Studios
The twelve-week teaching schedule: what happens in each studio, what to prepare, and what leaves the room.
Each studio is a working session on your own scenario draft, building directly on the one before it. Bring what the "before the session" note asks for — the studios assume you have.
What is a scenario?
The opening studio — the five-stage design pipeline the semester follows, and the first raw idea you bring to the table.
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
Inspiration and premise
Turning a raw spark into a one-paragraph premise using four generic Mythos flavours instead of starting from lore.
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
Truth and antagonist
Fusing your premise with a concrete Mythos entity or faction, and stating the causal truth your whole scenario hangs on.
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
Structure and investigation flow
Committing to a hook and a shape — linear or open — before any scene gets written in detail.
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
Locations, scenes and nodes
Turning a structure into a concrete chain of scenes — what's discoverable in each, and what changes if the players linger.
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
Clue architecture
Tagging your scene map against two clue taxonomies side by side, and finding the nodes with no redundant path.
Week 6 · 29 March 2027
Puzzles and red herrings
Designing a puzzle only for a clue that actually deserves one, and checking it against a partner cold.
Week 7 · 5 April 2027
Checks and failure design
Rewriting every skill check in your draft so failure adds cost instead of deleting the only path forward.
Week 8 · 12 April 2027
NPC workshop
Cutting every NPC that can't answer "why does this character exist," and giving the ones that remain one playable trait.
Week 9 · 19 April 2027
Atmosphere and escalation
Rewriting a description to imply rather than state, and checking your antagonist escalates through warnings before it can actually kill.
Week 10 · 26 April 2027
Playtest lab
Running an actual slice of your draft with a real player, and recording what diverges from what you expected.
Week 11 · 3 May 2027
Assembly and handoff
Assembling scenario text, clue map, NPC sheets and handouts into a packet a stranger could run cold.
Week 12 · 10 May 2027