Adventure Building (Part I): Plot

I am about to DM an adventure for some people that never played D&D before. So I wanted to create a small, fast and exciting adventure so they would be hooked into D&D for now on. But how can I do that? By creating an adventure that makes them believe in it, an adventure they could not forget easily, an adventure with compelling elements.

So, what are those elements? Well there are numerous elements in an adventure, but the most important are the plot, the location, and the cast. Those three are the main elements that are the core of the adventure and define everything else like encounters, skill challenges, puzzles, atmosphere and others.

In order to make a memorable adventure, those elements should be worked very well by the Dungeon Master. Because of that I decided to make a helping sheet to make me think about those important elements. This post we will look at the plot element.

Plot Element

The plot is the situation that is happening in the adventure, the history, the events that lead to the current status. It’s basically the problem that must be solved so the adventure can be considered successful.

Based on the 36 dramatic situations devised by Polti I made a list with the possible situations that an adventure could be based on. I tried to reduce the number of the situations to a more easily manageable number. I ended up with 20 possible situations that, I believe, cover the majority of stories that would make a remarkable adventure. An important thing to remember is that these situations does not need to stand on their own, they can and should be combined to create more interesting situations. Another point to be made is that the situations are very general and the reasons behind it (like love, religion, tradition, ethnic hatred, and others) can give the story many different tones and outcomes. Each item of the list comes with three questions to make you think about the plot and what makes it what it is. The situations are the following:

1) Persecution: Systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another individual or group for various reasons such as religion, ethnic, politics.

·       Who is being persecuted?

·       Who is persecuting them?

·       Why are they being persecuted?

2) Abduction: An individual or group is taken away by another individual or group for various reasons such as money, hatred, love.

·       Who was taken away?

·       Who took them away?

·       Why were they taken away?

3) Vengeance: Harmful action against an individual or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. Differently from justice, vengeance is injurious and often excessive as opposed to being harmonious and restorative.

·       Who wants vengeance?

·       Who is the vengeance against?

·       Why do they want vengeance?

4) Seeking: An individual or a group is seeking something or someone for a reason such as information, power, fame.

·       Who or what is being sought?

·       Who is seeking it?

·       Why are they seeking it?

5) Misfortune/Disaster: Something unexpected happened affecting an individual, a group or an entire area, changing the status quo in an undesired way.

·       What happened?

·       Who was affected?

·       What caused it?

6) Rebellion: Refusal of obedience or orders ranging from nonviolent disobedience to violent attempts to destroy or overthrow an establish authority such as government, guild master, arch mage, god.

·       Who are the rebels?

·       Who or what are they rebelling against?

·       Why are they rebelling against it?

7) Daring Enterprise: An individual or a group wants something accomplished. It usually involves a perilous deed or an unknown region, or even both making the fulfillment of the exploit hard, dangerous and not for the feint of heart.

·       What they want to accomplish?

·       Who wants to accomplish that?

·       Why they to do this?

8) Mystery: Something strange and/or mysterious has happened and is affecting and individual or group.

·       What has happened and what is mysterious about it?

·       Who is affected by it?

·       What caused it?

9) Enmity: An individual or a group hates another individual or group. The feeling can be mutual or not and caused by various reasons such as politics, religion, ethnic.

·       Who is hated?

·       Who hates them?

·       Why do they hate them?

10) Rivalry: An individual or group is a rival of another individual or group in some field such as combat prowess, magic, wealth, titles.

·       Who are the rivals?

·       What do they want to achieve?

·       Why each one wants to achieve that?

11) Betrayal: An individual or group who was trusted by another individual or group turns against them in a vital moment in favor of a rival or enemy.

·       Who is the betrayer?

·       Who was betrayed and in favor of who?

·       Why was he betrayed?

12) Madness: An individual or group is affected by abnormal mental state or behavioral patterns causing problem to others and/or themselves. This may have many causes such as magic, psychological issues, mental domination, vile influence.

·       Who is insane?

·       What are they doing?

·       Why are they doing it?

13) Imprudence: An individual or group acted without proper caution or not caring for the consequences and affected another individual or group in a harmful way.

·       Who acted imprudently?

·       What did they do?

·       What consequences it had?

14)  Idealism: An individual or group wants to accomplish some deed because of an ideal. This ideal could range from religious devotion, love, philosophy, tradition.

·       Who are the idealists?

·       What do they want?

·       Why do they want it?

15)  Sacrifice: An individual, a group or an object need to be sacrificed to some authority figure in order to accomplish something or prevent something from happening.

·       Who or what needs to be sacrificed?

·       Who are they trying to please?

·       Why they believe the sacrifice is needed?

16) Dishonor: An individual or group has been dishonored by another individual or group and seeks to repair their honor.

·       Who has been dishonored?

·       How and by whom were they dishonored?

·       What they plan to do to repair their honor?

17) Ambition: An individual or group is driven by a strong desire of personal achievement to do something that can have serious consequences.

·       Who is ambitious?

·       What does he want to achieve?

·       Why does he want it?

18) Mistake: An individual or group made the wrong choice, whether they realized it or not, and the mistake must be corrected.

·       Who did the mistake?

·       What was the mistake?

·       How can it be corrected?

19) Redemption: An individual or group feels remorse for some past deed and seeks absolution for what they did.

·       Who seeks redemption?

·       What did they do?

·       Why they seek redemption?

20) Loss: An individual or group has lost something or someone and is trying to adapt without what was lost, possibly with dire consequences.

·       What was lost?

·       Who lost it?

·       How was it lost?