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So we have this tag: . I thought this was about creating adventures. That seems to be what people use it for, too. Because, y'know, 'writing' them is the standard way to make them. Apparently it isn't about that though, because its summary says:

This question focuses on the writing aspect of adventure creation.

So apparently it's just about one aspect of the creation process. Not really sure what the "writing aspect" is exactly, or more to the point, what it isn't. The tag wiki confuses me further:

Questions with this tag are inquiring about writing adventure material, preparing story material for a game, constructing a story, and a flow or series of paths the players might take and the encounters they will find along the way.

... because that seems to describe everything in creating adventures, unless we exclude the research portions or something.

What's this tag really for, and how should it be used? Do we really need it to exist, or do we really need it to just be about "the writing aspect" as opposed to the whole creation process?

Should we keep it if we also have ?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Hrm. Agree; how would this not be covered by [gm-techniques] + [adventure]? \$\endgroup\$
    – BESW
    Aug 13, 2014 at 8:20
  • \$\begingroup\$ @BESW The creation process isn't about GM Techniques a lot of the time, which is a pretty broad tag about "doing things when being a GM". I'd rather see the creation process just have one broad tag or be part of [adventure]. \$\endgroup\$ Aug 13, 2014 at 8:21
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    \$\begingroup\$ I rewrote the tag wiki. \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk
    Aug 13, 2014 at 13:05
  • \$\begingroup\$ @mxyzplk Ok, thanks. :) Good to know that was an ok thing. \$\endgroup\$ Aug 13, 2014 at 13:28

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Can't we just re-write the tag wiki to express the broader meaning it's being used for?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Probably! I wanted to see if there was some reason we shouldn't do that though. Or possibly if we should eliminate the tag altogether (I think we shouldn't). \$\endgroup\$ Aug 13, 2014 at 8:27
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    \$\begingroup\$ Gotcha. This suggestion can get up/down voted to reflect the community's opinion of it as a solution, then. To work best, the other solutions should also be mentioned at some point in other answers.... \$\endgroup\$
    – BESW
    Aug 13, 2014 at 8:29
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    \$\begingroup\$ Tag wikis really aren't authoritative. Usually they're written unilaterally by a single user on the spur of the moment, and they get no or minimal peer review because they don't show up as front-page activity. A tag wiki that seems wrong... probably is! \$\endgroup\$ Aug 13, 2014 at 19:45
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    \$\begingroup\$ Perhaps we should call it "adventure creation" \$\endgroup\$
    – PipperChip
    Aug 21, 2014 at 19:16
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For the record, I think that would make more sense.

Writing is a major part of campaign creation, encounter creation, character creation, house-rule creation, game design, etc., but our tags for those aren't [campaign-writing], [encounter-writing], [character-writing], [house-rules-writing], [game-writing], etc.

Adventures aren't especially writing-based compared to the rest of the hobby, and I find it odd to have it singled out that way. Perhaps emphasising the "writing" part of adventure design once made sense in the days of typewritten adventure manuscripts submitted to Dungeon for consideration, but that's not what our users are doing.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Hear hear; I'm on board with renaming it. Writing is just a subset of the design process after all. \$\endgroup\$ Oct 7, 2014 at 3:34
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The tag could be renamed adventure creation or [campaign building] but I think [adventure writing] is the most-used phrasing of the whole process of creating an adventure, campaign, mission, dungeon-run, or what have you, and thus feel like it's probably the best term we could be using for that, as we should seek to use phrases in tags that are commonly recognizable. Given our current format for multi-word tags, [adventure-writing] is the way we would render the tag we would want to use for such questions.

The tag is made distinct from the [adventure] tag because it refers specifically to creating adventures entirely of one's own rather than setting up and running adventures made by another, and because it always refers to work performed by someone with GM-like authority, where the [adventure] tag would also apply to someone playing a published adventure rather than GMing one.

The tag is made distinct from the related [world-building] tag in that it refers to writing an adventure in a preexisting campaign world (whether that is provided by books/information from the creators of the system, a third-party publisher, a collective understanding of some 'normal' campaign world in a given system, or previous world building by a GM) rather than one which is created from scratch.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Well we have [campaign-development] tag, so it's understandable having this one separate from that. I agree with keeping it; at the time the tag wiki didn't appear to agree with how it was used. \$\endgroup\$ Oct 6, 2014 at 5:46

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