The 4 Adventure Types You Should Be Using In Your RPG Campaigns

a small blue dragon named pippet a piece of string with five knots tied into it that smells vaguely of oranges and the name dewdrop what do those things have in common how can you make an adventure out of them and what kind of adventure is it going to be well we're revisiting the four adventure types the four adventure types that i speak about on this channel in today's video so let's get going hello and welcome to this week's episode of how to be a great gm my name is guy and we're going to be looking at the four adventure types that i have spoken about before on this channel i'm also gonna be looking at examples of how to use them so that you are empowered as a gm not to be constrained by these adventure types but to be supported and guided by them something that i've been speaking about on the channel a lot recently is saying you understand story structure you understand one-to-one method you understand the five-step method you get that but you don't need to prep all of that you need to have that as a framework in the back of your mind the last piece of that framework is the four adventure types in my opinion now by using these four adventure types you know your structure you know if you're using five steps you've got five distinct periods within your adventure but what are those periods about well that's where your adventure type comes into play the four adventure types so once you know them you can then say i'm using this adventure type i'm using the five step method that means that intro has to be this the journey to plot has to be that and then the kill plot conclusion has to be that because that's the adventure type i'm using what those steps are is entirely up to you and as far as i'm concerned is stuff that you can generate as you are playing the adventure rather than prescribing and trying to railroad your players to get to that conclusion it's a agile way of creating your adventures people call it on the fly the world word agile i think is is used these days let's jump into the four adventure types with an example the example is a witch a wicked which wants to poison the king at the royal ball because she hates him that's her goal that's the sentence that we've created so the first adventure type is thwarting thwarting adventure types are very straightforward the pcs are given a target and they have to go and destroy or overcome that target it could be killing it could be collect it could be um capturing it could be simply defeating and exiling ultimately they have to overcome a specific big target if we look at our example of the witch who wants to poison the king the witch is the target the players get information that there is a wicked witch in the forest and she's going to poison the king they then have to journey into that forest they have to get to the witch they have to then defeat the witch in combat the adventure is over you can convolute and complicate the entire thing in between that's the beauty of knowing how thwarting adventures work you could throw at the that the pcs first discover that someone has been buying poison from the alchemist or someone stole poison from the alchemist the alchemist has a small bushel of leaves that were left behind by the perpetrator the leaves are identified by a druid he lives on a hill that's an adventure to get there because there's goblins encamped on that hill the druid then indicates that the leaves are from a very specific part of the forest which is dark evil and twisted and that the pieces shouldn't go there because it's full of baddies and the old evil witch the pieces then go to the forest they get attacked by wear spiders which was given to me by a viewer from my live show where spiders that's right half human half spider things where spiders attack the um party the party then eventually get to the clearing with a little witch's hut is based they find the witch she gives them their monologue about how she has to kill the king because the king refused to acknowledge her at the the ceremony of his daughter whatever they kill the witch the adventure is over all of that just out of the sentence the witch wants to kill the king using poison and following a thwarting adventure where the party is overcoming obstacles to get to the big bad and then they kill the big bat thwarting is really simple really straightforward and something that everybody should be able to do without even thinking about it when we move on to the second category or the second type adventure type that is delivering delivering delivering delivering the witch wants to kill the king with poison how do we use that as a delivery thing well what is a delivery adventure a delivery adventure is where the party is given something and they have to transport it to a certain point they have to get it from a to b whilst they are on route there are going to be things that are attempting to stop them from actually successfully delivering this item it could be trying to destroy the object that the party is delivering it could be that the object itself doesn't want to be delivered a runaway princess a slave a dragon egg that hatches and wants to fly it could be that there are creatures out there who just want to stop the pcs from getting there ultimately the delivery option the delivery adventure type ends once the pcs have arrived at their destination and have handed over the object so when we look at our witch and poison and the king where do we sit with that well in terms of delivery it could very well be that the party has to deliver an antidote to the king before the king dies the antidote is prepared by an alchemist in a city at x and the king is at y and so the party have to take the antidote all the way along the road and eventually get to where the king is and then give the king the antidote the witch of course we know she's around because of our original sentence the witch is going to send minions to try and stop the party and try and derail them try and steal it from them perhaps we want it to be a little bit more interesting so she is going to disguise herself as this beautiful young woman or young man and go to the party and try and seduce them to figure out where the antidote is so they can steal it or break the antidote or get the pcs to sell the antidote there are so many different ways that you could try and hinder the party from getting to their king that the adventure is practically writing itself and that's what i hope you are