[moved] The Great Project: Adventure Designers ... Assemble

[Grützi]

Over in the "Price of an Adventure"-Thread a little idea was expressed:
Why not create a team of people from this board and try to build something from there.

The1True's Post

As I find this a very interessting propositon let's see what we get together

First of all: Even tough I'm the one starting this thing here I don't want to control or force anyone to do anything here Anyone can join in, involve themselves in any way they see fit and leave at any time. This is a group excercise and everyone should take something worthwhile with him.

That being said let's talk about how we are going to do this.

The Phases
I think the best way to do something like this, is to divide it into discret phases, work trough each phase together and see where that gets us.

Phase 1: Building a team
In this Phase we will come together, discuss and share our skillsets and hopefully get all of it together in one place.
Assemble Participants:
Everyone who's intersted can join.
Goal:Create a list of people that are willing to take part in this project.

Participants share their skillsets
Every participant lists his/her skills and other useful informations for the project.
Goal: Have an overview of the usable skills and who has them

Choose a name for our group
We need a kickass/awesome name.
Goal: Create a name that makes the heavens tremble in fear

Create our own Subforum
If enough people are willing to make this work we should ask Bryce to give us our own little subforum. So we won't clutter the Workshop area with our myriad of awesome idead
Goal: Get everything together in one place

Phase 2: Defining the Foundations
Here we define the core concepts and themes of our oncoming work. Laying the foundation of all that is to come ... so to speak.
How much detail do we want? What does each of us want or not? Which system (if any) should we use? How much detail should we add to our setting?

Define a broad genre and the big themes
High fantasy, low fantasy ... gritty and dark, whimsical and fun? What themes do we want to be prominently featured in our project.
Hope, fate destiny? The contrast of life and death ... or nothing at all, making it up as we go along?
To be clear: This shouldn't limit what we are able to do, but rather bring everyone on the same page on a very basic level.
Goal: Get a first impression where we are going with all of this. Get everyone on the same page on a very basic level

Throw in "Must Haves" and "Do Nots"
Everyone can define one thing he/she absolutely wants to have and one thing he/she doesn't want to have in our project.
Try to be reasonable here, but keep it interessting. A good "Must Have" adds much to a setting or adventure, a good "Do Not" does just the same.
Goal: Everyone gets a chance to define the basics. Further define where we are going with this.

Choose a System (or not)
What system should our project use? Dnd? LotFP? For Gold andGlory? A stranger thing even? Do we write our own homebrew (forumbrew?)
Or do we make the whole thing system agnostic? If so, how do we handle the mechanics that are going to come in? Do we define a "standard" of mechanics for our project or make it up as we go along ... seeing where that gets us?
Goal: Get a system or at least define the underlying mechanics as much as is needed for everyone to be able to make this work.

Choose a level of detail for our setting
Should our setting be instantly plug-and-playable? Generic and easy to use. Or do we want a highly specific background? This can be very interssting to use but rather hard to adapt to any ongong campaign?
How much background do we want? How detailed should it be? How easy/hard to adapt shoukd it be?
Goal: Define the level of detail our Setting will have. Define the ease of adaptability for future DMs

Phase 3: Building a shared setting
Here we define/brainstorm a shared setting our adventures should take place in. I love the idea of many adventures taking place in a shared setting, as it instantly builds a vision of a greater world (Tolkien effect).

Build/Brainstorm the basic with what is already defined
With all we defined above we build/brainstorm the first rough draft of the setting
Goal: Get a first glimpse at our setting.

Go from coarse to fine
We take the first draft and refine what is needed/wished for until we reach the level of detail everyone (or most) are happy with.
We should leave plenty of white spaces to fill later (by us or by the DMs), but define enough for everyone to work with.
Goal: Get the wished for level of detail for our setting

Brainstorm/Fill in/Define our setting
This is the big part. Here we put the most part in. While we will jump around here quite some bit, I normaly try to organize my worldbuilding into broad terms to help me get everything together.

Cosmology and natural laws

Theology and Religions

Magic, Fate and strange phenomena

History, Myths and Legends

Cultures, customs and languages

intelligent Races and species

Animals and Plants

Biomes and Regions

Goal: Get a setting together

Phase 4: Writting Adventures
When we've come this far there remains only one thing to do. Write adventures in our new setting.
As everyone involved should have a pretty good picture of our basics, our system or mechanics and our setting ... everyone should be able to participate in any adventure they like.

Brainstorm/Create adventure seeds
We will create adventure seeds, fromwhich whole adventures can grow.
Goal: Get an overview of possible adventures in our setting

Write Adventures
Yeah I know.
I think if we've come this far we can further discuss the exact procedings on how to write adventures in our setting
Goal: Come together an discuss how we want to write our adventures

A few words to end this post:

1. All of the above is merely a suggestion.
Take it apart, discuss it, adapt it ... everyone who wants to take part in this is welcomed to help me/us create something awesome here We can change all of this. Ive brainstromed a few settings together with people and I've given/lead workshops on themes of the hobby for a few years now. So while I'm halfway certain that I'm not totally talking out of my ass here I still have a ton to learn and theres always another way to do things as well (or even better) than ones own way.

