Location-based adventures have a lot going for them. They’re naturally quite atomic in scale, in that each “room” exists mostly on its own, and the GM running the game can zero in on the location. A good adventure will have what the GM needs at hand easily enough to run the room. Some elements are less atomic, like random encounters and wandering monsters, but those are the exception. For the most part, a location-based adventure is just a bit less ‘dynamic’ than something else.
I’m not here to talk about location-based adventures. If you’re interested in those, I highly recommend the Designing Dungeons course by Josh McCroo and Warren D. I’ve just finished editing The Castle Automatic for Josh, and this guy knows his stuff. And don’t let “dungeon” in the title fool you either, there’s a lot of wisdom here for adventure design in all aspects.
I’ve been thinking about frameworks for adventure design that are a bit less rooted in location specifics and more in events, characters, factions, and interplay between them. Location-based adventures can have all these as well, but I’m looking to build a framework that stands on its own.
These adventures should be small and atomic as possible, taking lessons learned from location-based design. The GM needs to be able to understand the situation in full and run the adventure from that, holding important NPCs, events, and factions in their head to properly react to how the players act.
Step 1: Categorize All Inputs of the Adventure
To start, let’s work out what required elements we need for an adventure like this.
Elemental forces desire and protect something of value. A force can be almost anything. A person, a faction, a monster, a demi-god, etc. Forces should value action and forward momentum when possible.
Rarities are things of value that elements either want or protect. Anything worth value (to someone or something) is a rarity.
Locations are unique places with history and a charged atmosphere. For this framework, we’re only looking at locations as places that are occupied by elements and rarities. In an ancient temple dungeon crawl, a “location” might be the individual rooms, but in our case, the temple encompasses everything.
Levers are anything that can shift the balance of power, typically with elements and rarities but also sometimes with locations.
Step 2: Place Elements and Oppose Them
Take your elements and place them in your world somewhere. All elements either protect or desire a rarity. Some do both.
For each element that desires a rarity, it is opposed by an equally strong element that protects it. In the diagram below, the red dot indicates the conflict between two elements.
This creates a status quo. One element wants the thing another has. Since they are evenly matched, there is no progress being made on either side: the taker cannot take, the protector can only just barely protect.
Step 3: Place all Rarities in a Charged Location
Almost all rarities typically need to be placed somewhere physical in the world. This is where locations come in. When I say locations, I’m not talking about “room 105” in a widely used ruin, I’m talking about the entire ruin itself.
Each place should be unique with a focus on being memorable.
Step 4: Place Levers in the Adventure
A lever can be anything that can tip the balance of power for a location, element, or rarity. Levers are the things the PCs typically interact with: anything that gives them leverage of the situation and gives them some leg up on gaining control of the situation.
Levers typically exist outside of the element/rarity structure until they become involved.
Potential Energy
The adventure exists in a state of high potential energy. The elements cannot grasp the rarities because of counter-elements. The levers won’t get involved without a push. This perfect ecosystem of tenuous stability means that the adventurers getting involved allows them to provide the catalyst of change.
Once engaged with, the adventure/situation must begin hurtling towards its conclusion. Whichever way the scales were tipped indicates the ending.
The adventurers can get fully involved, pushing the elements towards a specific ending. This is the typical role of an adventurer and the meat of play. They must make informed decisions and take action to bring to fruition their desired outcome.
No situation comes out unchanged after the adventurers get involved.
What Does This All Mean?
Let’s put together an example.
House Raven has mastered skullomancy, a way to harness skulls from dead sorcerers for their own magical needs. They control the ossuary in the city and hire their services out to the highest bidder as spellcasters. They know that the Isle of the Dead contains ancient grimoires and eldritch secrets. They want those secrets, but the Unforgiving Sea is always hungry to claim any who sail out on her dark waters.
Theme: Black, billowing cloaks. Haunted eyes and faces painted with bone-white makeup. Death.
House Wolf was disgraced decades ago, acting with shameful cowardice when they were needed most. Now, they wish to climb back up the ranks to regain the power they lost decades ago. Jealous of House Raven, they see the power granted from the spell-skulls, and want that for themselves.
Theme: Old warriors with old scars. Hungry for power. Stalking, loping gait.
The Unforgiving Sea laps at the shores of the settlement, with water as dark as the night and a great deal more dangerous. Beyond the sea, or perhaps in the center of it, is the Isle of the Dead, a once prestigious sorcerer fortress, now long forgotten and full of secrets.
Theme: Waves of black water eating the light. Siren calls from beasts unseen. Ghostly lights that steer vessels off-course.
The Jarl of the settlement is more than happy with the status quo. If the powerful houses fight each other and the sea, he can live comfortably. He’ll bring his might and his housecarls to bear if he needs to.
Theme: An old and tired boar of a man. Insatiable appetite for pleasure. Loyal housecarls suspicious of outsiders.
The Trader’s Alliance has made a fortune by sailing up and down the coast of the Unforgiving Sea, but even they don’t venture far out into the depths. Their ships are sturdy and packed with supplies and warriors, ready to make trades and defend their spoils. The nature of the job attracts the foolhardy, and for the right price there might be a captain brash enough to sail to the Isle of Dread.
Theme: Routines and timetables. Salt-crusted long coats to keep warm. A wild glint in the eyes.
The Wise Woman has her own secrets of sorcery. She could care less about House Raven crushing skulls under fist to extract a pauper’s taste of magical power, but she’ll do whatever she needs to do to keep an expedition from reaching the Isle of the Dead—or make sure that she’s along for the ride herself.
Theme: An otherworldly cackle. More questions than answers. Hard to impress, easy to disappoint.
Conclusion
There’s still work to do, but you have a framework for a small settlement on the coast. You’ll need probably two or three NPCs for House Raven, House Wolf, and the Trader’s Alliance. Someone in power and someone at the bottom is always a helpful direction for prep. You’ll need to handle the Jarl and the Wise Woman, giving them wants, needs, and hates.
Infused skulls can be handled as scrolls or wands for whatever game system you’re using, and the “ancient secrets” could vary from an artifact of power or just manuscripts of sorcery that would prove useful to anyone in the business of dark magic.
The Isle of the Dead itself might need a more traditional location-based site (or hex map) for exploration, but not necessarily. The more work you put into fleshing out a location, the more you should consider how many elements desire the rarity within. You want your prep to be worth it, so if there’s a good chance that the adventurers never go there, don’t sweat it too much.
This is hardly a revolutionary way to design adventures, but I do think it can be helpful to pull out the core elements of what makes an adventure enjoyable and try to reverse engineer them. Looking at adventures this way can also help you shore weak spots, both in published adventures and your own.
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