realizing as we go through these adventure types all you need to do is choose whether you're a one two one or a five step method person choose the method and then you simply plug in this information to give yourself the the skeleton upon which you then are free to hang all of your imagination and your creativity so a delivering adventure is a fun adventure that's usually a time pressure you have to deliver this before the final moon of the third phase otherwise it's useless it must be delivered on a full moon etc etc etc so that's oftentimes a lot of fun the third type of adventure is a collecting adventure now this is quite different from a delivering adventure even though they sound very similar a collecting adventure often times is the battle to get to somewhere to collect the object rather than to take an object somewhere so whilst the players are fighting their way forward you must go and get the sword of high guard so that it can be returned to the king and he can save us from whatever is going on a collecting adventure is go there get something and come back the coming back part is not important if you want to to um look at at stories in terms of of how they work from the which and the poison perspective go and collect the antidote go and get the antidote or it could be something completely different go and collect the herbalist who can create an antidote for the witch's poison it could also be go get the poison before the witch does because it's wyvern poison that's been created by some deranged alchemist something along those lines either way collection adventures are also oftentimes race adventures so you are racing with others it's the grand great rays get there first you are trying to go and collect the prize so think about it as that as well um when you're trying to to situationalize the situation situationalize the situation what the hell folks so our witch has to get the poison the party has to get the poison and has to get there before the witch gets there do they have to defeat the witch no they just have to get the poison and destroy the poison the witch goes ow what a pity oh well so be it i'm off by and that's it they don't have to actually defeat the witch at all it's about getting the thing about collecting the thing the journey back is fairly mundane and straightforward when we then turn our attention to the last of the four adventure types it's the discovery type adventure now discovery adventures are quite literally going out there and finding out something there is no particular menace or malice that the party is necessarily aware of it could be go and find the lost tomb it could simply be what's on the map over there in a discovery adventure the party are going to be learning new things that's why it's called a discovery adventure whether it's new things about your world law whether it's new things about themselves and they're discovering parts of their backstory that they didn't know whether it is something that is of a political nature a discovery adventure could be why within one room and the party has to work out who is the murderer the objective is not to defeat the murderer that might happen at the end the objective is to solve the situation to solve the mystery so discovery adventures are quite broad in their scope but ultimately play out in the same way the players are going to progress until they get to the big discovery the big reveal the big thing they find the lost tomb getting into the last tomb and going beyond that would be a different adventure altogether that could be a collecting adventure that could be a thwarting adventure but finding the lost tomb on itself in itself is a discovery adventure they've got to go and speak to the tavern owner they've got to go here they've got to go there so with our witch and her poison it could very well be discovering the antidote and that antidote could be traveling around the kingdom trying to find the right herbs and things well it's a white berry of the jauba plant that only grows at the top of that mountain but we don't know how to get up there i'm afraid there are some mines there's an old pass but it's usually snowed in there is some other back routes there's a hot air balloon the players are going to enjoy discovering and learning and and gaining knowledge ultimately about how everything works or how your world works anyway so it's a lot of fun so those are the four adventure types that i use as my templates and once you have those locked in it's really just a case of saying well okay i'm doing this adventure type i'm using that that template the that method and off i go you only have to plan the first event what gets the players onto that thwarting mission how do we get introduced to the witch how do we get introduced to the fact that the king has been poisoned how do we get introduced the fact that the pcs are hired to go and discover the cure or are going to go and collect the cure or going to deliver the cure what is that inciting incident what is that event that happens and that's all you need to plan the rest will come along as you are mentally checkboxing okay now we need to discover that it's not the actual plot now we need to discover it's not this so the witch trying to stop the players on a delivery or a collection or a discovery the first thing could just be bandits are attacking them and when the bandit dies the one bandit goes now the witch will be mad oh dear huh who's this witch so you're just following those steps i hope this makes sense to you in some way and to me this is how it all really works in my head anyway so your task we haven't done tasks for a little bit now but we haven't had videos really that had a lot of tasks that you could do specifically but your task for your next game if you have an adventure opening up is to choose one of these four adventures and to run it through now once you are done running through this particular adventure type you then choose another adventure type for your next adventure by chopping and changing and keeping the different adventures happening this one's a thwarting then it's collecting then it's a discovering then it's a thwarting then it's a delivering then it's a thwarting or a discovery by chopping and changing your adventures will feel so different so dramatically different that the players will absolutely love it so your next adventure that you are going to run change it up if it was um if it was just an adventure try and figure out how to make it a thwarting adventure what do