Thoughts on Writing Modules
Although in recent years because of time constraints I
have been mainly running premade, colloquially “canned” modules, I have in my
day run tons of homebrew campaigns. So as I’ve begun this endeavor it’s
important to point out that writing a canned adventure for publication is a
much different beast than running a game by the seat of your pants. Laying out plot
points isn’t as easy as it seems and writing in ideas for if the players go off
the rails also is not so easy.
Since I am writing this as a one shot adventure I’ve also
come across the problem of how much content fits into four hours of gaming.
When you’re writing a full on module or a campaign like the APs from Paizo time
isn’t a factor. You can let the plot take shape however it will and if it takes
four session to run it takes four sessions, if it take six it takes six.
In preparation for this I’ve been playing a lot of one
shot adventures to see if there’s a common number of encounters for one shots.
The problem is that there isn’t. I’ve seen between four and six encounters. One
adventure even had seven. The thing is that all the stuff in the middle also
takes up time and there is no telling how long. I played in someone’s kinda
homebrew module that had six combat encounters but the game took only a little
over three hours. I played in a Pathfinder Society game that only had four
total combat encounters but between roleplay and exploration the game ended up
taking six hours instead of four.
What I’m working on should include quite a bit of
investigation—looking for clues to piece things together. When you run a
homebrew it’s easy to just throw the clues in depending on what the characters
do. When you’re writing an adventure you hope other people will buy and run,
you have to lay out clues quite clearly. This person has this bit of
information, and that object is settled here must be presented to the GM who is
now running your vision.
So I have my plot, I picked a number of combat
encounters, and I’ve hopefully written enough social stuff to fill in the other
time. But what about characters? In some cases you make the character to fit
the game, in my case I made the game to fit the characters. Either way you do
it you have to make sure that the characters you have can overcome the
obstacles of the game.
If you have tracks to follow in your game make sure you
have a character who can follow them. If you’re going to have social
encounters, make sure that you include a character with diplomacy. In a module
like the one I’m writing with investigation involved, make sure you have
characters with the appropriate knowledge skills, linguistics, and sense
motive. If at all possible give every character their own niche that isn’t just
combat and a chance to use it.
So those are all just some initial thoughts on the
subject as I’m taking my first foray into creating my own modules. But I’d like
to hear from you. Have you written your own modules to be published or at least
with the intention of other people using them? Have you written modules to fit
into a time constraint such as one shots at cons? Can you describe your method
for laying out your module?
If the CRB has raised the questions you want answers to
or inspired you to take a stab at that module that’s been sitting in the back
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