2. Everyone shares in everything here , Nobody owns anything here
Thats a rather good core rule for our future conduct on this project I think
Everyone can discuss/criticize/reassemble/change or in any way interact with anything created here ... but nobody "owns" anything created here inan absolute sense. So while you may have a strong vision of how soemthing should go ... you are only one of many here that shape this project together. Even if you are the person who created a specific part here ... now it belongs to anyone else as much as to you.


So what do you say?
Shall we do this?

Edit:
Who's in?

Beoric
Commodore
DangerousPuhson
Grützi
Ice
Malrex
The1True
Slick

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Count me in.

Skills: Writing, proofreading, editing, rule conversion, rule design, graphic design (Adobe Photoshop, maps for dungeons, towns and overland, and some digtal art), layout (Adobe InDesign), puzzle design, riddle writing, marketing, advertising, DM experience.

Art samples to follow shortly.

 

[Malrex]

I want to say yes, but I'm committed to some of other stuff (Footprints magazine, a patreon, and a few upcoming kickstarters). But...yes.

Skills: writing, proofreading, editing, layout, maps, more player experience than DM, not an artist....at all.

 

[Grützi]

Yeah ... DP and Malrex .. thats the spirit

Skills:
Writing, proofreading,rule conversion, rules design, graphic design (Photoshop on a basic level and with much help from my girlfriend , mainly maps), 3d modeling and animation (3ds max on a basic level, learning as I go along), puzzle design, DM experience, can playtest stuff on short notice, fluent in german

Examples of Maps and 3d Models

 

[The1True]

Hells yeah, I'm in.
18 years in video game design, 3D Modeling and Animation (3ds Max ftw!) My buddy at the gaming table has been a Concept and Layout artist for games and animation for an equal amount of time. Our frankly embarrassing, early 00's gallery shows some of my buddy's better stuff. Sorry about the Flash animations :\ We're frickin dinosaurs. We're both badasses with Photoshop and I'm alright with Worldographer and making peace with the reality of Roll20. A link would be more elegant, but here's a sample of a hybrid hex map I've been plugging away at:

 

[The1True]

Also written design documents and done some editing/proofreading.

 

[The1True]

You really broke it down beautifully there Grutzi. If we get our own sub-forum, we should break all those phases and parts into their own threads.

My only niggle with that list is world-building. A titanic undertaking like that might be a bit of reinventing the wheel which has the potential to distract us from mission completion.

Speaking of which; What is the mission? Write an adventure? Write a mini/mega campaign? Definitely, I think our objective should be to distill our combined knowledge and leverage it to produce a profitable title/recognizable brand.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Yeah, the worldbuilding seems a bit lofty for a first step.

How about this as an alternative: each adventure outlines a small part of the greater area in which it takes place - "this adventure is set in the sleepy town of X: a fringe settlement of giant-rabbit farmers that rests lazily in the Y hills on the border or Z province" and so on. We do up a larger map of the setting to include with each module (that's the easy first step) and label it with places that sounds really neat, but we only flesh out those places as part of the adventure which takes place there (to start). Maybe once we've written enough, or we have someone willing to invest more time into the worldbuilding side, we could eventually release a guidebook to the area.

As for the goal, I think we should do something sequentially, like a proper campaign. Start with an introductory adventure that exposes the players to a few interesting elements of the larger campaign world, and build from there. Personally, I'm a big fan of the mini-sandbox; that is to say, adventures which include three or four smaller dungeons and sites of interest, rather than one single dungeon.

 

[Grützi]

Yeah ... now we're talking.

Worldbuilding
To be clear: I don't want to build a whole world ... but just enough "setting" to have a solid foundation to work from.
We don't need to define every religion or god in the setting ... but we all should have a clear picture how gods work in our setting for example
Tha same for magic, cosmology (planes of existence) and the like.
We don't need to know every detail of the great empire ... but we need to know that there is a great empire ... and so on.
Broad genre, Big themes, metaphysical foundations of the world ....

Every Adventure can fill in the blanks a bit more ... even a Settingbook is possible later on.
I just think there is a basic framework we have to establish to get everyone on the same page here first... or else one writes a gonzo adventure and the other some gritty dark Warhammer Fantasy clone.

So we lay down the "ground rules" first, everyone sharing in the creation ... and then we build from there as neccessary.
A good foundation will give all of us a clearer vision to work towards and it will help to distinguish our stuff from all the other stuff out there.
And if someone wants to put in the work in the worldbuilding departement ... he/she is more than welcome ...

