Left in the cutting room: More reflections on adventure design

In late 2017, I wrote a couple articles for EN World discussing some lessons about adventure design I took from “How To Write Adventure Modules That Don’t Suck” from Goodman Games. You can find those two articles here and here. It’s a cool book containing a couple dozen essays on adventure design from a wide range of authors. And an original rpg encounter accompanies each entry in the book to illustrate the principles and tips discussed in each essay.

The format packs a one-two punch that often unearths valuable insight into adventure design, but it also yields some uneven results here and there. Not every encounter will prove useful to all game masters, but most are generic enough to fit easily into virtually any fantasy rpg system, and a few of the encounters work with science-fiction elements and settings. With a pdf version available for fairly cheap, I’m confident that most gamemasters would get some value out of the product.

But a discussion of “How To Write Adventure Modules That Don’t Suck” should highlight at least one of the encounters detailed in the book, and I originally intended to do so. However, that section of the article didn’t make the final cut due to an unexpected change in word count. So here, on my personal blog, I’m going to post what I originally planned to write about my favorite single encounter detailed in the book.

“Water’s Garden Shop” by Jean Rabe stood out for its delightful tone and creativity. The encounter assumes that the player characters have been asked to look after a quirky shop in the market district of a fantasy city while the owner is away. Events gradually take a turn toward the bizarre as escalating crises are unleashed on the party. The shop sells all manner of fantastical gardening supplies, plants and small pets, from carnivorous flowers to an intelligent frog who loves to discuss local politics and tasty insects.

The beautifully detailed encounter follows an essay by Rabe on the use of all five sense to immerse the players in the game, and “Water’s Garden Shop” packs plenty of sensory stimulation. The fish tanks bubble musically, the air feels tropically humid and the flowers dazzle in vivid color. Nearly everything in the shop features a magical twist, sometimes readily apparent but occasionally hidden for the player characters to discover. The encounter would serve nicely as a whimsical break for adventurers weary of grim dungeon crawls and marauding orcs.

So I salute you, Jean Rabe, for a lovely bit of adventure design. I hope I can find an excuse to get it on the table someday. I got a lot of mileage out of “How To Write Adventure Modules That Don’t Suck.” Pick it up if you’re like thinking about adventure design and could use some inspiration.