There are several reasons why I find it fulfilling to write my own campaign adventure arcs, but the one that is probably the most important is that it makes it easier to avoid the railroad. What is the railroad? That is the act of forcing your players into a certain course of action and not letting them deviate.
My biggest complaint about modules, erm, excuse me, adventures, pardon me for my use of antiquated old-school terminology :) is that they do little more than provide railroad tracks upon which the DM is supposed to drive the train. These are basic, linear, room-fight-door-fight-door-trap-door-fight adventures with little to no role-playing involved; your basic hack-n-slash. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t absolutely hate these things, after all, this sort of adventure does have it’s place. Off the top of my head I can think of two major times when a pre-made adventure is appropriate:
1) When the players are new to the system (or when the system is a new iteration with lots of rule changes) it is good to run a one-off adventure module so that you can all (players and DM) spend most of your time learning the mechanics and how they work in action. This allows the DM to walk through some of the most typical issues that you may run across in game that you didn’t think of while learning the rules yourself, and it also allows for ample house-rule making before your true campaign arc begins.
2) When only a few of your group can get together and play it may be a good time to run a one-off with different characters running through a pre-made adventure. It can be extremely fun while also being low risk for your players. Since they are using alternate characters rather than their regular campaign ones, they may feel more free to do crazy things or play a class they may not normally play, and if they die, well, it’s not their main character, so no risk there. It also allows you to spend your primary adventure development time on your own campaign since you can run the new DnD 4e adventures pretty much out of the package with very little prep time.
Anyway, back to the discussion at hand. It is difficult enough to design a compelling campaign setting and adventure arc… how do you keep your DM mojo, let the players do what they want, and still move through the big-picture story arc without too many side excursions? And how do you do this without being extremely frustrated that all of your weekly prep time got usurped by the crazy tiefling that insists on going West when the party is clearly supposed to be going North?
I like the idea that the world around the players is alive. When the PCs are off on a quest, things still happen in the towns they have been through and if they go back to that place time has passed and things have happened. This makes the world more real to them and it also means that a deadline is a real deadline. If Gerlag the Orc Chieftan has decided to sack the town unless the players bring him the Golden Elk Statue by the end of the week, then if the players don’t get the statue delievered because they chose to follow some other lead, then the town gets sacked. When they return the buildings are burning and the inhabitants are mostly dead. This may or may not have a greater effect on the main storyline, but the players usually don’t know if it will or not. This is a role-playing game and the decisions the group makes should be important. The players that have played with me for a while all know that there are consequences for the world around them if they don’t do important things in a timely manner. Getting off on too many side quests could have serious effects that aren’t seen until later on. I don’t do this to screw them over, but it actually generates story plot arcs more times than not.
The above paragraph makes it seem like I railroad them. Now, I have to be honest, sometimes I do railroad them – in fact, most of the time I railroad them. But here is the key: they don’t realize that I am railroading them! Since I let them do what they want, they think they have control of the game and actually they are keeping themselves on the tracks. How do I do this? Easy… I make a flexible adventure arc flow-chart:
1) Make a Basic Outline: I write a basic outline of how things will go if there was only a linear path to take in this particular story arc. I often make a little list that says, “first they talk to NPC 1 in Town 1, then they have to seek out NPC 2 in Town 2, then they have to go to place 3 and have encounters 1 & 2, then bring back Artifact 1 to get Reward 1 from NPC 1.”
2) Determine Decision Points: Now I take the information that is gathered or the duties performed in each step and I set them as decision points. For example, in the above description, the players were set to talk to NPC 1. Well, even if they ask the perfect questions regarding the main story, the NPC will usually tell them extra bits of information, true or false (the PCs don’t know), and at the same time might not tell them everything they need to know about the main arc. What parts seem important to the players depends mostly upon their personalities. So the decision point looks something like this: NPC 1 tells party information a, b, and c. If they don’t believe b or c, or they distrust NPC 1, they might try and find another informant in town (this can now be a good time to exercise some skill uses). Now, at this point I have to name a new NPC informant and come up with what she may tell the party and whether it is true or not. This is not difficult, we are talking two sentences maximum – but it makes you seem really prepared if they don’t believe NPC 1. If they do believe NPC 1 and don’t seek out the new informant, you haven’t lost anything since this person may come in at a later time.
How is this different than railroading? Well, if the DM wants to railroad this situation, or just simply wasn’t prepared for the PCs not believing NPC1, the DM would just say “you search, but cannot find any new informant in the area.” In other words, the players have no choice but to do what NPC 1 told them. Boring… and the players know that you need them to do what NPC 1 said, so they may get resigned to their character’s fate that is, at this point, decreed by the DM. Just the little bit of prep at that single decision point will change the way the players think about the world their characters are in – they will see that they have choices and their choices affect the outcome of the story. They will also think that their DM knows how to think on his/her feet.
