Writing for the Jonstown Compendium - How to Start?

[Richard S.]

Hey y'all, maybe this is a bit of a broad question but any sort of advice would be appreciated. I'd like to write at least an adventure to publish the Jonstown Compendium, but I don't have any experience with writing them outside the context of very sketchy GM notes. For people who have done it, what do you think is needed to write a good adventure, and are there any good examples or guides I should look at?

There's a part of me that wants to go even further and try my hand at a regional sourcebook, but I think I'm even less qualified to do that, and I'm terrified of stepping on someone else's toes if anyone else writes stuff for that area.

[Nick Brooke]

For really solid guidance and support, I’ll just plug this course from the Storytelling Collective (disclaimer: I had a hand in customising lesson plans written for Call of Cthulhu for the RuneQuest path): Write Your First RuneQuest Adventure.

There’s a bundle of four adventures written by the most recent graduates of the course, available cheap here: RQ Adventures Bundle.

Chaosium’s submissions guidelines for RuneQuest have some good practical advice.

I think starting with a straightforward adventure is a good idea. If you do write up a sourcebook instead, make it pick-up-and-playable (e.g. with a detailed home clan / town / tribe, personalities, player-facing handouts and plenty of adventure and campaign suggestions to get a group started). But that’s just my advice, and it’s worth what you paid for it. @jajagappa Harald Smith’s Nochet: Adventurer’s Guide or @blackyinkin Simon Bray’s Furthest: Crown Jewel of Lunar Tarsh and Beer With Teeth’s Sacred Earth, Sacred Water are three great examples of highly-playable regional sourcepacks for RQG homelands.

Edited January 21 by Nick Brooke

[Squaredeal Sten]

Take Nick's advice.  The Storytelling Collective's course worked for me.  It is a combination of advice and practical exercise, which is the best way to train.

Their first piece of advice is to have a scope of work you can complete in a reasonable time. And " complete" mea ns not only writing out the adventure. but doing acknowledgements, tables, layout, art, etc.. So for your first product you don't want to try to match the length of the Nochet or Furthest  books.  

You wrote about your own "sketchy notes."  That is a good start if the adventure was good.  Now your task is to explain to somebody else how to run that adventure.  This will involve expanding those notes and writing down the stuff that was only in your head.  You can do it.

[Nick Brooke]

I ran The Duel at Dangerford for my playtesters using about five pages of GM notes, two pages of quotes I printed out from the Glorantha Sourcebook and RQG Core Rules for reference, one stat-block, and a page of epic doggerel.

The published scenario is c.32 pages / 12,280 words (c. 1,500 are Chaosium’s text, quoted with permission), including art and maps and front matter and excluding Appendices 2&3 (unrelated playtest notes etc.).

HTH.

[soltakss]

6 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Hey y'all, maybe this is a bit of a broad question but any sort of advice would be appreciated. I'd like to write at least an adventure to publish the Jonstown Compendium, but I don't have any experience with writing them outside the context of very sketchy GM notes. For people who have done it, what do you think is needed to write a good adventure, and are there any good examples or guides I should look at?

My advice? Just do it.

There is an official Word template but it isn't very good, as the Headings don't map to PDF headings when you export to PDF. I have a revised Template that I can share with you that has fixed the headings issue, and I think other people have done the same.

If you want good examples of scenarios, look at the Classic RuneQuest ones. Although they are a bit wordy for me, they are good ways of doing it. Nick has sales figures for scenarios, but there are a lot that have sold hundreds of copies, so someone must like them.

As a GM, my scenarios are literally a list of bullet points and I riff of those. For conventions, I expand them a bit into paragraphs that I can use as the basis. For published scenarios, I tend to expand the descriptions of places a bit. 

For me, a good scenario is a balance between "you have to do this, then this, then this" in a lockstep way and "you are in a village and something happens, over to you" loosey-goosey style. I don't use scenarios exactly as written, and never have. As a GM, I take elements of the scenario and adapt them to my campaign, and as a write I assume that GMs do this as well.

So, for me, some general comments:

• Outline the general plot of the scenario at the start, so that GMs know what they are getting into. I've seen many scenarios where I have to read it several times before I understand what is going on.
• Split the scenario into Locations and Events, some events use the same location and some locations have several events, especially if the Adventurers might go back and forth between town and the ranch, for example, but only going through the gulley once.
• Make it clear what NPC motivations and intents are, some scenarios are really unclear on this and it is not helpful.
• Include sketch maps of places, if possible. They don't have to be great works of art but can show the general layout of buildings and locations.
• If you want to use art, use free art wherever possible. If you want to commission art, assume that you will sell 101 copies (Silver) and budget accordingly. Good cover art is expensive (Maybe $150+) but might be worth it.
• Use Nick's guidelines for setting the price. I normally set at $0.15 per page, or below, so that it comes into the Bargain/Cheap bracket, but others use a higher bracket.
• Get someone else to read it before you publish and ask them for feedback. Always act on the feedback, as it has been given for a reason.
• Get someone to proofread it. Use Word, or similar, to spell-check and grammar-check the document.
• Don't endlessly edit and refine it. Good enough is good enough. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
• Nick has some advice on how to publish it, otherwise ask here and we can advise you.

 

[Nick Brooke]

"Nick's guidelines for setting the price" is probably a reference to the price-brackets used in my JC Catalogue, but I also advise people about print-on-demand pricing (when that's relevant). For the former, most JC titles are 10-15 cents; generally I wouldn't charge more than 15 cents per page of content for one of my books unless it had really cool original art and maps. But the most important guideline is "charge what you think it's worth, and value your work appropriately." 

