Rapid-fire Adventures

Create memorable sessions fast without prep burnout

We’ve all fallen prey to it:

We’ve got a game to run tomorrow, and we don’t have a damn thing ready…and worse, we are so totally burnt out on prep we don’t even feel like playing anymore!

The creative and social high-point of the week is now prone to that nuclear disappointment message: “Sorry, everyone - some stuff came up and I can’t run the game this weekend.”

I’ve got a tool to beat those burnout blues, and to create memorable sessions with super-fast prep that will have you spending more time at the table, and having your players wonder how you create such immersive and enjoyable encounters.

(Just kidding - they’ll continue killing things during monologues, ruining your carefully crafted plots, and finding all the holes in your brand new dungeon like always - but that’s why we love them, right…?)

Ok - all we need for this is a piece of paper and a pencil, or whatever app you can scrawl and scribble in. Sticky notes are good too, if you wanna go fully Charlie Kelly with it and use your wall to help organize. (Just who is this BBEG, Pepe Silvia?)

One side of the paper is going to be for encounters, and the other side is going to be for points of interest.

On the encounter side, we are going to do a little stream of consciousness exercise - it doesn’t matter how cliche, or how stupid it seems to you at first, just write down every damn encounter idea you can think of that even remotely fits your setting.

I’m running a Mörk Borg game with some house rules, so I’m thinking - every possible thing I can think of as fast as I can that fits “dark-souls/medieval/gritty/brutal/grimdark etc.

None of these need to be epic or anything like that - we are just creating a texture here.

Whether you write down 12 or 20 doesn’t matter - just get as many as you can down on paper as fast as you can.

For me this might be like:

Wretched Peasants

Deserters

Woodcutters

Witch Coven

Blind Prophet

Thief

Wandering Merchant

Rival Party

Cultists

Cruel Noble

Pretty basic stuff. Just top of my head.

Next, I do the same with POI (points of interest).

Tree covered in masks

Ruined Tower

Abandoned Shrine

Field of Recent Battle

Fouled Stream

Abandoned Village

Ring Fort

Gallows

Work Camp

Tavern

Ok, we’ve got 10 in each column, but this actually doesn’t have to be the same number.

Now, the first thing I’m going to do is look at my encounter list, and think if there’s any more POI that jump into my head when I look at the encounters. As in -

Where are the woodcutters from? There must be a mill and a village near!

So even though there’s an abandoned village, I write down “secluded village” and “lumber mill.”

I do the same in reverse, checking my POI list and seeing what happens - the shrine makes me think of monks or pilgrims, so I write that down. At this point I’m not establishing anything - just writing stuff down as it pops into my head.

I keep at this scribbling until I have 12-20 things on my lists. I cross off stuff I don’t like, and take another pass.

Once I’m done doing this - I look at my encounters list again and ask “which of these are potentially connected?” I DON’T WORRY ABOUT CREATING A STORY.

I just see which ones I think might have some connection, and write the number down next to the entry of which other entry I think is connected. Some might have multiple numbers.

For example, my thief may be currently sought by the rival party. My cruel noble may be connected to both the wretched peasants and the woodcutters.

After doing this - I look at my POI, and do the same thing. Which encounters/people are possibly connected to which places?

Things like “tavern” are easy, because anyone might be. Stuff like “tree covered in masks” might be a little trickier, but maybe the thief makes a mask every time he completes a job as an offering to some trickster god.

This is where the layering comes in and vague stories will sketch themselves out for you.

At the end of this little exercise, I allow my mind to freely roam and create three sentence descriptions for my connections - just enough to have a solid idea to run with as my PCs encounter them, which I can still do totally randomly as they go from one place to another.

At the end of this quick little brainstorm, I might wind up with:

Cruel noble runs this region - pressure on the woodcutters to finish the ring fort - anyone who resists is put into the work camp

Coven of witches resists the noble - they’ve rallied a small force of peasants to fight against the soldiers - a recent battle went in their favor

Deserters have fled the nobles army after a battle - they’re holed up in the ruined fort

Cultists have taken over an abandoned village and poisoned the local drinking water - the blind prophet knows their secrets

I use this strategy when I’m in between running prepped games to save myself from burning out, create a cool, interconnected area of meaningful encounters and interesting places, and can run multiple sessions simply off of the “side of the road.”

I hope this helps some of you out.

(Also - STEAL! Take encounters, places, and so forth from movies, comics, video games, books, shows, documentaries, etc, and change them subtly to make them your own. I’ve run a hundred different games that were an old Eastwood movie made into a fantasy game, mashed up with a war documentary, with a dash of Joe Abercrombie thrown in for good measure.)

Have fun and keep your blades sharp!

- Castle Grief

Illustration provided by Elodie Lloyd of the Weird Blue Yonder