Adventure Building (Part III): Cast

On the previous post I wrote a few things about elements of an adventure such as Plot and Location. Today we will talk a bit about the Cast of an adventure, another main element of any interesting story.

The player's characters are obviously the main characters of the adventure, but any story needs its supporting cast and, of course, a antagonist. About the antagonist, every cool adventure needs a villain, a character the players hate and want to defeat it, that makes the adventure goes forward.

A key to make a good villain is to know his motivation. Once you figure out why your villain is doing what he is doing you're golden. Nobody goes around killing innocent people for no reason at all, least they are madly crazy. Motivations can range from simple ambition, greed to more complex situations. Maybe your villain doesn't see himself as one, on the other hand, he thinks he is the hero, that what is he doing is for a greater good. Not everything needs to be black and white, the antagonist might have true good intentions but uses extreme ways to achieve them because he lost faith on the other methods. But sometimes the good old evil villain with megalomaniac behavior is the fit for the adventure. Another detail you should think about when creating a villain is his remarkable traits. He can't just be another goblin. He either needs to be a giant sized goblin with black eyes, scars all over his body, or maybe a curved goblin, carrying a skeleton crane that is always with a crazy smile on his face. Make him different from any other monster the heroes see.

Other cast members that are important to an adventure are patrons, rivals, information providers and innocent victims for the villain. The first three are the ones you need to think most about. You will need to think about their motivations, interests and characteristics because they will interact with the PCs on a regular basis. Unfortunately for them, but not for you, the villain's victims won't need much of details, unless it's crucial to the story why the villain is killing specific people, like if he is trying to get revenge at them.

When thinking about he cast characters on your adventure you will have to think about how does this specific person fits the story. Why he is doing what he is doing? What is his objective? How is he involved? What does he know? etc. Following there are a few questions I decided to use when creating such characters. They help me think better, and organize the information.

- What's the character name?

- Is he a villain, patron, rival, informant or victim?

- What are his main characteristics? What are the first things you notice about him?

- What are his motivations?

- How did they get involved in the situation?

- What are his objectives?

- How does he pursue them?

Those are the main questions I think about when creating a character in an adventure. They need a purpose to be there, and a objective to seek. Of course this is just a starting point when design the cast of your adventure, but I believe it's a good start.