Over the past couple days, I’ve been putting some time into outlining my first One-Sheet for mass-consumption. I like how it’s shaping up, but it’s still in early stages and I think there’s several revisions in my future.
As I alluded to in Writing for other people, I want to start producing content for public use, as I build up my confidence and abilities as a writer to finally get started on a large-scale project that I think the gaming community will love.
Part of this process is documenting what I’m doing.
For the one sheet I’m working on right now, I had an idea. For this particular adventure, was the location and an era, but the location could be in almost any modern city of the era. I had an enemy in mind as well.
I let the idea bounce around my head for a while. After the kids were in bed and wife and I were sitting in front of the TV, I took out some paper and started writing down bullet points. I started with the City, since the idea began to take on a true location. I did some brief investigation and wrote down a better time frame. I wrote down the goal of the mission.
To me, One Sheets generally have three to four ‘scenes’. I wrote down Scene 1, Scene 2, etc and left space to fill in the gaps. I began to write details.
Scene 1 was the setup. How the PCs were engaged on the task at hand, etc. Basic stuff.
Scene 2 was a little bit of investigation. I briefly noted the things that would be accomplished in the scene.
Scene 3 was to be a combat encounter, with some investigative elements.
Scene 4 was going to reveal the reality of what was going on, and a combat encounter.
I was happy with the outline. The opponent I had thought was going to be involved – wasn’t. No worries, he’s on another planning document for another time.
The next morning, I typed up the outline and added even more details. Combat encounters weren’t built up more than knowing what creatures would be present, but the overall feel of the One-Sheet was there.
I passed this draft to a few trusted friends for comments.
Once I have those back, I’ll be incorporating any feedback into the outline and I’ll begin to design the combat encounters, which I think is going to be my biggest challenge.