In the summer of 2009, during her Mags the Axe School of Gamemastering series on All Games Considered, the titular Mags mentioned an adventure outline she found useful in devising adventures that she picked up from a seminar course conducted by Guy McLimore and Poehlein at Gen Con in the early 1990s. It’s an adaptation of the kind of beat sheet television and film writers use to map out the rises and falls of a story.
I found it pretty useful last year writing Lurker in the Lobby and Highway to Niflheim. So I went to find the file tonight to help lay out the structure for my next two, only to fail to find it on my hard drive. Turns out I just wasn’t being clever enough about search terms, but that did send me off to the Nachtmedia community, where the PDF is still available for download. With the demise of many Ning networks, you can still find Greg’s outline available as a PDF at the top of All Games’ Considered‘s links for the original episode.
If you’re new to writing role-playing adventures or having a hard time getting started, a form like Greg’s is a great place to start. Filling in the blanks helps you not only order your thoughts, but see what elements you may not give due consideration.
Thanks again to Mags for doing the legwork to make this available to the general gaming public.
[Link to PDF amended 10/14/2010.]
Held Action 
You are quite welcome!
I saw Greg at Conglomeration in Louisville a couple of weeks ago. He’s talking about reviving the Gamemaster Seminar series that he and Guy McLimore did back at GenCon back in the ’90s. In the meantime, we got a great interview with him in our latest episode of AGC!
Yeah, I just listened to that episode while baking bread this weekend. I plan to write a post giving the head’s up. Greg’s a great storyteller.
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