How to write a Dungeons and Dragons quest | 5 steps

in a previous video i talked about how to write a dungeons dragons campaign as a whole the big overarching campaign plot but that plot will often consist of a lot of smaller individual stories some of which may never really have a big impact on the term campaign story while the big campaign story is fun what your players will really enjoy session to session are the smaller often quite self-contained stories the quality of these smaller stories can sometimes make or break the campaign as a whole and it can sometimes be harder to write a really good self-contained small story as opposed to that big campaign epic there's a basic five-step template that i use when i'm writing a quest so i'll give you the template and then i'll take you through each step of the process here are the five steps of the template establishing the objective initial challenge main challenge new information final challenge now before we go further i'm going to try to get out ahead of a common objection that i hear to using this kind of template you shouldn't use a template because all of your adventures will start to feel the same now that would be true if the template produced the same kind of quest each time but of course it doesn't as you'll see later in the video changing a few details at one step or another in the template will change the character of the template as a whole with that out of the way let's jump into the first step establishing the objective [Music] your players need to do something and the sooner they find out what that something is the sooner they'll become engaged with the quest this step is about giving your players three pieces of information what needs to be done why it needs to be done and what happens if they succeed or fail there are a few ways to do this the simplest perhaps being the quest giver who encounters the players and just gives them the quest for example the local mayor might approach the players when they arrive in a new town and ask them to take on a job that his own people aren't really capable of dealing with alternatively and perhaps more organically the players might stumble upon the start of the quest a dead body the aftermath of a monster attack some strange phenomena something that demands to be investigated they might then seek someone out who can play the role of the mayor in the first example who can then give them that extra information that they might need perhaps a local witness or expert who can tell them about what they're dealing with [Music] now we get to the real meat of the quest this step is about putting a challenge in front of your players that will need to be overcome before they can access the main challenge of the mission for example they might need to get information before they can progress if the players are tasked with hunting down some bandits who've stolen an important artifact they might need to go around the town and find out some information about where the bandits are hiding out and who they work with this could involve role play some bribery persuasion intimidation this is the first small challenge to warm up to the bigger challenge if the objective is to enter a castle and slay a bugbear chieftain the players might have to first defeat a monster that lives in the tunnel they're using to sneak into the castle in its simplest form it could just be a journey that the players have to go on to reach the main challenge of the mission for example they have to go up to find the temple where the monster is hiding out so they ascend into the mountains it's a difficult climb and along the way they have to do various survival checks perhaps athletics to jump over a gap maybe there's some wolves attacking them as they're climbing the mountain trail [Music] after that initial challenge the players are ready to move on to the main event of the quest fighting a monster clearing bandits out of a cave it'll usually involve combat although it doesn't have to in one of my games the first challenge involved infiltrating an exclusive party at the opening night of an art gallery the second challenge was to convince a wealthy party goer to take on their struggling artist friend and support them as their patron this is really the simplest part of the template it's the players doing the thing that they set out to do in step one and if things ended here we'd have a decent little quest in our hands but it would be a little bit predictable and the players would feel that they kind of knew how it was always going to end from the start that's fine if the point of the quest is to run a particularly cool monster or a fun challenge for the players but steps 4 and 5 are where things can get really interesting [Music] during step 3 or immediately after it the players are going to get access to some new information and this information is going to redefine their relationship with the quest itself the criminal they were sent to kill is really a demon hunter and the quest giver is possessed by a demon who wants to get rid of the hunter a bandit is being employed by a corrupt local official a monster is under the control of an evil druid the new information redefines the player's understanding of the quest maybe it alters how they see their quest giver or how they see the artifact that they're trying to find the important thing is that this information was not available to them from the start the new information could also set up a whole new quest to complete in future sessions for example in the art gallery game i mentioned earlier the players succeeded in finding a new patron for their struggling artist friends however by listening into certain conversations and asking subtle questions they were able to ascertain that the art gallery was also being used as a money laundering front for a shady religious group which had ties to one of the player's tragic backstories the main objective had been accomplished but the new information set up and