I don’t think I’m alone in believing that an essential ingredient in designing adventures is finding the right balance between structure and improvisation. That’s why I really enjoyed The Road to Elturel: An Object Lesson in Adventure Design from The Angry GM. It’s a great lesson in adventure design, told through the lens of a campaign that started as “beer and pretzels” fun but turned into something deeper and more meaningful.
I wanted to explore the principles from the Elturel series and how we can apply them when creating our adventures. I’ll do my best not to copy-paste ideas here. Instead, I’ll try to take the insights, distill them, and offer practical advice for designing adventures, whether you’re using digital tools like Alkemion Studio or just pen and paper.
Let’s talk about how to start small, build intentionally, and create experiences your players will love!
Start with a Spark
Adventure design starts with a single spark. As ”The Road to Elturel” demonstrates, it could be a scene, an NPC, or even a vague idea. Don’t wait for the “perfect” concept and start with what you have and build from there.
For The Angry GM, it was a stealth escort mission: sneaking out of a city, guards on the lookout, and a helpless NPC in tow. It wasn’t the whole story, but it was enough to build around.
If you’re stuck, fiddling with brainstorming tools or random tables can be a great way to generate sparks. And, as you might guess from the whole Alkemion Studio thing, I’m a big fan of experimenting with these kinds of tools.
The key is that your initial idea doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to exist. Maybe it’s a location, a scene, or even an image in your head. Write it down and start asking questions: Why is this happening? Who’s involved? What could go wrong?
A spark is all you need to set the kindling aflame. The rest will follow.
Why Will They Care?
To draw players into an adventure, create a story that resonates with them personally. Start by engaging the players themselves. Appeal to their emotions and curiosity, and let their characters follow naturally. Emotional investment drives connection and engagement.
In The Road to Elturel, the author chose a runaway teen with a tragic backstory: a magician’s apprentice turned wild magic sorcerer. The story evoked sympathy and curiosity. The players cared about the kid, not because their characters had to, but because they, as people, wanted to help.
When creating your adventures, design NPCs and situations that evoke emotional responses:
- Sympathy: Who needs help?
- Curiosity: What’s mysterious?
- Intrigue: What’s at stake?
If you know your players’ preferences, lean into them. If not, use universal hooks: innocents in peril, secrets to uncover, or rival factions to outwit.
Goals and Resolutions
Every great adventure has a goal and players need clarity. What are they trying to accomplish? A strong goal anchors the story and gives players something to work toward.
Try to define your goal in one sentence: “Escort the NPC to safety”, “Find the missing artifact”, “Defend the village from raiders”.
In The Road to Elturel, the goal was straightforward: escort the NPC to safety in Elturel. The clarity of this objective grounded the adventure, giving the players a bright line to follow. But clarity doesn’t mean rigidity. Along the way, there was room for improvisation, complications, and surprises.
But a goal is just one half of the equation. The Angry GM emphasizes the importance of having a resolution. How will the players know they’ve succeeded, or failed? And, just as importantly, how do you ensure the resolution feels definitive? Players shouldn’t finish the session wondering, “Did we actually accomplish anything?”
In Elturel‘s example, success meant delivering the NPC to a trusted ally in a safe haven. Failure meant losing them to the enemy or, worse, letting them die. These outcomes were perfectly clear.
When designing your own adventures, think about those endpoints first. Nail them down before worrying about how to get there.
Visualizing the Journey
Adventures can quickly become a tangle of ideas, characters, and events. Mapping them visually helps untangle that complexity, making it easier to see the connections and possibilities within your design.
Node-based designs are perfect for this. Build a visual map of your adventure. Start with core elements (goal, NPCs, key locations, goals). Then draw connections: relationships, challenges, clues. Use visual cues like colors or tags to highlight emotional beats or critical moments.
But visual design isn’t just for clarity, it’s also a great tool for discovery. Mapping out an adventure can reveal gaps in logic or missed opportunities.
Anchor First, Fiddle Later
The Angry GM calls the foundational elements “squishy bits” and the detailed encounters “fiddly bits”.
Start with the squishy: the core elements we talked about earlier. These are your anchors. Once those anchors are in place, build outward and fill in the fiddly bits: the encounters, puzzles, clues and scenes that connect the dots. Adventure design is iterative. Each pass refines the adventure.
For Every Table, Every Game
Not every adventure needs to be epic. Some are one-shots. Others are sprawling campaigns. But the principles remain the same:
- Start simple.
- Focus on why the players care.
- Anchor your design with strong goals and resolutions.
Whether you’re planning an adventure of the week or a homebrewed saga, these ideas will work. They’ll scale up or down, depending on your needs.
What’s Next?
In future posts, we’ll dig deeper into The Angry GM’s Elturel series, exploring encounter design, pacing, and the art of improvisation. But for now, remember: start with a spark, anchor your story with clear goals, and build from there. Keep it simple.
Whether you’re using visual tools or a stack of sticky notes, these principles can help you create adventures that engage your players and leave room for surprises.
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