I’m a relatively new keeper and I’m still learning how to run games. The first was to set player expectations at the start. It was a tough session-everyone was in a zany mood-but I learned some vital things from it. Taking your small game child out into the world to be judged is hard enough, and this playtest involved delayed food deliveries and the hangry players trying to see how much of Australia’s second spiciest hot sauce they could eat. Allocating the time and sacrificing some of my fun time was necessary to get the project done. Still, it took me a long time on my weekends to get this done. Likewise, I’d previously worked as a graphic designer, so I knew how long it would take me to do the layout. If only this carried over to my physical fitness… It’s like a muscle-you work out a lot, and you’ll have more writing fitness. In my defence, I knew I had greater capacity to produce more words in a shorter space of time than someone who was new to writing.
I needed the additional time to do layout after playtesting, and I could only get my playtesters on a certain date. So, while the idea was to get the game finished by the end of November, I finished it a week later. I always underestimate my time, even after writing for years. Writing a game always takes longer than you thinkįollowing on from scope, you should always add a time buffer of 20% to any creative project, because that’s how long it will probably take. Which had flow-on effects to editing and design. So, of course, I failed to heed the advice and ended up writing a 10,000-word adventure with four handouts and three maps. The goal of the course was to write a 3500 one-shot adventure. There’s no point trying to write a 300-page campaign in one month. Setting the project’s scope to an achievable limit means you can actually complete the project in the allocated time. There’s a reason the first lesson in the Storytelling Collective course is on scope. I wanted to share a few things I learned from my process of writing this first game that I’m going to take into my next project.
Which I did, despite writing something that was a fair bit longer than a one-shot. The challenge was to write a one-shot in a month and release it on DriveThru RPG. If you’re interested in writing TTRPGs, I can recommend the course.
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