There are many ways to prepare an adventure. GMs far greater than I have much more detailed worlds with much more satisfying answers. In this section, I will present an easy way to set up an adventure for Words of Power. It scales up very easily into a campaign-wide system.

We're going to use a location-based format that utlizes a priority list to determine the actions of any NPCs in the area. So, figure out what story you want to tell and where it takes place.

I'm going to use an example I made as a tutorial here. I will try to keep it brief.

The players have agreed to help Astra, captain of the Shade Hill guard, to return to the past and defeat Memeth. Astra swears she stabbed a blade right through memeth but was slain anyway. Dominic is the magistrate of the town. The Silver Vigil are state officials come to audit Dominic. They actually work for Memeth. Spoilers : The Astra the players met was actually Memeth in disguise. He's trying to undo his death and kill Astra.

Step 1 : The Cast

The first thing we have to do is decide what the factions are. In my case, that's Astra, Dominic, Memeth, and the Silver Vigil. These are the forces in the area that have varying priorities and units.

Step 2 : Goals

The most important thing, the thing that makes roleplaying so easy, is setting ranked priorities for each faction and each major character. It allows you to know exactly what that character would do when push comes to variable shove.

Memeth - Evil advisor to the magistrate

Dominic - The Magistrate, appointed directly by the king
Astra - Captain of the Guard
Silver Vigil - Lackeys of Memeth, present as auditors for the King

Already, we know what Astra would do if forced to choose between saving the townspeople or protecting Dominic. We know how to intimidate or fail to intimidate the Silver Vigil. We know how to bribe Dominic. Priorities, yo.

Step 3 : Locations

We know where the story takes place, but we need to break it up into discrete zones. "At the palace" or "in the secret lab" needs to be defined well enough so that we can use it to place NPCs along a timeline. In my case, our major locations are:

• Mansion
• Audience Room
• Secret Lab
• Out of Town
• In Town

Step 4: Timeline

Now that we have peoples and places, we're going to define a timeline for the major characters and factions to take action in the world. This keeps the world moving around the players and marches us towards an urgent end. It punishes wandering and excessive caution. The players should be told the general timeframe that the adventure will happen in. In this case, I'd say something like, "In 3 days, Memeth will kill me. Please help me stop him." The players can do ~whatever~ they want to stop or not stop Memeth. At the end of 3 days, the NPC storyteller will conclude the story and everyone gets the boot.

The timeline is only a guide for you, the Storyteller. It tells you what events the players may have missed and what state they'll find each location in, based on that. Try to have each faction do something towards one of their goals for each tick in your timeline. The players don't need to know any of this is happening. They'll interact with the effects of it organically.

Players will have downtime as they try to solve your riddles. They'll derail things you had planned. Allow for this. It's just a guide.

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Day 1

Memeth lurks in the audience room, urgently suggesting a feast and festival the next day to Dominic.
Dominic has a very public audience to try to impress the Silver Vigil.
Astra is out of town, returning from a supply run.
Silver Vigil is in the audience room and in the lab.

Night 1

Memeth waits in his secret lab to receive the snatched townsfolk.
Silver Vigil snatches the barmaid, Marian.
Astra arrives back in town with top secret docs about the secret lab.
Dominic sleeps under guard in the mansion.

Day 2

Memeth prepares a ritual in his lab.
Silver Vigil is in the lab, planning an attack.
Dominic is organizing the audience hall for a feast.
Astra is barging into the audience hall to accuse Memeth, but Dominic does not believe her. She storms out to go find Memeth on her own.

Night 2

The feast commences.
Dominic is at the feast.
Memeth and the Silver Vigil are nowhere to be found.
Astra is watching over the feast but stressing about the missing Memeth.

The entire Stonebrook family of Dwarves will disappear after the feast. Dominic will assume it's because they're Dwarves who kept the party going.
Memeth will perform his ritual, claiming the 5 fates of the Stonebrook family to ensure his survival during Astra's attack.

Day 3

Dominic advises Memeth in the audience hall.
Astra confronts Memeth with a small crew of loyal guards.
The Silver Vigil casts spells to channel and bind the guards.
Astra charges and lunges her blade through Memeth's chest. He does not die and instead magically drains her life from her face.

The memory ends.

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You'll see that, on Night 2, Memeth is unavailable. Players can stumble into his lab and go through his things. Astra isn't even in town on Day 1 to answer any questions or warn. On Day 3, the thing we're here to stop either happens or does not happen. It's the resolution. This event can be made to happen anywhere but hopefully players are involved by this point.

Railroad Crossing

This adventure appears to be firmly entrenched on rails and, to some extent, Words of Power adventures are one-shots intended to be somewhat on rails. This design system and the game systems both handle free-roam open world stuff just fine. Do this same general process for nations. Give them goals and actions for each tick. Let the players interact with <whatever is happening> <at their location> during the current tick. Alter future ticks based on their interactions.

Step 5 : Applying Game Rules

After we've written the story and detailed the characters, it's time to do a second pass and apply game rules. The primary goal of this phase is to give stats to grunts, captains, bosses, and items. We also want to detail any status effects or hazards we know we're going to use.

Astra

Level 3
HP : 6/8/8/8
Armor : 8/8/8/8
Dwarf

Tags
Words
Armor
Weapon

Memeth

Level 3
HP : 6/8/8/8
Armor : 2/2/2/2
Elf

Tags
Words
Armor
Weapon

Silver Vigil

Level 1
HP : 4/6/6/6
Armor : 2/2/2/2
Elf

Tags
Words
Armor
Weapon

Conclusion

That's it. That's the whole process of preparing to run a Words of Power game.

• Read How to Play Guide
• Prepare Tables
• Prepare Adventure
  • Write the Story
  • Define Forces
    • Rank their priorities
  • Define Locations
  • Set Timeline
  • Apply Game Rules
• Players Create Characters
• Players Generate the Deck
• Have Fun
• Leave Feedback

theluckycrab | [email protected] | Crabsoft