The Chaosium community content programs provide us all with a place where we can create and self-publish content to use around the table when playing our favourite role-playing games. We may even earn a few coins for our work, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
I’m interested, but where do I start?!
Where do I start? An excellent question and one I puzzled over for a while. I knew about the Jonstown Compendium because of my interest in Runequest, so I started there and joined the Jonstown Compendium Creators Circle Facebook group, and eavesdropped to see what hints I could pick up.
Nick Brooke, Chaosium’s Community Ambassador, is especially active in assisting creators in all of our community content programs at DriveThruRPG, and I was lucky to meet him at Dragonmeet in 2024. He indirectly pointed me at the Storytelling Collective (www.storytellingcollective.com) and a short course, ‘Write Your First Adventure | Runequest Path.’
Write Your First Adventure
At the end of 2024, I decided I wanted to write an adventure, but I’m the type of person who likes to have a guide or structure, so I decided to invest $49 and buy the short course ‘Write Your First Adventure | Runequest Path.’
Note: I’m not saying you have to follow the same path as me. I just wanted to outline my journey and provide options. Your journey will vary.
In essence, the course helped hold my hand through the key activities of creating a scenario.
- Ideation and Organisation, solidify your idea and learn some basic narrative design theory
- Crafting your Adventure, writing within a framework and wordcount
- Playtesting, Editing & Design, tips for testing, editing and layout!
- Publishing & Marketing, a final polish, pricing and marketing 101
I can’t stress enough how much I learnt about the writing process, time management and keeping my project on scope (something I could finish by the end of the course!)
I started at the end of October 2024 and ran my first playtest of 'Battle of the Bards', a Runequest adventure, at Chaosium Con UK in May 2025. When I got home after the convention, I put the adventure in a plastic folder, on a shelf and have not looked at it since!
Am I joking, you ask?!
No! I got distracted and derailed at Chaosium Con UK...
Derailed by Age of Vikings RPG
I can honestly say I absolutely loved Chaosium Con UK. After the Covid years and generally playing online games or TTRPG via VTT, I was surprised and delighted to find just how much I enjoyed, and missed, running and playing a roleplaying game face-to-face around a table.
The Chaosium team were absolutely fantastic as well. So many actual smiling, talkative, beer-drinking, real people behind the names scrawled on rule books, compendia and RPG content. There were panels, ‘ask me anything’ opportunities, and a heady mix of possibilities.
I fell in love! My first sighting was the Quest Portal pop-up banner and Gummi handing me a QR-coded business card. What VTT is that I asked?
At the ‘What's next for BRP’ event, I saw Jason and Neil for the first time and realised they were responsible for the BRP line, including this new setting, Age of Vikings. What's that, I asked myself?
Finally, I found copies of Age of Vikings for sale in the Chaosium store. It’s beautiful. Concise. Very BRP-UGE, but with magic (rune and seiður) that enables role-playing and creativity, a setting in mythic Iceland that cries out loud for Norse mythology, heroic deeds, and the clash of shield-walls, with teeth flying!
The Chaosium shop sold out of the standard versions of Age of Vikings, and Laurence laughed as I bought the leatherette version. I’ll ask Pedro to sign it this year!
The Gods Walk Amongst Us!
I’ve played Runequest for 40+ years. I’ve heard of Greg Stafford, Jeff, Rick, Jason and a few others, but I’ll admit, I’m not great with names. So, who was this Neil with Jason, their relationship with BRP, and the Age of Vikings?
My first meeting with Neil was at the Quest Portal pop-up. I managed to grab his attention and asked about Age of Vikings, where it was and if it was possible to get involved somehow. Being me, I also asked where he got his Age of Vikings t-shirt and if there were any spare ones. Gummi overheard and dug around in his suitcase and proffered me a spare – and life then got very interesting!
Write Your First Adventure, Second Attempt
After Chaosium Con UK, things went quiet. I kept asking Neil and the Chaosium team if they needed help, but I mainly wrote. I had an inkling that a community content program for Age of Vikings would come about, and decided to take a risk and write something for that.
