Adventure A Week

Ambitious project!

I read the sample adventure, it was very professionally put together. It was good for 1 session I imagine. Maybe get a party 1/3rd to 1/2 way to second level.

I am one of the remaining play testers for the AdventureAWeek.com site, I was lucky enough to get on board early enough to be able to really see the vision Jonathan Nelson and Todd Gamble have come together. I can tell you first hand there is a stockpile of adventures already written, with more already in planning, the site is not going to run short anytime soon. On average the adventures are lasting anywhere from 1 to 2 sessions of play, and range from heavy combat, classic dungeon delving, to more mystery based. There is a unique setting and storyline that carries through each adventure, and consequences of actions taken in one will carry over to others down the line. Having said that, Jonathan has taking great care to make sure if you as a GM want to pick up the adventure and drop it somewhere else, all adventures on the site can easily be reworked for different settings with little to no work.

As far as experience in the industry, Jonathan's got 25 years under his belt gaming, and is a well received DM by many players who are currently working in the industry.
Todd's got 3 ENnies, he's an amazing cartographer and game designer. These two are the driving creative force behind this project. And that's not even mentioning the artist Tim Tyler, and his amazing work bringing the unique creatures and NPC's to life.

I understand the trepidation at investing in a project without seeing big names on the letterhead, but let's face it, who was Paizo ten years ago? The magazine Dungeon ran for how long? It was filled monthly with adventures written by folks like you and I.

And yes, I have no doubt there will be those who join, stockpile, and leave. Their loss. The site is designed with a mass amount of hyperlinking, leaving a game master free to run an adventure, rather than hunt down statblocks or maps. Everything on the site will be at ones fingertips, including the soundboard for effects. Not to mention the subscribers area with added bonuses.

These guys have put their hearts and souls, and an immense amount of experience and knowledge into designing a model that will hopefully be accepted and do well. Their adventures are solidly written, the cartography is amazing, and the art is inspiring. Subscribe for a month, try them out. At the absolute least, price wise, this site is offering adventures and support material at an insanely cheap rate.


And discussion regarding POD material is already being kicked around, so there's always a possibility

Having recently been burned by Dungeonaday (I resubscribed for a year just before they announced their plans to shut down), I have serious reservations about this site.

Also, the sample adventure has some issues that concern me:

1) The map has no scale.

2) The Blade of the Sun Lord is described as an artifact, and we're told that the runes on it radiate magic, but we're not told what kind of magic the runes radiate, the strength of the aura, or anything at all about what powers the Blade has. Did I miss something? This seems like a major omission.

3) There doesn't seem to be any way to run the adventure without having a laptop or tablet in front of you. That alone is a deal-breaker for me. The FAQ says, "As a member you gain access to the adventures and may run them straight off the website." I don't want to run them right off the website.

So, based on the sample adventure, I would not subscribe to this website.

KTFish7 said:

I understand the trepidation at investing in a project without seeing big names on the letterhead, but let's face it, who was Paizo ten years ago? The magazine Dungeon ran for how long? It was filled monthly with adventures written by folks like you and I.

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I don't find this to be a convincing argument. Ten years ago there were seemingly hundreds of companies churning out content under the SRD. Some of it was good, but a lot of it was... less good. I think that is the more accurate comparison here. The sample adventure is certainly not the same level of quality as a Paizo product.

JohnnyZemo said:

3) There doesn't seem to be any way to run the adventure without having a laptop or tablet in front of you. That alone is a deal-breaker for me. The FAQ says, "As a member you gain access to the adventures and may run them straight off the website." I don't want to run them right off the website.

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I was seriously considering it until this. There is no way I'm going to run an adventure where I have to be connected to the internet to do it. There is no wi-fi where I play and I'm not going to bring a 50' network cable to the game session to plug into a router. Plus, I'm not a big fan of the rent an adventure which is what this is. If I purchase something I want to have a copy of it that I can use 3 years from now when a new group starts.

I'm going to keep the page bookmarked for now and I'll check back now and then, but if there is not a downloadable version available for subscribers, I won't become one.

JohnnyZemo said:

Having recently been burned by Dungeonaday (I resubscribed for a year just before they announced their plans to shut down), I have serious reservations about this site.

Also, the sample adventure has some issues that concern me:

1) The map has no scale.

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Actually, if you look to the right of the dungeon, about midpage, the map does in fact have a scale.

JohnnyZemo said:

2) The Blade of the Sun Lord is described as an artifact, and we're told that the runes on it radiate magic, but we're not told what kind of magic the runes radiate, the strength of the aura, or anything at all about what powers the Blade has. Did I miss something? This seems like a major omission.

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You are correct that the type of magic and strength of aura were omitted, I have brought this to Jonathan's attention, Thank You. Regarding the question of what can the sword do however, there is an entire detailed write up clarifying exactly what powers the sword has.

JohnnyZemo said:

3) There doesn't seem to be any way to run the adventure without having a laptop or tablet in front of you. That alone is a deal-breaker for me. The FAQ says, "As a member you gain access to the adventures and may run them straight off the website." I don't want to run them right off the website.

So, based on the sample adventure, I would not subscribe to this website.

