Getting the Most out of this Course

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.

Learn by Doing

For you to get the most value out of this course, it is important that you take action and apply what you're learning right away - you will learn much better if you immediately apply the ideas you're learning into practice. Don't just read through the course in one sitting - commit to writing an adventure, 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, at the end you will have created a fun one-shot adventure you can run for your players or publish.

Set an Attainable Goal

Clearly define what you want to accomplish by the end of this course. When you're going through the course for the first time, I highly recommend you to aim to write a one-page adventure, like the ones you see on our website.

This goal is attainable, unintimidating, and limited in scope. You're extremely likely to accomplish it successfully, which will give you the confidence to pursue more ambitious projects later on (like longer adventures and campaigns). Successfully completing a small project is much better than taking on something vast and intimidating, getting stuck, and losing motivation.

Set the Deadlines

The writing process outlined in this course can be completed in two hours (if you're doing a live brainstorming session with a group of people, like we do in our discord community), or in two weeks (if you're busy, working on the adventure on your own, and want to take your time with each step), or in any amount of time in between - it takes as much time as you're willing to put into it. If you're working on a very long adventure or a campaign, it might take even longer.

Having said that, I'm designing this course to be completed in two weeks. The Adventure Brainstorming section has 7 parts and the Adventure Writing section has 7 parts, so I recommend aiming to complete one lesson per day (each lesson taking 1-2 hours).

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 an idea should be - 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, 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.

Write a New Adventure

When you go through this course for the first time, I recommend starting from scratch and writing a new adventure, rather than continuing to work on the ideas you've been working on already.

This will help you to experience the whole creative process, which includes deliberately generating 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.

Join our Community

Before we begin the course, make sure to join our Discord Community. You will get much more out of the course if you interact with the other people interested in writing adventures, actively engage in discussion, share your experience, ask questions, ask for help if you get stuck, and help other people to brainstorm their ideas (which will help you to have more ideas of your own).

Contact

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

Email: lumenwrites@gmail.com
Discord: lumenwrites

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!

Action Steps

Clearly define your goal for this course.
Go to the #introductions channel and introduce yourself:

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?

What are you hoping to get out of this course? What are your goals, what part you most excited for?

Which part of the adventure writing process are you the most curious about? What do you find the most difficult?

What kind of adventure do you wish to create?

Writing Process