So, I Wrote My First Adventure

I’d heard pretty good things about Storytelling Collective’s Write Your First Adventure (WYFA) course.

It promised to give you all the guidance, tips and motivation to create a scenario for a tabletop roleplaying game in 30 days.

It did that. And it did a lot more (for me, at least.)

It has successfully reignited my creative spark, and set me off on what I plan and hope to be a long path.

So, what is it?

Storytelling Collective have been around for a while, and aim to educate and inspire creatives, particularly those in the tabletop roleplaying game field. They offer many and varied courses, but the WYFA course is their flagship.

Previously, the WYFA course has mainly focused on all things D&D, but their most recent offering included a Chaosium path, with tailored learning and modules for Call of Cthulhu and Runequest.

That clinched it for me. I love Call of Cthulhu (and I am embarking on a love affair with Runequest too), and the thought of applying that #nanowrimo style creative discipline to writing a Cthulhu scenario was hard to resist.

So, how does it work?

Enrolling in the course gave access to a whole slew of useful and informative ’onboarding’ articles, then – starting 1 July – a daily drip feed of blog post-style modules taking students through planning, outlining, narrative design and the like, all the way through to advice on formatting, layout and publishing.

It was a lot to take in, and an ambitious program. But by adopting a slow release of new information on a daily basis, the WYFA course content didn’t overwhelm: instead it gave the blocks to build something in a structured and intuitive way that – for me and the dozens of others who have successfully completed it – resulted in a finished product.

The modules themselves weren’t interactive, and there was little in the way of non-textual content. But it was accompanied by an extremely active Discord channel, where the course coordinators (thanks especially to Kage, Ashley and Nick) were just about always on hand to answer questions, and fellow students could share the ups & downs of the creative process.

The Discord worked superbly for me, and I’ve met and since continued to collaborate with other fledgling authors of cosmic horror since the course officially completed on 31 July.

So, what did I make?

I made this.

A fully designed and published 50-page Call of Cthulhu scenario set in 1920s Edinburgh.

Is it the best scenario ever?

Of course it’s not. It’s probably a bit too long, a little convoluted, and things could generally be clearer and tighter had I taken longer to create it.

But am I proud of it?

You bet your dang tootin’ Sanity I am.

I made it, from nothing, in a month. It’s already live on DriveThruRPG and has already sold some copies. It’s a real thing, out there in the real world, and without me it wouldn’t exist.

I’d almost forgotten how that sense of creative fulfilment felt.

And it’s also given me the drive to create more. I’ve already finished the draft of my second Cthulhu scenario, and I have seeds written for another eight.

I want to learn, get better, publish more and give something back in whatever way I can to this hobby I adore.

And it’s given me a renewed sense of creative purpose that has been dormant for so long I thought it had expired.

And for that, I am eternally grateful to Storytelling Collective and everyone I met on the way.