One of the bridges I’ll die upon is that it’s harder to write a good adventure than it is to write a roleplaying system. Nearly anyone can write a story or string together mechanics into something cohesive given enough time, but there’s a different language that a writer needs to use for effective prose that’s usable at the table for creating collaborative narrative. This is part of the reason that we see designers jump to new systems, rather than focusing on supporting ones that they’ve already made, as writing adventures is hard. Even harder is writing a good and effective starter adventure.
So what do I mean by a Starter Adventure? A starter adventure is one that is included in the core text of the game and designed as an onboarding experience for both the players and the GM. The “included in the core text” bit there is subjective, but I’ll discuss why I think that’s important below.
So what are my qualifications? For one, I’m an adventure writer in the TTRPG scene. Most importantly, I am a GM. For nearly three years now, I’ve run a weekly open table group, rotating between one-shots and short arcs in whatever system takes my current fancy. So I’ve run a lot of systems, and I’ve run a lot of starter adventures. That’s not to say that I am the ultimate authority, just that I’ve got a pretty decent idea of what works for me at my table, and what I look for specifically with starter adventures.
Below are a set of principles for designing a good starter adventure. As with all principles, these are not hard and fast “rules”, merely ideas to think about when writing. Following them are five practical examples of fantastic starter adventures, along with my thoughts on why they fit the mold.
First and foremost, starter adventures are part of character creation. Whether a group uses the included adventure, comes up with their own, or even uses pre-generated characters, that first session is when their characters come to life for the first time, instead of being numbers and words on a piece of paper. This is where we as players test out the initial ideas for our character to see if they survive actual play. The first adventure is also often a turning point for the characters, where their lives are forever changed as they are thrust into adventure.
Starter adventures should be accessible. The most straightforward way is to include them directly in the game text, but you can get away with free downloads or inclusion in a separate quickstart guide/starter boxset. The impetus behind the starter adventure is to promote actual use of the system at the table, and making an adventure readily available for use will make that significantly easier for a prospective GM and group.
Starter adventures should serve as a practical application of the elements of the corebook. The key is that this adventure is a tool. Even if a GM ultimately does not bring the adventure to the table, it should be a practical showcase of what the game looks like in action. Ask yourself, what is this game about? What’s the expected gameplay loop? What’s the intended tone? How does the setting fit in? These are questions that this starter adventure can help answer.
If your game is about killing monsters, you better have some combat. If your game is about solving mysteries, there better be some investigating going on. If the player characters are given special skills and abilities, they should have interesting circumstances with which they can be used. If your corebook has a bestiary with factions and creatures, at least some of them should be appearing in your starter adventure.
When introducing these elements, drip feed them across that adventure. The goal is not to overwhelm the players with all of your mechanics at once. Introduce the key aspects early on, but save the more advanced stuff for later down the line.
If your system has an implied setting, the starter adventure should be dripping with it. Contextualization is key. There are a million different systems out there, and the implied setting and tone are often the deciding factor in whether or not a potential new player is going to buy-in to your system. From there, there’s also a very realistic chance that the starter adventure is the deciding factor in whether or not a game gets played or ends up on the shelf after a one-shot. Sell your settings through meaningful interactions. Lore is meaningless to play unless it is actionable at the table.
Keep it simple. As stated earlier, the goal here is to ensure the players and GM are not overwhelmed, as folks are going to be just getting their feet underneath them for the mechanics and their characters. A direct and clear objective from the onset of the adventure is advisable. This could be “simply survive”, “find the treasure”, “save the princess/village”, or “deliver the goods”. We want to promote player agency through choice, but having a clearly defined goal gives the players direction to work within, which will help prevent analysis paralysis until their characters and relationships are more firmly established and that no longer becomes an issue.
Your goal for the starter adventure should be about 1 session of play, with room for the GM to beef it up to 2 or 3 if they so choose. A critical aspect is that this adventure should have hooks to follow up on. Ongoing mysteries, surviving NPCs, strange items, etc. The starter adventure is a springboard. You want the players to want more by the end.
Don’t be afraid to go big. Fighting rats in the cellar is boring as hell, no matter the system. While we want our overall goal to be simple and straightforward, the related contents can go crazy. Introduce gods, fight eldritch beats, put them at odds with powerful figures, embroil the characters in a vast conspiracy, send out the hordes, etc. Just because our characters are brand new doesn’t mean they don’t have the capability of managing complex situations. If you’ve ever played a Soulborne video game, think of how quickly they put you in front of your first boss or seemingly insurmountable adversary.
As a practical design tip:
In a standard 3-4 hour session, depending on the complexity of the system, an average group can get through 6-12 things, with 4-8 of them being meaningful interactions. By “things”, I mean rooms in a dungeon, NPCs, encounters, traps, stuck doors, etc. Meaningful interactions are just those that take up a noteworthy amount of time (generally, this will be combat, but also includes stuff like extended conversations with NPCs, or complex puzzles). If we use a dungeon as an example, you can run 10-12 rooms, just make sure half of them are relatively empty. If you want an NPC heavy session, run a handful locations with 2-4 NPCs each.
For more direct inspiration, read the 7-3-1 Technique.
I’ve picked 5 different starter adventures that showcase the principles above.
Right off the bat, I’m starting with a bit of an exception. Honey in the Rafters is not the adventure included in the Mausritter corebook. However, it is included in the boxset and easily accessible through digital storefronts.
As many of you will know, Mausritter is a game about playing little mouse adventurers. HitR has a simple premise: there’s a beehive in the rafters of an abandoned human-made shack with strange things happening around it that need investigating. Now, what this does is create a perfect juxtaposition to immediately create buy-in from the players: Human-made spaces are giant dungeons for mice. There you go, that’s all you need to let your imagination run wild with the possibilities for further adventure.
