How to Create a Pamphlet Module in a Day

Two quick disclaimers up front: 

1. We will be recommending some books down the line. We are not affiliated with Games Omnivorous. This is not a sponsored post. We just love what they are putting out there. 
2. There will be no playtesting! We are churning out a whole module in a day, and we don't have time for naysayers or pesky players complaining about our mirror puzzle (more on that later).

What are we doing?

We aim to create a 3-fold pamphlet module similar to the ones you can see on the Goblin Goulash itch.io page. These are small self-contained adventures, playable in one or two sessions. 

The Secrets of the Lunar Octant title card from our itch.io page

A bit more specifically, here we chronicle the creation of The Secrets of  the Lunar Octant, available here: https://goblingoulash.itch.io/lunar-octant

This module was created during the Malta Global Game Jam in a little over one day. Originally, the idea was to triple up and create three of these pamphlets in parallel with my fellow creators in the Goblin Goulash collective. The initial plan was this:

1. Write the core ideas alone
2. Iterate on it in a group
3. Go back to finishing the writing alone
4. Get a last round of critique
5. Go into production mode: layout, art, etc.

In reality, we managed to create The Secrets of the Lunar Octant and were halfway through Mad Honey Jam when the pens were down. Still not bad.

 

The Bottled Sea

Probably the greatest boost to our speed is working with an established setting/framework. Both of the aforementioned pamphlets were published for use with the Bottled Sea setting created by Games Omnivorous. Working with a setting like this is great because we don't have to figure out a lot of the big-picture stuff, like factions or major locations. Instead, we can lean into the established setting.

For people who are not familiar with them, the Bottled Sea and Undying Sands are self-contained acid fantasy settings that come with 30-40 beautifully illustrated punch-out hexes which you can use to build an over-land map of the region in a randomized way. They also come with a long list of general encounters, rumours, factions, and most importantly for this exercise: a list of short prompts for every major location. They hit a very nice middle ground, establishing much of the themes, major locations, factions etc. without being overly verbose. In fact, both settings fit on a 3-fold GM screen so it's super easy to cross-reference the different encounter, rumour, and location tables.

With the introduction out of the way, let's start jamming!

The Bottled Sea has 18 named locations, so we bust out a trusty d20 and let fate decide — one less thing to think about. We roll 13 and get the following prompts (the Bottled Sea has two locations on one hex):

The Lunar Octant. A resplendent flotilla of futuristic sextants, octants, and astrolabes. Two bumbling scholars seek to unravel its mysteries. If used, players may draw three hexes and place one on the map. They may also re-roll Weather once in the future. The Lunar Octant can only be used at night, when the stars are out. 

A battalion of Manta Rays encircle these waters. Travel takes double time and risks an Encounter. The rays will alert the party to the encounter if their behaviour is observed. 

We use both of the prompts, turning the second one into an encounter table when the players approach the hex, and expanding the first one into a full-fledged location. 

We also check the corresponding hex, because the art usually gives good inspiration and this is the thing the players see before the module starts — if you are using our modules with the established setting.

The hex art by Games Omnivorous from the back of our pamphlet

Planning Ahead

While it is not always helpful to start writing with the layout in mind, because we are working with both limited time AND limited space here, we set up a crude template for the pamphlet content. In the template, we see the available space already while doing the write-up. Hopefully, this keeps us on track. 

My advice here is to hit a middle ground. Don't worry about how much content you produce for the first draft (it's always easier to cut and edit than to write). But also don't go too overboard, if you go over 3 pages for a 2-page pamphlet for the draft, you are just writing for the paper bin. With this said you can find the template here.

It is also good to keep in mind what are the main components we need for a module. In our case, we have this checklist:

1. Front Cover

We only put the title, our logo, and the cover art here. It is a limitation decided on the get-go and it informs how much space we will have for content.

2. Back Cover

Here we will have some flavour text (to be filled out last) and the main plot hooks. The Bottled Sea comes in handy again for the plot hooks, as it provides four different factions. We simply create a hook for each of them. No matter which faction the players are aligned with they always have an excuse to visit the hex. (Again, it is best to leave this for last.)

