Hooking the Players onto AD&D1 Published Adventure Plot Hooks

Bullgrit

Adventurer

• Jan 4, 2012

• #1

Did you (or your DM) play out the hook for getting the party into AD&D1 published adventures? Most AD&D1 adventures included information for how the party was to be hooked or hired or hoodwinked into the story. Few were just dungeons/locales with no background story about the current scenario.

For instance, many [most?] adventures start with the adventurers hired for the mission. Some of the modules had details about the hiring process, whether it was an open call to all adventurers to meet in the king's court, or was a personal gathering of your party, or was a pulling you out of the prison for this second chance at freedom. Heck, some modules even had the hiring process as a full series of scenarios.

Did you play out the meeting with the nobles hiring the PCs? Or did the DM just say, "You are hired..."?

How much preliminary was there to your party going out on a published adventure? Did you role play out the introduction to the scenario, or was it just a matter of your PCs are now standing outside the giant's fort?

If you played in a sandbox-style campaign, and the DM just bought Against the Giants, how much effort did he have to put in to get your party into the adventure?

And has this all changed as you gotten more experience with the D&D game? Has the newer editions changed the way this gets handled in individual games?

Bullgrit

 

Last edited: Jan 4, 2012

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Nagol

Unimportant

• Jan 4, 2012

• #2

Whether the game is new or old edition doesn't matter. What matters is the amount of continuity expected in the game world which is picked at the campaign start.

Most of the games I run have very strong continuity. Play picks up at the same point as the last session ended. PCs are presented opportunities to engage in a wide variety of activities and play focuses on the unfolding activities of the PCs reacting to the environment reacting to their actions.

Some games I've run have weak continuity where the PCs are (mostly) the same and play picks up in media res with a very quick description as to how the group found itself in the current circumstance.

 

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Corathon

First Post

• Jan 4, 2012

• #3

Yes, we played it out - but not usually in the fashion that the module suggested. I blended the module with the campaign, so patrons changed, or the group got some other form of hook (e.g. an old treasure map, a mysterious clue in an old book, rumors, etc).

 

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Enkhidu

Explorer

• Jan 4, 2012

• #4

Corathon said:

Yes, we played it out - but not usually in the fashion that the module suggested. I blended the module with the campaign, so patrons changed, or the group got some other form of hook (e.g. an old treasure map, a mysterious clue in an old book, rumors, etc).

Click to expand...

Which, I believe, was the intent behind the hooks in the first place.

 

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Crazy Jerome

First Post

• Jan 4, 2012

• #5

We were all over the map. Still are for that matter. When we ran time conscious, episodic, tenuous campaigns and/or one-shots, we tended to gloss over the intro or at least play it fast. In a longer campaign, it was woven in so tightly that the players often could not tell the published adventure from the homebrew parts.

 

KidSnide

Adventurer

• Jan 4, 2012

• #6

I mostly see modules adapted to provide gameplay for a conflict that was already in the campaign. For example, Against the Giants might be used when there is already a conflict with giants and PCs decide to take the action to the enemy. Something like Ghost Tower of Inverness might see use when the PCs decide to raid an abandoned wizard's tower.

Personally, I always liked to old-style Ravenloft adventures. You can have the mists suck up the PCs at any time, and their motivation is always to escape. It's a much better way to begin a campaign than "you all meet at a tavern."

-KS

 

Crothian

First Post

• Jan 4, 2012

• #7

We used their hooks when doing one shot or in campaigns that didn't matter how the adventure started. Other times the adventure plot hooks were used or rewritten as the DM needed.

 

Philotomy Jurament

First Post

• Jan 5, 2012

• #8

If the module is being used as a one-shot, separate from the regular campaign, then we'd probably cut to the chase and get into it. I'd probably read the introduction (some of those are too damn long, but I usually still read them).

If the module is being used as part of the existing campaign, then I'd likely adapt and adjust the hooks to mesh well with the campaign. Ideally, the players wouldn't even realize a module was in use. In this case, it's likely that I'd (sometimes radically) alter the hooks, and role-playing is likely to be a part of the hook-baiting and hook-setting process.

 

Jan van Leyden

Adventurer

• Jan 5, 2012

• #9

In the beginning I mostly assumed that the heroes just came on the scene. In N1 - my very first foray as DM - the PCs just arrived at Orlane with some basic information. Their second adventure - Das Hügelgrab von Cathaerlach - was a task given by an NPC without much talking about it. Only with the third one - "Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh" - I became more creative. I designed the town, installed a town council and had the PCs drawn into thing via roleplay.

Later on the intro grew more and more from the campaign's impetus. The only given hook I really used - and would use again in an instant - was th one from "All that Glitters." The idea that the PCs find some fragments of a treasure map in the wrapping material for the cleric's ivory sticks with those fragments provided as a handout is just too cool to ignore.

 

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Jhaelen

First Post

• Jan 5, 2012

• #10

Corathon said:

Yes, we played it out - but not usually in the fashion that the module suggested. I blended the module with the campaign, so patrons changed, or the group got some other form of hook (e.g. an old treasure map, a mysterious clue in an old book, rumors, etc).

Click to expand...

Same here.
I cannot remember a single instance of a game where we skipped that part. We never started right at the entrance of a dungeon or even with the DM saying "You all agreed...".