I Survived the Storytelling Collective's November Workshop!
Goodness! Long time no see, dearest reader!
Whew! That was a busy month for me in November. I mentioned in a previous post that I was participating in the November Write Your First Adventure workshop being run by the Storytelling Collective so I wanted to talk about my experience with the workshop and how I feel about my finished product.
My Final Product
Let's start at the end -- that is, my Call of Cthulhu one-shot adventure. For anyone who doesn't know, the Call of Cthulhu tabletop roleplaying game is a game similar to D&D but based on the Lovecraft mythos. Rather than being heavy on battles, it focusses more on investigation and discovery. A lot of the adventures tend to be set in the 1920s, because that's the setting Lovecraft wrote his stories in.
You may all know that I love sci-fi horror so I ended up creating an adventure on a colony ship heading towards a newly terraformed planet. Horror on Epsilon IV is set in the far distant future and investigators play as Citizens aboard the Epsilon -- a colony ship headed to newly terraformed Vulminov. Unfortunately, before that happens, they are summoned to the Company Representative's office. It seems that someone on the ship stole some very valuable cargo and the players -- and their fellow passengers -- will be in deep trouble if they don't get it back. However, it turns out that the real danger might not the thief, but the cargo itself...
One thing I wanted was a small environment, which is why I chose a colony ship. I also had the random desire to include the hate I feel towards HOAs, which inspired the CAC (Citizen Accountability Committee). The players are characters who have to participate in the CAC, which means policing their fellow passengers, but also provides a sensible reason as to why they are the ones who must find the lost cargo.
I ended up getting pretty into creating the "character" of the Vulpes Company and how they influence the game and story -- my technical writing skills really came in handy here (I even designed a company logo)! Because this adventure is set in the future and has some unique background regarding the world/setting, I decided to design a "citizen" brochure. This document is meant to give the players insight about the world, the ship, CAC, and the Company and can be given to the players before the game.
The Vulpes Company is not responsible for any deaths or injuries that may occur during Epsilon’s voyage to Vulminov.Remember that you, as a Responsible Citizen, are responsible for your actions on the Epsilon and your actions and those of your fellow Block members, will dictate the benefits you may or may not receive upon arrival.
Flavour text from Horror on Epsilon IV
The character sheet was a little extra I think adds some flavour too. I call it a Citizen File and it mimicks the normal CoC sheet entirely except that I changed the starting value of "Computer Use" to 40%. I did this because my adventure is set in the future and I don't think it's likely a person born in the future wouldn't have a competent understanding of computers.
Not only did I write the whole adventure, but I also did all the art -- including maps, handouts, the custom character sheet, and the cover! The cover in particular I wanted to mimic typical pulp covers for fiction magazines back in the 50s. In my typical style, I stuck to black and white, but added some blue neon for highlights. Overall, I am super proud of the final product.
The Process
A friend (Solomon Forse, who is my co-editor for the upcoming Howls from the Dark Ages) asked me to participate in a November workshop with him. When he first asked me, I was hesitant because, normally, workshops are rather pricey. At least the ones I've seen. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Storytelling Collective was only charging $35 USD. Obviously, since I am writing this blog post, I decided to go for it!
The goal of the workshop participants was to have a completed one-shot adventure by December 1st, ready for publication on one of the online sites like DrivethruRPG or Miskatonic Repository.
If you don't know: a one-shot is an adventure meant to be played in 2 - 4 hours, or one sitting. My goal was to have a 2 - 3 hour adventure.
The workshop opened on November 1st, but I started brainstorming right away and already had my idea fleshed out prior to the first day.
The month-long program was hosted online and was pretty comprehensive. In total, there were 64 lessons, divided into 9 parts. The lessons were written by people who work in the industry, which was reassuring, because you knew that they were experts in what they were talking about.
These lessons are slowly released over the month so you can't read them all at once, but rather step-by-step. Take a look:
Welcome to Write Your First Adventure (6 lessons): this section was available prior to the start date ad set expectations about the program. It also contained a welcome kit with downloadable extras and a writer workbook for brainstorming.
