Wednesday 7 February 2018

How to convert published adventures to Quill: White Box scenarios


The Quill: White Box book contains scenarios to get you well on your way to adventure, but there's more you can do once you've completed those. I want to talk about how to turn those published modules for other fantasy games into Quill letters.

Your objective is determined by the module

Do you have to free a village from a spellplague? Kill an undead giant? Whatever the objective is, this also feeds into your letter's objective. In most adventures you will have been hired by someone, so the idea is that you're relaying information back to them with your letters. Even if you're in the bowels of a dungeon, you're given a magical raven that delivers your letters. You need to tell them how far away you are from achieving your goal, theories you have about the dungeon/story and what has happened in that section.

Split the module into manageable sections

Most modules will be cut into parts, whether it's a wilderness section or new dungeon level. Take each logical part of the module and read through it. It doesn't matter if you know things you're not supposed to know, this will offer flavour and inspiration for your letters. If I have a dungeon, I'll split it by level. Or if it's a huge dungeon, I'll split into segments. The number of segments is important to determining your final score. You must have at least 5 sections in an adventure. The more sections, the more treasure, but also the more chance of dying.

Sections become your ink pots

For each section, create an ink pot of ten words using the words in that section. Nouns work well for this, particularly monster names, traps and items. Remember to have an inferior version of the word and superior version. So if I saw a beholder in one room, I might have eye monster/beholder as one word in the ink pot.

Score yourself after each section

So now we know a section is one letter. You will be scoring as you go, so score yourself after a section. The scores are:

5 or less: you have fallen afoul of something in the section. Lose either one item, or if you can't you perish.

6-9: you have scraped through and find 2d6gp

10+: you have told your tale of bravery well. Find 2d6gp x [section number]

Calculate your final score

If the majority of your scores were 5 or less, you have failed. Lose all items. If you cannot, you die.

If the majority of your scores were 6-9 or there was no majority, you have scraped through. Gain 1d6x[final section number] gp.

If the majority of your scores are 10+, you have had great success. Gain 3d6x[final section number]gp.

No comments:

Post a Comment