So the gaming group moved from Saturday to Friday night, which is, wait, that's tonight! In fact, you can see their cars pulling up now. You just got home from work yourself! How will you ever deal the finely crafted, dutifully honed adventure they've come to expect?

Here's how to create a decent adventure in 30 seconds. First, work it backwards from the end. You start with a 'big bad'-- a boss encounter, a minor-league 1-night heavy doomed to fall that day. Pick from one of the following categories:

* Elemental * Undead * Plant or fungus creature * Extra-dimensional entity *

Okay, why those? The key is avoiding high levels of sentience, which would also necessitate planning, scheming, and plot. By chosing something with either no brain or who has a totally alien, non-human mentality, you free yourself of having to create motives or interplay. Also, players are easily motivated into destroying 'a monster', whereas a humanoid menace might raise the risk of negotiating, politicking, and other social-based character skills.

Remember not to tell the players what the 'big bad' is-- not now, not during the game, not after they kill it. The essence of a good villain is a dose of mystery, and this is the one time you will never call it by its official Handbook name. Even during the final encounter, describe it, never name it.

Now that you have 'bad thing that must be destroyed', step 2: put some intermediate threats between the entrance (which you still haven't invented yet) and the 'big bad'. These should be tinier or juvenile variants of the big threat.

If the ultimate goal is facing a plant elemental, toss in a few shriekers and shambling mounds. Going after a ghost or wight? Put in some ghouls and zombies (always fun). Got a Hound of Tindalos, a blink dog or displacer beast will do. We'll dub these the 'juvies', short for juveniles, because 'mini me' is so overused.

Now, put a trap the players must navigate before they reach the juvies. If it's an elemental, the trap is 'the element'-- a pool of fire, a pit, an acid lake, whatever. If it's undead, make it an avalance of bones, a pit, an acid lake, whatever. For other stuff, you can always use, umm... some sort of pit, or acid lake, you get the idea.

The trap should be something the characters can spot before they trigger it. It's a thinking challenge, a 'how do we get past', not a gotcha. Fortunately, you don't have to think up a solution beforehand, because whatever you think up will be ignored by the players anyway. Just give 'em a challenge and let them answer it.

Now, we populate what (to the charaacters) will be the early part of the adventure. This is the window dressing, where you set the theme. This primes the players so that, when their characters finally reach the 'big bad', they say "of course, that makes sense, no wonder all those damn [whatevers] were there."

This early part can have some easily-killed kinfolk of the main enemy type, or some fanboys, or some hangers-on. If you're running a plant elemental as your final challenge, some kobolds or elves might be on the outskirts. If it's a fire-elemental, heck, toss in some smithy gnomes or will-o-the-wisps. If it's undead, a couple of jackals or some flesh-eating worms are likely to be hanging out in the outskirts. These opening bits should be fun and easy for the players, plus it also buys you time to think a little more about how difficult to make the 'big bad'.

The last creation part is the lure or hook, what draws the characters (and thus the players) into the attack. Generally, go with the obstructionist principal. This weird lair/place where people die just sort of appeared here and now everyone in the area is panicking. Maybe some local kids went missing-- or a recent shipment of the King's gold. Perhaps it's just that this area is in the character's way, blocking their progress from campaign start A and campaign end B.

Even though you can use a 'because it is there' justification, it's always good to sweeten the plot with an offer of a bounty or the lure of lost treasure. You can invent the treasure later, since your 30 seconds are almost up. Fortunately, you're done!

Once you start running the game, you can scale the threats as you go. You've already restricted yourself to only having to look up 3 or 4 sets of monster stats, so there's no NPC creation or deep stat work here. Tracking enemies is easy because the characters are either facing hanger-ons before the trap, juvies after the trap, or the big bad in the lair.

In order of creation, then, you have:

5. Big Bad
4. Juvies
3. Thematic Trap
2. Kin, fanboys and hangers-on
1. Lure

Once you run it, the players get to experience:

1. An opening hook
2. A motly assortment of easily dispatched foes
3. A thinking puzzle
4. Some larger threats, that start to make them think there's a pattern
5. A major unknown threat that makes them go 'aha', plus treasure

You're done in 30 seconds. Time to game.

Until next month,
Sandy
sandy at rpg.net