Treasure Tables is on hiatus as of December 13th, 2007 -- after two years of daily posts, I needed a break. If you're looking for GMing material, I have two recommendations: the hundreds of posts in TT's archives, and my new project, the multi-author GMing blog Gnome Stew. Happy GMing! -- Martin

Squeeze Out Tasty Adventure Icing

Wed. October 11, 2006 

Courtesy of an email from Jeff Rients (thanks, Jeff!) comes this link to a post by Dr. Rotwang: The Adventure Funnel.

It’s a method of scenario creation that revolves around successive steps of brainstorming, each of which refines the previous step. It reminded me not only of a funnel, but also of those funnel-shaped bags you use to squeeze out icing for cakes.

At the end of the adventure funnel process, you’re left with delicious adventure icing, blended from the best elements of your brainstorming. It looks like a sound approach — check it out.

More posts about: Online Resources, Scenarios

Comments

7 Responses to “Squeeze Out Tasty Adventure Icing”

  1. Dr Rotwang! on October 11th, 2006 10:22 am

    …

    …

    …Holy cow. If I’d known starting a blog would be this useful and fun for folks, I woulda started one in 1985 when I travelled forard in time to 2005 and started The Internet.

    Wait! None of that made any sense, did it? Hmn. Third one today.

    Thanks for the props!

  2. Martin on October 11th, 2006 1:43 pm

    You’re welcome! It was an excellent post. :)

  3. Jason on October 12th, 2006 9:14 am

    In fact, I used it yesterday for my session last night. It helped me solidify a few ideas I had, and as a result, we had a great session last night. 2nd level D&D characters, near death experiences, life saving adventures, it was great!

  4. Carolina aka Troy Taylor on October 12th, 2006 9:37 am

    Really good way of articulating the brainstorming process. FWIW, this is much the same process that goes into reporter/editor brainstorming enterprise news stories at the newspaper I work — and I imagine the same is true for any “new idea” in business.

    Thanks for laying it all out for us gamers to use. I don’t think I’ve every really thought in those terms before as a GM, and it’s great to see its application.

  5. MaD IRiShMaN on October 12th, 2006 2:31 pm

    Excellent… I’m going to try that in my new Mutants & Masterminds game next week. :)

  6. tsuyoshikentsu on October 12th, 2006 7:29 pm

    This advice goes doubly for people like me who have a group like my Shadowrun group: one or two veteran players and a whole lotta newbies.

    Give them the spotlight. Guide them, but make sure they have a chance to shine. On the last mission, they let me do the plan: I made sure that while I did the setup work to make sure it went off right, pst a certain pint it was all them. (The covert ops guy got to snipe the hell out of things, and the driver got to drive a car through a restaurant. Oddly enough, and thanks to the dice, it went off perfectly: only two innocents dead, one injured — pretty good for a snatch-n-grab involving firing an automatic weapon in a crowded restaurant.)

    T

  7. Martin on October 17th, 2006 2:19 pm

    Perhaps Dr. Rotwang will turn his post into a free PDF… :D

    I’m just saying. ;)