Intro – D&D World Building & Your First Adventure Hook
I know what it’s like to spend way, way too much time prepping for a game. Working out minutia about NPC’s dogs, and the colors of tapestries on the walls, etc. All just to have my players go in a completely different direction, not experiencing what I’d toiled over. Leaving me, the DM, a bit frustrated and overworked. I want you to learn from my mistakes and be a better DM than I was. This is because there is a better way! Constructing a homebrew challenge for your players to conquer and watching them implement shenanigans you’d never thought of can be one of the best parts of being a DM. In this article, we’ll equip you with the tools on how to do that. We’ll be going over crafting your first adventure hook for in your game world.
This guide is part three of a three-part series on D&D world building. If you missed the first two articles, check out Part 1, and Part 2. We’ll go into this article with the assumption that you’ve got context from the first couple of articles. You’ve got evocative world concepts going for you as the backdrop. You’ve you found your spark, and you’ve built out good bones… with “pillars” of your setting fleshed out so you know what your world at large is / and isn’t about as well as knowing what the major forces and major challenges are. Now we bring it all together into a neat package called the adventure! We’ll walk you through how to build out just enough of a structure, and have the tools and elements ready to facilitate an epic session that will leave both you and your players wanting more. Ready? let’s talk about creating an adventure hook!
Tip #1: Create a Problem to Solve Not a story To Follow
IT is your job as the DM to create the challenges in the game world. It is up to the players to create the story of the adventurers’ journeys through that world.
(So don’t be a dick DM and try to write the players stories for them.)
Don’t be seduced by the allure of trying to create a story that you expect the characters to play out. If you were to create 100 games for players, trying to lay out what choices you think they would make, developing a story accordingly, 99 of them would end up with the players going in vastly different directions than you had thought. It is very important to understand the value of creating a problem for players to solve, and not necessarily come up with the ways that they are going to solve for it.
There are huge benefits for going with this challenge creation approach. Vs. the railroading alternative. First, it is more fun for the players. So many players love D&D for the player agency that it provides. That is, we love the free form aspect of the adventure. We enjoy being able to feel like we experienced a truly critically thinking and creating a solution to a problem together. When we as DM’s prescribe the solution that we expect the players to follow, and then worst, possibly insist that they follow suit, it just fails. Players are frustrated and the DM is frustrated.
The second big benefit to this challenge creation approach is that it’s more fun for the DM. As a DM, you may feel like you worked hard on something and want them to see it and experience it and appreciate it… cuz… it’s awesome! You might start forcing the story to go that way and creatively making all other options except the path that you’ve designed to be… “impossible” to pursue. The problem is that no matter how awesome your content is, if forcing your players to experience your content denies them the freedom of choice, they are going to hate it.
Follow along with the rest of the guide to frame up a problem to solve, and know enough juicy detail and improv tools to create great detail, and tension around it, and you’ll start your recipe for success.
How do you know what kind of problem to create? Let’s explore finding, and working with inspiration for an epic adventure.
Tip #2: Feel free to zoom way in and out
When you are musing about ideas for content to include, Should you start with big ideas or small ideas? Truth is, Inspiration in our minds comes randomly. We may be excited about global forces one minute, then perhaps a lonely NPC’s discreet experience in the next. Feel free to zoom way in, and way out when world building… elaborating on what inspires you. It’s best to try not to restrict your thinking At first. If you are inspired to write down some cool ideas about an NPC boy and his pet lizard that acts like a dog, and your next thought is to the giant sentient timber wolves that reign the arctic ring, go for it! The mind map format that we’ve looked at in Part 2 is my favorite method for doing a kind of brain dump in all aspects of your story, allowing your mind to feel like your thoughts have been well captured in an organized way, thus clearing room for more creative thought. This process alone is amazingly therapeutic, and fantastic at generating new ideas. It’s amazing how much more creative thinking your brain does when it feels like the first idea it’s been chewing on has been reliably captured. If you get your good ideas out onto paper, your brain can do what its best at and start giving you more ideas when it feels like it can operate at a blank slate.
Tip #3: Build Tension
Tension makes for great storytelling. When building the setting, and setting up problems for the players to solve, consider opposing forces in the world. Think of people, factions, kingdoms, races that have motivations and are trying to do things in this setting. Think of others that may have conflicting goals and think about how that may work out. If the humans are deforesting the western kingdom to make way for his majesty’s royal keeps, how do the druids feel about it? How about the local dwarves or Amazonian warriors? Is there tension amongst key leadership in a town or city? Are there guild rivalries?
