WoAdWriMo On Reflection

So, one month later and WoAdWriMo is finally over. Now that Obliviscence is out I can finally sit back and reflect on how it went.

First off, the main reason I decided to do this was to get me focused on my roleplay writing again. Polgarus Games has been on hiatus for almost 18 months now – and that has been mainly because I've been too unfocused. I'll play around with ideas for a while then jump to another, or allow myself to get easily distracted, and before I know it months have passed and nothing has been done! Doing WoAdWriMo was a good wake-up call... set a goal, set a deadline, and then sit down and just do it.

Secondly, going through the discipline of actually plotting out an adventure was a positive process. Don't tell my players this, but when I run an adventure I usually wing 90-95% of what I'm doing. I might have a few names, maybe a couple of scenes and an idea or two of what's going to kick things off, but most of the time I'm making it up as I go along. WoAdWriMo made me sit down and, for once, actually figure out everything ahead of time.

(I'm not saying I'm actually going to plot things out in the future – but at least I've had a chance to try it. :-) )

I did end up writing a lot more than I intended. Originally I thought I'd only end up writing a 15-20 page adventure... it ended up being 32 pages long (and this is the version without the maps and possibly a few images). It's a good wake-up call for some things I plan to write shortly – cut the waffle, and get down to business straight away.

So what do I think about my finished result?

On the plus side, I'm happy with the cover I created and the layout I used. Neither of them will win any awards, but I think they are good, neat and professional in appearance. I lost track of how many pages I printed out trying to find a font I was happy with for the main text – it was at least 20 pages.

On the downside, I think the adventure itself suffers from two problems. The first is that it is fairly linear. While I wrote in various suggestions on what to do if the PCs wanted to do something else (and encouraged the GM to run with the players instead of trying to force them to follow a set path), there is still an expected order that for the PCs to follow. They will go to the Exchange, they will be ambushed, they will meet Leopoldo, they will look for a new spare part, etc. Unfortunately I'm not too sure how the adventure could be changed to overcome that given its setup as a once-off taster for The Forgotten.

The second problem I think the adventure has is that there's way too much boxed text (at least early on - which could tie in strongly with the first problem). I think I got better the further I got into the adventure, as there is less text towards the end (although that was partly because I was running out of time). I'll have to try and limit the amount of boxed text I include in the future so it doesn't overwhelm the adventure I'm writing.

Overall I think WoAdWriMo has been a fantastic experience, and I look forward to participating again next year!