One of the first rules they teach you in those pesky freshman-year composition courses is "know your audience." Before you sit down to write a text, consider who's going to be reading it and plan accordingly. When it comes to tabletop role-playing games, I've always considered the game master to be the primary audience of published adventures. Game masters are far more likely than players to read the text of an adventure, so why wouldn't a designer write with the game master in mind?
Because the peculiar genre of tabletop role-playing adventures draws a key distinction between the game master who reads the adventure and the audience of players who probably won't.
Joseph Goodman, the tabletop designer who runs Goodman Games, took a look at this distinction in a fascinating essay titled "A Publisher's Perspective On Adventure Modules That Don't Suck." The piece appears in a collection of over 20 such essays called How To Write Adventure Modules That Don't Suck, an expanded edition of which was published earlier this year from Goodman Games. The collection features essays brimming with game master advice and imaginative encounters ready to drop into virtually any fantasy role-playing game. There's even an essay on designing convincing alien races for science fiction settings. In this first part of the look at this book, and how it can impact your adventure creation, let's focus on Goodman's entry about what he looks for in high-quality adventure design.
Early in the essay, Goodman makes a point that hadn't occurred to me before, at least not in the direct way he words it. "First and foremost," Goodman writes, "a budding adventure author needs to keep one very important thing in mind: Your audience is playing, not reading."
It's fair to say that one sentence shifted my entire perspective on published RPG adventures. I'd always imagined that published adventures should take a game-master-first approach. Goodman, on the other hand, says the first goal of any adventure should be to "give the players a fun time." If I'd been asked what the primary objective of a published adventure should be before reading Goodman's essay, I would have said something like, "Provide the game master with the tools and instructions he or she needs to give the players a fun time." The difference is subtle, but the "players-as-primary-audience" paradigm should color every step of the design process, from the conception of the adventure onward.
What does that mean? For starters, Goodman recommends that adventure designers playtest their ideas at least twice before sitting down to write the final product, first with a group of players the designer knows personally and again with a group the designer doesn't know. Only if both playtest groups had fun should a designer start putting pen to paper, according to Goodman.
He also recommends that adventure designers thoroughly consider the strengths and weaknesses of their chosen system before writing. A fun adventure is one that plays to the strengths of the system being used, while avoiding its weaknesses or blind spots. Once a designer has developed the adventure in enough depth that it delivers a fun experience that plays to the strengths of its system, then (and only then) does Goodman recommend the designer start writing text meant for other game masters to use.
I virtually always take on the role of game master, and I used to judge published adventures from that perspective. If the game master can grasp the material easily, I thought, it would be likely that player fun would follow. Goodman's essay inspired me to start thinking about written adventures on two different axes, the more important of which focuses on what the players need rather than what the game master needs. Adventures that score well on the player-needs axis should feature a variety of challenges that make good use of the mechanics of the chosen system, and that they all link together to tell a coherent story. Adventures that score well on the game-master axis should present all those qualities through clear and concise text and illustrations that allow the game master to bring the adventure to life at the table with minimal fuss. It's a bit of a "chicken and egg" situation with a twist: which group should an adventure writer consider first, the game master or the play group?
It could be possible that an adventure would score well on one axis, while doing poorly on another. For instance, if you, as the game master, found an adventure module with well-written and polished text that conveys only dull ideas. Or, on the other hand, maybe some adventures showcase imaginative encounters that get lost in poorly written text or confusing organization. I suspect that the two axes aren't as mutually exclusive as they would seem to be. My hunch would be that an adventure can start out with fun concepts for players, but that it will also provide value for game masters as well.
So are there famous adventure modules that serve game masters well but lose sight of the needs of players, who are ultimately the true audience for a role playing game? What adventure modules do the best job of striking the balance of providing high-quality material for both the reader and the audience?
contributed by Fred Love
Because the peculiar genre of tabletop role-playing adventures draws a key distinction between the game master who reads the adventure and the audience of players who probably won't.
Joseph Goodman, the tabletop designer who runs Goodman Games, took a look at this distinction in a fascinating essay titled "A Publisher's Perspective On Adventure Modules That Don't Suck." The piece appears in a collection of over 20 such essays called How To Write Adventure Modules That Don't Suck, an expanded edition of which was published earlier this year from Goodman Games. The collection features essays brimming with game master advice and imaginative encounters ready to drop into virtually any fantasy role-playing game. There's even an essay on designing convincing alien races for science fiction settings. In this first part of the look at this book, and how it can impact your adventure creation, let's focus on Goodman's entry about what he looks for in high-quality adventure design.
Early in the essay, Goodman makes a point that hadn't occurred to me before, at least not in the direct way he words it. "First and foremost," Goodman writes, "a budding adventure author needs to keep one very important thing in mind: Your audience is playing, not reading."
It's fair to say that one sentence shifted my entire perspective on published RPG adventures. I'd always imagined that published adventures should take a game-master-first approach. Goodman, on the other hand, says the first goal of any adventure should be to "give the players a fun time." If I'd been asked what the primary objective of a published adventure should be before reading Goodman's essay, I would have said something like, "Provide the game master with the tools and instructions he or she needs to give the players a fun time." The difference is subtle, but the "players-as-primary-audience" paradigm should color every step of the design process, from the conception of the adventure onward.
What does that mean? For starters, Goodman recommends that adventure designers playtest their ideas at least twice before sitting down to write the final product, first with a group of players the designer knows personally and again with a group the designer doesn't know. Only if both playtest groups had fun should a designer start putting pen to paper, according to Goodman.
He also recommends that adventure designers thoroughly consider the strengths and weaknesses of their chosen system before writing. A fun adventure is one that plays to the strengths of the system being used, while avoiding its weaknesses or blind spots. Once a designer has developed the adventure in enough depth that it delivers a fun experience that plays to the strengths of its system, then (and only then) does Goodman recommend the designer start writing text meant for other game masters to use.
I virtually always take on the role of game master, and I used to judge published adventures from that perspective. If the game master can grasp the material easily, I thought, it would be likely that player fun would follow. Goodman's essay inspired me to start thinking about written adventures on two different axes, the more important of which focuses on what the players need rather than what the game master needs. Adventures that score well on the player-needs axis should feature a variety of challenges that make good use of the mechanics of the chosen system, and that they all link together to tell a coherent story. Adventures that score well on the game-master axis should present all those qualities through clear and concise text and illustrations that allow the game master to bring the adventure to life at the table with minimal fuss. It's a bit of a "chicken and egg" situation with a twist: which group should an adventure writer consider first, the game master or the play group?
It could be possible that an adventure would score well on one axis, while doing poorly on another. For instance, if you, as the game master, found an adventure module with well-written and polished text that conveys only dull ideas. Or, on the other hand, maybe some adventures showcase imaginative encounters that get lost in poorly written text or confusing organization. I suspect that the two axes aren't as mutually exclusive as they would seem to be. My hunch would be that an adventure can start out with fun concepts for players, but that it will also provide value for game masters as well.
So are there famous adventure modules that serve game masters well but lose sight of the needs of players, who are ultimately the true audience for a role playing game? What adventure modules do the best job of striking the balance of providing high-quality material for both the reader and the audience?
contributed by Fred Love
