Primary Objective

Your adventure idea isn't complete until you have figured out the Primary Objective your players will try to pursue - a Problem they will be trying to solve or a Goal they will be trying to accomplish.

Primary Objective is the core of your story, the most important element you need to figure out. Once you know the Objective - everything else will fall into place, because almost all the other elements of the adventure are defined in relation to the Objective:

Adventure Hook is the moment at the beginning of the adventure where the players encounter the Problem they must solve or establish the Goal they will try to achieve.
Antagonist is the primary force that stands in the way of the players, their goal is the opposite of the heroes' Objective.
Challenges and Encounters are the obstacles which the players will need to overcome on their path to the Objective.
Intriguing Mysteries are bits and pieces of information the players will gather throughout their adventure that are required for them to accomplish their goal.
Surprising Twist is the moment in the middle of the adventure when the players' Objective changes in some way - they realize that it's not what they once thought it was, or some complication makes it much more difficult to achieve.
The Climax of the adventure is the moment when the Objective is resolved, when the players succeed at accomplishing their goal (or, rarely, fail to do so and lose).

Resolving the Objective will be the single most important event in the story, it will determine whether the characters succeed or fail, the thing the "final battle" revolves around.

Stories are about Problem Solving

Stories and roleplaying games are fundamentally about creative problem solving.

Adventure Ideas are fundamentally problems. They create an exciting, challenging, important goal for the players to accomplish.

This is the fundamental "game loop" of an RPG - the GM puts an interesting problem in front of the players, and they find creative ways to solve it.

Big problems are broken down into smaller Challenges. Every scene the characters try to solve a small problem, their successes take them closer to achieving their goal, the setbacks and complications take them farther away from that goal.

Players encounter a big problem at the beginning of the story, they go through a series of challenges that add up to ultimately solving the problem at the Climax of the story.

This gives the players a sense of progress, makes them feel like their actions are meaningful, make impact on the world, add up to some larger purpose. Primary Objective is that purpose.

What makes a Good Primary Objective

Primary Objective is a specific thing the players must do in order to succeed in their quest. A specific action they must take that will resolve the main conflict.

Primary Objective must be:

High Stakes - players should care about accomplishing it. It should be very meaningful and important to the characters and to the world they live in. Players should have a good reason to pursue it, whatever it takes.
Exciting - the problem should be interesting to solve, the goal should be desirable to achieve. Players will spend the whole adventure doing everything in their power to accomplish this, so it should be something fun to participate in.
Difficult - the objective should be difficult to accomplish. It will be the main source of challenges and conflict in your story, it will create a lot of struggle for the characters, and you want your players to feel epic and heroic when they succeed.

Objective Examples:

Kill the dragon to save the village.
Break out an innocent from an unassailable prison.
Stop the Villain from opening a portal into the Demon Dimension.
Solve the crime to prevent a war between the two kingdoms.

Objectives and Villains

Objectives come in two types, like two sides of the same coin:

Players really want something, and the villain stands in their way.

Rescue a princess from a dragon.
Journey to a distant location and find treasure.
Broker peace between warring kingdoms.
Perform the heist of the century.

Villain really wants something, and players must do whatever it takes to stop them.

Prevent the villain from performing a terrible world-ending ritual.
Make sure the villain won't get their hands on a powerful artifact.
The Villain wants to kill or kidnap someone, and the players must protect them.
The Villain is pursuing the players, and they must escape to survive.

So any idea you have for an Objective is actually two ideas - it is either something the players want to pursue ("Kill a Terrible Monster"), or must prevent the villain from obtaining ("Protect an Adorable Creature from the evil Hunter.").

Looking at the Objectives this way doubles the amount of ideas you have, and helps you to come up with interesting and unusual stories (by swapping the Heroes and the Villains, telling the story from the perspective of the Antagonist).

Objective Archetypes

Just like in the previous lesson, taking ideas from your favorite stories (and changing them a bit) is one of the best ways to come up with your objective.

Unlike the other story elements, the objectives actually tend to be pretty generic - there's a limited amount of story archetypes (the goals the heroes can pursue). There are about 10-20 most common objectives that 90% of the stories revolve around. What makes an objective unique is the specifics of the story, all the other elements of the adventure idea that surround the objective.

When you watch movies and read stories, learn to notice the objective the heroes are trying to pursue, and compile a list of your favorite ones.

Here are some of the most common objectives:

Obtaining some important item (McGuffin), creature, person, or information.
(Train robberies, fetch quests, rescue missions, spy missions, capturing fugitives.)
Killing/defeating a Villain or a dangerous monster who's up to no good.
(Horror movies, superhero movies, many sci-fi and fantasy movies.)
Traveling to some distant location through dangerous territory, or ending up in a dangerous place and trying to survive and return home.
(Most adventure stories).
Solving mysteries, finding out the truth.
(Most detective and mystery stories).
Invading, Defending, or Escaping a location.
(Heists, prison breaks, many action movies).
Convincing/manipulating people, gaining power through non-violent means.
(Intrigue, drama).

(or preventing a villain from doing one of the above).

Here you can see the full list of the objectives I have compiled. You can go through the list and try applying each of the ideas to your premise, that is a sure way to generate a lot of new and interesting story ideas.

Premise-Based Objectives

Often the objective will grow naturally out of the story idea you have developed in the previous lesson.

Start with a Villain - come up with an idea for a villain, and figure out what it is that they want that the heroes must try to prevent.
Start with the Setting - what's wrong with the world the heroes are living in, what must be fixed?
Start with the Supernatural Element - some kind of magic, spell, technology, or a creature is causing problems, and the story is about resolving those problems.

Most of the time when you have any idea, it's possible to figure out what kind of Objective it naturally leads to. Is that something heroes want? Is that something they fear? Is it causing some problems they must solve?

Examples:

Villain - Crazy scientist obsessed with world domination.
Objective - stop him from performing his dangerous experiment.
Setting - dystopian world where the good has won, and is now ruthlessly oppressing the evil.
Objective - incite the monster rebellion and lead it against the Paladin army.
Supernatural Element - a magic Trident used to control the Kraken.
Objective - steal it from the Pirate Lord who's currently using it to control the seas.

Difficulties

One of the best ways to make the Objective more interesting is to add some restriction to it that makes it more difficult:

Problem must be solved using social/political means only.
Problem must be solved stealthily, secretly, under cover.
Problem must be solved under time pressure.
Players must avoid violence, collateral damage.
Players must compete with the rivals.
Players must cooperate with the enemy.
Players have incomplete/false information.
Players have limited resources/preparation.
Players must do it while protecting someone.
Players must do it under scrutiny/supervision, bound by strict rules/laws.
Target must be unharmed.

Action Steps

Make a list of 5-10 possible goals for the players to pursue, add them to the Primary Objective section in your brainstorming template. Select your favorite one.
List the things that make the goal difficult to accomplish.
List the reasons why the goal is important to the characters.
How can you make the players care about the goal?
Share your ideas in the #adventure-ideas channel.
Extra Credit: If you can think of goal archetypes or complications I haven't mentioned - send me a message (lumen#7925 on Discord).

Exciting Premise Setting and Locations