I write a lot of adventure guides, and I get a lot of lovely feedback from people who struggle to understand published adventures and tell me that my guides have helped them. So I thought I would share my method with you, in case it helps you.

1. Finding out what’s in the adventure.
2. Organising what’s in the adventure
3. Fixing what’s in the adventure
4. Final prep

My guides started from my adventure reviews and writing, taking apart adventures and analysing them so I could understand what made a good and bad adventure. The method I use has evolved over time as I’ve sought to boil down modules into their component parts and present them in a way that lends itself to use at the table.

Along the way, I’ve had a lot of help from Sly Flourish’s 8 Steps of Adventure Prep model; for monsters, I use variations on the monster roster and the abbreviated stat block from Forge of Foes; and NPC profiles from the official D&D Adventurer’s League NPC format and from Mausritter.

Finding out what’s in the adventure

The first step is reading to find out what’s in the adventure.

I begin by finding the start of the adventure. Usually it’s boxed text. If it’s not, I write some text for myself. I’m better at reading text than improvising the start of the adventure.

Next, I go through the adventure (including all the room descriptions and boxed texts) with a collection of highlighters. You can also use the highlight function on a PDF, but I prefer print.

• Pink: event or scene (this is often a section title)
• Yellow: a clue, secret, or lore
• Purple: location
• Blue: NPC
• Orange: monster, hazard, trap or other damage-dealing thing
• Green: treasure

Organising what’s in the adventure

Then, before I’m going to play, I reorganise the whole thing, writing lists that cover either the whole module (for a one-shot) or what I expect to be in the next session (for a longer campaign). The lists are:

• Scenes
• Clues
• Locations
• NPCs
• Monsters
• Treasures

Making sure everything’s there

After the lists are done, I examine each one to make sure it holds together. Each element has its own procedure:

Scenes

This is usually a bulleted list, but I think through the transitions between the scenes and the choices I expect the characters to make.

What the party finds out

I organise clues by main secret (for example, the charming prince is really a necromancer) and by the evidence that the adventure gives for the player to find out the secret (his journal, entitled “My struggle to achieve necromantic power.”) If there aren’t enough ways to find out a secret (at least three), I try to think of more, but I will often improvise these on the fly.

More often than should be the case, there’s a piece of evidence like “the windowsill has three skulls carved on it,” but no associated secret. Then I spend some time pondering what the evidence could mean, and write that as a secret.

As an example, I was preparing the “Leilon Point” adventure from Sleeping Dragon’s Wake. In that adventure, there is an undead shark skeleton with feet attached. Leaving aside the fact that sharks aren’t bony fishes, and therefore don’t have skeletons, there is still the question of why the skeleton is there and who attached the feet. By focusing on this I was able to make a new secret that made the whole adventure hang together (the Myrkulite necromancer had experimented on a sacred sahuagin shark and earned the enmity of the sahuagin, which caused them to attack the village since they were told it was full of Myrkul worshippers.)

Locations

I usually make a page with a keyed map on top and the room descriptions with everything stripped out that isn’t room description below (like secrets, clues, NPC info and other random stuff that gets stuffed into room descriptions.) Sometimes (too rarely) the module already has something like this. Usually the room descriptions are cluttered with things that make sense elsewhere.

NPCs

For every NPC, I write down what they look like and what they want. For important NPCs I include ideals, bonds, and flaws. If the adventure doesn’t contain this information, I make it up.

Monster Roster

From my list, I make a roster of the monsters with basic stats and abilities. I sometimes put traps, hazards, or siege equipment on this list, or really anything that will damage the players. This roster is really a kind of OSR-style stat block. It includes name, number of monsters, challenge rating, description, the armor class or spell DC, their average HP, the bonus (+) they have for attacks or proficient abilities, the number of attacks and the damage per attack. Then I write special abilities in the notes, and what the monster motivation is. For example:

The purpose of the roster is to assess the difficulty of the fights the players may have, force myself to read through their stat blocks completely, and allow me to quickly locate any stat blocks I need. Experienced GMs can run most monsters from the roster.

Treasure

For treasures, I check that there is enough treasure present, and whether any of the treasure is relevant to my party, or whether I want to add any special treasures. For magic items, I like to think of a little history or lore to go along with them. A magic item can be a little package of rules and lore.

My party

For my own games: I go through what I’ve done and I think about my player characters: is there something here for each of them? Some way to look cool? Some lore I can add? If it’s a one-shot I think about how they could be connected to an NPC, to a location, to one of the clues.

Fixing it

At this point, I’m ready to critique and fix the entire thing. What’s the hook for my characters? Is the start sufficiently dramatic and interesting? Can I understand the logic of the module? Do the locations, NPCs, and clues support the theme of the module? Is the boss fight cool enough, too weak, too strong? If things are missing or unclear, I fix them now, and I add and delete secrets, treasures, monsters, NPCs, and scenes to be appropriate to my players and what we’re doing, because now I have the module in chunks.

Final prep

I usually then use my lists to check off what I need before the game:

• art for NPCs
• treasure cards or descriptions to give players
• stat blocks for monsters
• art and handouts for scenes
• maps for locations

If I play in person I use cards for most of these, online I make sure they are stored in the VTT or in my computer in an appropriately labelled file.