What makes a good adventure?
Elements
1. Objective
First things first, what is the adventure about? What are the heroes supposed to do? In narrative terms, this is the call to adventure. There’s a ruins to explore; there’s a princess to be rescued; there’s a monster on the loose; there’s an opportunity to be had, etc.
Sometimes, GMs create interesting locations or situations without a specific thing to accomplish. Sometimes, the objective can just be “explore & recover treasure”, but it can’t be that every time.
2. Motivation
The motivation is another plot point in any good narrative. What makes the hero actually get off the tavern bench and try to resolve the objective? Money, pride, love, revenge, power? Give them tangible reasons for risking their necks. Most players want to play a hero, & heroes are typically motivated by something other than money.
In fantasy TTRPGs, this is usually a reward of money (gold) and power (leveling up and magic items), but if players are invested in the world, there are other ways of motivating them. The villain can threaten something or someone they like, for example, or can do something they regard as so bad that they want revenge or to right the wrong. If they’ve joined a faction or become champions of a patron, they can merely be asked or ordered to resolve the issue (theirs usually some other reward ultimately waiting).
3. Bad Guys
Interesting bad guys often make a good story. Defeating them is often motive in itself for the adventure. The heroes aren’t just going up against a necromancer, they’re going up against Sir Grigor, Blood Knight of Suthain, who preys on beautiful young women–sometimes enthralling them into his seraglio of “witch wives”–and carries Nowist, the Spear of Night, which makes the surrounding landscape appear as fog-laden nighttime. And decapitating him will clear the land, gaining the heroes the admiration of all the surrounding common folk.
4. Infamy
A villain isn’t much of a villain if the heroes have never heard of him or her until they battle or vice versa. Be sure to build such a character up. His name is only whispered. His heinous deeds have left scars. Evidence of his presence is palpable–burned cottages, a lingering mist in his domain, wandering undead, impaled enemies. Even if the baddie is just a beast, the heroes can still see it at a distance, find the remains of its victim, meet a witness, survivor, or victim’s family.
The heroes should hate the villain long before they actually meet for the final showdown. Look for ways to make the conflict personal, especially by have the heroes meet the villain early on.
5. Location
Look for interesting places for the adventure to take place in. A good story usually features the hero going into a strange place that is foreboding but interesting. They explore it for a little while before getting down to business. (In storytelling terms this is sometimes called “fun and games” or “venturing into the wilderness”.)
Old D&D nearly always featured an underground dungeon, because it’s easy to key a map to discreet rooms. But you should strive to set your encounters in more varied locations. One or two should be really spectacular locales, something that really feeds the fantasy of adventuring in a world of wonder.
6. Pacing
Pacing is critical to making the players feel the adventure is moving along and the story is progressing. Forget the giant “adventure” books Wizards of the Coast puts out and aim to get the heroes into the meat of the adventure quickly and out again after five or six sessions.
7. Ticking Clock
Putting a time limit on the adventure helps to avoid it becoming a boring slog in which the heroes laboriously clear each room in a dungeon or castle. Especially in the second half of the adventure, they should be focused on accomplishing the original central objective.
The first half of an adventure or story may be full of exploration, discovery, and wonder and the second half a race against time, or the whole adventure can be a race, chase, or scramble.
8. Reward
There are many kinds of rewards for completing an adventure, including leveling up, gaining treasure, completing a story arc, gaining knowledge or authority, etc. Look to vary these up from one adventure to the next to keep the players interested, so they don’t feel like they’re just hacking their way thru dungeons to collect gold and magic items.
Sometimes the motivation of an adventure is its own reward (“Let’s go get that treasure!”) but sometimes the thing that initially motivated the player characters isn’t the thing they get rewarded with at the end. So remember they can and should sometimes be separate.
zarban.com 
Leave a comment