Each adventure spans two pages and opens up to lay flat.

Everything you need for a

four-hour session is on those two pages, with the occasional custom monster stat
block located in an easy-to-print/copy section in the appendix. Adventures are:

Modular Rip them out and fold into any campaign you run.
Low-prep Read a one-sheet adventure and be ready to run in fewer than fifteen
minutes!
Discoverable Play to see what happens! Lots of random encounters written in a
loose, sandbox style means a collaboratively told story, increasing GM and player
satisfaction.

Each adventure is stand-alone with the exception of a four-part story arc wrapping
up in an epic, world-shattering conclusion.

This adventure module includes:

10 1-sheet adventures The core of the module is a set of low-prep, high-octane

adventures with 5e stats and black-and-white maps.
3 Pre-generated Bullet Campaigns This is a technique similar to Dungeon Worlds
'Fronts' or Fates 'Issues'. Each Bullet Campaign is a faction or force in the
world with diabolical plans. A list of NPCs and Escalations let gamemasters easily
adapt those campaign events to the story unfolding at the table.
1 Region Map We include a one-page 8x10 hex area black-and-white map (each hex
being 60 miles) with a one-page description. Use this world or swap in your own
setting.
1 City Map & 1 Village Map Both black-and-white maps include a legend along with
key issues and encounters, richly detailed and described on a two-page spread.
GM Tools The product includes random encounters, random villages, a list of
optional adventure seeds, lists of random NPC names, and other great tools to make
the adventure alive, dynamic, and expandable for months of play.

===============

http://thedragonsflagon.blogspot.ca/2015/12/d-micro-settings.html

Monday, December 7, 2015

D&D micro-settings
When I think of "settings" for D&D-type games, I think of two different sorts of
products.

One is the sort in which an entire campaign may take place, detailing in broad
strokes a fairly large geographic area. Many settings of this type have been
published, and you probably know at least a few of them by name if not more
intimately: Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and the Known World (a.k.a.
Mystara,) among many, many others. With this type of setting, you generally get a
map, a description of the various regions, the nations and cultures, major NPCs and
factions, history and legends, and probably some adventure hooks and a few new
character classes or sub-classes.

It's the second kind that I want to talk about today. Exemplifying this type of
setting is B2: The Keep on the Borderlands. While it (and most other examples of
the type) was published as an adventure module, it's really a mini-setting, without
an explicit plot or any of the other common trappings of most adventure modules.
Instead, we get a very detailed base of operations in the titular Keep, a small-
scale wilderness map and a few outdoor encounter areas, and a sprawling map of the
Caves of Chaos. All areas of Keep and Caves are fully stocked, with stats for all
inhabitants. Each area is described in detail, with furnishings and treasure.
Relationships between the factions of monsters are described, with hints on how
they might interact and how the players can manipulate them to their benefit. A
table of rumors provides adventure hooks, which the players may pursue or not.
There is no predetermined goal, no "win" or "lose" conditions, nothing expected of
the player characters but to go forth and explore something.

In a way, a micro-setting is like the fabled megadungeon in that it's meant to be

visited again and again, changing with time and the characters' actions instead of
appearing once and never seen again. Unlike the megadungeon, the micro-setting
isn't meant to sustain an entire campaign on its own, though a phase of a campaign
may center around it.

There's a lot to love about these little settings.

Having pre-mapped and stocked micro-settings without plots means I can run whatever
I like, or whatever the players want to pursue. A good mini-setting has the
potential for a variety of different kinds of adventures. The Keep, for instance,
has opportunities for scouting, rescue, search-and-destroy, and exploratory
missions, service to good and noble causes, and treachery and betrayal. It's all
there, and my group can pursue whatever they like. I won't have to scrap some
elaborate adventure I've written up for the night's session nor improvise something
more to their liking completely off the top of my head. If the players decide
they'd rather investigate where those skeletons and zombies are coming from instead
of searching for the merchant's wife, I'm prepared and ready to roll with it.

Re-using familiar locations gives a campaign continuity, which makes it more

believable and gets players more invested in it, in a way that making new locations
from scratch for every adventure doesn't. Having recurring locations, characters,
and factions figure into each new adventure makes the world feel real and organic,
not just a series of vignettes unconnected by any common thread but the same
protaganists. Instead of inventing a new mercenary outfit to support the next
villain in his plot to overthrow the castle, you can use the goblin tribe the
players ran out of the cave complex three sessions ago. The goblins have a reason
to hate the PCs, and the players have an emotional stake in proving that their
first victory was no fluke. Plus, they get to use whatever they've learned about
these goblins' strengths and weaknesses, which makes their past encounters
meaningful to current events, instead of just war stories to tell around the
tavern.

You can build a campaign world from the bottom up by stringing together several
micro-settings. It's a process of discovery from both sides of the screen.
Players discover the world by playing in it, and you discover how each micro-
setting relates to others to form the greater world. All the bits in between
micro-settings can be fleshed out as-needed rather than set in stone in advance.
Without the overarching plan that a detailed macro-setting imposes on the campaign,
you're free to build your world on the fly for the greatest enjoyment of your
group. What's beyond the dark forest that they players have declared their
intention to cross? Not some generic village that you put on a map because it
looked like there should be something there, but another micro-setting bubbling
with adventure potential!

You can use a mix of your own micro-settings and published ones. I don't know
about anyone else, but it can be creatively liberating for me to drop a micro-
setting ready-made by someone else into my game and figure out how to put it to
use. Because it's sprung from a different mind than my own, it forces me out of
unconscious patterns, but because it's a micro-setting full of possibilities and
not a story with a predetermined plot, my imagination is set free to fly on new
courses rather than simply put in a different straitjacket.

