design referee

Adventure Lab

OVERVIEW

An ADVENTURE is a series of Scenes, strung together to determine how a story is told. How those scenes are connected is determined by two primary factors:

  1. The Referee’s simulation of the game world and the forces present in the Adventure, and
  2. The Players’ reaction and adaptation to those forces.

The components of Adventure which this section is concerned with are presented in the following order:

  • BEATS: The smallest element of an adventure: usually a single event, and around a third of a Scene.

  • SCENES: Consist of three (or more) Beats, and drive a simple narrative from beginning to end. Often you can think of an encounter, from beginning to end, as a Scene: the introduction of an obstacle to the players, the gameplay that surrounds them overcoming that obstacle, and the result of their attempt.

  • ACTS: Consist of three to five Scenes each, and tell a single, self-contained story, which generally go through a standard phase of setup (beginning), conflict (middle), and resolution (ending).

  • ARCS: Consist of three to five Acts, and provide a single satisfying long-term story across a campaign. Acts are often arranged in something like the following structure:

    • ACT 1: SETUP (Beginning, Inciting Incident, Second Thoughts, and Plot Point 1)
    • ACT 2: CONFRONTATION (Obstacles, Subplots, First Culmination, Disaster)
    • ACT 3: RESOLUTION (Descending Action, Confrontation, Climax, and Wrap-Up)

  • CAMPAIGN: Consist of one primary and two or more secondary Arcs. This combination will usually satisfy the most lore-hungry party of adventurers, with lots of subquests and tangents to chase down.

What follows are guidelines and rules for building and using Items, as well as a few stock lists of Items you can use in your Sessions when you’re first starting up.

DETAILS

ACTS

Acts consist of multiple Scenes - depending on your goal as an adventure designer, there can be as many or as few as you like, but it’s often simplest to keep an Act to three Scenes in order to very easily organize each chapter to have a discreet beginning, middle, and ending point.

ARCS