Something From Nothing 1: Initial Ideas

Last week I published my random adventure title generator, which very quickly spawned a random adventure jam that’s running from September until January 1st. The idea is that you use the generator to create a title and then use that title as inspiration to write an adventure for whatever system you want. Simple enough.

This also coincides with me relaunching my Patreon – and alternating between monthly games and monthly adventures. The first adventure I released was FEAST, which came out yesterday, and September will see a game called The Fiction We Live. What this means is that I’m going to be releasing an adventure in October, right in the middle of the adventure jam, and so it makes sense that I should write one using the jam rules. (I’ll probably do that in December, too).

This is also a good excuse to start blogging again, so I’m going to document the creation of this adventure here.

Step one is very straightforward: idea generation.

I generated tons of titles, but the one I’ve settled on is Beyond The Drowned Demon.

My initial thought is that it’s going to be a short, self-contained dungeon crawl, purely because they’re the easiest kinds of adventure to write (and that’s fairly important when you’re working to a tight deadline). I’m picturing a flooded temple, possibly at the bottom of a lake. Large sections of the dungeon will be underwater, and the characters will have to figure out a way to mitigate that particular hazard if they want to explore the dungeon and achieve… whatever it is they want to achieve. I don’t know that that is yet.

As far as hooks, the most obvious one is that the characters are hired to investigate a newly-discovered temple before treasure hunters and scavengers arrive. Given the title, there will probably be a demon inside the place. Whether or not they know about it going in to the thing remains to be seen.

If you check the jam page, you’ll also see that I linked to a couple of generators created by Nate Treme – Who’s the boss here? and Names & Titles.

The very first result I got out of Who’s The Boss Here? was The Burnt Eater of the Drowned Spire and that’s just immediately perfect. I actually think I’ll change the title to suit that boss, so now the title is Beyond The Drowned Spire. I may even end up dropping “Beyond The”, though I don’t know yet.

My gut is telling me that the Drowned Spire was some kind of temple that was invaded by a demon – The Burnt Eater – and attempts to banish it failed spectacularly. In the end, the Spire was sealed and the region was flooded to seal the Burnt Eater inside. Maybe the Spire is lying on its side at the bottom of the artificially-created lake? That could be a very cool dungeon environment, with everything on its side.

I also got a couple of excellent names and titles from the other generator:

• Sanpio Gilrelia, Flood Priest of Karim
• Mizork Setdok, Spire Binder of Thonho
• Hudko Xantia, Tower Zealot of Quarfio
• Maljee Atuzubar, Mud Reader of Kamo
• Cazkia Posho, Wave Twin of Luper

I don’t know who any of those people are but the names and titles are great and they give me something to work with.

Probably my next step will be to make a cover, because that’s just how I work. And while I’m doing that I’ll be mulling over the adventure in my head and letting ideas gestate.

More next time.