Additional Resources (8 lessons): extra content like pep talks.
Part 1 Ideation and Organization (15 lessons): in-depth look at brainstorming, ideas on building mood, what a "living document" is, and more.
Time to Write (1 lesson)
Part 2 Crafting an Adventure (20 lessons): help on structure, research, narrative, and more.
Time to Polish Up Your Adventure! (1 lesson)
Part 3 Playtesting, Editing, and Design (8 lessons): a look at editing, cover design, etc.
Time to Wrap Up Your Project! (1 lesson)
Part 4 Marketing and Publishing (4 lesson)
In addition, there is a Discord community where you can chat with other participants, share ideas and links, or just encourage each other. I can't say I really used the Discord much, but I am sure other people found it useful (maybe?)
The schedule laid out by the workshop was to set a scope/plan your project Nov 1st - 7th, write from the 8th to the 19th, then play-test and edit from the 20th to the 24th, finally publishing Nov 25th to the 30th.
The first week lessons were all about setting scope and building out ideas, mood (mood boards were a topic), which isn't really my thing. I know all about scope, I mean as a technical writer, I have to create scopes of work all the time, but I wasn't really keen on defining a creative project so strictly. I'm also not the type to make mood boards or playlists for my works. I don't know. Not my vibe.
At this point though, I had a bit of a crisis because I began to wonder if I wasn't approaching the workshop with the right mindset. Should I just force myself to make a mood board or something? At what point should I stick to a creative process that I know works for me versus when I should try something new to see what happens?
Well, instead I just agonized about my identity as a writer/creative person until the next week started and it was time to write. Rather effective use of time I think.
Writing an adventure is a whole different undertaking than writing a short story or piece of fiction. The main reason for this is because the adventure is meant to be used by the person running the game and is more of a manual than a story. In this, I think my technical writing skills came into play again.
Still, it was a crunch to finish it. A month sounds like a lot of time, but it went by in a flash. Plus, since I planned on doing all the art myself, rather than commissioning it, that meant I had to allot time for that as well.
The writing lessons in the workshop were super useful. Although a lot of it was pretty obvious, there were some things they brought up that I had never thought of. It was also helpful having it all laid out, broken out by topic, for easy reference and reminder.
That said, there were some lessons I never bothered looking at, mainly the pep talks. There were quite a few of them and I've never been a fan of pep talks. I never even liked going to my school's pep rallies. I also didn't end up using their workbook, because I prefer to brainstorm on paper. But I did look over the document and it was well designed, so I think would be really helpful for those who like to plan out digitally!
However, I really liked the base document they made that you could use to start your project on. It had formatting and broke the adventure down in parts, which made it a lot easier to plan how I wanted my end product to look.
I finished my document a couple days before my scheduled play test. I was pretty nervous. For one thing, this was my first one-shot, and two it was my first time running it. Luckily it went well and my friends (most of whom had extensive RPG playing experience) had only minor comments and suggestions. They also were kind enough to allow me to use their characters as my adventure's pre-generated characters.
After that, I had just a couple days to edit, finish the art, and publish it on the Miskatonic Repository! I spent a lot of late nights refining my document and working loose ends.
Could my adventure be better? Of course. It is, after all my first, however I am super proud of Horror on Epsilon IV.
Overall, I am glad I participated in the Storytelling Collective's workshop. Although I didn't benefit from every lesson, I did find takeaways from most of them. As a whole, the lessons were well-written and comprehensive. The activities that followed each lesson were effective and contextual. They covered every topic under the sun, had examples, graphics, pretty much everything you could ever need to start and finish your first adventure.
So, if you're interested in writing your first adventure, I think this workshop might be the one for you. They run them multiple times a year and it helps to hold you accountable at a reasonable cost.
Also, if you're a person who runs CoC adventures, why not check out mine? Let me know what you think about it as well!
Now that I am finished with this project, I have more time on my hands so regularly scheduled reviews are coming. I know you've probably been bereft without them!
See you soon.
x PLM