I was thinking what makes a good adventure good; I mean memorable good? I know one of the coolest parts about RPGs is combat. But there is more to a RPG; there has to be, otherwise it is a war game. I was just thinking there are three basic parts to a RPG:
Research. Farmer Jones is missing chickens; find out who’s taking them.
Exploration. Chicken feathers lead up to the old abandoned mine; enter and search the mine possibly triggering or avoiding dangerous obsticles along the way.
Return. After finding and potentially beating up some chicken eating beast deep in the belly of the mine you return and give what chickens still live back to farmer Jones; he thanks you and gives you a pig as reward.
There you have it an adventure!
But wait; this is not what makes RPGs cool though. What really makes RPG adventures cool are the variables involved basically: Time Distance and Shielding. Time, we as GMs need to set a time schedule to complete the chicken quest. Say after three days the monster has eaten all the chickens and wanders off. Distance, now how far do we travel to get to the farmers house or how far is it to the mines, because you know the players are going to ask. Shielding are we going to let the party directly see the monster from the get go? Like if they decide to stake out the hen house one night. Or do we only hint at its existence along the trail and deep into the mine?
Once we figured this all out, do we have and adventure? Nope. I think what puts the topping on the cakes is: We need to set some rules of randomness whether it is a coin toss; heads you find the monsters foot prints, tails you don’t, or a dice roll; on a 5 or higher on a die 6, you find the trail of the chicken fiend. If everyone at the table can agree on some rules and what tool to use, for example, dice and charts which will add some unpredictability, then you are very close to having all that you need.
Now you have your own adventure and your own rules. As long as you have a group of people to game with then you are set. We call this campfire rules because that is what we do when we go camping to pass the time.
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About shent_lodge
[...] OK so I made a quick summary of an adventure. Basically you tell the PCs Farmer Jones is having trouble with his chickens, they go off to investigate and save the day. But who is this troubled farmer? Almost by default the players will research all about the chickens, the chicken house and the beast eating his chickens. [...]