RE: DragonRaid Adventure Guidelines
Posted by: joerevesz <joerevesz@...>
<Egil wrote:>
Hello. I am from Norway. I have had some interest in Dragonraid for a time, but have never managed to gather together people that are keen on such a game (at least when I have had time and opportunity myself). Have some questions and a request that I think could be of interest to this forum.
1) Is Dragonraid a game that only suits kids, or can it also be of learning and gaming-value for grown ups also?
2) To me the Bible is holy. Fine. How is it using actual scripture in a game of allegory? Does one ever go to church thinking "ha, that bible-word reminded me of the time my group were in the Cave with the trolls and..."? I ask because I am curious, and have never tried the game.
3) The request: do you have some guidelines for how to make a new and inspiring campaign/adventure? Both regarding making a compelling story, and how to incorporate allegory/message? Discussing this I think is very important also regarding the developement of a second edition, which I think should have a large section on how to make ones own adventures (that are satisfying and made with responsibility both as game and allegorical christian message.).
Kind regards Egil Wold, Norway
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Hello Egil,
Some answers to your questions:
1) DragonRaid is written for the younger teenager, but I have been in all-adult groups that used it quite successfully. Some elements of the adventures need to be changed, but the AM can do that rather easily since he knows (or show know) his group.
2) Remembering things from a game isn't really a problem. When that ting takes over a person's thinking, then it is a problem. I think that is a matter of conscious, we have freedom in Christ in most of what we do. If using DragonRaid makes one's mind wander at the wrong times then maybe that person should stop using it or at least try to put it into perspective. Any preoccupation with worldly things is a bad sign.
3) While we do not have specific guidelines for writing a new adventure, posted below are general guidelines that should help someone get started. Specific rules on how to make an adventure may stifle creativity, so we kept them more general. We may put them in the Second Edition, but it may be better to post them on the DragonRaid website. Not everybody is going to need them, so it does not necessarily need to be in the text of the rules or AM Manual.
Joe
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DragonRaid Submission Guidelines
Adventures for Christ plans to publish a series of adventures and sourcebooks detailing the planet EdenAgain in DragonRaid, the Christian discipleship/role-playing system. The main continent of EdenAgain is Talania, and currently, all adventures are taking place there. Overall, the setting is medieval fantasy.
*At the moment, we are taking adventure submissions only.
The following is a summary of our current needs:
Adventure Texts
Adventures have to be fully compatible with previously published materials. The Moon Bridge Trilogy is a good example to follow.
We really want to expand the enjoyment of the DragonRaid system through publishing adventures. These Raids should be theme based, not just a hodge-podge of encounters with monsters and villains.
We realize that many Adventure Masters will tailor source material for use with their group, so all material, dragon Mind Speech, and Teaching Situations must be non-denominational in approach.
Background Books and New Material
These must be fully compatible with all cultural details outlined in our other DragonRaid publications. Nothing will be accepted that conflicts with already published materials.
Please contact the AFC Rules Committee (joerevesz@juno.com) to discuss your ideas for new Dark Creatures, rules changes, new WordRunes, etc.
Fiction
We have not as yet published any fiction. It is something that we will consider. See the LightRaider Net electronic newsletter at http://www.dragonraid.net for a fan fiction forum.
Submission Information
Please contact our Adventure Committee to receive a full Writers' Guidelines before submitting ANY material. The Writers' Guidelines contains details that will answer many questions and provide a format for your submissions. This is to ease our work, and help clarify our communications with you.
Adventures for Christ Adventure Committee
P.O. Box 0089
Bath, OH 44210
Writers' Guidelines
Pre-submission
Before you mail all of your hard work to us, please keep a few things in mind. First of all, you should be familiar with, and should have played DragonRaid a few times. Your text should be compatible with the currently published game rules and should not introduce revolutionary changes that contradict the rules. Secondly, please do not send in any thinly disguised D&D adventures that you have recycled from long ago. That system does not fit into DragonRaid, and we do not have the time or the resources to convert your adventure into something that we can use. Also, be sure that you have included fleshed-out Teaching Situations that make sense and complete and correct scripture references. We will make suggestions for rewrites, but we will not add Teaching Situations to adventures lacking them. Remember, DragonRaid is primarily a discipleship tool. An adventure without Teaching Situations is not a DragonRaid adventure.
