Making an adventure whole-cloth out of a novel?

I recently read the second Dresden Files book, Fool Moon, and when I finished it I found myself thinking, "You know this would work really well as an adventure."

It has several set-piece battles against a variety of enemies in a variety of locations. It has interesting characters that could serve as NPCs (both allies and enemies). It has good ways to drop leads that could take a party from point A to point B without railroading them (though to be clear, this would not be a sandbox adventure).

So my question is, have you ever created an adventure that basically took an entire work of fiction (novel, movie, TV series, whatever) and pretty faithfully set it up in an RPG world? We've all used such sources for inspiration, I'm sure (a battle setting here, a monster there, an adventure hook over there), but is it common that the structure of a work of fiction also functions well as the structure for an RPG adventure - plot line, battles, characters and all?

And yes, I'm aware that a Dresden Files RPG exists, though I know very little about it. Maybe that game does exactly what I describe, "adventurizing" the novels!

I've tried it a few times with no success. The biggest problem point is what is obvious the the protagonist and his first move in the fiction is rarely (read never) the first option pursued by the PCs. In addition, the protagonist typically has specific attitudes that guide the fiction (for example, Dresden is protective of females, distrustful of authority, and driven to defend the innocent) that are not shared by the PCs so quite often the PC won't get to B from A. As a third point, the PCs have the major advantage of numbers so they CAN be both at A, B, anc C should the need arise.

This is pretty much what I expected. PCs are not characters in novels and are not under the DM's control, so they might not cooperate.

However, published adventures do exist, and well-written adventures allow for the possibility that the characters will not follow the linear progression that the author intended. Are there novels that have been successfully adapted into a published adventure framework?

I've never done it or seen it done.

I certainly don't think my group would enjoy playing through a pre-written story; even if they decide how they get to the end, the end point is pretty well set.

the Jester said:

I've never done it or seen it done.

I certainly don't think my group would enjoy playing through a pre-written story; even if they decide how they get to the end, the end point is pretty well set.

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Fair enough; does this also go for published adventures? I'm guessing so, which is fine; I know that lots of groups only run home brew adventures.

To be clear, I probably wouldn't want to run an adventure based on a novel that the players had read already, just like I probably wouldn't want to run a published adventure that the players had previously played through. But I'm not anti-published adventures (I'm enjoying running War of the Burning Sky, for instance).

the Jester said:

I've never done it or seen it done.

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Sure you have.


Dragonlance.

OnlineDM said:

Fair enough; does this also go for published adventures?

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It depends on how awesome the adventure is- the most satisfying conclusion to a module I've ever run was, hmm, not exactly pre-scripted, but if the pcs put the clues together they have one clear solution to the problems they are facing and it results in an awesome Hammer Horror finale (Of Sound Mind).

A direct conversion will, in my experience, typically produce a pretty bad game. It tends to make for a railroad with a lot of assumptions about character that aren't accurate.

However, you can draw from a novel (or film, or whatever) a bunch of good ideas that you can then use to make your own game that is effective. The key is thinking in terms of neat characters, setpiece events that would be cool, and underlying causes, instead of focusing on "chapter 1 then chapter 2 then..."

Cerebral Paladin said:

A direct conversion will, in my experience, typically produce a pretty bad game. It tends to make for a railroad with a lot of assumptions about character that aren't accurate.

However, you can draw from a novel (or film, or whatever) a bunch of good ideas that you can then use to make your own game that is effective. The key is thinking in terms of neat characters, setpiece events that would be cool, and underlying causes, instead of focusing on "chapter 1 then chapter 2 then..."

Click to expand...

Yeah, this is more what I had in mind. It would be ridiculous to try to have all of the conversations from an actual novel be worked into an adventure, of course - the protagonists in the adventure will be a random group of adventurers rather than a single, well-defined character. But I could very easily see the following outline:

Scene 1: The adventurers are called to the scene of a murder. They investigate and discover the following possible leads. They meet the following NPCs (which they could ignore, befriend, distrust, etc.).

Scene 2: The PCs may come to this scene based on some of the leads in Scene 1. They find this particular den of bad guys, who attempt to intimidate them rather than fight, though a fight could break out. Here are the NPCs. Here are their stats in case a fight does break out (along with a description of the terrain for the fight).

Scene 3: The PCs may come to this scene based on leads in Scene 1 or Scene 2. Details here.

Scene 4: While the PCs have some down time, they are contacted by NPC X who asks for their help with situation Y. They can follow up on this and go to Scene 5, or they could ignore it and do some independent investigation on the threads they picked up in earlier scenes, which could either lead them to Scene 5 all the same or to Scene 6, depending on the results.

And so on, until we get to Scene 15, which is the climactic battle sequence with the BBEG that all roads ultimately lead to.

This particular book struck me as being well constructed to provide Scenes 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, for instance. If it were converted into a published adventure, those scenes could be taken more or less as-is from the book (same NPCs, same settings, same plot hooks). However, given that any particular party may take a different path, the conversion author would have to provide Scenes 3, 7, 8, 11 and 12 to explore alternate paths that ultimately lead to the same conclusion.

So, following the footsteps of the novel protagonist would be a path available to the party, but some branching paths would be out there as well, though they all end up in the same place (as is the case in general with published adventures).

It's more than just taking some NPCs, monsters and plot hooks from the novel, but it's not a "faithful railroad" either.

And it sounds like the answer to my question is, "No, this sort of thing is generally not done." That's fine - I was just curious. I'm still relatively new to RPGs, so I don't know what's out there.

Converting a Novel to an RPG adventure is like any media format conversion. Whether, novel to Movie, or Movie to TV and so on. Nothing directly translates 1 to 1, but you take the best bits that fit, and find the ideas behind the story and put them into the new framework as best as one can.

Some work out, many do not.

I love the Dresden novels, the TV season that was done was poor in general, but passable. Some elements were great, others were done for no real visible reason, as far as I can tell.

The Dresden Novels are very pulp, action adventure, and I'm sure that taking the concepts that drive them you can pull the general elements into a fine D&D adventure.

You might also want to look into the Fate based Dresden RPG. Warning, the books are huge, but you can buy PDF's of them as well.
They rely heavily on creating and setting the mood of the adventure area, as much as delving into the characters themselves as part of the campaign creation setup.

Can't wait for the next novel to hit next month.