The 5 most important tips to creating your next homebrew adventure.
1. MAPING YOUR WORLD.
Start small, you don't need to draw up a whole scaled map of your continent straight of the bat. Instead, make the starting place of your adventure, whether that's a small farming village or a Duergar fortress deep in the under-dark. Then, once you've worked that out, start on the world around it, maybe the kingdom the village belongs to or a neighbouring Drow settlement. You can even have a great adventure solely inside one building, once I ran an adventure where the players persuaded the drunks in a tavern to rise up against their oppressive rulers. They formed their own one building nation, it was obliterated a tenday later, but it still provided hours of good quality game play without anyone taking a single step outside the tavern.
Start small, you don't need to draw up a whole scaled map of your continent straight of the bat. Instead, make the starting place of your adventure, whether that's a small farming village or a Duergar fortress deep in the under-dark. Then, once you've worked that out, start on the world around it, maybe the kingdom the village belongs to or a neighbouring Drow settlement. You can even have a great adventure solely inside one building, once I ran an adventure where the players persuaded the drunks in a tavern to rise up against their oppressive rulers. They formed their own one building nation, it was obliterated a tenday later, but it still provided hours of good quality game play without anyone taking a single step outside the tavern.
2. NPCs.
Good NPCs (non-player characters) are what give life to your game. The key is to give them unique features that the players will remember them by and hopefully, start to care about them. One difficult problem you may encounter is that for one reason or another, PCs love to kill NPCs, I've had players murder their patron, a lead into a large quest, the moment they met, and it is really annoying. You might be tempted to just buff the NPC until the players can't take them but that will often give them a feeling that it's you (the DM) against them, which should be avoided at all costs. Instead, a combination of well crafted, interesting NPCs and consequences for murdering them should hopefully sort it out.
Good NPCs (non-player characters) are what give life to your game. The key is to give them unique features that the players will remember them by and hopefully, start to care about them. One difficult problem you may encounter is that for one reason or another, PCs love to kill NPCs, I've had players murder their patron, a lead into a large quest, the moment they met, and it is really annoying. You might be tempted to just buff the NPC until the players can't take them but that will often give them a feeling that it's you (the DM) against them, which should be avoided at all costs. Instead, a combination of well crafted, interesting NPCs and consequences for murdering them should hopefully sort it out.
3. PLANNING THE ADVENTURE. Will the players battle a cult of blood drinking demon worshipers, or will they break into the city's bank to part the people from their coin, having an idea of where the adventure will go is essential*, especially for newer players who need a bit of help getting started. Make several good hooks to short quests but be careful not to spend too much effort on each one, as the players might decide to not do it at all. Before starting your campaign, it can help to ask the PCs what sorts of things they want to see in the adventure and most important of all, don't bog the game down with meaningless combat after meaningless combat. You should aim to have an equal amount of the three pillars (combat, exploration and social interaction) and make sure to gift decent amounts of XP for things other than combat to encourage the players away from just bashing at everything they see.
4. RAIL ROADING. Probably one of the worst, and most commonly made mistakes a DM can make is railroading, where you force the players down one path. I know it can be infuriating when you've spent hours on something, and it never get used but as a player there's nothing worse than feeling like you don't have any choice in what you do. It can help to consult the players as to what they want so you can spend your time on something they will enjoy.
5. BBEG. While the BBEG (big bad evil guy) is an NPC, I gave it its own section because of how important a good nemesis is to the game. The BBEG is your players worst enemy, and much of the game may be spent striving to bring their downfall so they must be properly fleshed out. An important thing to consider is, how will your players meet this person. Often it is better to sit back and see how the adventure goes, wait for the players to suitably piss off an NPC and then make them the BBEG. If you do it the other way, making the enemy before the game has begun and slotting them in, it can give an artificial feel to the game.
Don't overpower them, if the players have no chance at beating them then they will either die trying to defeat them or just give up and go for an easier quest. It's a trick balance but what I've found works best is where in the climax fight, there is an equal or slightly greater chance of success than failure, but in the boss fight, don't fake the rolls, if the players die then make them die.
Don't overpower them, if the players have no chance at beating them then they will either die trying to defeat them or just give up and go for an easier quest. It's a trick balance but what I've found works best is where in the climax fight, there is an equal or slightly greater chance of success than failure, but in the boss fight, don't fake the rolls, if the players die then make them die.
Now you have these essential tips, get out there and build your adventure.
*Even in a completely sand-box world, you still need to have an idea of the threats around the players
*Even in a completely sand-box world, you still need to have an idea of the threats around the players