Q: What if I miss the deadline?

Like the target size of 32 pages, we at WoAdWriMo consider the 'deadline' of June 30th to be a goal, not a stick with which to beat the participants. If you complete your adventure in July or later, do not be ashamed of not completing the project in June. We're not here to bring you down. Any adventures submitted on or after July 1st will be cheerfully accepted! Don't stop writing just because you missed a completely arbitrary deadline. We want you to succeed and we want you to be able to share the fruits of your hard work with others. Just don't let our easy-going attitude be an excuse to put off working on your adventure!

Q: What counts toward the page goal?

A question tha has come up more than once is whether things like maps or pre-gen PCs count towards the 32 page goal. The short answer is YES! Anything that helps make your adventure awesome counts towards your goal. Over at the WoAdWriMo forum user WeaveWarden (of MythWeavers) came up with this great post:

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Just as there are many possibilities for a given adventure, there are many possible ways of describing an adventure. Let's take a look at some of the common elements that writers can use to fill those pages with useful content.

Textual Descriptions

• Discussion of how to integrate the adventure into an ongoing game (hooks, description of preceding adventures, ways to fit into an established campaign setting)


• Setting Description


• Character Descriptions


• Pre-Readied Character Speech


• Pre-Readed NPC/Monster Action descriptions


• NPC/Monster Statistic Blocks


• GM Meta-Advice on ways to introduce/handle certain situations


• Custom Adventure-Specific Rules


• Treasure Tables (and other tables of random possibilities)


• Lists of possible results for information-finding attempts (possible rumors uncovered, knowledge known on a subject, clues uncovered in a room)


• Suggested extra media for a given scene or story (music, movie clips, links to videos available online, etc)

Non-Textual Descriptions

• Scene illustrations


• Images of characters (consider both illustrations and photographs)


• Adventure/encounter flow charts (to help organize the progression of the story along possible paths of action)


• Illustrations of opponents / monsters


• Maps (small-scale and broad geographical)


• Relationship diagrams (family trees, rivalries, political organizations)


• Formatting elements (background or border images and patterns, etc)

Don't forget to check the copyright laws governing any images you end up borrowing from other sources.

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Good work, MythWeaver!

Q: I'm done! Now what?

We are thrilled beyond measure to hear reports of WoAdWriMo participants that are almost done writing their adventures! So let's say you got a completed adventure. What happens next?

First, please let us know! We want to sing your praises! Drop a comment here or at the WoAdWriMo forum, or send an email to me personally. If you want us to host the adventure so that other may download, please send me a copy in an email. We're trying to get an automatic uploader set up on the WoAdWriMo Adventure home, but so far it is not ready. We'll let you know when we have that up and running.

If you want to host your adventure elsewhere, please provide us with a link so we can pass it on to others. We want people to see all your hard work, and we want GMs interested in your module to be able to find it. Maybe you want to try to sell your work, instead of making it available for free download. If you find a buyer, please keep us informed of the details. We'll help get the word out to prosepctive buyers.

Q: What system should I use?

A: You can write your adventure for pretty much any system you want. WoAdWriMo is about you and your adventure and what we can do to help you, not about us and our needs or desires. Writing a systemless adventure is also a perfectly acceptable option.

Perhaps you are having trouble selecting a system to use. There are many approaches that will help you narrow your choices down. You could pick a popular system in hopes that more GMs will use your adventure. To that end expect a future WoAdWriMo blog entry regarding the proper use of the d20 license and Open Gaming License.

Going in the opposite direction, you could use your WoAdWriMo adventure as an opportunity to shine a light on a system that isn't as popular as it could be. If you hope to evangelize for your favorite game it would be a good idea to write an introductory adventure for new PCs. Several very good games flounder in obscurity at least partly because some GMs don't know what to do with them. A good intro adventure helps overcome that obstacle.

Adventure writers that want to go systemless may find it helpful to introduce a little bit of system into their adventures. The Fudge role-playing game uses a seven step ladder of ordinary words to describe all traits. The ladder is as follows:

• Superb
• Great
• Good
• Fair
• Mediocre
• Poor
• Terrible

Using a simple system like this one allows for consistent shorthand remarks such as "The orcs are Good warriors overall but Poor archers." For more information on Fudge (include a free download of the entire rules), check out the official Fudge website, or visit this unofficial Fudge fan forum, or just grab this two-page quickie Fudge in a Nutshell. But please remember using the Fudge ladder system is not a requirement of the WoAdWriMo challenge, just a helpful suggestion that you are entriely welcome to ignore.