incite a new quest with the shady religious organization as a new antagonist [Music] in most cases though the new information just opens up the final chapter of the current quest the real ending the players have encountered the demon hunter found out about the demonic quest giver and now go back to the village where they got the quest to face the real villain it's a conclusion which was always going to happen but which the players couldn't have predicted from the start the purpose of the template is to give your players enough information at the outset during step 1 that they become genuinely invested in the campaign you never leave them in a situation where they don't know what they're doing or why they're trying to do it at the same time you withhold just enough information that there's still room to surprise the players and give them an ending they couldn't have predicted so that is the template that i use when i'm writing my adventures obviously i don't use this every time but i use it often enough that if you go back through some of my old adventures the ones i've talked about in videos in this channel or through my patreon content you'll notice that this kind of format crops up quite a bit but the adventures where i've used this format are actually all very distinct from each other because sure that the fundamental skeleton of the story might begin the same but along the way so much evolves and is added that you don't really recognize it as being the template depending on whether it's combat oriented or role-play focused depending on what the new information reveals in step four it's gonna feel like a different quest every time what's more as you bring your players in you're gonna find that the quest takes on a life of its own you might think you know what the template says is going to happen but your players will do the unexpected they'll solve problems you didn't even know were problems to begin with they'll do things in an order you didn't anticipate and by the end of it in terms of the player experience it's going to feel like its own unique quest not like anything they've done before whenever i'm running short of ideas whenever i'm staring at a blank page and i've got a session to prepare for tonight i turn to this template but speaking of ideas how do you come up with them well i'm glad i pretended you asked because that's what this next part of the video is about [Music] so how are you going to come up with the actual ideas to plug into each step of the template well i suggest starting from step three rather than from the beginning step three the main challenge is both the center piece and the turning point of the quest so starting here gives you kind of the flavor and the structure for everything around it sit down and imagine your players in a really cool scenario don't worry about how they got there or how you justify the elements you see in the scenario just envision the coolest most epic finale you can for example the players are in a sewer the water is rapidly rising and they're fighting giant venomous spiders once you've got that image fixed in your head you're gonna work backwards and now you're going to justify each of the elements you envisioned in the spider sewer scenario maybe the players have stumbled on an illegal spider farm underground the spiders secrete a powerful venom which can be extracted and diluted to become a powerful psychoactive drug a criminal gang has been farming this venom and selling it on the streets it's wreaking havoc when they realize the players have busted their operation they open a floodgate water begins to pour into the sewer and the players are now trying to escape the rising water while also fighting these giant venomous spiders now let's work back further who gave them the quest maybe it was the captain of the watch the captain keeps on getting foiled every time he tries to go after this gang in fact he's starting to think that someone close to him might be an informant so he needs help from outside of the watch now what is the new information that the players get at step four well maybe after they've escaped the rising waters they explore more of the gang's hideout and they find letters linking the gang to the town's mayor the mayor to whom the captain of the watch reported regularly was the informant who was feeding information to the gang and taking a cut that's why the city watch were powerless to take the gang down the players take their proof to the captain and there's a thrilling final scene where they lead the city watch to storm the mayoral residence take this template and try it out with a few different plots it doesn't take long to put something together and as you fill in the five steps you're going to get more of your own ideas coming in the story will start to evolve and take on a life of its own if you challenge yourself to write three adventures with this template perhaps one focusing on combat one on stealth and investigation one on role play i guarantee you'll come out with three very distinct adventures and most importantly your players will experience them as very unique distinct adventures i find that this template works pretty well for one shots and longer stories but my ideal length is usually about three sessions so session one is the first two steps session two is three maybe four and then session three is steps four and five usually if you do end up using this template i'd love to hear what you came up with in the comments below this video because it's amazing how different dms can take this simple skeleton of a story and build onto it with something that feels completely unique to their world and their dm style it's just so cool to hear about for me and thank you for watching i hope the video was helpful and many more like this to come

Channel: Tales Arcane

Views: 30,942

Keywords: dnd, D&D, dungeons and dragons, dnd5e, dungeon master, ttrpg

Id: Lu14SMUx_2g

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 25 2022