Wrinting a role-playing campaign

This is the second chapter of a personal role-playing campaign project.

With this chapter, players begin the first part of the main quest: to find the heroes of the previous war so that they can help them against the yuan-ti invasion.

The first hero to find and convince is the dwarf Adrick, lord of the small city of Ironspear.

However, the players soon notice that something is not quite right in the town.

Having started a Narrative Design programme with Kurt Mc Clung, I wanted to put my new knowledge into practice. My role-playing campaign and this chapter were perfect exercises for testing my new narrative tools !

You can find my working method for this chapter and the general campaign below.

For each scenario, I try to work on different narrative elements and add at least one gameplay mechanic. For example, for this chapter, I decided to practise writing dialogue and add two mechanics/rules.

Working on dialogue in a role-playing game was really fun and stimulating! I always had to think about what the players could say and anticipate all the questions they could ask the characters.

I also had to create more characters and situations where the players could talk to them.

However, my storyline had to remain clear and as brief as possible : I had to avoid writing too much dialogue that was unlikely to be used.

To avoid this, I had to work on the content of the dialogue in relation to the players' progress : I had to be sure what information they had and when. The characters, their behaviour, and what the players discovered as they explored, also allowed me to answer some of their questions without them having to ask.

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For the additional mechanics, I wanted to take advantage of the fact that players would be taking part in more dialogues by adding more advanced investigation gameplay.

During their quest, players are faced with mysteries and questions. They have to cross-check the information they've obtained by talking to the characters and during their adventuresin order to answer these questions and find out what's really going on in the city.

LThe second mechanic allows players to free some of their enemies from the curse that afflicts them. By doing this, players ensure that they have reinforcements for the final battle in the last chapter.

With this rule, I'm trying to add a long-term challenge and reward for the players.