Using other people's micro-settings in your campaign also reduces prep work for you
while still allowing maximum detail. If the players decide to explore that ruined
keep looming on the hill, you've got it all mapped and stocked, and if not, you
haven't spent a ton of time writing it up for nothing. With a mixture of your own
creations and published works, you can have a ton of very detailed areas with a
fraction of the effort it would take to do it all yourself.

Unfortunately, the supply of micro-settings available seems to be a lot less than

that of macro-settings and plotted adventures. If you know of any other good
micro-settings, feel free to post titles and links in the comments.

Next up, I talk about the ingredients that make a good micro-setting.

============

http://thedragonsflagon.blogspot.ca/2015/12/ingredients-of-micro-setting.html

Ingredients of a micro-setting

Last post, I rambled about micro-settings in D&D: Pre-designed and stocked areas
without any particular plot attached.

Making a micro-setting is both similar to and different from building either a

standard adventure or a large-scale setting. It requires the former's granularity
of detail and the latter's focus on open-ended potential rather than specific
events and actions.

Details which are important to the form are:

Maps: As the name implies, a micro-setting should be relatively small. How small?
There's no objective limit, but I would say small enough that all points of
interest can be explicitly marked on the map. A macro-setting map, such as a hex
map of a kingdom or a continent, only shows the most notable feature in each hex,
such as a city or a type of terrain. In reality, a six-mile hex can contain a lot
of interesting stuff, far more than a single icon would indicate. The hex map
might show a village beside a river, but there might be a wizard's tower on a tiny
island in the river, a monastery on a rocky crag overlooking the village, a ruined
castle in the boggy area by the riverbank south of the village, and a cave where
the local youths go for mischief which unknown to them contains a secret entrance
to an ancient underground stronghold. The micro-setting map should be of high
enough resolution to show all those things and where they lie in relation to one
another.

A base of operations: A complete micro-setting should include a place of relative

safety, where the characters can rest between adventures, restock and upgrade
equipment, store treasure, gather information, and recruit help. It could be a
fortress, an trading post, a village, a fleet of ships at anchor, a clan-steading
of dwarves or elves, or even a lair of friendly monsters. May be mapped and keyed,
a la the Keep from B2.

People: Important, influential, and interesting NPCs, such as leaders and authority
figures, mercenaries for hire, merchants and traders, professional services,
rivals, mentors, and potential employers. Some bare-bones stats are a good idea; a
few personality traits and motivations for each one are even better.

Factions: Organizations of people and monsters, whether formal or informal: guilds,

families, tribes, houses, clubs, secret societies, religions, etc. What are their
interests and aims, and how do they relate to one another?

Dungeons: Dark and dangerous places to explore for fun and profit. The setting
should include at least one good-sized dungeon or several lesser ones, each fully
mapped, stocked, and ready for play. (Some published micro-settings make
exceptions as a teaching tool for new DMs; the Cave of the Unknown in B2 is an
example. You'd still want to fully map and stock it if you intended to use it as
part of the overall setting, though.)

Adventure hooks: Basically any fact about the setting that might lead to adventure
opportunities. Often presented in the form of a rumor list. These may appeal to
the party's sense of heroism or helpfulness (i.e. the needs and concerns of the
common folk regarding things dark and dangerous) or to their curiosity or self-
interest (rumors of treasure, magic, or just weird things.)

Of course, what you don't write up in detail is nearly as important as what you do.
Anything that isn't directly relevant to running a game in that micro-setting
should be left vague or unspecified, no matter how interesting it might seem. This
allows the micro-setting to be easily inserted into someone's game world, or for
you to re-use it at some later date in a different game world without having to gut
it to avoid conflicts. It truly is a "module," plug-and-play.

Focus on the Right Here and Right Now. No extensive history, no intricate
connections to the wider world. We don't know why the Keep is on the Borderlands,
except that it's an outpost of Law that stands between civilization and the forces
of Chaos. We don't know how long it's been there or who built it. We don't know
where the castellan came from or how he was appointed to this post. Leaving all
these spaces blank makes a micro-setting flexible and versatile. According to the
needs of the particular campaign and world, the Keep could be new or old. It could
be pushing back the frontiers of civiliation into the wild, or the last bastion of
a retreat. The castellan could be a humble enlisted man who won his position
through grit and determination, or the bastard son of a powerful noble shunted
aside with this remote posting.

It's a setting, not a story. When you're populating your micro-setting with people
and creatures, think about motives and goals, not actions. Actions come later,
when the campaign is in motion. Instead of writing up what a monster or a faction
will do, figure out what it wants in the long run. A typical plotted adventure
might have the evil cult kidnap the local ruler. In a micro-setting, the cult
might wish to quietly infiltrate and corrupt the local good church, entice new
members to join, and ultimately establish itself as the most powerful organization
in the setting. Broad objectives like this allow the DM a lot of freedom to decide
just what methods and tactics the cult will use, and adapt to changing
circumstances and opportunities. If and when it makes sense for it to kidnap the
ruler, it will do so. A lot depends on the actions of the players - they are the
wild cards in the game, after all, and their decisions can simultaneously close
some opportunities for the other forces in the world, and open others.

I think that wraps up this particular topic. Next up, thoughts on making
adventures in a "plotless" setting or micro-setting meaningful (i.e. plotting on
the fly during the campaign.)