Guidance on setting up a new community content title is attached. Note that it's possible the main Account menu name has changed on the new DriveThruRPG site, it could be My Content or My Community Content, I'm not sure the new site has yet taken in its final form.

Setting Up a JC Title.pdf 

[jajagappa]

9 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Hey y'all, maybe this is a bit of a broad question but any sort of advice would be appreciated. I'd like to write at least an adventure to publish the Jonstown Compendium, but I don't have any experience with writing them outside the context of very sketchy GM notes. For people who have done it, what do you think is needed to write a good adventure, and are there any good examples or guides I should look at?

A lot of good advice by others above. Sketchy GM notes are as good a place to start as any, particularly if you've run the scenario yourself. If you have run it, add to your notes about what worked, what didn't, and where the PC's branched off. Then build on those points.

For examples, look at the scenarios in the Starter Set, the old Borderlands set, some of the Sandheart scenarios, or those by Beer with Teeth. All are good basic adventures with well-structured content.

I'd focus on fleshing out the writing/content first, as well as sketches for any maps or diagrams needed (you'll need to describe those, so best to have the correct picture at hand to work from). If your scenario is in a village, get that sketched out, marked up, and then add the notes about each place so that you can detail scenes at relevant sites subsequently and stay consistent.

Writeup a short, one paragraph summary of what you think the scenario is about. Once you get it written, you'll likely revise it, but it may help to keep you focused and not go off on too many tangents while writing.

Have an idea as to when the scenario occurs (particular day, week, or season, if relevant), whether aspects of the setting are relevant (e.g. weather), and note those down. If they don't matter, note that too as you want to provide a short paragraph to the GM on those details.

Describe your expected scenes - the primary points of interest. Bullet points are good starting points, but need to be expanded into text. 

Also think about transitions between scenes. Bullet point those as well - why would the PC's go from point A to point B? What if they go to point C instead? Does it work if they go off on another tangent (e.g. clues to lead them back if they go astray)?

I prefer to be aware of spelling and grammar as I write, so always have spell-check and grammar-check on. Once you've gotten the basic writing down, you'll want to edit with an eye towards organization so that the GM doesn't have to hop back-and-forth to figure out what's what. (If you want to see a bad example, try reading through the Smoking Ruins scenario - the scenario is good, the organization is challenging at best.)

Use the Jonstown Compendium Creator's Circle group on FB (if you don't mind being on FB): Jonstown Compendium Creators Circle | Facebook

You can find folks there who will read drafts, suggest edits, etc. - all valuable in putting together a good, well-edited work.

10 hours ago, Richard S. said:

There's a part of me that wants to go even further and try my hand at a regional sourcebook, but I think I'm even less qualified to do that, and I'm terrified of stepping on someone else's toes if anyone else writes stuff for that area.

Speaking from experience, regional sourcebooks are not trivial and require a substantial time commitment. If you're thinking 1-2 years, you're on the right timescale. If you have a particular place in mind, ask here or in the Jonstown Compendium FB group noted above. 

If you want to put together a small, usable sourcebook, I'd recommend works in line with Dregs of Clearwine or Cups of Clearwine. Small, focused pieces centered on a group of NPC's in a place the PC's are likely to visit. Caravanserai is another example of thinking about a specific place (though easily movable).

[Gallowglass]

7 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

For really solid guidance and support, I’ll just plug this course from the Storytelling Collective (disclaimer: I had a hand in customising lesson plans written for Call of Cthulhu for the RuneQuest path): Write Your First RuneQuest Adventure.

+1 to this as well, I wrote “Desire for Knowledge” using exercises from the course. I didn’t get it finished in one month, but it still motivated me to do the hardest parts in one big swoop. 

[soltakss]

12 hours ago, Richard S. said:

There's a part of me that wants to go even further and try my hand at a regional sourcebook, but I think I'm even less qualified to do that, and I'm terrified of stepping on someone else's toes if anyone else writes stuff for that area.

Never be afraid of stepping on people's toes. If you have love for a place and have original ideas then publish them. How many people are writing for Sartar at the moment? They are forever stepping on each other's toes, or are dancing around each other, and nobody minds at all.

I would love for other people top write things set in Dorastor, or to write HeroQuests, for example.

[Malin]

On 1/21/2024 at 11:08 AM, soltakss said:

I have a revised Template that I can share with you that has fixed the headings issue, and I think other people have done the same.

I would LOVE this template, headings are essential and hopefully we'll be at the editing stage soon!

[Goldennose]

Do a mindmap of the scenario. It really helps in getting to know where the problems there are. These are examples from Islands of the Lost.

[Nick Brooke]

Here's a video interview I did with Kat Clay at PAX Aus on Getting Started in Community Content. It's a bit Cthulhu-esque (she's a Miskatonic Repository author), but lots of stuff will be relevant for Jonstown Compendium creators as well.

 

[soltakss]

On 1/22/2024 at 4:51 PM, Malin said:

On 1/21/2024 at 10:08 AM, soltakss said:

I have a revised Template that I can share with you that has fixed the headings issue, and I think other people have done the same.

I would LOVE this template, headings are essential and hopefully we'll be at the editing stage soon!

JC_Revised_Template.docx

 

Here is the Template, @Malin

[Malin]

7 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Here is the Template

Thank you so much!

[g33k]

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

JC_Revised_Template.docx 23.12 MB · 4 downloads

 

Here is the Template, @Malin

@Nick Brooke -- is it possible Chaosium wants to adopt this improved template as the one they provide to everyone, instead of people all having to reinvent that same wheel (or make do without)?

[Richard S.]

It's been a few weeks but I just want to say thanks to everyone for your advice and encouragement. I'll admit that I haven't actually gotten started with anything, but the hill definitely look a little less steep now. Thank you.