Embracing Constraints to Make Better Adventures
There’s strange freedom in limits.
When I first started writing The Temple of the Hollow Flame as a one-shot adventure zine, I didn’t expect it to be 300 pages. I didn’t have glossy art budgets or six writers on staff. I had a story, a self-imposed deadline, and just enough room to breathe: 20 to 30 pages. That constraint didn’t feel like a barrier — it felt like a blueprint.
Here’s the truth most of us learn the hard way:
The best adventures are often the ones that know when to stop.
A good zine, like a good dungeon, has walls.
Fewer Pages, More Pressure
In a 200-page campaign book, you can afford to meander.
You can layer in side quests, tangled backstories, expansive maps, and a dozen locations the players might never see.
How can I be so confident? I know, because I’ve done it.
I once ran an Alien RPG campaign where I built over 30 detailed battle maps: cryogenic labs, orbiting stations, drop zones, tunnels, reactors — the whole cinematic spread. I had a layered conspiracy. A creeping timeline. A horrific reveal of the BBEG designed for maximum tension in Act III.
The players?
They didn’t even come close.
Within the first hour, they distrusted the mission, isolated themselves, and started turning on each other.
One character sabotaged the central computer. Another fabricated a distress call. They hid weapons, accused each other of subterfuge (rightly so in some cases), and made choices so gloriously paranoid that half of them never even encountered the ultimate boss I had carefully scripted.
They wrote their own horror story. And it was better than mine.
That campaign taught me a lesson I carry into every zine I write: the game isn’t about what you’ve planned — it’s about what you make possible.
And constraints help you get there faster.
Constraints Make You Choose
Limited space forces you to ask hard questions.
What matters?
What can I cut?
What am I really trying to say?
You can’t include three rival cults and a sprawling Undercity.
You might get one cult. Maybe a cursed well.
You’ll lean harder on mood, implication, and ambiguity. You’ll stop overwriting and start trusting your readers — and your players.
A zine isn’t a script. It’s a loaded question, a whisper in a dark hallway, or a half-burned map scrawled with lies.
In The Temple of the Hollow Flame, I didn’t chart out the entire region. I created just enough.
A haunted village.
A handful of broken NPCs.
And a central, dreadful truth hiding in plain sight.
It’s short because it has to be sharp.
Zines Are Tools, Not Tomes
Think of your zine like a dagger, not a war hammer.
It’s light and fast. It fits in your GM prep bag without dragging you down.
A good one-shot doesn’t handhold. It doesn’t micromanage the GM.
It presents strong scaffolding, suggests momentum, and then gets out of the way.
That’s why I love writing in this format.
The Temple of the Hollow Flame features a structure for emergent horror.
The layout of the town hints at its buried purpose.
The people are kind, tragic, and complicit.
The players can’t fix everything — but they can uncover something true if they survive.
It’s not a perfect answer. It’s a charged space where meaning takes shape to play.
Why the ‘Zine Is the Dungeon?
Walls define a dungeon; its hallways lead somewhere. Its rooms ask questions.
It forces you to make decisions that matter — and sometimes to live with them.
A zine works the same way.
Its limited pages push you toward precision and ask: What’s the feeling I want to leave behind?
It challenges you to refine, not inflate. To trust silence. The key is to write for the GM as much as for yourself.
So if you’re buried in lore, stuck on world maps, or unsure how to begin:
Try shrinking the canvas.
Cut the fat.
Choose one emotion.
Write like it matters — because it does.
Sometimes, the smaller the dungeon, the more it demands from you — and the more it gives back.