Adventure Designer

This is a set of worksheets which I have designed for planning out Adventures. I've used it for The Shadow of Yesterday, Serenity, Traveller and GURPS, all with more or less equal success. The original design was for The Shadow of Yesterday, hence the reference to Secrets and Keys in the character summary.

This file very clearly isn't intended to act as an at-table play aid, but instead to function as a planning tool which you can print out and fill in.  Typically multiple copies of the Key Scene Worksheet are needed.

Because I generally run event-based adventures, I don't use the map index a lot, but I do on occasion. The NPC Index is a document which I maintain throughout the life of a campaign.

The Key Scene Worksheet has been broken out into a separate PDF form, which you can fill out and print, so that your in-scene notes are easy to read. You'll also see an example of a filled out sheet.

If you use this in your game, please leave a comment below to let me know how this worked for you. I'd love to know what features worked and what needed improvement.

OpenOffice Adventure Planning Document

I've made an OpenOffice writer template for planning out your adventures. I have also incorporated features from Robin Laws' Laws of Good Game Mastering to plan out your transitions between scenes. This makes the templates better for mysteries, as well as the Set Piece and Branching adventure structures described by Mr. Laws.

Key Scene Version 2

Version 2 of the Key Scene Worksheet has been modified based on some discussions at The Forge and the Steve Jackson Games website. New Features:

• The intended hero of the scene, and their heroic opportunity, are explicitly called out. Hard experience has shown that for a scene to be successful, it must put one of the players into a position to be a hero. You don't need to railroad them, but the opportunity needs to be present so that they can make the choice.
• The principal conflict of the scene is explicitly called out. The Key Points of the old sheet did a decent job of this, but I decided that it needed to be made clearer.
• The branching structure discussed in Laws of Good Game Mastering has been added to the sheet.