How do you create your adventures?

[Bigkrieg]

I am curious as to how many of my fellow game masters create and run their adventures. The way I run my games is that I have an overall plot in mind and have perhaps a short list of things I want to happen. For example I might want the characters to run into a certain bad guy but do not have it mapped out of how it will happen and necessarily how the encounter will turn out. But for the most part I impromptu most my adventures and all the content therein.

When I use to game master about 6-7 years ago, I would literally type out every aspect of the adventure. The characters did not really like it because it was too scripted and they felt that they had no freedom. The advantages were that I would spend more time in creating a realistic environment and solutions to obstacles. With my style now, I do not spend as much time on details such as planets or encounters.

Again, my question is: How do you create and run your adventures? What works best for you? Are you like me where all the content of an adventure happens on the fly or do you write out your entire adventures? Or are you somewhere in the middle? I would love to hear the communities' responses.

[Bren]

Typically I write the adventure up according to an MS-Word template that includes Chapter, normal Scene, Cutaway scene, and Encounter styles. Nice thing about using styles is it makes it very easy in a long adventure to automatically create a Table of Contents. But that's just the adventure plan and as Helmuth von Moltke said, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

[garhkal]

[schnarre]

...I like to have a general script or outline when possible, but I don't always adhere to it--Players will be Players, & this often leads things way off into left field.
...That said, my original campaign had a "yearly outline": each month of the year there were one or more big events that figured into the long & short of it, & numerous runs would often figure in around these events--alternatively, the PCs could become involved in one or more of these depending on how the games progressed.
...Additionally, what character each player had figured into the adventures as well. I tried to have stuff that the Techs, Pilots & Blaster-slingers could each involve themselves in, so as to keep to the spirit of the OT. The original WEG modules were often good guidelines in this.
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[Guardian_A]

My stories have always came to me easily. I tend to create a campaign by coming up with a rough story arc. (Example: Group is imprisoned together, group escapes, group wages personal war on the ones that imprisoned them, group exacts its revenge.) Once I have that much, I'll do pretty much the same thing for each session. (Example: Group meets, plan for escape, execute plan.)

So long as I have important NPCs and encounters/maps made up a head of time, the characters own actions will determine when and how those events will come about.

I know that a lot of people cant run a campaign that way, but its always worked well for us.

[Jedi Skyler]

For the less-well organized of us, it can be very helpful to have everything you want to have as concrete incidents written out. That will help you keep tabs on what the group has and hasn't done. That being said, you need to figure that the players will be players, and will take you in directions you didn't want to go or anticipate going. However, as the GM, you have the ability to either bring the group back around to a given plot point, or to change your adventure around so that a plot point that happened early on in your outline, still happens, but later on down the line. It will take some added creativity on the GM's part, but will allow for a more cinematic feel...which is what WEG D6 Star Wars was all about. They said it in all their books. They want players to feel like they're in the movies, and it's the GM's job to make it happen. Flexibility will greatly aid you in this endeavor.

[Fallon Kell]

I generally make a loose outline of events, conversations, and locations I want to cover, and then I let my player into my sandbox. So far, he's not very take charge, so I've guided him through two adventures with NPC babysitters, but I'm starting to reach the point where I'm going to make him figure some stuff out on his own.

Eventually, I hope to get to the point where he's a pirate/trader/mercenary captain, and he chooses what he wants to do, where he wants to go, and how to do it. At that point, he'll have as much input into the adventure as I do. Probably more.
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Or that excessively long "Noooooooooo" was the Whining Side of the Force leaving him. - Dustflier

Complete Starship Construction System

[Jatrell]

I write a basic outline of what the mission is and give a "briefing" so to speak. From then on I let the players guide me. If I have combat in mind, they seem to negatiate their way out of it. If I have a negotiation mission in mind, they tear the place up. So I let them make the call. I find it usually works out better that way. It always seems like the more in depth I get, the farther away from the objective the group gets. So I find this method a little easier. Besides, my group give me literal headaches with RPing to the extreme. Makes any mission I write completely unpredicatable
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Experience is the excuse everyone gives for their mistakes

[Bren]

[dadofett]

[jarazix]

I write a title crawl for each session and start out describing a cinematic.

I make a rough outline of what I want to face, I always make sure to add:

1 game of chance
1 battle
1 chase

I plan the chase, the major NPC, and I fill in the rest on the fly.

I tend to make npc's very simple common people have 2d on everything and 4d in their profession.

Skilled henchmen are 1D better 3d except in skilled areas they are 4d

easy bosses, 4d except main skills which are 6d.

Not super realistic, but it works fast.

I keep thug and stormtrooper stats handy.