The “secret” to Mörk Borg is that it’s a bit of a dark comedy. It’s dark and edgy, but in a doom-metal, tongue in cheek way, and not the cringe edge-lord way. It’s intentionally over the top. Most importantly, the system is so simplistic that you’re playing the world more so than getting deep into the mechanics.
Mörk Borg is known for its over the top graphic style, but Rotblack Sludge does something interesting. If you notice, the adventure is laid out incredibly well in a style that’s easy to understand and use at the table. The design of the core text is meant to elicit tone, but as soon as you get to something that requires a more practical application, the style switches.
For the actual content, let’s look at the opening paragraph. “You face execution for heretical theft”. An immediate goal; stay alive. “A masked Seer, a Courtier of the Shadow King, offered you a chance at life”. The very premise of the adventure here is introducing multiple important NPCs and puts the PCs at the call of royalty from the onset. “It’s believed Aldon is imprisoned in an infamous underground locale, a place no free man would willingly go”. A confined location that keeps the goal direct, but allows the party to approach it however they see fit.
Getting into the adventure itself, the second location has a colorful NPC, the third has skeletons that may awaken depending on the actions the PCs take (cause and effect), but also a number of books “written with a frenzied hand in an unknown language” that creates a sense of mystery and encourages you to read more (which may trigger the skeletons to wake up). The rest of the space is filled with grim and awful things, but most importantly, insurmountable combat challenges when faced head on. Through this adventure, the text teaches you that your actions have consequences and that creative solutions are encouraged to avoid combat altogether, which are the key pillars of the game.
Troika is “the otherworld’s favorite RPG”. Technically a retro-clone of Fighting Fantasy, but with a science-fantasy twist (as a point of contention, Troika is not “gonzo”. The questions created by the content in the corebook have answers and a logic, but Dan Sell is just not interested in giving them to you, so you need to answer those questions yourself.). The city of Troika, the system’s implied base setting, is a strange place. It stands at the convergence point of a galaxy of “crystal spheres”, serving a similar role as Sigil in Planescape. So any manner of strange person or creature can co-exist there at any given time. It can be a lot to take in. This is made especially apparent, as the book never really tells you anything in a straightforward manner. Everything you learn about Troika as a setting is told implicitly through the descriptions of backgrounds, creatures, items, and spells.
Blancmange & Thistle is the tool that contextualizes it all. As with the others, the premise is simple. Your party arrives at Troika City, and are looking for accommodations, only to find out there’s one room available at their chosen hotel, the Blancmange & Thistle. From there, the goal is just to make it to the 6th floor where your room is. But every floor has a number of weirdo and funny folk to interact with, and generally just annoy your players. It takes this hotel, a simple, believable space that we can all imagine, then packs it full of all manner of weird people co-existing in the same space. It condenses Troika down into something that’s approachable and understandable.
Escape from Mos Shuuta is the adventure included in the Edge of the Empire Beginner Game boxset. The box also includes a 48 page condensed rulebook, pregenerated characters, and a set of the custom dice needed to play the system.
The goal of the adventure is stated quite literally in its title; escape from Mos Shuuta. Mos Shuuta is a small town on Tatooine, Star Wars’ most immediately identifiable planet, with each PC in trouble with the city’s Hutt ruler, prompting their bid to escape. Why this adventure is great is because it’s sort of a scaffolding or framework, more a series of vignettes than standard adventure, but these vignettes are broken down in such a way where you learn how to run and play the basics of the system simply by running and playing through it. For the most part, you can get away with just skimming the included reference book and still be mostly okay. Edge of the Empire is quite complex, and this adventure makes it infinitely more approachable to newcomers.
I’m not the biggest fan of the Dragon Game, but LMoP is undeniably great. It’s the included adventure in the 5e Starter Set, and just might be that system's most played adventure. I’ve included this adventure because it’s a great example of the reinforcement of a system’s gameplay loop. You start in a tavern, fight some goblins, dive into dungeons, and slowly unravel a larger mystery at play, leading to a confrontation with a big bad guy. All things considered, it’s very straightforward and basic, but that’s the beauty of it, as it’s meant for the type of folk that have never played an RPG before.
So how do we make this actionable? Writing a good adventure is still hard work afterall. Remember, our goal here is just to make something that promotes play. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel or write the next great adventure. You can write a very solid starter adventure with less text than this document. So start simple. Find an idea that supports what your game is about. If you’re stumped, below are ten basic, one sentence frameworks to help get the ideas flowing.
Once you have your basic concept in mind, start by plugging in elements already present in your core text. You can always change them later if a better idea comes up. From there, twist and warp the core concept to make it better fit your setting. Then create a handful of locations/encounters/NPCs to support the core concept and provide interesting challenges. Finally, string them together in a way that’s logical for your setting. This all seems like pretty basic stuff, but it’s useful to mentally break down the elements like this to make the challenge surmountable.
Once you’ve got something that roughly makes sense, try it out. Run a group of players through it or string together some mock characters and have a little solo session. If you’re not excited to run your own adventure, why would anyone else be excited to do so? It doesn’t matter if that first attempt is bad. Let them break it or go off the rails. Solicit feedback, take rigorous notes, then go back and update the draft.
You can do this.
If all else fails and you want another set of eyes, come track me down and I’ll help if I can.
Twitter: @Unenthuser
Discord: OffendedDefender#1022
Did you like this post? Tell us
Leave a comment
Log in with your itch.io account to leave a comment.
I’d really like to translate this post in Italian. Would that be okay with you?
Yeah, sure. That’s fine by me.
Great advice and a really solid list of example adventurers! Definitely going to be keeping this all in mind as I continue work on my starting adventure!