Each campaign is comprised of a series of Adventures. These adventures are the meat of the campaign, and each one can take several game sessions to complete. Shattered Gods Adventures follow a very simple structure, which is outlined below:
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Adventure Components
- Adventure Name
- Synopsis
- Cast
- Major Locations
- Scenes
- Timeline
- Conclusion
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Adventure Name
Your adventure name is something that will be revealed to your players early, so be sure to pick something they will find exiting.
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Synopsis
The Adventure Synopsis is a several paragraph overview of what the adventure is about. The length can vary based on the length of and complexity of the adventure, but this section should clearly explain what the major story arc of the Adventure is.
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Cast
The Adventure’s cast is a complete list of all NPCs involved in the adventure. This list will grow over time as you generate new NPCs. Pre-defining as much of your cast as possible is critical to telling a good Shattered Gods adventure, because it allows you to provide hand outs for each NPC to the players. These handouts are discussed further in the gamemastering section, and you can see examples in the sample adventure at the end of the book.
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Major Locations
Each adventure is likely to include several locations that the party will travel through. For example a simple adventure would include the town where the adventure starts, the forest north of town, the elven village the PCs might pass through and the dungeon where the dreadlord they have come to slay if hiding out.
These locations will each be fleshed out using the location template, which explains how to create vivid, memorable settings for your group.
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Scenes
Scenes are the meat of every adventure, and you will spend the vast majority of adventure creation time fleshing them out. You can read more about creating scenes in the Scene Creation section.
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Timeline
Certain events in your adventure may occur at a specific time. In order to track these events you need to create an Adventure Timeline. This will help you know what your villian and other major NPCs are doing at any given time.
It is a good idea to place events into your timeline based on the scenes you have created. For example if the Baron is going to execute a prisoner in three days time you’ll know that the PCs have three days to prevent it. If they do not then simply have the player die at the end of the alotted time.
When you write your conclusion (the next section) whether the prisoner lives or dies may have a large impact on future adventures and your campaign at large.
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Conclusion
Each adventure has a conclusion, which details how the fallout from the adventure will effect the over all campaign. For example, if the party killed the Baron how will that effect the region? How would the outcome differ if they’d not only left him alive but become allies with him?
The conclusion is one of the more difficult portions of the adventure to prepare, but it is also one of the most critical as it will determine how you prepare the next adventure. Please refer to the sample adventure listed at the end of the book for a better look at the conclusion.