you need to plant at the beginning of the adventure for the player characters to go we have to defeat something we think it's this then when you get to the middle of the adventure that they go oh no no no it's not this it's that that is what we actually have to defeat how do you introduce that as the nemesis how do you introduce that as the enemy that is going to be fighting the pcs all those kinds of things that's if it's sorting if it's discovering if it's collecting if it's if it's delivering you know what to do now you've watched this video so that is your task change it up and then let us know in the comments down below there are some subtle variations of adventure types that i haven't included here i have done a video on those subtle variation types years ago if you're really desperate you can go and find that video on this channel but primarily speaking it's about these four and utilizing these four until you can make up adventures on the fly and adjust them accordingly according to the adventure type that's it from me we now have something that talks about what happens in between those adventures and i think if you have players who love to play the game outside of the game during downtime then our sponsor of today's show is going to be absolutely perfect for you welcome to the downtime app now this particular app is something that i didn't think we needed until i got introduced to it and then i went hey that's pretty awesome so downtime app is a new creation and links down below to get involved in this entire production by the way it's a super cool idea and what it is is you load in your characters your characters from your regular game and then you create a party for the characters within downtime app and then the characters get to do stuff in their down time so in between your gaming sessions where they've slain the big dragon and they're about to start their next adventure what are they doing what are they doing in their down time it's a way for characters to create things as you can see my dwarf here has created a simidhar in his downtime he now claims his scimitar but perhaps he wants to start another action another week has gone by someone cancelled someone couldn't show up and so we've spent another week doing nothing he can click to start an action to start a downtime now with the right skills and the right um tools the character can then start to do something so let's see could he make and there are a lot of things that characters can do by the way they can build towers they can create sort of all kinds of wonderful and interesting things and more are being added daily so let's see if we craft some armor we can see here he does not have enough time remaining between sessions the gm sets that oh you have 15 15 days or you have a month of down time so we can see how many days it's going to take and hours 26 hours to create this and also so it's impossible to create but he could craft some chain mail there's no doubt there that he could do that and there are a lot of different things that could be crafted there um that ring mail looks quite nice i think that looks uh that looks pretty good it's gonna take him two days zero hours and it's going to cost him 15 gold and he has to have smith tools so we're going to select that there's our workshop this is all of the bits and pieces and how long it's going to take in world time uh that's real world time by the way so in 2 days 20 hours and 18 minutes the character will be able to come and or the player can come and claim this equipment that they have now made so let's choose this and off they go now the action is not yet approved and there is a reason for that we have to switch to the gm screen so it's quite an interesting piece of software here you can see my players have joined in and they are busy trying to approve so the gm has to approve what the characters are trying to build perhaps the gm doesn't approve a tower because the land needs to be negotiated over but some ring male i'm going to approve that and this potion i'm going to approve that and so we can see that our human male wizard is going to be brewing a potion and that the dwarf is going to be making some scale male we can also see that the potion is at 12.6 percent already it's only gonna take eight um uh 12 days to uh finish going but the wizard has got a lot of skills and things that align with that and of course we can manage our party we can add in some home brew equipment um and uh class information of course and uh we can see here that the session will stop on the first of june then uh it's called a week in the cities the players are in the city for a week and that's what they're going to do we've obviously got messages and things that we can check out and communicate with the other players we can look at the uh we can create more parties if we wanted to if our players were in different parties and things um and uh so that is downtime app now there's a lot more to it and of course there's a wonderful discord community that you can join which i suggest you do join so uh go and check them out downtime app sponsors of today's show what to do in between adventures now the other thing that i haven't mentioned is that it is available on mobile which allows you to then have your phone and whilst you're sitting doing nothing wait you can just increase what your character is doing or chat with the other player characters um and make sure that everyone's on the same page and there are rules and systems coming out for collaboration and the like in the near future check them out link down below thank you to them for sponsoring today's show thank you to our wonderful patreons patrons i should say for making this entire channel possible really do appreciate that thank you and of course to you for waiting until the very end or watching until the very end i should say and until next time i wish you and yours the very happiest of gaming

Channel: How to be a Great GM

Views: 46,106

Keywords: creating the campaign, campaign creator, how to be a great game master, how to gm, great gm, campaign creation, dnd campaign, dnd campaign design, dnd campaign ideas, rpg campaign design, rpg campaign ideas, rpg campaign, role playing campaign, campaign design, fantasy campaign, game master guide, dungeon master guide, gm tips, dm tips, rpg adventures, rpg adventure types, dnd adventure ideas, d&d adventures, roleplaying adventures, ttrpg adventures

Id: 8FWKQWKdCbE

Length: 19min 58sec (1198 seconds)

Published: Mon May 24 2021