3. Travel Encounter

We decide early to turn one of the aforementioned prompts into a travel encounter you can throw at the players when they approach the hex. We reserve the inside flap for this, which leaves us one page for the main content.

4. The Twist

These small one-shot modules usually need one good twist that makes them unique. It can be a puzzle, a clever NPC interaction, an interesting dungeon layout — you name it! You can use this twist to organize the whole adventure around. You can sprinkle interactions and small locations around the module to point back to your twist to make the experience more coherent.

The Reality

This is all nice and well — but in reality, when planning this module, we do change the twist as we go. The first idea revolves around the two scholars we know will be there based on the prompt. Originally we want them to bicker about how to operate the machinery around them — maybe resetting each other's progress. Consequently, we make them with conflicting personalities. Unfortunately, we can't come up with a clever way to "gamify" their interactions with each other and with the environment. And that's okay. We chug along; leave the scholars for now and later we come up with a mirror puzzle for our Twist instead (more on that later).

Drafts

I am a visual type so I always find it helpful to start doodling when I feel that I'm stuck with writing. Just trying to lay out the environment to get the gears turning. While being stuck on the core puzzle of the adventure, I start doodling and after a few minutes come up with this crude sketch:

Draft of the Lunar Octant

Beautiful! Well at least from the outlined shapes we can divine the main locations at the hex. We name them 1) Observatory Tower 2) Celestial Sextant 3) Great Telescope 4) Platearium (why not?) 5) The Deck (we are really running out of ideas here) and 6) Diving Bell. 

We have a good argument with my fellow creators. "Why diving bell?" To be honest, I doodled an egg shape and thought it would be cool to have it as a diving bell. But fret not, the rule of cool trumps everything and you can always find an explanation in hindsight. My explanation? Well achually, Edmond Halley famed astronomer — and namesake for one of my NPCs — also invented a diving bell. You see it's a very clever easter egg. I am so happy with myself that I will repeat this with William Herschel famed astronomer — and namesake for my other NPC — who is famous for his mirrors. Hence the mirror puzzle (more on that later) in hindsight.

And now we are on a roll, we have all the locations, and we have the theme: 18th-century astronomers — the module now basically writes itself. All we need is a good through-line for the adventure.

The Mirror Puzzle

So since the beginning of this project, we've been joking with my fellow creators that we need a good puzzle — something that is engaging and clever; something that is innovative. Obviously, not something like a mirror puzzle — done a thousand times over; distracting from the fiction; devolves into fiddling with measuring angles on graph paper. In fact, we are so above this that early on we have a note in the draft that Herschel (the NPC) tries to convince the players that the whole adventure is a mirror puzzle; but it is not actually a mirror puzzle.

Well now it's 9pm, we are running out of time, and we do need a puzzle somewhere — the whole location screams of puzzle! Fuck it. We are doing a mirror puzzle. Deadlines are looming; I start laying out a mini-dungeon for the Great Telescope — telescopes have mirrors, right? It is not an amazing dungeon map; it is very linear but I at least make it vaguely telescope-shaped. 

The map of the Great Telescope laid out in Dungonscrawl

Arnold Kemp's words ring in my ear as I decide to interpret "mirror puzzle" in the vaguest way possible and just fill my map with an assortment of man-sized lenses and wall-sized mirrors — none of which makes a workable mirror puzzle. I am a big fan of a style of OSR design where puzzles are either incomplete or just have the vague shape of a puzzle. There is no way to push players towards the "one correct solution" because the scenario has no official solutions. It's a mystery to both the GM and the players. It facilitates engaging with the fiction, bending what is possible, and coming up with creative solutions. It does require some leniency from the GM — a lot of "yes and" and a lot of "yes but". I find these puzzles leaning more into the medium of TTRPGs, rather than brain teasers with a set solution or "board gamey" puzzles that hinge on rules (like skill checks or abilities). 

So with this in mind, here is my "shape" gesturing towards a mirror puzzle: 

1. I set up a small map with nonsensical mirrors and lenses. Even on a cursory look they don't make any sense and don't line up at all.
2. To make the "puzzle" unmissable, I triple up on the clues: one of the NPCs mentions a "mirror puzzle" and orients the players towards it; the other NPC sets the players on a quest that rewards them with two large mirrors; finally, I put a translatable instruction in the Observatory Tower that plainly explains what to do.
3. I make sure that every encounter table has a mirror on it. And make a point of covering one of the locations (Planetarium) in "reflective disks".