On ships I use crew stats as standard...and add 1d to all for expert, another for commander, another for ace, and another for ace commander

I keep it very fast and loose

[Bren]

[JT Swift]

Here my list of WHAT EVERY STAR WARS ADVENTURE NEEDS…
Almost all of this was pulled from WEG books. Sorry about the formatting but it was sorted as an outline with tabs.

*Lots of Action - Fast Pace for most of story

At least one big…
Combat scene
One Combat Scene with Miniatures
Vehicle fight (IF you want the heroes to used vehicles you MUST provide them!)
Chase scene

*Morality Play: Good vs Evil - Doing the moral thing is HARD! Because…
Temptation – DARK SIDE!
Risk of life or resources
Must make sacrifice: The conflict is so epic that all the grey personalities are eventually forced to take one side or another.
Good of the many vs good of the few?
Ends justify the means?
Star wars is about man vs machine. The good guys use machines. The bad guys are USED by machines. The fact that the good guys are better pilots then the bad guys is an inherent symbolic take on how the goods guys control their machines and don’t let them control them. The only badguys who can be good pilots are the ones who ARE machines or are part machines.

*Epic Storytelling! Grand Scale – Everything is BIG, including…
Plots, settings, risk, size of things, consequences, etc…
Exotic locals
The one message you can find in ANY myth is that there is a deeper pattern / meaning to life – there is a deeper force at work in your life. This can be found in any myth because every myth has an author/writer who shapes it. So its always part of every myth.

* Scenes where the heroes experience the environment/culture of the world
(see, hear, touch, smell)
SW universe is sorta like ours – everything is pretty much explored.
Technobabble terms (glowrod, etc…)
Star Wars uses Iconic titles rather then proper names
Trade Federation (Not nemodians)
Emperor (not Palpatine)
Galactic Empire (not Rome)
Republic (not America)
New Republic
Rebel Alliance
Imperial Center (not Coruscant)

Lots of Aliens
See page 258 of RPG Revised for how to make planets interesting.
Basically it came down to describing not only what the players see but what they heard and smelled. Also describing without telling. Don't say they smell the blood, tell them what blood smells like so they can make their own conclusions.

*Tie Things into the Movies: Characters, settings, tech, aliens, organizations, vehicles
Try to tie the adventures into the Galactic Civil War in some ways. So that if they fail on a local level it will advance the Imperial Agenda in at least some small way.

*Surprises - Badguys show up / Emergency / Unexpected encounters
When the stories are getting stale see page 23 of the GM Handbook

*Interesting NPCs and at least one Verbal interaction scene
Lots of Banter
Everyone should have one memorable trait, appearance, movement, or voice

* One big problem to solve

* At least one subplot: Use Sub Plots to build characters while you use the main plot to advance the story.
Male and female heroes are only half a person. They need to be complete before they will be ready for the other challenges in a story. The hero becomes complete by ‘joining’ with his (or her) soul mate.

* The PCs should be HEROIC!
Heroes take separate unlikely actions
Spectacular stunts, plans, and tricks
(The crazier the stunt the more you should FUGE the diffs)
A Hero discovers a truth that surpasses his (of society’s) current limitations and then brings that knowledge to the society so everyone benefits.

*Read everyone’s Objectives and figure out what the Campaign is about. What truth does each individual hero uncover? What truth do they all uncover together?

*They must face the public’s perception of the Alliance (good or bad)

*Heroes are always the underdogs.
Outnumbered & outgunned.
Come from Humble Origins: Heroes almost always emerge from obscure origins. They are underdogs. Sometimes they are nobles who have been “lost” to the common world and must discover their true heritage/superpowers/alieness. Sometimes they were always just commoners and they must earn their greatness.
Emphasize how risky things are
Emphasize how powerful and dangerous the Empire is.
One of the challenges it overcoming depression and fatalism. The INDIVIDUAL can make a difference!

*Heroes need people to save.

*Heroes make great Sacrifices

*Heroes are always remembered fondly by the survivors
(People also talk about heroes of the past)

NOTE: Do I actualy check every item off for every adventure I run? No. But its great at fleshing out a those short quarter page suggestions WEG makes.
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- J.T. Swift

For Everything about the TARDIS check out
http://www.whoniverse.net/tardis/

For all things Gallifreyan check out
http://meshyfish.com/~roo/index.html

[Bren]

Nice list J.T.

[garhkal]

I usually go with

6 scenes/chapters min.
1 purely RP scene
1 poss investigation or other know based scene (even if all that is, is using planetary systems to find out where the heck you are)
1 customs 'scare and search'.. (mostly just to see if the pc's decide to be dumb
1 combat that will happen.
1 poss combat (usually but not always linked with the above customs)
1 tech focused.
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