Ever fancied designing your very own adventure? Releasing an RPG adventure is an amazing way to give life to your worldbuilding project! So this April we’re launching a flash challenge: Adventure April! It’s a great opportunity to get started designing one-shots, both for beginners and expert designers.

UPDATE: For the full Adventure April challenge blog post, go here!

Why you should create an adventure

There are many reasons why creating an adventure for your setting is a great idea!

  • An intro one-shot will get you new players. Get them hooked to the world and turn it into a campaign!
  • See your world from the player’s perspective! You’ll see your creation in a whole new way, which will give you tons of ideas.
  • You probably want to show off your worldbuilding! Who doesn’t? A one-shot is a great idea to do it!

What’s the difference between an adventure and a one-shot, you ask? Well, let me tell you!

What’s a one-shot?

In tabletop RPGs, a one-shot is a short adventure that can be played in a single session. This means that everything happens in about 4 to 6 hours on average! So it usually has simple (but engaging!) plots and characters with not a lot of backstory. They’re often used to try a new system or world setting without committing to a full campaign, or just to take a fun break from longer campaigns that need more focus and dedication!

If you’re a writer, you probably don’t care about all the stats and dice —but that doesn’t mean one-shots are useless to you! Many one-shot designers base their adventures around a map and then add explanations of what can happen in each location. This can be really useful for a writer too because it gives an overview of the context of a scene. Even if you think this won’t work for you, give it a try —it might end up being an amazing method for you! It’s also an amazing way to introduce your world to new readers. If this feels a bit too much for you, feel free to collaborate with someone with more experience designing RPGs!

What’s Adventure April?

Adventure April is a brand new flash challenge that will start on April 2nd! You’ll have the whole month to write a short RPG adventure that can be played as a one-shot —using World Anvil, of course! There will be shiny prizes to be won, and if you play your one-shot on stream we’ll help you promote it! It’s all about sharing the amazing creations of our community, after all!

Don’t know how to write a one-shot? Don’t worry —we’ll be giving you some tips and examples so you can get started with a bang! And you’ll be able to write your one-shot for any genre, system, or setting, so don’t worry if you’re homebrewing everything

How can you get started preparing for Adventure April?

The challenge will start in April, but here’s some things you can do to prepare in advance!

  • Make sure you have a World Anvil account. A free one will do!
  • Pick a system! If you haven’t chosen an RPG system for your world yet, now’s a good moment to do it.
  • Read published one-shots to get some inspiration. Check out Emergent Event: Fractal Towers by Dylon on World Anvil for an example!
  • Want to collab with other people? Get in touch now!
  • If you want to stream your one-shot during April, you should start looking for players as soon as possible. And send us an email to hello@worldanvil.com so we can shout-out your stream!

Well then, let’s get started! Create your free World Anvil account and start preparing today!