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2004-08-23

Solve the Mystery type plots

I have always liked plot lines that revolve around solving the mystery. The plots can be very intricate and details like in a solve the murder plot, or very simple like in a room puzzle.

The DM Design Kit, although very old and based on an older version of the Dungeons and Dragons rules is a fantastic resource for designing these types of adventures. It was the tool I used to define Mystanamyr's Cat. I think it is a great tool and at Only $4.95 USD (6.46 CAD) it is very affordable.

The product is made up of three books (all in the same PDF), the first book is the "Adventure Design Rulebook". This is the guts of the book, it steps through in detail the steps required to build a good adventure. Although this is based on the D&D ruleset, it is very easy to adjust the concepts to other rule sets. This is the place where you can read about how to build your plot, describe your featured villain, build traps, and my favorite a really neat way to define a chase scene. This is the valuable book for me, I learned a great deal about adventure hooks, planning, and plot layout. I also like some of the interesting documentation ideas presented.

The second book comprises a series of forms that you can use to construct your adventure. These are still based on D&D, and have a lot of info that other systems don't need. It is still pretty simple to adapt to other systems. There is a completed adventure used as a example through out the book.

Finally is the adventure cookbook. I have not really used this book that much, it is a create an adventure book for when you don't have a plot line in mind. By stepping through the process it will help you create a pretty cool adventure form nothing. I usually have too many plot ideas rather than too few so I don't get a lot of use out of it.

The only thing I really dislike about the product is the horrid scanning job. Every page has the text of the next page showing through the scan, and te pages are not scanned square.

Over all I really like the product and I am very glad I bought it. I would recommend picking it up (and I don't recieve any kick backs if you go and purchase it).

1 comment:

Bazin said...

So, I just stumbled upon your blog with that new 'next blog' feature Blogger has installed. I'm quite intregued, so I'm likely to keep reading.

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