presents TM The Guide to Game Design Volume I: Adventures by Wolfgang Baur with Keith Baker, Ed Greenwood, and Nicolas Logue The KOBOLD Guide to Game Design Volume I: Adventures A Compilation of Essays from OPEN DESIGN By Wolfgang Baur with Keith Baker, Ed Greenwood, and Nicolas Logue Acknowledgments It’s impossible to thank everyone when several hundred patrons have contributed their thoughts over two years of blogging, posting, brainstorming, and discussion, but one tries. When you have a mind that works better with fi ctional names than real ones, it is more of a challenge still. First of all, let me thank all the patrons who have supported Open Design, from Andrew Shiel, the very fi rst patron of the very fi rst project, to the most recent arrival to the community. Everyone who commissions a project makes a contribution. It may be a matter of answering the polls and funding the writing, art, maps, and publication of this work; that’s important for every project. In fact, without it, Open Design wouldn’t exist, and wouldn’t attract the rich commentary and the talented contributors it does. Beyond that crucial support, there are a few people who consistently keep things positive and illuminate. Others have provided support in steering discussions, in providing alternate solutions, careful proofreading, or the little known art of monster wrangling. Patrons have stepped forward for a hundred small pushes in the right direction. In that vein, and for their generous insight, criticism, and imagination, I’d like to thank Keith Baker, Randy Dorman, Clay Fleischer, Gary Francisco, Jeff Grubb, Richard Green, Ed Greenwood, Mark Gedak, Lucas Haley, Benjamin Hayward, Ed Healy, Lutz Hofmann, Christian Johnson, Ken Marable, Ari Marmell, Ben McFarland, Robert Moore, Daniel Perez, Chris Pramas, Kevin Reynolds, Jaye Sonia, Jim Stenberg, Joshua Stevens, Brian Summers, Keith Unger, and Stephen Wark. Open Design would be a poorer community without you. Thanks also to Aaron Acevedo, Johnathan Bingham, Darren Calvert, Lucas Haley, and Jeff McFarland for their art, and Andreas Reimer and Lucas Haley for their cartography. I’d also like to thank my editor, Bill Collins, for his tireless efforts to make this compilation a reality. Any remaining errors are, naturally, my own. ii — Volume 1: Adventures Foreword I expected that Open Design would be a learning experience. I didn’t expect that I would be the one doing so much of the learning. I was not a novice in adventure design two years ago, but I had never been asked to explain myself before. I knew that I preferred story-driven adventures to purely combat-driven ones, and that I liked giving Dungeon Masters sandboxes rather than railroads. I have a deep and abiding faith in the ability of good DMs to take a solid outline and bring it to life for their players. My job, I thought, was to inspire DMs with adventures they wanted to run, NPCs they enjoyed roleplaying, and combats that would be amusing or terrifying. Great. Fine. Wonderful. Now explain how to do that. That’s the part that I promised, but wasn’t at fi rst sure that I could deliver. The early days of Open Design were panic-stricken behind the scenes. What if the commission funds couldn’t be raised? What if everyone just wanted to argue? How would I keep everyone entertained until the project either launched or (shudder) belly- fl opped in a big and public way? (None of this came to pass by the way.) I wrote a couple of essays about adventure design to tide people over; private posts and musings that I didn’t think of as part of the project. These essays proved to be immensely popular (with the very small audience of the time), and were later published by Wizards of the Coast as their Adventure Builder series. Others followed, some of them becoming Dungeoncraft entries in Dungeon magazine. They started people talking. Born out of desperation, the design essays became a delight, a way to get out of the small, tactical discussions to take on larger issues of DMing and design, to look at the panorama rather than the cameo or the miniature. Since the end of Dungeon, the essays jumped to Kobold Quarterly, with entries in the Dungeon Design series by Keith Baker and Ed Greenwood. People keep asking for more. I think we might be onto something here. They helped me start a conversation about the issues all designers face. I hope these discussions make you think about what you love best in gaming. I like to think that they may strengthen your designs. Even if you disagree, the conversation about why is the fi rst step to a deeper awareness of what drives your design, whether