Whelan.
Writing adventure modules exercises two disparate skills: writing and design. When I studied design, the central thesis of our work was as follows: “Designers solve problems.” Adventure writing and design is unique because it encompasses narrative and instructive writing, designing interesting problems and providing access but not solutions for the players. Writing adventures requires supporting the agency of characters to explore and problem solve, and of the referee to comprehend and explicate for others.
Designers solve problems. Adventure writers design problems. Solve the problem of not having problems.1
Adventures are not novels
Writing advice for novels does not translate to adventures. They are a different medium. Preferences based on a narrative form that is linear and climatic by its nature in the West are antithetical to creating situations in which players and the referee have choice and agency.
The answer to me is people-centered writing and design. Adventures are intended to be read and enjoyed, to be a springboard off which the referee can leap and twirl in terror or excitement before sinking into the abyss.
This is a matter of my own personal taste. You do not have to agree.
The ‘Whos’ of an adventure matter
Who built the location and why? Who used it? What happened to them? Who is there now? How does this location suit their purposes or hinder them? What is dangerous to them? Who are they attempting to keep in or out? Who treasured this place? Who loathes it? What signs have they left before crumbling into bone matter? Who do they miss and who do they hate and who do they yearn for? The 'whos’ of an adventure matter.
Consider multiple use cases including reader and referee
Who is reading this adventure? How will they use it? Are they a person who runs an adventure from the page? Do they thumb the spine and run their fingers over the pages, their mind’s eye imagining? Are they seated propping up books and printed out papers, peering over a folded screen, hooting with malicious joy? Who will read and who will run it and who they will play with matters. Keeping in mind both the people in the adventure and the people experiencing the adventure matters.
Consider form and function and the challenges they may introduce
How is choice centered in your design? For the reader or referee, it can be: how does this adventure cater to different methods of use? How does it welcome different approaches while challenging from a content perspective? Ground the challenge in the problems within the adventure, not its use as an instructive document. As Chris McDowall says (paraphrasing) “Why can’t we strive for poetic cookbooks?”
Act with intention in creating challenges and hostility
There is a role for hostility and challenge in design and art. An adventure without danger and stakes fails to be fun or memorable in most cases. Making an instructive document intentionally difficult to experience is either a creative choice grounded in obfuscation or potentially an exercise in pretension. One can be creatively hostile. However, never forget that adventures have a function and that is to be read or played. Remember who will experience the adventure.
If design or writing choices become an active hindrance to an adventure being experienced, that is a moment to pause and consider whether the creative choice is worth the alienation of the referee or reader.
Other things to read
Retired Adventure “The Basis of the Game is Making Decisions”
Idle Cartuary "Eight Intangible Tips for Editing Your TTRPG Manuscript"
Goblin Punch “OSR-Style Challenges"
Zedeck Siew “Who Gets to Be a Person”
Nick L.S. Whelan suggested this joke be added and wrote it. Thank you Nick.↩