Submissions
1. Submissions should be grammar and spell checked.
2. All references to special DragonRaid nouns (i.e., LightRaiders, Once Born) should follow our spelling conventions. That means joining the words (keeping the second one capitalized) for nouns that represent redeemed people or items (i.e., TwiceBorn, LightRaiders, DragonRaid, StarLot), and separating the words for unredeemed people or items (i.e., Once Born, Dragon Slaves, Dark Creatures, Shadow Stone). See "DragonRaid Text Style" below.
3. Do not format the text, other than using bold and italic. The layout will be done later; the writer does not need to be concerned about it. This means:
a. Do not use tabs.
b. Do not set off text with asterisks (i.e., *****), pluses (i.e., +++++), or any other character.
c. Do not indent text, using tabs or spaces. This formatting will be done later when final layout is done for the adventure.
d. If you need to create a table, use the table feature in your word processor. Alternatively, provide it as ASCII text in a separate file.
e. Do not use hard returns (pressing the Enter key before the end of a line of text) for anything other than to denote a new paragraph.
4. Have all of your adventure text is contained in one file.
5. Please provide maps as separate bitmap files, and please use descriptive names for each.
6. Please submit text in TXT or MSWord format.
Required Elements
To minimize sending the adventure back and forth for revisions, the writer should have "everything" in close to final form as possible.
Please submit:
1. a short description of the adventure and its major teaching
2. an outline of the adventure
3. a map of the area of the adventure (does not have to be great quality, our artists will probably do the final versions)
4. a list of teaching situations with scriptural references
5. the adventure text
6. dragon Mind Speech list, if any
7. maps or floor plans of important places or buildings, if any
DragonRaid Text Style
Is the name of the game "Dragonraid", or the stranger "DragonRaid"?
"DragonRaid." See below.
What about when referring to the entire race of dragons, as "Dragons" or "dragon"?
Usually, it is not capitalized, but it just depends. There is no reliable precedence for capitalizing general races of beings - especially in DragonRaid, which tends to use capitals in many situations to infer respect or reverence. This is especially true for pronouns, which is why the OverLord and the Most High get "He'd" and "Him'ed" most of the time. It's just another superlative distinction we can make that further lifts the name of God above all names. Conversely, we don't want to offer the dragons the same courtesy, so we keep them lower-cased.
What about the different races such as "Dwarfs" or "dwarfs", or "Elven" or "elven"?
See above, or use the style in Lord of the Rings or the Chronicles of Narnia, either way the names of general races on EdenAgain are not capitalized.
How about the different Once Born, the "Races of Men", or "races of men"? (Likewise, "Men" or "men"?)
See above.
Do we capitalize the common usage of monster names, as "Orc" or go "orc"?
No, do not capitalize them, unless the names are at the beginning of a sentence.
Naming Convention
The general rule for names in DragonRaid is this: If it is a "redeemed" thing, then two word titles are put together and the capital letters of both are kept.
For example:
OverLord,
EdenAgain,
DragonRaid,
TwiceBorn,
StarLot,
LightRaider,
SaltWarrior,
WordRune,
Mist Barrier, etc.
Unredeemed things (with some exceptions) with two word titles are kept as two separate words. For example:
Shadow Stone,
Once Born,
Liberated Land,
Dragon Lands, etc.
Some names are not capitalized unless they start a sentence:
dragon slave,
dragon soldier,
dark creature,
dragon(s)
A scant few exceptions to these conventions have begun to emerge in the context of DragonRaid-related fiction, since too many capitals can break the flow of a sentence and come across as too stilted. Said exceptions don't usually affect proper nouns and titles (such as TwiceBorn, LightRaider, or WordRune), but rather some of the terms that would have a more vernacular slant in workaday use. The most predominant example of this is "DragonRaid." That's the title of the game, but the characters within the realm of the game don't see it that way. So when referring to a LightRaider's mission in prose, it would be acceptable - perhaps even preferable - to call it a "dragon raid." (Should you do it this way, it would probably be best to separate the two words, and not to capitalize, to ensure the distinction is complete.)
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