Writing Roleplaying Game Modules

 

After running The Game for over 40 years one would think I would have some advice to give. One should quit thinking that. Every time I put pen to paper, I become flummoxed and lost in…. the story and not the adventure. Why, what, how, when, where, who just confound and then hound me and what should be simple encounter becomes a whole history and tons of exposition. 

  That is not what an adventure module for sell to the public at large should be, methinks. Most gamers have their own world they are using and the exposition becomes pointless. That is not to say it becomes entirely pointless, but some of it does.

In my recent module (A Deadly Tide, M4). I just gutted 8000 words. Does anyone really need to know the backstory, love life, anger management issues, and deliriously violent life he had as child of an assassin? Nope. The NPC would likely die in no time at all and the Castle Keeper could make it up on the fly quickly anyway. There was too much backstory and exposition so I had to start it all over.

Yet, somehow that backstory is important to me as a writer. It anchors the NPCs, monsters, places, and things. It anchors them to the setting though and that setting is Airdhe or Inzae. I just have to de-anchor them in the future I believe. That, or maybe anchor them deeper and just focus on the worlds we have?

Or throw caution to the wind and anchor each to a unique world. HAHA - I just had an idea.