Oct 21, 2019 by [ "James R. Miller" ]
Categories: rpgs Tags: 5e dnd homebrew lets-write-a_module

Let's write a module part 2: Design goals and snowflake-method overview

This blog post will look at our basic design goals of the module in a bit more depth than the introductory post as well as a cursory introduction to the snowflake method.

Design goals

I find it helpful to make a list of my design goals early on as it helps me stay focused on what I’m attempting to do. My design goals for this adventure are as follows:

1. Begins in a town (1,000 or fewer residents) but within a day or two ride of a village (6,000 or fewer residents)
2. All encounters within a radius of a few days of in-game travel from the town
3. Levels 1-5 for 4 5E PCs
4. Experience will be by milestone instead of grinding XP
5. Setting agnostic; the village and town can be plopped down into an existing setting such as the Forgotten Realms or Golarion without too much modification
6. Fun for both GM and players

Once I have my basic design goals, I like to move on to a top-down approach.

Top-down approach

I like to use a top-down approach in adventure planning; specifically, I like to use a method I picked up from Randy Ingermanson called the “Snowflake Method” that he teaches for fiction writing. You can read more about the technique in the fiction context here.

In short, the method (as adapted by me to adventure writing) is this:

1. Write a one-sentence summary
2. Expand that one-sentence to a summary paragraph
3. Create major/minor NPCs with just a few sentences each
4. Expand each sentence of your summary paragraph to its own story paragraph
5. Expand on the NPCs and give them their own motivations, goals, and resources
6. Expand each story paragraph to its own page
7. Turn your “story” into “situations” instead of plots in a story
8. Link these “situations” together

When writing a novel, it’s quite different from writing an adventure in that you don’t have to worry about third-parties (your players) interfering with your story. Thus, during this whole process, you want to keep in mind situations you can throw your PCs in, that can have results that don’t cause the game to end. There’s great blog post here written by Justin Alexander that goes into this concept in more detail; I strongly recommend you to read that post (and the rest of his wonderful blog).

Prepping adventures like this will feel fresher to both you and your players, in that the cooperative story telling aspect of the game is allowed to shine. We’ve all been in the game where the GM uses a heavy hand to railroad the players into a predetermined result. Instead, your villains will have goals, motivations, and resources that they will work towards, letting you “play” the bad guys more as opposed to regurgitating a predetermined result from a store-bought adventure. If the PCs do something unexpected, you won’t be discouraged; rather, you’ll be ready to adapt, improvise, and improve your adventure. This will lead to the world feeling more alive for both you and the players, which leads to the most important goal of all: everyone having fun at the gaming table!

Next time we’ll talk about the one-sentence summary.