ITS FINALLY HERE!!
My first ever adventure, VOX PATRUM, made for triptech^3 pamphlet jam, officially approved by TKG for use with Mothership. Pick it up on Itch now!!
Now, my experience of making it.
I'd never published anything before, but the jam motivated me to do so. I'm running a sci-fi campaign right now, and the strongest portion of it revolved around a crazy cult on an asteroid. The characters had rescued the head of the cult, and he offered them 1mcr to get him reinstated as the head of his cult. When they got him back there, his brother, Abaddon immediately counteroffered - "help me kill my brother, and I'll give you room and board for a few years." The party decided to go for the big payoff, but had to earn the support of multiple council members to do so. They quickly set about multiple hijinks, and by the end of it, solidly earned three of five necessary votes! That led to the death of Abaddon, the payoff of 1mcr, and a happy ending for everyone!
I tried to adapt that pretty literally; the only hook was finding the cult leader in space, and then running the same gauntlet my players went through. The core information was centered on the cult leaders, assuming that would be the bedrock of the players attempts to get votes. Initially, I was trying to do a black-and-white layout, simply because I had never done layout before. That resulted in the following very early version.
I pretty quickly realized I wanted to do something more, which led to the art drafts I previously posted about. From that point though, all I really did was tweak and tweak and tweak the layout from there until the final jam submissions.
So, what did I do? I worked. Furiously at first, then halfheartedly, then not at all, and now furiously again. I had seen enough modules in the jam to know I needed a location-first structure, with the characters as features of the location rather than the other way around. I completely rewrote the location descriptions, putting them on the interior spread. I redesigned the layout for that spread to accommodate a map as well, and then crammed the cultists into a single panel. I also added a crude relationship table, and maybe more importantly, added d5 hooks, rather than the single one I previously had. The final design isn't perfect, but its a damn sight better than what I previously published.
What'd I learn?
In some cases, more is more. I was so worried about running out of space that I shortchanged the adventure by leaving out key things - especially the full details of the location where the adventure took place. I skimped on doing multiple hooks to cut down the length as well, and always had the room to do it. The adventure is better for me adding more to it.
Be Realistic. I was pretty afraid to publish something ("EVERYONE HATES YOU ITS A REALLY BAD AVENTURE" - my brain), and simultaneously had delusions of grandeur; that I'd win the jam with my first ever submission and make millions of dollars doing so (lol). However, having published something is better than not having done something. It's set realistic expectations for future projects; that I'll maybe do okay, but that exceptional success requires continued dedication to what is a pretty difficult craft.
Publish > Not Publish. Yeah, results aside, and even if nobody ever picks up the pamphlet, I'm glad to put something out into the world. Frankly I think the alternative is that I ran away from RPG online communities forever, so the fact that I'm here writing this means I chose the "stay involved" option. And, this means that the other hundred ideas I have in my head might actually make it out into the world too. No promises though.
But yeah, Vox Patrum is real and finished and in the wind.
It's also on sale, so feel free to grab it on Itch!
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