What are the "Don'ts" when making a community adventure?

[Fastlex]

As the title says.
Thinking about starting one based around community made characters.

[Ad Bot]

[Conan]

don't make the story shallow and easy-to-predict or completely out of your control. have a general storyline/"plot conflict" prepared and give more information and direction than "you wake up in a room" which basically gives people no clue of what to do.

don't: "you wake up in a room"
do: "you are _____, and your goal is _____." Not as blatant as that; phrase it out and develop it, like "your car has been stolen and you need to get it back." it can be long-term or short-term but make sure it fits your length of time that you plan to have the adventure run.


that said, don't make situations too straightforward. have a certain level of ambiguity that have unclear consequences if taken. an example would be deciding to talk to someone or leaving and avoiding the conversation. in the immediate sense it has less direct control over the adventure but like any chekov's gun it has effects on later story development.

this also requires you to be open to not going the way you want the adventure to go, so don't be close-minded if it doesn't.


don't depend on your community characters to provide the people you want the adventure to have. pretty given; examples would be captain mace and legoboss/eliptats. however, give them more importance than just people present in certain action scenes.

don't force yourself to include everyone asap; take your time about it and develop the characters thoroughly. it helps to assign the characters real-life counterparts you may have met, such as friends at school or something, if you have trouble displaying their personality uniquely. note that writing inherently limits the ability to directly understand how the person talks/acts so don't be worried if your dialogue seems pretty flat, just make sure it stays consistent and displays the character's personality over many dialogue actions consistently to get your effect. I tried doing this in OUTER RIM but i'm unsure as to how effective it is.


don't have simply a general idea or a specific idea of where you want the adventure to go. plan out some long-term plot moments and the short-term action consequences but I find it best not to create a defined script beforehand, allowing the scenes to be fluid and adaptable. bear in mind though that that means you need good character visualization so you can see them act in various situations which may or may not be ones you plan out beforehand.


DON'T OVERDO THE ART IF YOU DO ANY. rule of thumb: if it takes longer than 15 minutes to set up (assuming you have all your character sprites/designs beforehand) its too complicated. Also, make sure they carry sufficient detail so small quirks like background character actions can be used to foreshadow things, or just make the bg less boring.

[Aripany]

Don't put it in offtopic.

[TheScout]

don't make a new one every week because you abandoned the last one after nobody gave any suggestions for 2 whole hours

[Yosher]

don't start adventures and then shamelessly lock them a few weeks later

make sure you have an interesting storyline that you won't get bored of yourself because i've made that mistake a little too many times now and i feel horrible because of it

the only one i apparently found super interesting was this one because i kept it up for 8 months, which exceeds the lifespan of a lot of forum adventures by far.

[childofdarkness016]

Because I don't care about society's rules, I'm giving you the "Dos" of making a Forum Adventure.

Make us care about characters! Having tons and tons of characters may seem cool, but if they're boring, flat, characters, the story tends to suck. Having a more limited cast of characters makes it much easier to develop each one and give them a distinct personality. Of course, you can have a lot of characters, but the more important characters should have strong personalities and overshadow the less important ones.

Also, watch your grammar. A more serious point of a story can easily become stupid just because the writer was too lazy to use the right form of "there" or didn't capitalize properly. Sure, most people won't really care, but it certainly helps! I like to read what I wrote out loud a few times to make sure none of my sentences are super awkward.

Make a good template for the characters so that people can provide you with as much information about their OCs. You especially want to ensure that people can give back stories for their characters, because if you don't, it'll be quite tough to write them in the story. Trust me.

Good luck on your adventure! ^u^

[Shell]

Don't use outlines if you're making pixel art.

Trust me. It makes the job a lot easier if you don't.

[Decepticon]

Well, in my opinion, don't force people to do actions

I.E. don't go

"Oh, you can only do two actions, which are;
1. eat sandwich
2. get up"

but that's only my opinion

[Legoboss]

Pretty given; examples would be captain mace and legoboss/eliptats. however, give them more importance than just people present in certain action scenes.

Thanks bby

All I would suggest is if people don't reply, just wait.
There is always at least one person that will be reading your story
don't do your adventure for pure attention, do it for other people.

Wow that came out a little cliche, woops.

[PurpleMetro]

thankfully nobody mentioned my adventure
which reminds me, i'm off vacation, i need to update it soon >.<

[childofdarkness016]

Well, in my opinion, don't force people to do actions

I.E. don't go

"Oh, you can only do two actions, which are;
1. eat sandwich
2. get up"

but that's only my opinion

It really depends on what kind of adventure you're doing.

What you mentioned follows the style of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. I'd rather not go on a long diatribe and explain the history of them, so just use Google for any clarifications.

What you prefer is a "Text Adventure," which I also choose to not explain in depth.

The difference between the two is that the former is better if you want a story to be a bit more linear and detailed. The latter is better when you want your players to have partial control over the story, and leaving exploring details up to the player.

I personally like both styles, but I think Text Adventures are more popular in general.

[TristanLuigi]

Don't jump on the innawoods bandwagon, I guess. Everyone else pretty much covered it.