In this year’s Gen Con Program Guide, there is a special adventure called The Misguided Menace of Georgetown. Although written by Brendan LaSalle, the adventure carries the following credit for the design team:
Design Team: Alton Anspaugh, Angela Hanson, Max Hartman, Ted Holmes, Daniel Kline, Brendan J. LaSalle, Sebastian Maier, Drew Maione, Taylor Marconi, Daniel Myers, Nick Samra, Frederik Schmid, Matt Schulstad, Cameron Sheehan, Dan Skiroock, Jin Young Song, Gary Ulrich, Sarah Walker, and Dr. Patsy Brackin
How on earth could that many people be involved in one adventure module? Well, as Brendan notes in the introduction, in 2016 he had the honor of being the Keynote Speaker for Creativity Con I, hosted by the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. The purpose of the convention was to encourage and develop creative problem solving skills and design solutions with the engineering students of Rose-Hulman. As a part of that effort, Brendan ran a four-hour creativity workshop for Dr. Patsy Brackin’s Senior Design class.
The class split up into five sections, each tasked with coming up with ideas for a different aspect of the adventure: monsters, treasure, traps, hazards, and settings. The groups discussed the issues and challenges among themselves, then presented three ideas each to the class. The final portion of the time was spent weaving all their disparate ideas together to make a single cohesive adventure.
And what an adventure! The Misguided Menace of Georgetown is fun, funny, deceptively challenging, and so, so weird. Exactly one of the twenty-odd participants had a tiny bit of RPG experience, and this bizarre adventure is testament to the power of a fresh prospective. The students packed this wild scenario with personal references and in-jokes—the same way Brendan does when he write adventures—so he felt right at home amid the fun anarchy they created.
You can read this adventure in The 2018 Gen Con Program Guide. And to give further insights into the background of this adventure—and perhaps enhance your own creative process—below is a video of Brendan presenting his keynote address on creativity at the original Creativity Con I, way back in 2016. Enjoy!
[wpdevart_youtube]obzZKx1qF4E[/wpdevart_youtube]
