Valanche’s Eye
by R P Davis
R P Davis is the author of Valanche’s Eye, a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition adventure about a settlement ravaged by an Earth Elemental. Davis is no stranger to writing RPGs; he has more than 20 titles to his name available on Dungeon Masters Guild. Below, Davis shares his perspective on writing role-play stories.
What inspired this adventure?
I can’t say there was anything specific [that] inspired this story. I’d been seeing tons of “Get the mission, go slaughter the obviously evil things and take their stuff” kind of adventures coming across the Guild and elsewhere. Some were more elegantly packaged or interestingly presented than others, but they had a common theme: Here is an obvious villain. Go and swat it.
Before I go any further, that’s cool! It’s a trope, and I’m all about embracing tropes when writing fantasy content, whether it’s a three-volume epic novel or a one-shot D&D adventure. But it was bugging me. I wanted to do something different, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.
Then one night I happened to be browsing through the Monster Manual while reading in bed — what? You mean you don’t do that? Is that weird? Why are you looking at me like that? [Editor’s note: you’re not alone in this!]— and got to the entry for xorn. (Don’t worry, that’s in the SRD, so we’re allowed to say it.) Xorn are interesting creatures. They’re intelligent. They can swim through stone. And they like to eat gems.
I wanted to do something different, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.
That right there is interesting enough. But when I thought about one of characters in my weekly home game, a gnome with a fondness for gems which could better be described as an obsession, and a combination flashed into my brain. Disturbing my wife and two dogs, I leaped from my bed and dashed to my office to write the idea down before it left me: A relative of the character’s was working a gem mine troubled by a xorn.
That’s all the idea was at first.
When I looked at the idea file the next morning, I started to think deeper. Unlike other elementals, xorn aren’t evil. They’re neutral. They don’t maliciously attack other creatures for the fun of it. Here was a perfect opportunity to take an “out and down” adventure — where adventurers travel from a settlement through the wilderness to a dungeon, descend, clear it, and go home — and make the villain not so obvious.
It took a few days pondering this before I hit upon the idea of making two quasi-villains. On the one hand, there’s the elemental who’s devouring the livelihood of ostensibly innocent humanoids. On the other, there’s an ostensibly innocent humanoid who doesn’t give a flip about anything or anyone other than greedily exploiting his mother lode. The obvious villain is the xorn. But the hidden villain is the greedy mine boss who’s counting on stupid adventurers to just wade in and slaughter the creature he lacks the power to kill himself.
The adventure is basically how the characters interact with this situation. Yeah, there are combat and other encounters. It’s a D&D adventure module, after all. But it’s the skeleton of a story, a theme, for players and DM to explore.
How do you approach writing an RPG?
It varies. Sometimes I hit upon an idea and a story comes flooding out, like happened in Valanche’s Eye. Other times I see a map and wonder what lives there and why; figuring out the dungeon ecology causes a story to present itself. Other times I’m browsing a book and come upon a cool monster I’ve never used before. Yet other times I come up with a villain, which leads to figuring out her Evil Plan, which leads to imagining ways heroes can thwart that plan.
In all cases, however, as I noted above I think an adventure module is the skeleton of a story which is fleshed out and given life by the people around the table. Tabletop RPGs are collaborative storytelling. My approach to writing an adventure is to give the bones and a small amount of flesh upon which the full story can be built.
It starts with an outline. Then I add in milestones, what Larry Brooks in Story Engineering calls the “Tent Poles.” Without at least a first plot point, midpoint shift, and second plot point, you don’t have a story which is recognizable as a story, so you have to have those.
Tabletop RPGs are collaborative storytelling
Then I decide that’s too linear and add in options, different paths the story can take. The hard part is bringing the paths together to the tent poles, and thence to the big finish. That’s why my hard drive is littered with adventures that will never see the light of day unless I decide to flesh them out myself into short stories or chapters in a larger work of speculative fiction (which is always a possibility).
This particular adventure is relatively linear. There are no ways the players can deviate too far from the plot line without wrecking the whole thing, at least in a predictable way. That’s often considered a failure in design, and I confess freely to it as such! However, if I were to write Valanche’s Eye in a way that provided, say, three or more approaches to each tent pole, the thing would be more like a Wizards hardcover adventure path book, like Storm King’s Thunder, than a DM’s Guild module.
What tips do you have for aspiring writers?
Some books I recommend for writers include How To Write Adventure Modules That Don’t Suck by Goodman Games and Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, mentioned above.
Go get those and devour them. Internalize their lessons. You won’t be sorry.
Here are a few random thoughts specific to my philosophy of game writing:
If you’re writing for other people’s games, embrace linearity. Yeah, some reviewers might take you to task over it, but I don’t think you can spend the time on writing a DM’s Guild or OGL adventure and offer the kind of “sandbox” experience upon which many players predicate their enjoyment of the game. You’d spend so much time on it, you’d never see a return on your investment.
More than that, I consider much of the commentary about sandboxing to be ignorant of story structure. The odds of a sandbox experience actually producing satisfying STORY are slim to none. You’re just flailing about, never really accomplishing anything. Without the linearity of the Ring, there would have been no reason for Frodo to cross Middle-Earth in the first place. That’s not to say that his decision to leave the Fellowship at the Pillars of Argonath couldn’t possibly have been a sandbox decision; that’s totally arguable. But as many sandbox aficionados would have started complaining the instant their character got the McGuffin in the first place — never mind the Council of Elrond, where they’d start shrieking about a railroad! — they’d miss out on the towering, epic story.
As humans, we need those basics of story to feel satisfied with the experience. Otherwise we feel like we’re experiencing things, but ultimately we’re spinning our wheels. Maximize efficiency by creating the skeleton of a story. Give the characters a few options on how they can arrive at those crucial story beats. I think the best 5th edition example of how to write a relatively short adventure that has a good balance between linearity and sandbox is Lost Mines of Phandelver. Read that; better yet, play through it, paying attention to what’s happening and why, and map out how the different sections interplay.
Other than that, my advice is practical:
- First, before you release anything to anyone, get an editor to look over your work. Not your wife, or your friend. Someone you don’t know whom you pay for their efforts, who doesn’t care enough about your feelings to let things slip lest they harm your delicate sensibilities.
- Second, have your work playtested. Get objective, unbiased feedback from your playtesters. Then send it back to your editor.
- Third, have enough pride in your creation to dress it up nicely. There are any number of ways to lay out your work attractively. Learn them and use them.
- Fourth, if you’re going to make a semi-serious stab at this whole self-published adventure-writing activity, establish a brand quickly. At least make your covers look coherent, so a browser can tell your thing is one of your things with a glance.
As humans, we need those basics of story to feel satisfied with the experience.
What’s coming up next for you?
I’ve got a bunch of stuff percolating away. There are several collaborations in which I’m involved which will soon be released on the Guild. I’m also working on new stuff on my own. New adventures will be forthcoming in the spring and early summer.
If someone wants to read my full thoughts on how to approach writing for the game and playing the game, there are a couple of Guild products you can have a look at. First is “You Can Try — Tips on Becoming a Better DM,” which is my best-selling monograph on DMing and adventure writing. Second is “I Want to Try — Tips on Becoming a Better Player,” which is more player-focused. Both were written with the sole objective of helping people get more fun from their tabletop role-playing games. If people want to see how I build a sandbox — after I spent so much time kvetching about them! — they can take a look at Timbertown, my adventure base in the Forgotten Realms.
Get Valanche’s Eye on DMsGuild. Follow R P Davis on Twitter.
