Tabletop Adventure Designers: Build Your Own Role-Playing Game

In this six-week course, learners move beyond playing role-playing games to designing one. They invent a setting, from a floating island city to a haunted library, and build the pieces that make an adventure work: character choices, a fair dice or card system for actions, and a quest with puzzles, choices and friendly or tricky characters to meet.

Teamwork and communication are at the heart of it. Learners trade ideas in small discussions, test each other's rules, and practise being a game leader who describes scenes clearly and keeps every player involved. They finish with a short game design document and a pitch for their adventure.

How classes work

The course meets once a week for six weeks, with each 55-minute class building on the last. Learners design a new piece of their game every week, try it out with classmates in short playtests, and refine it before the final session where they pitch and run their adventure.

What we'll cover

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  Week 1: World-Building: Setting, Mood and Big Mystery – Learners create the place where their adventure happens, map key locations and write a hook that makes players want to explore.

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  Week 2: Character Sheets and Player Choices – Teens design a character sheet with traits and abilities so players can make meaningful, balanced choices for their heroes.

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  Week 3: Dice, Cards and Fair Action Rules – Learners build a simple system for deciding success or failure, then test whether it feels fair, exciting and quick to use.

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  Week 4: Quest Design: Puzzles, Choices and Allies – Teens plan a three-scene quest with a puzzle, a tough decision and helpful or tricky characters players can talk to.

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  Week 5: Leading the Table: Narrating and Teamwork – Learners practise describing scenes, responding to player ideas and keeping everyone included, then run a short scene with classmates.

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  Week 6: Adventure Pitch and Live Playtest Showcase – Teens present their design document, pitch their world and guide classmates through a short playtest of their quest.

Learners should have played at least one board, card or role-playing game and be able to follow and explain its rules. They need a device, paper or a notebook, pencils and a standard six-sided die or two.