Step 3 for Writing Super Hero Adventures: Outline
Hello heroes! Welcome back to the next installment of my process for creating engaging and exciting superhero tabletop RPG adventures. In Episode 1 we talked about brainstorming, synopsis, research, and player characters and Episode 2 covered villains. Now we’re ready to get into the real meat of adventure design.
Today we’re talking about how to design a solid outline to function as the backbone of your scenario. I’m going to walk you through how I build my adventure skeleton, a skeleton which can be enough to run a full-on session without further development, but can also function as the jumping off point to create more in-depth adventures. I will continue to reference my Sinister Six example from the past two blogs.
Admittedly, there are two kinds of writers in the world, often called pantsers and plotters. Pantsers prefer to fly by the seat of their pants, working from nothing but their imagination and maybe a Post-It Note that says “Joker stuff this episode?” I am able to work in this format (and I have often had to due to procrastination) but I prefer to be a plotter. I find that taking the time to create a solid outline, leads to more enticing inciting incidents and better plot developments (things like plot twists and satisfying endings.) If you are a panster, I hope you’ll get something from my outline advice, but I admit you are a mercurial unicorn who walks your paths through wondrous places. As for the plotters, this is the perfect resource for you.
To begin, I look into Pre-Adventure Notes. This is where I will mark down who the main antagonist is, what their motivation is, and what they have done before the adventure to set themselves up for success. This is usually a paragraph or two of relevant information that the players will never see, but helps me begin imagining which scenes to build. Here is an example from a game I’m working on for Origins 2021:
Decades ago, long before the formation of the Justice League, the New God Metron brought a dying Billion Dollar Bates to Daxam. Bates was the sole mortal with the complete knowledge of the Anti-Life Equation and had spent the 50s and 60s being pursued by Darkseid’s agent DeSaad. This pursuit culminated in a battle beneath Bates’ mansion, with Bates and a cult known as the Sect facing off against DeSaad and an army of Parademons. DeSaad moved to capture Bates when Metron intervened.
Metron foresaw the damage Darkseid would do with the Anti-Life Equation and, in a rare moment of proactivity, grabbed Bates and took off through time and space for a world on the other side of the universe. Somewhere DeSaad would never think to search for a missing human: Daxam, 5,000 years earlier. Bates died shortly after arriving in Erkol. To Metron’s surprise, the Anti-Life Equation wasn’t so much in Bates’ head, as on it. His flesh fell away, revealing his skull upon which the equation was engraved. Metron buried the skull in the foundation of the in-construction royal palace, tuned his Mobius Chair to scramble his memories of the event, and returned to his original time.
For five-thousand years, the skull remained undisturbed as Daxam grew around it. Wars were waged, regimes rose and fell, and for a time, it seemed the universe would be safe. That is until Mongul arrived, overwhelmed Daxam’s military, and summoned the Sinestro Corps. to his side. Mogul declared himself ruler of Daxam and the leader of the Sinestro Corps. in one fell swoop and has spent the last five years as its undisputed dictator. During those five years, Mongul has rooted out dissenting members of his Yellow Lantern Corps, and pressed Daxam’s people into destroying their own world for resources to build war machines. He’s knocked down whole cities, torn asunder mountain ranges, and poisoned the oceans with heavy chemicals.
Kel Gand the former king of Daxam has organized a resistance to Mongul, but they have had a hard time standing up to Mongul’s superior power. They have relied on guerilla tactics and have been searching for any advantage they can find. Resistance scientists have been working around the clock to synthesize a Yellow Solar Energy Serum that could finally grant them the power they need to defeat Mongul. Finally, the resistance has brought a deep space transmitter online, and has broadcast their first distress beacon to the universe. No one answered. The message was intercepted by the Guardians of the Universe who have placed the planet on a quarantine, while they decide the best way to deal with Mongul.
Meanwhile, on Apokolips, Darkseid finally caught up with Metron and killed him in a massive battle over the devastated world. He seized the Mobius Chair and was granted all of Metron’s knowledge, including the scrambled memory of where the Anti-Life Equation was hidden. Lord Darkseid didn’t know where exactly Bates’ skull was hidden, but he knew it was on Daxam.