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In regards to your third point in this post, the target audience of this site is obviously comprised of those who have brought their laptops and tablets onto their gaming tables. There are ways around that obviously, but that is the target model in this instance.

In the end, this is more along the lines of what this site is, a collection of adventures with support material made available at the rate of a new adventure a week. If the model doesn't work for some folks, that is to be understood, not everything will work for everyone. but the guys founding AdventureaWeek.com are looking at where gaming is going, and we're seeing more and more publishers and companies aiming RPG product towards the virtual as playgroups go online, and GM's taking advantage of more and more PDF's to build vast libraries that require no room, at a fraction of the cost of dead trees.

Again, I understand this model doesn't work for everyone, so do they, which is why PDF's and POD have been discussed, but the site isn't even open yet folks, let them walk before you tear them down. They just might surprise you.

EDIT- As Jonathan has reminded me PDF downloads are free to Annual Members and $7 each for everyone else... Member or not. So the site is actually very usable for offsite preference.

AaW Clarifications

Quoted from the website:

Here’s what you get for $99/year:

• A new adventure every week!
• Access to every adventure on the site
• Free PDF download option for all adventures
• Adventurer’s Journal (side quests & maps)
• Treasure Trove (new magical items for your consideration)
• Audio Soundboard (sound effects for your game)
• Printables (high resolution images for download/printing)
• Dungeon Tiles (professional dungeon tiles for combat)
• Monsters (new and original monsters complete with full color illustrations)
• AaW Campaign Setting – Maps, History, Culture
• Races
• Classes
• Domains
• Sorcerer Bloodlines
• Spells
• Archetypes
• Prestige Classes
• Locations
• NPCs
• Magical Items
• All new content available as a plug-in for HERO LAB.

To answer some questions and clarify some misconceptions:
Free PDF downloads are only available for annual subscribers. This is to avoid potential piracy (signing up for monthly membership, downloading all PDFs, cancelling membership).

Adventureaweek.com accepts adventure submissions and provides:

• Full Color Cover Art
• Full Color Interior Illustrations
• Professional cartography by award winning artist Todd Gamble
• Editorial Services
• Professional Marketing
• PDF Sales
  and more!
  

Authors which have their material accepted and published on AaW receive 40% of all PDF sales in the Adventurer's Mercantile online store (where all PDFs are available for individual purchase).

JohnnyZemo said:

Having recently been burned by Dungeonaday (I resubscribed for a year just before they announced their plans to shut down), I have serious reservations about this site.

Also, the sample adventure has some issues that concern me:

1) The map has no scale.

2) The Blade of the Sun Lord is described as an artifact, and we're told that the runes on it radiate magic, but we're not told what kind of magic the runes radiate, the strength of the aura, or anything at all about what powers the Blade has. Did I miss something? This seems like a major omission.

3) There doesn't seem to be any way to run the adventure without having a laptop or tablet in front of you. That alone is a deal-breaker for me. The FAQ says, "As a member you gain access to the adventures and may run them straight off the website." I don't want to run them right off the website.

So, based on the sample adventure, I would not subscribe to this website.

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As someone else ultimately disappointed by SGG's handling of Dungeon-a-Day, money back notwithstanding, I thought I'd offer a slightly different view to Johnny Z's in that the version I managed to access and use DID have a scale on the map and, whilst the artefact he mentions didn't have a magic listing, I took the aura to be strong (like all artefacts) evocation (like all sunblades) and linked to "Light" - although confirmation would've been nice as you state Johnny. However, it DID have all I needed to know about the blade for me to let my players know how to use it.

Finally, as this was a example module (I believe that's the case) I just copied it to a Word document, deleted the parts I didn't want, amended others to fit my campaign, printed it off and used it without a bit of kit in sight. The copying and printing bit of this took less than a minute.

As I say, just an alternative view and different experience to Johnny's, one that was seemigly much more satisfactory for me as a GM and enjoyable for my players, as the points he raises didn't seem to affect their game-play in any way because two out of three didn't exist and one didn't matter as I could get an answer for them.

Cheers

I like the basic concept - as a customer it seems like a reasonable deal, assuming the adventures are good; and I've no reason to suspect they won't be.

NERDTREK said:

Adventureaweek.com accepts adventure submissions and provides:

• Full Color Cover Art
• Full Color Interior Illustrations
• Professional cartography by award winning artist Todd Gamble
• Editorial Services
• Professional Marketing
• PDF Sales
  and more!

Click to expand...

Well, of course it does all that! That's what publishers do with the content you write for them! That's not a service they're providing the author, it's a service they're providing for themselves; and it's not a selling point for a writer (well, unless the writer is going to be given the rights to all that stuff, which is unlikely).

It's a standard work-for-hire agreement, but with royalties rather than direct payment.

Authors which have their material accepted and published on AaW receive 40% of all PDF sales in the Adventurer's Mercantile online store (where all PDFs are available for individual purchase).

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It's the royalty-only issue that would stop me. Are there any plans for paying a flat fee per word in the future? I know it's tough as a start-up to do that (ENP worked on royalties at first, too) so I completely understand why the deal is structured that way at the moment; but royalties-only is categorically not a good deal for writers (or for any type of freelancer). Hopefully you guys can move towards a regular pay structure at a later date.