Going to get some milk and returning with a car...

The other day (Monday I believe), I began to put down idea for a second installment of my MyRealms mini-quest called “Blades for the Moonshae” (whose working title is “Blades of Aniolaran”). With the announcement of the “Our Realms” gameday, I have been thinking about adventures and writing a lot. So there I was putting down ideas and thoughts.

Who is the villain here?

What are the PCs doing now?

What are the NPCs doing now?

What could be a cool encounter?

What new monster can I spring upon the PCs?

What level is this one?

All this went through my head. As I started to put down some ideas together, the whole thing began to form into a whole… And it stared at me… I needed a trilogy! ARGH! No way would I be able to finish everything in two adventures.

Part 1, Blades for the Moonshaes, brings the PCs into the story. Part 2 is rather investigative and sets up a finale I had hoped would be done in part 2. Part 3 will be the climax.

I have to say that I am not a fan or trilogies, other than Star Wars… Why? Because I find they often have too much filler. However in this case, the series really grows and sets up the next installment. I like stories that start and end (see my adventure writing series) way more over an endless series of loose end adventures. I will edit myself and make SURE the third installment closes off the current series. Should inspiration hit me with more ideas, a new series will be born…

The story is based upon Moonshavian fanboy knowledge I’ve been collecting since I learned that I would be writing for the Isles. Something I would REALLY have liked to see in LFR modules but that seem to be rejected by HQ.

Now, before you go “OMG! He’s ranting again!” (And if you read this blog on a regular basis, you would), let me stop you. This stipulation, I can understand and support. What HQ does not want are fanboy’s wet dreams adventures where a casual gamer goes “Why should I care about the color of this chick Midnight’s panties? She lived over a century ago! This makes no sense!” The stipulation allow for adventures to be somewhat simpler (since the author/editor does not have to populate the adventures with pages upon pages of background to make sure the DM or the players did not have to listen to endless droning about why such and such NPC is cooler or about the story of such-and-such NPC when in the adventure, just getting a “magic sword” would be sufficient.

I believe I have a way to make the fanboy pill pass easily to casual gamers because of my philosophy of “if it’s not in the module, you need it”, which links up well with HQ’s vision of things. So while this requires more work on my part to integrate, my natural laziness means I cut out unneeded parts.

There… A narrowly-avoided rant… That was close… And rare!

So where was I? Oh yeah! The Blades for Aniolara… So right now the big kicker in that adventure is a Skill Challenge I really want to see how it plays in-game… I think the MyRealms adventures are a great way to test out a special format or different style of encounter… For Blades of Aniolaran I am making the adventure run-able at both low and high tier (leveling up monsters & skill check DCs), allowing me greater freedom in running the adventure for players.

Wow… So there it is… I started writing about my series, then trilogies and series, moved to a near-rant and ended lauding the MyRealms adventures…

As promised I went to get some milk and returned with a car...