Making an Adventure with "Mythmere's Adventure Design Deskbook Volume One"

There were two volumes of the Mythmere's Adventure Design Deskbook series released thru Black Blade. As I understand it, the original plan for the series has been scrapped and a one volume hardcover design book is planned. I don't know the details. The two volumes which were released, Principles and Starting Points and Monsters, are still available in print from Frog God Games' Swords & Wizardry Legacy Products page.

As this could possibly be construed as a review and as far as I know, Congress still says I have to be all kinds of up-front about that sort of thing, I'll mention that I purchased the PDF from Black Blade and wasn't asked to write this post.

Today, we're going to use the random tables contained in Volume 1, to make an adventure!

I'm feeling sluggish, uncreative and generally out of sorts, today. So, my current emotional reality will make for a fine test of the material.

"This first book is about the topmost level of adventure design: a cardinal rule, the elements of a good adventure, the location, the villain’s plan, and the adventurers’ mission. These all provide context – the framework upon which the details hang. Oddly – and I’ve had this confirmed to me by several brilliant adventure authors – the context is often not the starting point for creating an adventure." - Matt Finch, ADD V 1

I'd better quote Matt's Cardinal Rule, as well:

A good adventure should maximize meaningful player decisions.

Today, since we're using Volume 1, we will indeed be going with context. So, the book kicks off with three sets of tables for generating a location. The last, takes a more abstract approach. (rolls d6.) The d6 tells me to use the second table. :)

There are four sub-tables within Table 1-1B: Locations. Each sub-table has 100 entries.

Results

• Structures Description: Coastal
• Structure: Sanctuary
• Feature (First Word): Mutant
• Feature (Second Word): Spawn

That seems really on the nose. The results can generate some mind-bending gestalts and I'd prefer something more wild and woolly! I almost scrapped that and re-rolled. But, let's see where it's going.

A set of tables for generating adventures starting with a Mission is next. I'm not going that route today and will instead jump right into the meat of the matter. Most of the tables in this volume are about generating a Villain!

Table 1-11 is the Master Table of Villainous Plans. There are 15 entries on this table. Result:

• Food – the villain seeks to get food for himself, a monster, or for his organization.

There's more detail in that entry and indeed, many of the tables and entries have extensive commentaries. I'm only aiming to show the results, though, not reproduce the book, so I'll keep things as bare bones as possible.

OK. I could stop here. I can immediately think of several directions to go with this thing. I'm glad I didn't scrap those first results, because it's starting to sound pretty cool! But, since my main goal here is to explore Matt's book, I'm going to continue and see what else the Tables have to say!

There are sub-tables for each of the Villainous Plans entries, more than one for most of them. 21 pages worth, so they get rather detailed.

The Food thing is one of the simpler choices, with only one table to further flesh things out. We now turn to Table 1-23: Food-Related Activities. There are 20 possible results, here. Result:

• The villain/monster’s food processing operation outside a community is causing environmental-type damage in the community (fouled water, poisoned grass, clouds of poison gas, etc) 

So, we go to Table 1-35: Unusual Minions and Lieutenants.  Three sub-tables of 20 entries each. Results:

• Nature of Minion: Sorceress
• Unusual Characteristic: Very Concerned with Personal Appearance
• Reason Why in Villains Service: Unwilling Minion.

Allright. As Matt says:

"Virtually every prominent adventure author I’ve talked with about this question has answered it in the same way. A creative adventure begins with a visual image of some kind."

Matt's preface has a lot to say about the creative process and use of random tables. From my experience, I agree with Mr. Finch and visual imagery, daydreaming, etc., always take me where I want to go. So, I'm gonna go and smoke a cigarette and daydream about that ecological thing. Be back in a minute.

Ok. I'm back. As an aside, this type of creative daydreaming is the quickest and surest way I know of, to pull up personal psychological data. Once you start learning your personal bank of symbols, there's a lot of places you can go.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled adventure.

About ten or so miles outside a population center, an estate sits upon the coast. The Sorceress living there, has three children. These children are all gifted Psionics. Who are emotional vampires needing the fear, pain and terror of sentient beings, to survive. The Sorceress is horrified at what she has to do to feed her children, but what choice does she really have? The nearby town has, for years, been subject to disaster, deprivation and violence. Which grows worse and more frequent, as the children grow older. When the children were younger, she would damage herself to feed them. Hidden beneath her clothes, are horrid scars and grotesque alterations. As her offspring grew older, their need outstripped her ability to provide for them.

Allright then! In a way, I wish some results involving more detailed tables had come up, but, this smaller Random Table path proved itself, admirably! By the way, I love this book. You should get one, before FGG runs out!