If YOU Can't Write an Adventure, Why Should I?

After my previous thread about looking for scenarios for a mechan campaign, I had to get this off my chest...

I'm really, really suspicious of game companies who produce volumes of material about their setting but very few adventures/scenarios for it.

On an economic level, I understand why. I've heard over and over that adventures/scenarios don't sell, and for good reason -- one game master buys it, not each of his players. So a setting book is more profitable. But that GM is still pretty important, and I would argue you absolutely need to provide something to get him or her started, even if it's only to show the GMs what a scenario looks like.

On a philosophical level, I realize that we're all supposed to be creating our own adventures anyway. But as a new father with a full-time job, the only way any campaign gets off the ground is if I can crib from SOMETHING, so I desperately need those scenarios.

On a customer service level, if you're not willing to produce scenarios/adventures for your games, I start to suspect A) it's too hard to write balanced adventures, which sure as heck doesn't build any confidence in your company, B) you don't actually have the expertise to take your game system and write a scenario for it, and C) that means I shouldn't bother trying to craft my own scenarios if you can't be bothered to do it.

Anyone else notice this? Is it just a question of economics, philosophy, or something else?

Hm.
Scarred Lands had -no- adventures.
(Except for the Burok Torn book, which was one giant campaign masquerading as a sourcebook; and maybe a freebie).
I never really saw that as a problem, actually, since there were so many adventures coming out at the time.

Of course, I was a single guy with free time when I ran that game. As a new parent now I see your point.

But most campaign settings coming out now are well supported, with adventures no?
(Eberron, FR, Paizo's new world all have strings of adventures).

Heck, yes, I've noticed it. Many, many games are written from that wrong premise--namely that there are DMs who will take the game and run with it. For me, the biggest failing with most games is that there aren't enough adventures published (if any). As a parent and a professional, I just don't have the kind of time to make my own adventures and run them. In truth, I never did. Even as a student, I used modules to run campaigns. (Dungeon was great back then.) I've even bought games because the free adventure was so good (Skull & Bones for example).

Now, more than ever, RPGs need to be plug & play for me (to borrow a computer term). Especially since DDM gives me painted minis right out of the box with stat cards. The biggest game going just got even better, so all those other cool games have to be even more accessible to compete for my increasingly limited time, interest & money.

I don't know what causes such sourcebook proliferation at the seeming expense of adventures. I've read that it is because non-modules sell better because many players buy them as opposed to only a few DMs. But, most people in my group own only the basic books for any given game if they even have those. Aside from the PHB, nobody is really buying anything else anyway besides the DM. Even our current DM, who doesn't have a DMG or MM, bought the 3 adventure books he's currently using. He also bought minis for every single foe in those books, which is a lot of sales. Even if it's on the secondary market, it all feeds together. For a non-D&D game, the only books at the table are usually the GM's.

One of my gaming buddies says adventures don't get written because it's harder to do than a sourcebook. I think that may be part of it, too.

The company that seems to do better with this is PEG with Savage Worlds. Most of their campaign setting books also include a plot point campaign and adventure generator. A player's guide pdf generally is available with a site license to allow a purchaser (usually a GM) to print as many copies as he wants. That way, each player can have a campaign guide, and the GM has the adventure module, as it were. They also try to put out printable counters/tokens for use in game. Not as cool as prepainted minis, but definitely more GM-friendly than nothing and less expensive than minis.

But, it is still hard to get players interested in playing those other games. I'll keep trying, but I will definitely favor games that are as easily accessible to me as a GM as possible. That means adventures and minis/counters. Otherwise, it would have to be very, very compelling for me to put forth the effort to bring a game to the table without those aids.

I feel this is unfortunate. I personally think good adventures HELP sales of your setting material. Look at what Paizo did with Golarion...write awesome adventures for your world and people will play in it. I'm doing the same for Sinister Adventures. Learning from their good example: Hire the best people in the industry too create incredibly awesome adventures for you and people will be excited about what you are doing.

I agree with the OP entirely. Also a good adventure is basically a gateway to a setting. You play one good one and you're hooked.

Economics is a pretty driving factor though, don't you think? If a company is going to dedicate resources toward a product, then that product needs to at least pay for itself. Otherwise, it would have been a better investment to create a product that would pay for itself.

I am curious what indicator of balance a lack of adventures indicates. Or are you speaking directly toward the single game system/single campaign setting development path? Something where a game system was designed to support a specific game world.

But if you were designing a campaign setting that was geared toward D&D, or even generic fantasy d20, wouldn't you need to introduce some significant deviations from the core conceits before you would need to create an adventure to demonstrate how to balance with the new rulesets.

I appreciate well designed adventures, to be sure. But when I speak of design, I am speaking much less about mechanics than adventure design. Of course, shoddy mechanics will speak poorly about a company. However, there are many more elements that go into a good adventure. And quite frankly, the things I am looking for out of any given adventure might not match very many other group's desires.