All this culminated a month ago when boomtubes opened across the space lanes around Daxam, and a massive invasion force from Apokolips took the planet. Darkseid himself led the battle against Mongul and crushed him in one-on-one combat. He destroyed Warworld, captured their Central Power Battery within the wreckage, and recalled all of the Yellow Lanterns’ rings, leaving them powerless to resist. Mongul and Kel Gand met in secret and decided they should work together to overthrow Darkseid before continuing their own war. The resistance has now fired off one more distress beacon…
This lets me know as I’m planning the adventure that there is going to be conflict not just with Darkseid but with the opposing members of the resistance: Mongul and Kel Gand. I also know what Darkseid is looking for, so I need a scene that describes exactly where Billion-Dollar Bates’ skull is. And I know that the resistance leaders will have their own plans for how to stop Darkseid so those can be scenes as well.
After this Pre-Adventure section, it’s important to decide how many scenes you need. I define scenes in a roleplaying game as individual story beats or instances where the action changes from one type to another. I usually estimate that one session of an adventure (about 4 hours of gameplay) needs 6-8 scenes with a break in the middle for people to stretch their legs and refill their drinks.
Once I decide how many scenes I need I’ll list them numerically and categorize them along the following categories: Conflict, Challenge, Roleplay, Investigation. These four broad categories cover the major ways PCs can interact with the world in a super hero RPG.
I define these categories the following way:
- Conflict: PCs engage in a combat scene against supervillains or their minions. Generally takes 30-45 minutes depending on complexity or the opponents’ abilities.
- Challenge: PCs use their skills and powers to overcome an obstacle presented by circumstance or the environment. (I.E. Sneaking into a facility, protecting the city from a tsunami, catching an asteroid and throwing it back into space) Generally takes 15-30 minutes.
- Roleplay: PCs take time to interact amongst themselves or with NPCs. Often expositional in nature or a source of character development. Varies wildly depending on the nature of the scene and whether or not you step in as the GM to push things on.
- Investigation: PCs inspect an area for clues related to their current mystery. Generally in a more localized space than a Challenge sequence. Generally takes 15-30 minutes.
These categories are not mutually exclusive either. Scenes can be a combination of two types, or can be an either/or situation in case there are multiple ways a particular story beat can be resolved. You should be open to thinking through a couple of different ways your players will approach any scenario. You don’t need to write a whole scene for each category, but having a sentence or two talking about what to do if your knock out brawl turns into conversation will help your future self at the table.
So what do you do with these categories? You look at the amount of scenes you have and divide them up between the four categories. Doing this ensures that your adventures won’t feel samey during the session, and you can check your outlines between adventures to make sure you’re not doing too much of one thing from adventure to adventure.
There’s an example of what the split looks like below:
- Pre-Adventure Notes
- Scene 1 (Introduction) Conflict Scene
- Scene 2 Investigation/Roleplay Scene
- Scene 3 Roleplay Scene
- Intermission
- Scene 4 Conflict or Challenge Scene
- Scene 5 Challenge Scene
- Scene 6 (Climax) Conflict Scene
- Epilogue
- Rewards
- Consequences
- Cast
The important thing to note is that these scenes (apart from the first and last scene) aren’t necessarily in chronological order. We’ll go over how to connect the scenes together a little later in this piece. For now you just want to make sure you have a decent variety.
So, now we know what kind of scenes we want to feature in our adventure, we can begin constructing those scenes. For me, this takes the form of scene cards. I literally use index cards at this point, but you could accomplish the same thing in a word processor like Word or Google Docs. I use one card for each scene, and they contain the following information:
- Scene Name: I give each scene a one sentence name, mostly to keep them straight in the outline, but also for my own amusement
- Scene Category: Which of the types or type combinations I assigned in my outline
- Scene Synopsis: A one-two line breakdown for what happens in the scene.
- Scene Location: The setting of the scene. (I.E. city street, hero HQ, villain’s lair)
- Scene Characters: The relevant NPCs for the scene.
- Scene Conflict: The driving drama of the scene, this can be the goals of the NPCs, environmental hazards, or anything else that can challenge the heroes.
- Related Plot: This is reserved for campaign style adventures. I’ll mark down if this scene relates to the overarching main plot of the campaign or if it’s related to a subplot. I’ll talk more about subplots in a future campaign oriented blog post.
