Welcome & The Process

Welcome to the Adventure Academy! Thanks for joining! I hope you're excited about this course, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what you will create using the things you will learn here!

First, I want to give you a few general tips that will help you to get the most out of this course.

Set an Attainable Goal

Your goal for this course is to create a new one-page adventure, similar to the ones you see on our website, and then run a playtest of that adventure.

This goal is attainable, limited in scope, and unintimidating. Achieving this goal will teach you everything you need to create any kind of adventures. It will be easy to drop an adventure like this into any game, or to string a series of them into a campaign. You will experience the entire process, from the initial spark of the idea, to watching your story play out at the table.

Once you've mastered this process, you'll be able to apply these principles to any storytelling project you're working on, and ready to take on more ambitious goals, like creating longer adventures and campaigns.

Write a New Adventure

Start fresh. When you go through this course for the first time, I recommend that you start from scratch and create a new adventure, rather than developing ideas you've been working on already.

This will help you to master the entire creative process, which includes deliberately creating new adventure ideas from scratch.

This will also help you to write without the weight of the expectations you may have if you've been struggling with a big project and getting nowhere. Take this course as an opportunity to experiment, to try something new.

Set a Deadline

You should set a deadline. I recommend aiming to complete an adventure in seven days.

You will be able to do that if you spend thirty minutes every day doing the action items provided for you in our lessons.

Once you've done that once, and mastered the process, you'll be able to go through the entire process and create an adventure in a couple of hours.

Learn by Doing

You will get the most out of this course if you take action and apply what you're learning right away. Don't just read through the entire course in one sitting - read one lesson at a time, and make sure to take the Action Steps listed at the end of each lesson before moving on.

If you successfully complete all the action steps outlined in this course, by the end of the course you will have a complete one-page adventure you can run for your players or publish.

Avoid Perfectionism

Avoid perfectionism. Don't try to complete all the steps perfectly, instead - do the best you can within the time-frame that you have.

Looking for the perfect idea is one of the major causes of the writer's block - people get stuck feeling unsatisfied with the ideas they have, or feeling the choice paralysis when trying to pick the best idea out of the list.

Lower your expectations for how good you think your initial idea should be. Your ideas build on top of each other and evolve as you go through the writing process. It's much easier to improve the simple idea you already have than to come up with something brilliant out of the blue. Even a simple and obvious idea will turn into something interesting and unique by the time you're done with your adventure.

Don't get it right, just get it written. The most important thing is to successfully complete the simplest playable adventure, your only goal should be to just make it exist - you can always go back and improve it later. If you move at a steady pace and complete the adventures regularly, instead of getting stuck on one project and trying to make it perfect - you will grow much faster as a writer, be more productive, and the overall quality of your work will increase.

Ask Good Questions

The core process of brainstorming ideas and writing stories comes down to asking and answering questions. Asking good, specific questions is the best way to make sure that you won't get stuck in the writer's block, because it removes all confusion and ambiguity about what to do next, and gives you clear, attainable goals - you will always have a concrete, specific task to accomplish. Breaking down complex goals into small and clear steps is the best way to make them seem less confusing and intimidating.

Most of the questions you will need to answer are universal for all adventures, I have written them down in the Adventure Blueprint and in the Action Steps sections in this course. I'll be using these questions to guide you through the story writing process.

Some of the questions will be specific to your story, they will come up as you write your adventure - such as figuring out what is the next step of your villain's evil plan, how to describe a specific location, how to make one of your encounters more interesting, etc.

Whenever you feel confused about what to do next - try to make a list of the most important open questions you don't yet know how to answer. Make the questions as specific as possible, clearly define the exact problem you're facing. If you're not sure how - write down the list of things you already know about the story, and then the things you don't know will become apparent.

Make Lists

The best way to go about finding answers to your creative questions is making lists. To answer a question, quickly list 5-10 possible answers you can think of, and pick your favorite one. Don't try to come up with the best answers right away - aim for "good enough". If the best idea you've got is still not great - that's okay, use it as a placeholder. It will be much easier to improve it later, after the first draft is complete.

Start by finding simple and obvious solutions, then, if you have some time left, list the most important things you'd like to improve about your ideas and focus on them.

You can also get good results from intentionally trying to write absurdly bad answers. What is the opposite of what you're trying to accomplish, what's definitely not going to happen next?

This strategy takes advantage of so called divergent thinking - instead of trying to find the "best" or the "correct" answer, you try to generate a list of possible alternatives and then pick your favorite. That encourages you to explore ideas that wouldn't naturally occur to you, and makes the creative process much easier.

It is also a great way to overcome perfectionism that often causes the writer's block. It's difficult to come up with one great idea, it's much easier to come up with 5-10 potentially valid ideas and build on top of them, recombine them, tweak them, and pick your favorite.

That's why the Adventure Blueprint is built around lists - for every step of the process you'll make a list of ideas and then pick your favorite ones to take to the next step. Answer questions quickly, make creative choices, commit to them, and move on to the next task.

So this is the core creative technique you will use throughout the whole course: ask a good question, list 5-10 answers, pick your favorite, and move on. You're never staring at a blank page - you're always choosing from a list.

Engage with the Community

Engage with the community. You will get much more out of the course if you interact with the other people in our community, actively engage in discussion, share your experience, ask for feedback on your ideas, and help others.

Almost all Action Steps sections will have a prompt asking you to post something in the Discord - discuss your ideas, share your work, ask for help and feedback. This is one of the most important and valuable parts of this process, so make sure to take advantage of it. Don't be shy to make posts about your progress - our community is friendly and encouraging, and will be happy to help you on your journey.

And remember the principle of reciprocity - the more you help other writers to improve their work, the more likely they will be to help you with yours. When someone left you some good feedback - give back, look at what they're writing and comment on one of their posts.

I also highly recommend organizing your own brainstorming sessions, and participating in sessions organized by others, because creating adventures is much easier and more fun when you're doing that with other people. It is a fantastic way to learn from others and come up with ideas you wouldn't have thought of on your own.

Contact

If you have any questions or encounter any issues, don't hesitate to contact me:

• Email: lumenwrites@gmail.com
• Discord: lumenwrites

Share this Course!

If you find this course useful - please share it with your friends or on social media, it would really help me to grow our community!

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Action Steps

• Clearly define your goal for this course, and write it down somewhere. I recommend "I will complete a one-page adventure in one week, and then I will run a playtest of this adventure."
• Join our Discord community, go to the #introductions channel and introduce yourself:

1. Tell us a bit about yourself. What should we call you, what brings you here, what are your hobbies and interests, how did you become interested in GMing and writing adventures?
2. What are you hoping to get out of this course? What are your goals, what part you most excited for?
3. Which part of the adventure writing process are you the most curious about? What do you find the most difficult?
4. What kind of adventure do you wish to create?