Consider: What is the presumed number of PCs? What are the matching roles in the group? What about level? What about an individual groups preferences for mystery, riddles, combat, etc?

With just those few questions, you can easily narrow down your target audience from just GMs, to a smaller portion of GMs.

I know that I am an abyssmal consumer as far as purchasing adventures goes. Even with the birth of my third child, I am still not terribly likely to purchase adventures.

That being said, I still understand where you are coming from, at least somewhat. I think.

In the case of a new campaign setting, there should be at least one adventure included. Even if it is just to help set the tone of the campaign setting, there should be something. Most new games I have come across seem to have at least some web support with an introductory adventure. If nothing else, there is material from initial playtesting that can be used. The only real exception I can think of in my experience was the True20 book. But that did have several test settings. And since True20 is more a toolkit than a game system, I don't really hold that against them.

I do admit that when my littlest girl was born, I deviated from my choice of homebrew settings and went with Ptolus. I knew the setting book would provide a wealth of material that I could build off of. As well, I knew there were exisitng modules. Monte had been releasing his Ptolus stuff as generic settings for a while, so I could use those if I needed to. But even now, I am deviating seriously from the published material. For one thing, I have 6-7 players for most sessions. Secondly, as the campaign has progressed, I have developed my own stories and NPCs and the like. But I very much appreciated the campaign setting for what material it provided to give me a jump start.

talien said:

On a customer service level, if you're not willing to produce scenarios/adventures for your games, I start to suspect A) it's too hard to write balanced adventures, which sure as heck doesn't build any confidence in your company, B) you don't actually have the expertise to take your game system and write a scenario for it, and C) that means I shouldn't bother trying to craft my own scenarios if you can't be bothered to do it.

Anyone else notice this? Is it just a question of economics, philosophy, or something else?

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It's probably solely a question of economics; adventures don't sell well, so there's little reason to produce them. Sane people don't work on things that give them insufficient return. No need to start spinning conspiracy theories.

Even if adventures were a dime-a-dozen I still wouldn't buy them. I want the fluff and crunch of a setting. Adventures usually make certain assumptions about the group and my groups usually don't fall into those categories.

Graf said:

Hm.
Scarred Lands had -no- adventures.

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There was The Serpent Amphora, actually.

But yeah, adventures do tend to sell somewhere in levels somewhere between "dismal" and "unhealthy" on a depressingly regular basis. Not only are you selling to about 1 out of every 4-6 consumers of your setting, you can't even guarantee that sale: it has to be a premise that interests that one particular GM. I note this myself as a consumer: you can write a brilliant adventure concerning drow, but if you're sick to the teeth of underground S&M elves with a spider fetish, an adventure with textbook drow just isn't going to be worth the purchase.

Another factor that makes it difficult in this day and age (not impossible, just difficult) is the increasing ability for players to customize not just their characters, but their motivations. Depending on game system, you could have two gaming groups side-by-side and the protagonists of each group could be so diverse that they just wouldn't bite at any of the same plot hooks. You see this manifest whenever someone says "I couldn't run this for my players" — it might be motivation, an unexpected party composition, there are all number of potential incompatibilities. That's a great thing that empowers players, and I like running games that are customized to my players — but it also means I just don't find that many adventures that I could actually use without doing work comparable to creating an adventure from scratch. (Of course, when running D&D I also use a homebrew world, which complicates things even further; at least 20% of encounters would have to be rewritten just because the monsters involved just don't exist in the setting. Including, say, drow.) Basically, it's not that it's hard to write an adventure for the game — it's that writing an adventure for my group is a lot easier than writing an adventure for my group and your group and Ted's group and so on. If you're talking about a setting where all of the PCs aren't expected to have the same "job" (like, say, "shadowrunner"), it's rough.

But in the end, it's usually just an economic issue. I quite agree that it's a desirable thing for a company to be able to put out adventures, and that they really help the people who evangelize the game most — the people who are running it. Unfortunately, you do tend to need some really good-selling material in order to subsidize the adventures in most cases; the adventures are frequently not paying for themselves, much less providing profits you could use for other things.

Barastrondo said:

There was The Serpent Amphora, actually.

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Which was, incidentally, a full trilogy (or 4-parter, if you count the free intro).

Just for the record.

Mouseferatu said:

Which was, incidentally, a full trilogy (or 4-parter, if you count the free intro).

Just for the record.

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OK. I thought the Serpent Amphora was just the freebie.
Not sure how I missed they published three more.

Hmm, this is a good point. I have bought campaign worlds (Dark sun) that even with adventures, felt tissue-thin to me. And some worlds(Birthright) that just screamed adventure even out of the basic book/box. And I have played adventures (Red Hand and Kruk-ma-kali) that made the world around them, no source book needed.

Without adventures it would really make running a new world harder.