it is a love of action, setting, character, or plot. Everyone’s approach may be different. But these essays are the children of almost 20 years of design. They’re all grown up, and ready to go out into the world. Wolfgang Baur February 11, 2008 Th e Kobold Guide to Game Design — iii Open Design Projects to Date Originally conceived for the Open Design patrons, the essays in this volume also showcase these ongoing projects. For the new reader, the projects to date are: • Steam and Brass, a clockwork adventure scaled for 6th, 8th, or 12th level characters and set in the Free City of Zobeck. The most exclusive and fi rst Open Design creation. • Castle Shadowcrag, an adventure for characters of levels 10 to 11 that takes place in a shadow-haunted castle near Zobeck. • Empire of the Ghouls, a sourcebook and adventure full of hungry undead beneath the surface of the world. This mini-campaign covers levels 9 to 12. • Six Arabian Nights, an anthology of short tales for levels 5 through 10, taking place in and around Siwal, City of Gardens. • Forthcoming: Blood of the Gorgon, a murder-mystery and intrigue adventure in Zobeck, for levels 8 to 10. Written by Nicolas Logue, and developed by Wolfgang Baur. Copyright 2008 Open Design LLC. All rights reserved. Most product names are trademarks owned by the companies that publish those products. Use of the name of any product without mention of trademark status should not be construed as a challenge to such status. Open Design, Free City of Zobeck, Kobold Quarterly, and the KQ logo are trademarks of Open Design LLC. iv — Volume 1: Adventures Contents 1. Th e Th ree Audiences 1 7. Using and Abusing 2. Shorter, Faster, Harder, Less 3 Misdirection 31 Small Beats Big 3 Players Making Bad Choices 31 Small Writers Starve, Compact Misdirection in Read-Alouds 32 Writers Thrive 4 Fey as a Misdirection-Based The Art of the Pitch 4 Subtype 32 Long But Short 5 Misdirection and Fairness 33 Six Secrets of Text Compression 5 Treasure Misdirection and What You Gain 7 Appraise 33 3. Why Writers Get Paid 8 Conclusion 34 4. Fantasy Realism 12 8. Monster Hordes: Epic Heroism vs. Smooth Skirmishing 35 Serious Fantasy 12 Respect for Players and Page 49 Says “No Way” 35 Setting 13 How to Handle Hordes 36 Coherent and Plausible 14 How NOT to Handle Hordes 38 5. Worldbuilding 16 Conclusion 39 9. Stagecraft: Point 1: Gaming Ain’t Fiction 16 Th e Play is the Th ing 41 Point 2: Genres, Action, and Big Ideas 17 Structure of the Story 42 Point 3: Hide Your Work. Conclusion 45 Bury It Deep 18 10. On the Street Where Heroes Point 4: Logic of the Setting 19 Live: Bringing Towns to Life Point 5: Empire of the Ghouls 20 in a Fantasy Campaign 46 At Last! Pond-Oriented The Basics 46 Worldbuilding 21 The Locals 47 Conclusion 23 Answering the Questions 48 6. Pacing 24 The Trick of Subplots 48 Pacing 24 A Cornerstone Character 48 Defi nition 24 The Law and the Lively 49 Combat and Pacing 24 My PCs Fought the Law 50 Events and Pacing 26 Getting It Right 50 The Secret of Castle Shadowcrag’s 11. City Adventures 52 Pacing Structure 27 City Types and Party Types 52 Cliffhangers as a Resting Place 28 Contained Violence 53 Increasing Speed by Raising City Law and Order 55 Stakes 28 Use the Innocent 55 Setting Up the Finale 29 City Characters 56 Conclusion 30 XP for City Adventures 57 Conclusion 57 Th e Kobold Guide to Game Design — v 12. What Makes a Night Arabian? 58 It’s Not Mechanical 58 Clear Heroes and Villains 58 Nested Stories 60 Conclusion 60 13. Hardboiled Adventures: Make Your Noir Campaigns Work 61 Everyone Has A Past 62 Big Risks, Trivial Rewards 63 The Ugly World 64 The Role of Alignment 65 Hit the Books 66 14. Th e Underdark 67 The Mythic Underdark 67 Underdark as Wilderness 68 Heroes as Permanent Outsiders 69 Conclusion 70 15. Fire and Sword: Inspiration and Discipline in Design 71 Two Kinds of Fire 71 Working With Fire 72 When the Fire Goes Out 72 The Sword 73 The Three-Bladed Sword 73 Conclusion 75 vi — Volume 1: Adventures 1 Th e Th ree Audiences September 20, 2007 As an adventure writer, you always have three audiences. You need to please all three to be successful. They all want “great adventures,” but that phrase means different things to different audiences. The fi rst is the editor; if your pitch or query is too dull, too mechanical, or too long, you’ll never get it approved. The other audiences don’t matter because they will never see your work. The editor wants to please his readers; he knows their tastes, he knows what’s being talked up on the boards, he knows what products Hasbro’s marketing department will want him to push.