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

Tips for Creating Scenarios and Story Arcs

Wed. March 7, 2007 

Roleplaying Tips has posted a two-part series entitled “Hipbone’s Connected to the Thighbone” that offers advice on scenario and story arc creation.

Part one is all about building adventures. It includes some great advice about loosely assigning roles to the PCs: stimulator, foil, detective and driver. (Even if you skim the article, read this section — it’s excellent.)

Part two opens with advice on tying the various elements of your adventure into a unified whole, and then moves into story arcs, finishing with a brief note about extending this technique to campaign creation.

Adventure creation is an area where I can just never get enough help — it’s something I’ve always struggled with as a GM. Even if this is one of your strengths, though, you might find some surprises in these two articles.

More posts about: Campaigns, Scenarios

Comments

4 Responses to “Tips for Creating Scenarios and Story Arcs”

  1. John Arcadian on March 7th, 2007 6:09 am

    So that is really a great article and way to look at it. Plus the tip a few articles back about using pictures of minis for tokens. Rock on.

  2. VV_GM on March 7th, 2007 8:56 am

    I subscribe to Roleplaying Tips, and that is one of the best articles they’ve had in my opinion. I agree with Martin that adventure writing is one of the harder tasks a GM has. Anything that makes it easier for me is something that I am grateful for.

  3. Mike Bourke on March 10th, 2007 9:25 am

    Thanks for the compliments, guys; glad you found the articles useful.

  4. Martin on March 23rd, 2007 7:22 am

    Thanks for dropping in, Mike! If you ever want to write a guest post about adventures for TT, consider this an open invitation (and just drop me a line if you’re interested).