Since I think these ideas were quite good, I’ll repost them here. It is probably quite difficult to dig these up from the OTEATP group where I first posted them.
These are just some of my thoughts about how to build a simple adventure, and not meant as criticism to anyone. Take a look at at, and tell us what You think and add Your own ideas to it, and then we will eventually have an adventure cookbook.
So, when we run out of ideas, lets have a look at this: (Don’t follow the parts of the recipe that You don’t like!)
1: There is a theory that there are only 36 different dramatic situations. (Hey, 36 You say, then we can toss the coyns, very CT indeed, or use the red dice white dice thingie…) These situations are listed here.
Use one or two of them…2: Adapt the situation to the CT universe.
3: Use an encyclopedia, and look up two or three words at random, and include these in the adventure.
4: Look in an online newspaper, and pick two or three minor events, and adapt these to the CT universe.
5: Use an idea from Your favourite television action program. (But not from “Murder she wrote”)
6: Use a really strange idea from your favourite television sci-fi program.
7: ???
8: ???
etc…
99: Put it all together.
Thoughts or ideas?
Image copyright expired. Public Domain.
BeRKA,
I agree with your thoughts on using a newspaper to generate ideas. A lot of times when I’m having trouble coming up with an idea I just go to the newspaper and look till I find an interesting headline. Often these make good extended encounters or side trek adventures. One of the cool things about doing this is you have to take the event that happened and translate it to a different tech level.
I just went and got a headline from my local paper, “Robbery leads police to big haul of guns, drugs and stolen goods”. Wow could we have it served to us on a silver platter please! Ok lets say we’re on a higher tech world at least 12 or so. We have a patron that ‘somehow’ had some sort of PDA type device that is in that haul. He has some sensitive information he doesn’t want to get out. So he hires our intrepid players to either get the device or wipe it’s drive. Now we need to figure out what types of high tech gear the players can use to accomplish their mission, or how they can sneak into the police evidence locker. It should be fun just to throw the problem out and sit back and listen to what kind of crazy plans the players come up with.
Anyway, you could come up with a number of scenarios to get players involved with that headline and have any random encounters you need for the evening all taken care of.
With some imagination, there are so much ready made stuff you can use.
If I get some spare time, I’ll will use the recipe above to produce an example scenario and post it here.
I really like the idea of using the news to develop game ideas, especially for a real fast idea or to fill a gap. I use it very often when one of the players can’t be there and you really need them to follow the game line.