Along a similar vein one WoAdWriMo participant, known as VV_GM over at the WoAdWriMo forum, is working on what he calls the Universal Adventure Design Language. We'll keep you posted as details become available.

One final note about system choice. The good folks at Palladium Books seem to have a rather draconian and confusing policy towards online fan creations. While your WoAdWriMo support team loves many Palladium products, their internet policies and reputed litigiousness scares us just a bit. So while we heartily approve of anyone wishing to write adventures for any of Palladium's games, we will not be hosting such works at the WoAdWriMo section of Treasure Tables. But if you provide us with a URL to an alternative host, we will cheerfully link to your adventure.

[Many apologies to all readers for the lack of updates over the last week! My daughter came home with the chicken pox and I had been unable to finish this post.]

Q: Why is the goal 32 pages?

A: The 32-page goal is an arbitrary guideline only. Many of the classic D&D adventure modules from TSR clock in at around 32 pages, so that's why we picked that number. The point of setting a pagecount is to signal that we're challenging you to write Full Length Badass Adventures, not short one-night jobbies. That being said, if you write a complete, coherent adventure and it's 'only' 20 pages long we are not going to give you an 'F'. We will cheer! Don't pad out your adventure just to achieve our 32 page goal. All the parameters of WoAdWriMo are guidelines designed to help you. If one or more of our guidelines isn't cutting the mustard, please ignore it!

But suppose you really, really want to meet our 32 page goal and you're coming up slightly short. What should you do? Anyone who has had to squeak by in the classroom by handing in a short assignment knows all the tricks you can pull to make a small text seem bigger. The font size can be increased, the margins widened, etc. We ask that you not do this just to reach an arbitrary pagecount. Instead, consider adding bonus materials.

For example, you could add a Designer's Notes section explaining exactly what you are trying to achieve in your work. Or perhaps you could write up a one-page history on the creator and wielders of that cool magic sword in room 23a. A player's hand-out section might be handy for your adventure, if you use lots of clues. Or if your adventure involves a lot of interpersonal intrigue, consider devoting a page to a relationship map. Or just throw in some new crunchy bits, like new monsters or magic items. That's always fun. Basically, ask yourself "What could I add to this module to make it more user-friendly or fun?"

Q: What happens to my completed adventure?

A: First of all, you get our heartfelt congratulations. Congratulations! You made it! A winner is you! What happens next is entirely up to you. Throughout the entire WoAdWriMo process you are in the driver's seat. Martin Ralya at Treasure Tables will host any WoAdWriMo adventures that participants want to submit to us. Our vision is that the WoAdWriMo section of TT will serve as a central clearinghouse of adventures produced as part of the WoAdWriMo challenge.

But that's just our vision. If your vision is different, that's what we want you to go with. If that means you find another host for your adventure, we will happily link to that other site. Or perhaps you want to submit your manuscript to a publisher. That would be super! We would be thrilled to flip through a copy of Dungeon magazine or click over to RPGnow and see a WoAdWriMo adventure on display.

There is one option we would like to avoid. We don't want you to produce that adventure and then keep it to yourself. Please share! The WoAdWriMo challenge has a two-fold purpose: to motivate you to write and to make great adventures available to other GMs. We can't fufill that second mission goal unless the resulting adventures enter general circulation.

As always feel free to ask questions, share concerns, and make suggestions. We're here to help you.

Can I start now?

Over the next couple of weeks we'll be using this space to organically grow a Frequently Asked Questions page for Worldwide Adventure Writing Month. Once we seem to have most of the common questions answered, we'll get a complete FAQ posted over at the WoAdWriMo section of Treasure Tables. Today we'll start by tackling one of the first questions asked, even before this project went live.

Q: Do I have to wait until June to start writing my adventure?

A: Absolutely not! If you want to start immediately, that would be fantastic! Think of June as the final stretch, the crunch time with the finish line in sight. There's no reason to wait if you don't want to. We started this project several months in advance so that people could get cracking early if they desired. If someone handed in a complete adventure before June 1st we would be thrilled.

In the meantime consider us your personal cheering section. Yay! You rock! The WoAdWriMo team also wants to be your clearinghouse for useful information and resources in the coming months. If there is something we can be doing to make your module-writing easier, please let us know. We want you to succeed and we'll do whatever we can to help you out. You can leave a comment here, start a new thread on the WoAdWriMo forum, or email me personally.

Future FAQ fodder: What happens to my completed adventure? Are there any legal issues I should be worried about? Why is the goal 32 pages? What system should I use?