Alpha Dawn - Star Frontiersman

How to Referee Adventures
Adventures are the stories to challenge the players
and their characters. The referee can use published
adventures or he can create his own.
The first thing you must do as a referee is create
adventures for your players. Adventures can be as
simple or as complex as you want to make them.
You can design them completely from your
imagination, or take ideas from books and movies.
1. Choosing a theme or basic story and the goal of
the adventure.
2. Selecting the settings where the story takes place
3. Designing the events that lead to the goal, and
the obstacles that must be overcome to reach the
goal
4. Creating the non-player characters and creatures
that the characters will meet, and deciding how
they will affect play
5. Writing any special rules that are needed for
unusual events
6. Writing a final outline of the adventure to guide
the referee through the action.
7. Create any maps needed to define the adventure
areas.
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Theme
When choosing a theme for your adventure, you
should consider these three things:
• What has happened before that led to this
adventure?
• What must the characters do to complete their job?
• What sorts of obstacles do you want the players to
face during the adventure?
Some suggestions beginning referees can use to
create simple adventures are listed below:
• Explore a New World: The player characters are
hired to explore an undeveloped planet. This theme
can be used many times by creating new planets
with new challenges.
• Obtain Information: The player characters must
search for special information about a place, group
or thing and return to their employer with the
information.
• Retrieve a Stolen Item: The player characters
are hired to locate and bring back to their
employer something that has been stolen perhaps
secret plans or an invention.
• Catch Criminals: The player characters must find
and capture space pirates, thieves or other
criminals.
• Rescue Someone: The player characters must
locate and rescue someone who is being held
prisoner -- a hostage, kidnap victim or a person in
prison.
• Mad Scientist: The player characters must
prevent an evil scientist from taking over a planet,
setting loose terrible robots or performing some
other evil.
These are only a few examples of possible
adventures. You could even combine several of
these themes into one adventure. You could also
create an adventure based on something discovered
by the player characters in an earlier game. This
adds excitement as players use information they
have found in earlier adventures to solve the riddles
of another.
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Settings
The settings or locations of an adventure
determine the events that can take place and
what animals and events can be encountered;
guards and robots can be encountered while
searching a secret outpost, but wild creatures and
dangerous terrains are more likely if characters are
exploring a new planet. Your settings can be as big