Tip #4: Leave Room for Player Backstories
You will elevate the quality of your game, and have much more engaged players if you take their concepts and backstories from their characters and make them relevant parts of the world. Again, you are building the challenges, and they are telling the story! Tie in interesting tidbits about where the character has come from to elements in your world. Rogue says that he is part of a thieves guild? Ask them what they see their thieving guild being like and them build up a turf war between thieves guilds, an underground war is waging. There are myriads of allies, enemies, and subplots at your disposal. Give room for those kinds of player hooks to flesh out the important elements of your world.
Tip #5 Find the Right Focus by Creating with the End in Mind
Please, don’t make the mistake that many of us have and try to boil the ocean when world building. While you may want to brainstorm a wide range of inspirations for the world, when you’re considering what to finalize to be playable in the first few sessions, Start with your inspiration for some cool, thought-provoking concepts, outline some bullets for what the world is like as a whole as well as some locations and influential people around it, and then you’ll want to zoom in, and flesh out a specific setting that your characters can experience. The end goal you are looking for is a macro pallet, and pillars and one zoomed in experienceable location to start.
I like to picture it as a hex grid. Consider it this way to get a perspective on spending time on what will matter to really having fun, while reducing tedious distraction.
[Red] Make a great initial location that the players can experience. Elaborate on your bulleted lists and create great descriptions and memorable NPCs.
[Yellow] then illuminate in your mind what their world looks like just one step further out. If this was an RTS game consider just what their fog of war would be. Create a bulleted list of what kinds of places these are is interesting, and who there is to interact with, don’t overdo it. Beyond that, we have just concepts from our world building scattered around. The graphic below is a great illustration on getting immersive where the players are, fleshing out some bullets about the world just out of their current reach, and having overall concepts lined out beyond that.
Key Concept: Build detail around the current challenge at hand, and have bullets prepared about the areas that they might choose to go next. Pull on character backstories dynamically to pepper in hooks and back story elements to supercharge interest, and engagement here.
Bonus Tip: Fleshing out the Setting with Memorable NPC’s and Visceral Environment Details
With the above sections taken into consideration, you’ve been able to really find the right level of zoom and to focus on building elements in your story that bring out the heroes story in your session. Your last prep task is to add some wonder and some detail to the initial area that the party will be experiencing. Don’t focus on building an eighty person cast for your production. Create maybe two to three core NPCs that your characters can interact with. Think of what their primary motivations are, what they do, and something distinct about the way they look, sound, or hear.
With the environment they will be experiencing, think of a few details that you will have at the ready to throw in. I used the word visceral in the heading here because we really want to convey ideas that help the players be able to really almost feel the tastes, smells, sounds and sights of the environment. Think of the description of the spicy meats they will smell at the bazaar, or the hundreds of burnt orange flags that they will see in the market district, or the eerie, glass-like stare that they will see from all of the orphans from that one strange building in the canals district. Try to think of a few descriptive, visceral detail (in bullets) for a few select elements.
In Summary
You’re ready to play! Our process has stepped you through creating a world for players to play in, being really efficient by musing, focusing on creating good structural elements to the world to drape our story on, and then fleshing out the challenges and problems ion the world. Remember, tension is great for storytelling! You’ve made choices to include your players’ backstories in the setting, and you’re choosing to build your adventure in a way so that you can run a character-driven story. Then you got in the right mindset about creating just enough so that there is a rich world to explore, but not going overboard with content that the players may never experience. Now go and have a great time!
What’s Next?
How do you grow your game from here? One of the core skills to work on with this kind of minimal prep / focus on the characters’ story kind of play is a strong ability to be able to improvise at your table. I’ve found improvisation to be a kind of muscle. You get better at doing it by just… doing it. You feel more confident that things will turn out well by just embracing the idea that you’ll develop ideas collaboratively, as the session unfolds… and it may not be perfect but you’ll say yes to the rule of cool and green light having a great time for you and your players. We’ll be creating more articles just on improving your improv at the table that will include both mentalities to have, and practical tools to assist you, so stay tuned. Thanks and happy dungeon mastering!