Sketching to Talk

I'm a visual communicator. Compulsively so.

Not because most of my life has been consumed with creating art. Oddly enough that has very little to do with what I am talking about. Art and communication aren't automatic bedfellows.

Also, a career in design isn't why either. It maybe helps because of the need for clarity in design, but it isn't an underlying reason why I need to use visual aids. It is something else. Something I didn't figure out until later in life.

When I try to talk about something, I need to sketch it out as I talk. Whiteboards are magic for that, but it could be on napkins. Pen, pencil, marker...

As long as it is steady in delivering pigment to a surface, I don't care what I use.

I also don't care what it looks like either. I think it has nothing to do with directly communicating out. I'm not trying to draw you a picture of something when I do this.

The thing I am drawing is a scribbly mess of lines and boxes. Half spelled words, underlines and circles. If I have more than one color it gets even messier.

I think it has to do with ordering my thoughts. With making the things in my head coherent for outside consumption.

Everyone claims I am the reason all three of my kids have ADHD. Maybe it is a part of that mess. Who knows?

What I do know is that it has been a necessary part of trying to write adventures for Torchbearer and Dungeons & Dragons. Even though I am talking to myself. Even though I am not trying to explain these things to others, it has been the only way to pull this off.

Until this year, I have never attempted to write an adventure before. I've certainly created them to run in various games, but codifying them? Creating a space in which play and some sort of narrative can unfold? Never done it.

When I got asked to participate in Death By Dungeon over on Substack, I jumped at the chance. How hard could it be? I have read and played so many adventures, both good and bad, and I am a pretty good designer, right?

The ask happened at the time I was planning the fourth issue of Yggdrasil MGZ, which I was toying with the idea of centering on an adventure for Torchbearer. It's kismet!

...

It's bullshit. It is such an utter, pain in the ass, bunch of bullshit to design and write adventures. Or, it is at least when I do them. You may like this garbage, but I fucking hate it.

Why you may ask?

Well an adventure is a tool. It is a tool for people playing a game that needs to be easy to use. It needs to minimize page flipping. The document needs to flow in a way that supports play. It needs to have a purpose to make sense.

I don't mean the color of the setting when I say purpose. I mean what type of flow are you trying to elicit from play. Exploration? A desperate chase? The political machinations of the Great Game?

And that is where it gets hard. Taking that and translating it into tools. Taking the thematic ideas and shoehorning them into something actionable. And starting with writing or dungeon designing just didn't work for me in this.

If you have been reading my work for a while now, you probably have guessed I am a bit off the cuff. I like to mull on things in my head for days before I start writing. When I write an issue of Yggdrasil, I usually have a first draft a few hours after sitting down. These articles show up in the world in a similar way.

That shit did not work for these adventures. I couldn't get my head around things. I lost track of the scale of them. Of how pieces connected to one another. I couldn't picture the final product in my mind, and studying old adventures was no help whatsoever.

Then, one day as I was talking on a call for my day job and sketching nonsense in my notebook to order my thoughts, and it hit me. Adventure design is like nothing I have ever done before, and so I have no structure in my head. There is no set of patterns for me to draw from.

When I design an issue of the magazine, write some fiction, or work on art, I get to tap into existing pathways of thought to pull it together. Even if it is something entirely different than anything I have done, like Testament (on sale now folks), there is something to work with. It takes less effort to get to where I want to go.

So, I started sketching things out. First as scribbles of nonsense. Names and ideas based on the prompt, Sanctum of the Serpent Vaults. I combed through the OD&D books and wrote in the margins bullshit ideas. Eventually I started to form a picture like this one:

It is messy and incomplete, but it got things going. After a little bit, I started to cook. Ideas started to click together and make sense and I created a stack of pages like this...

Very little of it would make sense to anyone but me. Time has no bearing here in my visual communication to myself. My notes and doodles overlap and contradict. I effectively tapped into a method of communication I use for work on a whiteboard to address complex ideas.

The key to my process ended up being about pretending to be working through a new idea with other people. Mentally put myself in a conference room with whiteboard walls and people looking at me like I am nuts. Once I did that, I could tap into existing processes for something entirely new.

And I think it is kind of new, or novel, in what I am trying to accomplish with this dungeon level. As there are two entry points into the dungeon and five segments, I started thinking about the structure for the book.

Book. I will make printed ones even though the Death By Dungeon project is meant to be digital. I can't help my preferences for physical objects.

But, as I was saying, what would the book feel like as a tool? I have decided to merge the structures of two books I love, Cloud Atlas and Only Revolutions.

Cloud Atlas has a wonderful pattern in how the book is structured. I think of it as a sound wave. Each section is a step up the wave to the crest, then steps down to the end. Not dissimilar to how the adventure is structured.

Only Revolutions is an entirely different beast all together. Where Cloud Atlas, while unique and wonderful, it is recognizable as a novel. Only Revolutions gives you two perspectives that are read from either end of the book.

Can you see where I am going with this idea? The adventure will adopt a similar pattern, letting the group play through from either end of the adventure.

I have no clue if this will work, but that has never stopped me before. As of right now I am 75% done with the writing. I am probably a week away from starting to pull the structure together in layout.

Wish me luck.