- Transitions: Connections between the other scenes in the adventure. Particularly helpful for mystery adventures. I’ll also mark down any time sensitive plot points related to the scene (I.E. If the heroes go to Scene 4 before Scene 3, Scene 3 changes in X way.)
- The Back of the Card: If I’m feeling inspired, or I know the scene cards are the extent of my preparation, I’ll write flavor text on the back of the index card.
I like to use index cards because I can visualize how the plot can move, and I can paperclip the index cards to my GM screen.
Here is an example Scene Card from my Sinister Six game:
- Scene Name and Number: Aggressive Journalism #1
- Scene Category: Conflict Scene
- Scene Synopsis: The Sinister Six stage an attack at the Daily Bugle, hoping to lure Spider-Man into a trap. They get more than they bargain for when they kick in the door only to find a force of Symbiotes.
- Scene Location: The Daily Bugle
- Scene Characters: Symbiote J. Jonah Jameson, Symbiote Minions
- Scene Conflict: The Sinister Six have to survive an attack by an even angrier than usual J. Jonah Jameson and his Symbiote reporters. Physical conflict. Skyscraper is ten stories tall so there is the risk of falling. The Bugle has several large printing presses which can be used to hinder characters (especially those with capes or tentacles that can be shoved into the press) or just as thrown weapons.
- Transitions: This is the intro scene so it leads directly into Scenes 2, 3, or 4.
These scene cards are the majority of my outline. Once I have a card for each scene I can start looking at the bottom portion of the outline. This includes the following four parts:
- Epilogue: A paragraph about the resolving action of the adventure. This is basically a rundown of what happens after the climax of the adventure. Sort of providing the specifics of happily ever after. Superheroes like to hear how they made the world a better place through their actions, so come up with some short-term and long-term benefits for their actions.
- Rewards: What the heroes gain from the adventure. This can be something mechanical like Character Points or something more roleplaying oriented, such as a contact or a relationship with an organization. You can also award them reputation bonuses with their city or new equipment.
- Consequences: This is like the Transition point on the scene card, but for the whole adventure. These are story developments that are a direct result of this adventure. They can be loose threads that didn’t get wrapped up (maybe the mastermind escaped or the heroes don’t know the supplier of the street gang’s super weapon.) They can also be consequences of the heroes’ actions (maybe the criminal they accidentally dropped in a vat of acid comes back as an even worse supervillain.) As long as you include this section for most of your adventures, you’ll never run out of story threads.
- Cast: This is where I mark down which NPCs I’ll need for the adventure and where I place their statblocks. Depending on how much prep I’m doing for an adventure I’ll either place full-sized statblocks here or I’ll put shortened statblocks with only the particulars I need.
At this point we have a finished outline. This skeleton is enough to run the adventure from if you’re confident in your improv abilities, but it’s also a great bedrock to build a more elaborate adventure from. As a bonus, I’m going to include a blank outline template below that you can use to create your own outlines. That’s enough for right now.
Next time we will dive into exactly how I created a Dynamic Scene, so we can flesh out this outline.
Blank Outline
- Pre-Adventure Notes
- Scene 1 (Introduction)
- Scene Name:
- Scene Category:
- Scene Synopsis:
- Scene Location:
- Scene Characters:
- Scene Conflict:
- Related Plot:
- Transitions:
- Scene 2
- Scene Name:
- Scene Category:
- Scene Synopsis:
- Scene Location:
- Scene Characters:
- Scene Conflict:
- Related Plot:
- Transitions:
- Scene 3
- Scene Name:
- Scene Category:
- Scene Synopsis:
- Scene Location:
- Scene Characters:
- Scene Conflict:
- Related Plot:
- Transitions:
- Scene 4
- Scene Name:
- Scene Category:
- Scene Synopsis:
- Scene Location:
- Scene Characters:
- Scene Conflict:
- Related Plot:
- Transitions:
- Scene 5
- Scene Name:
- Scene Category:
- Scene Synopsis:
- Scene Location:
- Scene Characters:
- Scene Conflict:
- Related Plot:
- Transitions:
- Scene 6
- Scene Name:
- Scene Category:
- Scene Synopsis:
- Scene Location:
- Scene Characters:
- Scene Conflict:
- Related Plot:
- Transitions:
- Epilogue
- Rewards
- Consequences
- Cast