Snagging Adventurers With Better Hooks

Bad hooks are a common complaint in Ten Foot Pole's reviews of published adventures. Adventure writers obviously struggle with transitioning users into the adventure, with efforts ranging from the flimsy (“um, the mayor will pay 50 gold for you to, uh, look into his orc problem?”) to the nakedly non-diegetic (“get in loser, we’re going adventuring”).

But I get it. Hooks are hard to write well in a published product, because PCs might enter a given scenario from any number of directions; and unless the product is written for a very specific setting, the writer may not even know the fundamental, baseline assumptions of the game world. 

But even when they are hard, hooks are still important, because the transition into a new scenario or location is an area where the DM could most use help from the writer. By comparison, it’s much easier for the DM to adjudicate uncertainty when the PCs are in the middle of a scenario already in motion. Getting started is the hardest part.

Hooks are usually presented as a best-guess at what the party is doing and what the PCs want, with the assumption that the DM will choose the closest one and tailor as needed. Can we make them any better? Get them any closer to what the DM needs? Perhaps by categorizing common ways adventuring PCs might enter an adventure scenario? 

What would these categories look like? 

• If the PCs are returning to civilization after visiting the dungeon…
• If the PCs are in transit as part of a longer journey…
• If the PCs are lost in the wilderness…
• If the PCs are looking for something that might be found in a town or city…
• If the PCs are searching for something that might be found in a dungeon…
• If the PCs are in search of a particular person or a type of NPC… 
• If the PCs are fleeing or retreating from someone or something…
• If the PCs are recruiting henchmen, hirelings, or replacement adventurers…

Some of these could be combined or better defined… but it might be worth a try to think of the hooks in terms of where the PCs are coming from, rather than where we hope those hooks will take them in the ensuing scenario.