Mission/Goal
The end goal is:
1. To create awesome stuff that is played
2. to create/establish a brand/collective/union/whatever that is recognized by the scene/the hobby
3. get rich or die trying

As to how exactly we are going to do this ... I'm full on with DP here.

Release an Introductory Adventure to show the setting and hook new players/DMs
Then create several Mini-Sandboxes that allow DMs to explore our world on their terms.
Release smaller stand alone dungeons or "closed in" adventures.
Release setting guidebook or such stuff.

Subforum
With 4 People already in and more coming (I hope) I think we are off to a good start.
I'll ask Bryce later when I'm home from work If and how we are going to pull this off

 

[Malrex]

I want to dissect/add a few things to the Mission first for clarity:
Mission/Goal
1. To have fun.--This is important to me. I do this stuff as a hobby. If it becomes a drag, then I plan to stop. But family first and lets keep things fun.
2. To create awesome stuff that is played--I agree with this. I'm wondering if this team can go one step further...can we make our adventures suitable for Roll20 to reach out to that market? I have no skills in that but just seeing other's abilities, it's making me wonder how hard it would be...
3. to create/establish a brand/collective/union/whatever that is recognized by the scene/the hobby--Sounds like we need a logo.
4. Get rich or die trying--we will probably die...heh. BUT this opens up a lot of questions. Are we doing this for profit? Are we doing this to generate funds for a cause (i.e. donations)? Are we just doing this for free? If we are doing it for profit then I have some further discussion points about it as I think getting all that stuff nailed down in the beginning helps stop frustration and resentment later.

I'm shoulder deep in a project exactly like this with my team--we made a region and slowly branching out to make a world. It's a lot of fun, but things can blow up really quickly and cause paralysis as to how much you can do or think about....So I think starting small is a good idea. Figuring out some of the deities is important as there may be information gleaned from an ancient tomb and what not--or to help figure out clerics...but some of that info could be a bonus page in the back of an adventure--can always take out those sections later and combine it into a setting book. But the first thing that is most important is what ruleset are we going for (and seeing everyone's skills, I think we should do one OSR ruleset (OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, doesn't matter to me) and convert for 5e and maybe Roll20).

I like DP's idea...start with a small town, have maybe one medium sized dungeon nearby, but litter the place with 4-7 smaller areas of interest (caves, wilderness areas, ruins). We could all work on the medium sized dungeon together--fine tuning the guidelines we want to work with (bullet points? bolded? symbols?). Once everyone has an idea of how the layout and organization of the adventures should look like, then we can all branch out and have room to be creative with the smaller areas in solo's and duo's, but then we bring it all in and make sure it's following the guidelines that were set.

I also think I should take more of a backseat as my first priority is to the Merciless Merchants and I don't want to over commit.

 

[Slick]

Skills: Writing (I think that one goes without saying for everyone on this forum, no?), layout, Photoshop, and illustration, specifically monster design, mapping, "page filler" images, etc. I don't have any examples of my art on hand atm but I can upload them later.

3. to create/establish a brand/collective/union/whatever that is recognized by the scene/the hobby--Sounds like we need a logo.

A logo, sure, but I don't see the reason to create a "brand". Nothing wrong with just saying "hey, we're a bunch of guys from a forum (PLEASE JOIN IT), we made this for fun, here you go"

4. Get rich or die trying--we will probably die...heh. BUT this opens up a lot of questions. Are we doing this for profit? Are we doing this to generate funds for a cause (i.e. donations)? Are we just doing this for free?

My vote is free, but if everyone involved could somehow agree on a charity then PWYW would be fine too. Splitting profits sounds like a big pain in the ass and again, this is mostly just for fun anyway.

EDIT: I also agree in regards to limiting the scope of this thing, overambitious plans absolutely kill projects like this.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

2. To create awesome stuff that is played--I agree with this. I'm wondering if this team can go one step further...can we make our adventures suitable for Roll20 to reach out to that market? I have no skills in that but just seeing other's abilities, it's making me wonder how hard it would be...

3. to create/establish a brand/collective/union/whatever that is recognized by the scene/the hobby--Sounds like we need a logo.

To these two points:

2) Roll20 requires the following: 5e rules, gridless maps. That's it.

3) As I've literally taken a college course in logo-design, I volunteer to take the first stab. We need a name though.

FYI it's easier to write for 5e and convert down to OSR than it is to do it the other way around - converting to OSR essentially involves stripping things out, rather than adding things. I know this may come as blasphemy to a lot of you, but also the 5e market is bigger.

 

[Malrex]

My vote is free, but if everyone involved could somehow agree on a charity then PWYW would be fine too. Splitting profits sounds like a big pain in the ass and again, this is mostly just for fun anyway.

Splitting profits can be a pain which is why a % needs to be set up front--then its easy to do it through Drivethrurpg's royalty tools.

