Key Plot Points

Now we need to figure out the plot of our story. There are many different story structures, some of them involve up to 15 plot points (like the Save The Cat methodology). Adventures don't need to be anywhere near as complex as the movies or novels, so I ended up designing a simple and straightforward story structure that works really well for the adventures.

The key plot points of our story structure are:

Adventure Hook.
Twist.
Climax.

Adventure Hook

Adventure Hook is the moment at the beginning of the adventure that establishes the Primary Objective of the players - they encounter a problem they must solve or the goal they want to achieve.

The point of the Adventure Hook is to draw the heroes into action, capture the players' interest, give them the motivation to accomplish their goal, and give them the initial set of tasks to accomplish. You want to establish the world that the players are in, and then, without much delay, introduce them to the quest.

You want to make sure that:

Players know what their goal is.
Players care about accomplishing the goal.
Players know what they need to do next.

How can you do that? There are many ways to introduce a quest.

When in doubt - throw the heroes into action as soon as you can.

Ways to throw the heroes into action:

Start "In medias res" (in the midst of the plot) - start the adventure with players already in the middle of dramatic action. For example being chased by someone, or teleported to an unfamiliar place, or stranded in a dangerous territory, or in the middle of a sinking ship.
Start with combat. Getting attacked or ambushed is sure to capture players' attention and motivate them to deal with the threat. Or maybe a fight breaks out around the players, and they see some innocents being harmed.
Players witness a crime or injustice (committed against someone else or themselves). For example, someone being dragged to jail while claiming to be innocent.
Start with a non-violent conflict. For example - someone is accusing someone of cheating, a King died yesterday and now there's a power vacuum, someone outlawed alcohol, a group of thugs come to the village demanding tribute.
Put the world around the players in danger. The city is being invaded by evil legions or King's paladins on a "peacekeeping" mission.

Another good approach is to start with a good mystery or something supernatural, make the players curious, have them witness some strange magic taking place.

Start with a mystery:

A dead body has appeared in the middle of a crowded street.
Players find a bloodied dagger with a mysterious note.
All the cats in the village have disappeared overnight.
Everyone in the city has suddenly fallen asleep except the players.
Heroes are approached by a superintelligent rat.
The city is getting covered in thick purple mist with something dangerous inside.
The sun has failed to rise and replace the moon this morning.
The ghost of an old king has appeared to claim the throne.
Players rest on the beach when they see an army of merfolk rising up from the water.

You can keep it simple and introduce the mission using a Quest Giver character.

Start with Quest Giver:

Someone runs up to players begging for help.
A wealthy merchant is hiring them to do a shady job.
A secret agent is sending them on a mission.
Their friend sends them a letter from prison.
They see a sad kid crying, looking for his mom.
Someone sells them a suspiciously cheap treasure map.

You can also start at a point where the player's actions first clash with the Villain's plans - any of the examples above could have been caused by the main Antagonist doing his dastardly deeds to unknown ends. In that case, you would design your Antagonist's plan first, and then figure out a way for the players to notice it and intervene.

Twist

As the heroes pursue their goal, they will have to overcome a series of obstacles. But if we just made the players go through a list of random encounters between the Hook and the Climax, it would quickly get predictable and boring. That's why we need the Twist.

The second important purpose of the twist is to raise the stakes and threat level. We want the challenges heroes are facing to progressively escalate, and adding a twist in the middle of the story is a great way to increase the tension.

Twist usually happens halfway through the adventure, the heroes encounter something surprising or unexpected that changes the direction of the story.

The easiest way to do that is to introduce an unexpected complication which makes the goal much more difficult to accomplish.

Examples of complications:

The path to the objective is blocked, a more difficult way must be found.
Environment around the heroes becomes dangerous.
A big risk or sacrifice is necessary to proceed.
Heroes are captured/trapped and must escape.
Key item is lost, stolen, or turns out to be fake.
Transportation is sabotaged or stolen.
Heroes are betrayed by a key ally.
Important location is destroyed.
Enemy discovers heroes’ weakness.
Enemy is warned of the heroes’ actions.
Innocents are in danger, require help.

Alternatively, you can reveal some surprising information. That is your classic plot twist.

Examples of surprising reveals:

Players were searching for answers (investigating a crime, solving a mystery), now they know what's going on, and must go and stop the antagonist from doing something terrible.
Villain's secret plan is revealed, and must be stopped at any cost.
Enemy turns out to be more powerful than expected (or gets backup).
The real evil guy is revealed (maybe their Ally was a Villain all along).
Heroes' employers turn out to be evil.
The defeated villain turns out to be just a pawn in a much larger plot.
Antagonist turns out to be innocent and must be helped.
Everything the heroes were doing up to this point was leading them straight into a trap.
Heroes were tricked into doing the Villain's bidding.
Heroes unwittingly cause a disaster (the Princes they've saved turned out to be a ruthless tyrant).
Key information players relied on turns out to be wrong.

Another type of twist can come from the Antagonist. The Villain notices the heroes' actions and makes a move, begins to fight back. You can see the list of moves a villain can make in the previous lesson.

Climax

Climax is the cool, exciting, dramatic, memorable ending to the adventure. Final, most important and dangerous challenge, a point in the story that resolves the main conflict. Ideally, you want it to be an epic scene at a cool location.

Depending on the outcome of this challenge the heroes will either succeed, defeat the antagonist, and get what they want, or lose and fail to achieve their goal.

This is where the heroes blow up the Death Star, drop the ring into Mount Doom, defeat Voldemort, escape from their prison, leave the vault with all the stolen treasure, with a super important court case, rescue that princess, find Nemo.

You create the Climax by looking at your player's Primary Objective, and figuring out what is the ultimate action the players must take to accomplish it (and what makes this action difficult and dangerous), what challenge must they overcome to succeed.

Because the Climax is so closely tied to the Objective, and takes place at the Epic Climactic Set Piece you have designed in the "Setting and Locations" lesson, and is probably the moment when the players face off against their Antagonist - you already know most of the things you need to figure out about what exactly what needs to happen.

You just need to make sure that the problem is solvable given the tools that the players have, that they know what they need to do, and have plausible approaches to accomplishing it. It's a good idea to make sure that you can think of at least a couple of things the players could do to win, so that they don't have to face an unsolvable problem.

It is also always good to try to design an alternative non-combat or stealthy approach the players can take.

Activity

Come up with an exciting Adventure Hook. How do the players encounter the problem?
Come up with a surprising plot twist or a complication the heroes will encounter halfway through the adventure.
Figure out what happens at the Climax.
Share your ideas in the #plotting-and-outlining channel and ask people for feedback.
Extra Credit: See if you can leave some insightful feedback on posts made by others.

Main Characters Escalating Challenges