This way the players have plenty of options and the goal is clear. The puzzle is not figuring out "what to do", but figuring out "how to do it" with missing or imperfect components. As a final "yes, but" I also add one major hurdle in reaching the puzzle — a monstrous slug that can paralyze the players.

As a sidenote about said slug: note that the text says "It excretes a substance which can paralyze a person for 1d6 hours" instead of "its attack has a chance of paralyzing the players". It is always a good idea to create obstacles that could be turned into boons under different conditions. Sure the slug is a huge obstacle but what if the players can somehow safely store some of that paralyzing slime? It might come in handy later.

Similarly to the Great Telescope, the other half of the puzzle involves a missing Projection Sphere (a MacGuffin). Depending on their allegiances, the players are explicitly visiting the hex to find one. However, the sphere is missing with no clear directions on where to get a genuine one — leaving the players to improvise if they want to use the Observatory Tower. This is another type of weird puzzle, one that has all the well-defined necessary components but some are inexplicably missing. Just like puzzles without a canonical solution, these puzzles force players to think outside the box as well.

Art and Inspiration

Probably the best tool out there for making professional-looking dungeons is Dungeon Scrawl. As you can see in the figure above, even a sketched-out dungeon looks perfectly good, it basically only needs some labels and we are good to go.

For the rest of the art, we go to Unsplash, Pixabay, and Wikimedia Commons. They are a great source for royalty-free pictures including photos, sketches, and vector art. The challenge with working with royalty-free pictures is keeping a consistent style. In this case, I hack the problem by relying heavily on old woodcuts. Because of the style and fidelity of these old illustrations, they generally blend together very well. 

All the components for bashing the Lunar Octant together

The figure above shows how the different illustrations come together to make the vague shape I sketched out the beginning. To round out the "dungeon map" of the Great Telescope, I also swipe an illustration of a slug in a more-or-less matching style from Pixabay — and I add some labels to the map as well. While rummaging around for illustrations, I also find our cover art on Wikimedia — a woodcut of two astronomers observing the sky with an octant from Johannes Hevelius's "Machinae Coelestis: Pars Prior" (1673). Perfect!

Finishing Touches

The only thing left now is to tie everything back together with the established setting. We go back and write the adventure hooks, giving each faction a reason to send the players to the hex. This can be something as simple as a callback to something on an encounter table (e.g. the Shepherds are after the fabled Gargantuan Manta Ray from the d6 Things Hiding Among the Manta Rays table) or something more complex (e.g. the Collectors looking for a Projection Sphere which plays a major role in the core puzzle of the module). After this, we write a short flavour text.

Done! A pamphlet in more-or-less a day. While most of the write-up and the art was a solo project, I had constant conversations with my fellow creators at Goblin Goulash, who gave feedback on the content, helped with figuring out details, and proofread the docs. In the meantime, they were taking the lead on other projects — including the draft of the Mad Honey Jam and the map for The Bazaar of the Gods.

Final touches to the itch.io page

Once the templates on Google Docs helped us definining the basic layout with the main spaces where we needed art, and the general flow of the document. All was left to lay it out and put everything together. Once we have the PDF, we go through our itch.io checklist quick:

• Cover Image (630x500): We grabbed a free 3-fold pamphlet mockup template for this.
• 3 Preview Images (877x620): For this we just double the Cover Image — because it won't show up on the game's page otherwise — and add two low-res previews of the pamphlet spreads.
• Banner Image (960x400): This is optional but the game page looks much better with a graphic title.
• Google Fonts: Save the names! You can set itch to the same fonts to match the pamphlet.
• Content: A quick introduction to the game.
• Attributions: In our Hexomnivorous pamphlets we obviously give attribution to Games Omnivorous but also give shoutouts for the people who created/compiled the free art assets — this is optional, technically all images can be used without attribution but it's good praxis.

That's it! Published! Have fun!

Check out the finished product on the Goblin Goulash itch.io page!