Context of an adventure is the description of the circumstances that surround and link together its different elements.
It’s divided in two:
- Rules (Crunch) - Essential rules and mechanics
- Descriptive text (Fluff) - Non essential description of motivations of NPCs, events and backstory that lead to the adventure.
One of the main thing to do is to correctly “dose” the fluff.
As Adventure Designer there is a very special relationship between us and the story we write:
- As a writer you work at the first level of separation: you write something and the reader reads it and imagines it coloring it with its individual experience.
- As a screenwriter you work at the second level of separation: You write something that is then interpreted by someone else, that is then seen by the watcher.
- As an adventure writer you work at a third level of separation: You write an adventure that is read by an arbiter (e.g. a Game Master) who can present your work as is or re-write it, change it, etc. Then after presenting it to the player they interact with the story following the rules of the game system and the randomness of the dice.
As an Adventure Designer you don’t have direct control of the players’ actions. A good adventure should build an imaginary space where the original stories of the players play out. You need to concentrate on creating visual description of people, places, things, trace the narrative and set the motivations of the NPC. You need to set the scene of where unknown players will improvise their conflicts.
You should be an Adventure Writer and not a writer, you need to find a good balance between giving the player agency but also trace a narrative. Writing an Adventure path with linked adventure makes the player agency go away since every adventure starts at the endpoint of the one before.
You also need to limit the fluff. Free fuff is boring. An Adventure text should be concise and useful during play, you can exclude information that player will never find out.