3) Determine Consequences: I add a short sentence about the consequences of the decision under the decision point part of the flow-chart. This could be as simple as NPC 1 hates the PCs for life and will attack on site, or it could be an elaborate chain-reaction of events that affects the major story arc in a big way – this is completely dependent upon the individual situation, but if there are long-term effects, I spell them out on the adventure arc flow-chart.
For example, what about something more major than just looking for another informant? Like what if the players needed to take Artifact 1 back to NPC 1 to gain her trust and therefore garner her services later at a critical point, but they decide that Artifact 1 could be useful or worth selling and therefore don’t take it back to NPC 1? What do you do? Well, that would be another decision point:
a) maybe NPC 1 needed the artifact to pay off her ample gambling debt or she is going have to flee her hometown since the mafia or assassin’s guild will be after her for the bounty that the booky put on her head. Due to her forced exit, she is very resentful of the party and vows to get revenge on them. Later in the adventure, when she was supposed to help them, she can now be a hindrance. This could be a major turning point for the main campaign arc.
b) or maybe when the party returns to the town too late, they hear about how the mafia is after her and they decide to go and find her for the bounty reward, but decide to help her in the end, or may really take her back and retrieve the bounty. This could affect the party’s overall reputation in the area for the better or worse.
c) or maybe they are coming back to town and catch her fleeing because they are a little late and the deadline has expired for her to pay the booky and then they agree to be her envoy and try to negotiate with the booky (good skill challenge), who now demands double the money she owes. Sounds like they might go on a new quest to help her?
You need to decide, ahead of time, what the consequences will be for the party if they choose that route. Feel free to make the consequences grave, it will be more fun for the PCs anyway. Note that by ‘grave’ I don’t mean that you say “well, since you didn’t give Artifact 1 back to NPC 1 there is no way to finish your main quest, so the adventure is over.” I don’t mean grave for the game, I mean grave for the party
4) Alternate Encounters: If the gaming session that you planned in the main arc had the players fighting two major and one minor combat encounter, then you need to have alternative encounters set up in the side arc to replace those (so that you stay on your experience point time-line properly). What I mean is that most DMs have an idea of how often the PCs should be leveling and you should too, so if your players go off on a large side tangent and you don’t have encounters set up that are going to get them comparable experience to what they would have had if they followed the main arc, then they will be behind. This is mostly a preference thing, but I like to have at least one relatively large battle for each 4 hour session that I DM.
What I do is add an encounter that makes sense to the flow of the activity at each decision point. I list this encounter out just like I do for the main story arc and I note the pages where the monsters can be found (if I’m pulling them out of the monster manual) so that I can get to those pages easily (just like I do for my regular encounters). One of the best things about 4e is that encounters are so much easier to make that I don’t have to spend hours generating encounters that my players never stumble upon. The encounter takes me only few minutes to create and I have it ready without too much hassle, and if they don’t actually go that way and experience that encounter, I’m not resentful of the loads of time I spent generating the encounter because I didn’t spend loads of time.
Remember, all of this may be basically separate from the main story arc – these are side activities – but they may, depending upon who the PCs meet and how they act, end up becoming major joints in the flow of the bigger adventure. All it takes is a small flow chart with decision points spelled out and consequences determined.
The last thing that I do to head-off a railroad session is to keep a few of lists with me at all times:
1) A list of names. This is a ready supply of names at my fingertips so that, if my players happen to ask about something or someone I wasn’t prepared to answer about, I can seem prepared by giving them a name.
2) A list of professions. This could be on the same list as the names, and it serves much the same purpose.
3) A list of buildings. This is a list of taverns, inns, blacksmith shoppes, churches (the god’s to which they pay tribute), magic shoppes, equipment purveyors, etc. If a PC wants to take a detour to find an equipment shop and buy some new gauntlets when I didn’t expect, I can easily generate a store-name and proprietor on the spot. Once again, this all goes to making it look like your prepared and totally expecting the side-track.
4) A list of random events or rumours that the players may hear in any given session. This is to keep the world real and changing and interesting. It also assures that the PCs will have to make choices about where they go and which adventure they choose to complete. These are usually one or two sentences that I thought of at usually completely inappropriate times of the day and wrote down for future reference. You never know when a single sentence idea is going to spawn a few sessions.
A Final Note: The most important thing to keep in mind is that you must be flexible. Flexibility is the thing that will keep them interested in your main story arc while at the same time letting them do what they want. You have to be prepared to let them explore side quests and not be frustrated. All it takes is a bit of preparation and the frustration is gone, which means everyone has fun – and that’s the whole point.
~DM Samuel