Tome of Adventure Design
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The Tome of Adventure Design
A fantasy adventure game¸ at its very heart¸ is about developing an open-ended "story" of the characters. The referee is in charge of the fantasy world¸ and the players direct the actions of their characters in that fantasy world. Neither the referee nor the group of players has complete control over what's going to happen¸ and the result is an evolving set of surprises for both the referee and the players.
Unlike the players¸ as the referee and creator of the game world¸ most of your "work" is done ahead of time. To some degree or other¸ you have to create the groundwork for the adventure before the game starts. Even though no battle plan survives contact with the enemy - and if you're an experienced referee you know exactly what I mean - the game has to start... with a starting point. This might just be a vague set of ideas¸ or it might be as complex as a set of maps with a detailed key and well-thought-out encounters for the players to run into.
The Tome of Adventure Design is organized as a series of "books¸" each one providing resources at every step of the way. The vast majority of the content of each book is made up of random generation tables that we created over a quarter of a century (sigh) for our own use. It should be said up front that these are tables for deep design - in other words¸ most of them are too long¸ and contain too many unusual or contradictory entries¸ for use on the spot at the gaming table. There are already many excellent books of tables for use on the fly; the tables in these books are different. They work best as a tool for preparation beforehand¸ providing relatively vast creative resources for browsing and gathering¸ rather than quick-use tables designed to provide broad¸ fast brushstrokes. Our shorter tables tend to deliver cryptic results designed to shock the reader's creativity into filling in the gaps¸ whereas the longer tables are unusably vast for easy random generation¸ being designed to shock the reader's creativity into operation by presenting a sea of possibilities.