But I REALLY like the idea of the PWYW route and donating to a charity. The charity could be different per adventure or for any cause that comes up. And maybe the charities are for a RPG cause--help foot the bill for some adventures so that Bryce can keep reviewing, or maybe there is a forum and the prices go to help pay for the domain costs, or maybe someone in the RPG industry died and his/her family needs a gofundme for funeral services. Or we could do more of the usual charities. It's probably not going to generate that much money, but I think its a cool concept and when people saw the logo, they would know their money is going to a good cause.

Edit:
I'm not sure how to write 5e adventures..lol. I guess I could help write a dungeon/setting and someone with 5e experience could add in the monsters? Maybe I can help convert to OSR or something.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Edit:
I'm not sure how to write 5e adventures..lol. I guess I could help write a dungeon/setting and someone with 5e experience could add in the monsters? Maybe I can help convert to OSR or something.

If you write the "bones" of your part I can sub in the appropriate 5e rules, while you can sub in the OSR ones, if you'd like to go that route. All it takes is for me to do a diligent read-through a go "ah, a wall to climb - OK, gotta put an Athletics DC in there", and so on. Same with stat blocks, once we nail down a proper 5e format for abbreviated ones.

 

[The1True]

I think we should aim for profit as that has been the focus of a number of threads and I feel like that's integral to this experiment. As I proposed previously, I think we should at least initially pump any profits back into this website since I suspect the forum was set up as a Patreon incentive and then somehow went off the rails. It'd be cool to support the guy who has offered us all this (and then disappeared lol). Thinking much past that feels like utter hubris, but I guess if there was further success, we'd be looking at pumping the money into polished products and self publishing and eventually paying the creators a substantial cut of the fancy collected gold foil kickstarter prestige format limited edition print run.
Slick is right though, the main focus should be fun.

 

[The1True]

I definitely think 5e is the way to go. I think it's important to see if we can actually get a 5e scenario to act like an old school adventure without significant rules alterations. It's a wider and more dynamic market and a great way to get the game we love in front of fresh eyes.

 

[Grützi]

I asked the Powers That Be if we can have a little subforum playground to ourselves We'll see what happens

1. To have fun.--This is important to me. I do this stuff as a hobby. If it becomes a drag, then I plan to stop. But family first and lets keep things fun.

Thats the baseline ... Rule number one Full on behind this.

2. To create awesome stuff that is played--I agree with this. I'm wondering if this team can go one step further...can we make our adventures suitable for Roll20 to reach out to that market? I have no skills in that but just seeing other's abilities, it's making me wonder how hard it would be...

Have played a bit on roll20, never DMed anything on there. Still it is a section of the hobby we should definetly explore

3. to create/establish a brand/collective/union/whatever that is recognized by the scene/the hobby--Sounds like we need a logo.

A logo, sure, but I don't see the reason to create a "brand". Nothing wrong with just saying "hey, we're a bunch of guys from a forum (PLEASE JOIN IT), we made this for fun, here you go"

Brand may be a strong word for what we are going to be ... but when we first publish something people will automatically associate a certain label with us. We can get in front of all this be providing them with a label upfront ... control how we want to be perceived etc. etc.

4. Get rich or die trying--we will probably die...heh. BUT this opens up a lot of questions. Are we doing this for profit? Are we doing this to generate funds for a cause (i.e. donations)? Are we just doing this for free? If we are doing it for profit then I have some further discussion points about it as I think getting all that stuff nailed down in the beginning helps stop frustration and resentment later.

If profit should be one of our main goals we must carefully consider what we are going to do with the money.
As Malrex said: we can share it among ourselves or we can redeploy the money into charities and the like.
Investing in Bryces Patreon or such stuff could be a nice touch too.

I don't really think we are going to make the big money here ... yet if money is involved it can become ugly quite quickly ... better plan ahead on this one and have a plan ready.Im open to all here ... as long as the group decides together i'm in.

5e
I played it, I DMed it sometimes
DP has the most experience here it seems so I trust his word on the matter of conversions and the like.
Creating an OSR version alongside a 5e version could work very well. An as The1True said: It's good to try new things sometimes ... 5e seems like a good way to do this.

Scope of the Worldbuilding/Adventure
Like I said. Define the absolute basics and expand from there


Name of our group/project
If we get our subforum I will open a thread on this.
Any suggestions are welcome here ... let's get creative people

 

[Malrex]

I'm ok with 5e. I'll just need a little help. Regardless, I'll plan to put in a Dragonborn something or other in there somewhere...and something to do with warlocks.

Is Lynch Mob too negative sounding for a name...haha.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Art samples as promised

 

[Grützi]

@DP:
Awesome art. I know who is going to do the NPC portrait now

@Malrex:
I love Lynch Mob ... but it has a bit of a negative vibe to it ...