Now a Bestseller on DMsGuild!
Our adventure Secrets of the Betrayer just hit Copper Bestseller status on DMsGuild! This adventure fixes your Vecna: Eve of Ruin campaign, and it stands out because of its non-linear story, deep connections with the lore of Kas and Vecna, and an epic boss fight. With the Copper milestone reached, now is the perfect time to reflect on the design process—what worked, what didn’t, and what we learned along the way.
Collaboration and Different Design Perspectives
Working on this project with my friend Alain was a deeply collaborative experience. However, we quickly learned that we approach adventure design with a different emphasis:
- I prefer writing toolkits with building blocks that allow a DM to customize the adventure to fit their players.
- Alain loves deep lore, providing rich details for DMs to connect the adventure with a larger story.
These perspectives had to merge into a single, cohesive product. Alain and I talked constantly about our different visions of the adventure. In the end, we always found a compromise which combined the best of both worlds. And sometimes, we split responsibilities according to our strengths:
- Alain focused on writing the lore-heavy introduction and inserting setting details into each encounter.
- I handled mechanical aspects, such as coming up with exploration procedures for the characters’ journey through Tovag, and structuring the boss fight.
The result? Hopefully, a more accessible adventure that appeals to both lore-focused and action-oriented DMs.
The Importance of Setting Clear Design Goals
At first, we aimed for too much: making a Tovag-themed adventure, tying it into Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, providing horror advice, and ensuring compatibility with Vecna: Eve of Ruin.
Playtesting revealed this was overwhelming. Players were confused by conflicting themes and overloaded with information. The solution? Narrow our focus. After playtesting, we decided our primary design goal was to provide fixes to the shortcomings of Vecna: Eve of Ruin.
Playtesting is King
Playtesting was a game-changer. When designing in isolation, it’s easy to lose sight of how an adventure plays for others. Testing showed us where the adventure lacked focus and injected fresh energy into the project.
One challenge of playtesting is distinguishing between feedback on the adventure itself versus feedback on how it was run. For example, in one playtest, the party was TPK’ed in the final battle. But the DM also ran that fight with ruthless tactics, even using meta-game knowledge to punish characters. Understanding whether that meant we had to nerf the boss’s stats or not remained a challenge throughout playtesting.
Final Thoughts
Hitting Copper Bestseller is exciting, but the real value lies in the lessons learned: collaboration makes for a stronger product, clear design goals prevent bloat, and playtesting is essential to refining an adventure. Moving forward, these insights will shape how we tackle future projects. And rest assured, Illusory Script is already deep in the design of our next DMsGuild product! Hint: It’s a guide to a town that appears in many Forgotten Realms adventures but has not been given a detailed look yet!