I started "Snæfellsnes, the Snow Mountains Peninsula". A setting for a starting group of players. Looking to provide hearth (family), home (a farm), and community (friends, foes, NPCs etc), some rites and rituals to stimulate and enhance the character creation process and then some starting scenarios, trying to link them with the sandbox scenario in the Age of Vikings rule book, The AlÞing.
About 40 pages in, I began to realise just how much scope creep had wrapped me up. So I paused and set myself a small task: Write and publish a one-shot in a day.
Write and Publish a One-Shot in a Day
"Sea and Salt" was intended as a short 2 to 3-hour one-shot scenario. The scenario is 2 pages and is based on the 5-step adventure model: Orient/set-up, Travel/explore, Development-Encounter, Analyse/evaluate, Act-finale. My target was to plan, write, layout and publish.
After writing and developing NPC stat blocks, I used a basic Word template to produce a simple, clear and themed PDF. After gaining permissions from Chaosium, the scenario "Sea & Salt" was offered for free to the Age of Vikings community.
In summary, Sigbert Loftsson, disgraced and outlawed, has taken refuge on Hrafney and forged a pact with a sea hag and fate-weaver named Gróa of the Deep. The adventurers have been sent to retrieve him so that he may face trial, but the hag has spun twisted bargains, and Sigbert’s soul hangs in the balance.
Write and Publish a Scenario
One key lesson I learned is that to publish a scenario, a key skill is layout. As an independent content creator, you will need to learn the layout tools and process.
Layout tools:
- WORD – we have all probably used word processors like Word or Google Docs. You can use these to format/layout your adventure, and the community content programs provide templates in Word and InDesign, along with other creative assets. I would suggest these are appropriate for shorter documents or simple layouts.
- InDesign - an Adobe product is (I’m informed) extremely good for the layout of documents, but personally, I just can’t afford the monthly fee. However, there is a free alternative...
- Affinity Publisher - a free alternative to InDesign now. I use it. There is quite a steep learning curve, but once you're there, your layout ramps to the next level. I would definitely recommend the investment in time to learn this layout tool.
By writing and publishing "Sea & Salt", I learned what I could do in a day, and more importantly, the end-to-end process/steps required to take an idea, write it down, format/layout, and publish.
My next goal was to finish "The Fróðá Wonders". At under 20 pages, I still over-complicated this scenario. After my initial writing, feedback from readers meant a complete rewrite. Lesson learned: don’t bother with layout until you have a decent/completed script.
Finally, I had "Fróðá Wonders" completed, subject to a final re-layout using the Sagas of the North community content program template. But I was working on that with Nick during my other part-time role at Chaosium as Community Ambassador for Age of Vikings 😊
Sagas of the North
At Chaosium Con EU in Gdansk, Poland, we announced the Sagas of the North, Chaosium’s Age of Vikings community content program on DriveThruRPG. At that time, the intention was to launch around the end of the year, but subsequently, this has slipped to February of 2026.
The Sagas of the North content guidelines and FAQ, along with templates in Word, InDesign (and Affinity Publisher), and some free art assets to help bring your writing to life, are ready!
I have used and tested these and worked to ready the "Fróðá Wonders" and "Snæfellsnes, the Snow Mountains Peninsula", so they are available pre-launch. We have been working with several other interested authors to ensure we have a variety of exciting content available when the Sagas of the North kicks off in February.
Interested in becoming a creator for Sagas of the North?
If you're interested in becoming a creator, please do it! The best piece of advice I can give is – just do it! If you find you struggle, ask for help.
We will be setting up a Sagas of the North Creators Circle on Facebook, where creators can gather and help each other. But in the meantime, please join one of the other groups: Jonstown Compendium Creators Circle or Miskatonic Repository Creators Circle, and I’m sure you will find help.
Please don’t underestimate the effort and end-to-end process. But persevere, the result will make you smile and glow with pride. No one can guarantee you will make a fortune selling your work, but are you really just doing it for the money? Initially, I suggest you keep the strings on your purse tight. Don’t splash on expensive art, not until you know you will at least recover your costs.
But do it! It’s fun, frustrating, and fabulous!
Interested in becoming a creator - Go here to get started!
