D&D 5E Adventure Design: Backstory and History

[Lanefan]

A few of the adventures I've been reading recently draw very heavily from what I call the "Pathfinder" method of writing adventures. That is, they have long, wordy descriptions of the backgrounds, histories and personalities of the characters and adventure. These descriptions can be very extensive.

I'm curious how people feel about this method of adventure writing. Do you enjoy the extensive backgrounds? Do you think they're too much?

Almost without exception they are nothing more than bloody annoying, and largely a waste of time and space. Pathfinder adventures are usually the worst for this, as not only do they insist on putting in lots of backstory for the actual adventure they also have to fit it in to the adventure path it's part of which means yet more bleepin' backstory.

How do you find they help you as a DM prepare and run the adventure?

They help add work. When I'm running a canned adventure it's (almost) always being slotted into my ongoing story in some way or other, meaning I have to strip off all the pre-written backstory and replace it with my own. I'd far rather they just ignore the backstory entirely (or maybe throw in a half-pager for someone who might be running it as a one-off) and use that space to answer some of the more obvious "what-if" questions that playing through the adventure will raise.

Hypothetical example: I don't care a whit about Gragi the Giant King's life history or how he came to be King (I can make that up on the fly if needed) but I do care how the Giants might react if the party goes in through the roof instead of walking into the module's set-piece battle behind the front door, because I can't always make that up on the fly without stopping to read a bunch of room descriptions; and I don't prep adventures to that level of detail beforehand. I care what the Giants might do if they manage to take a PC prisoner. I care how long the Giants might wait if a patrol goes missing, and how they'll then react. And so on.

Actual example: the final set-piece battle in Keep on the Shadowfell - the write-up horribly fails to answer the most obvious of what-ifs, including but not limited to
- what if the party attack the thing coming through the gate; what is its AC, how much damage will it take to convince it to go away, etc. (one PC in my game put about a dozen arrows into it)
- what if the party fail to prevent it coming through or just don't get there in time, what happens then
- what if the party want to close the gate, is there a mechanism to do so and if so, what is it
- what if the party want to finish opening the gate (and one unwise PC in my game actually tried this!)
Which meant that when I ran it I had to make all this stuff up on the fly, and I don't need a module for that. (what I did was insert an opening/closing mechanism that Kalarel's ceremony had triggered but that he was only part-way through using; a race then developed between two PCs with one trying to close the gate and one finish opening it, and the closer won by one segment! As for the creature-thing I just dreamed up a very large number of hit points and a very poor AC (it's stuck in a gate, for crying out loud!) and let the archer have at 'er.)

Lan-"one of the reasons the early 1e adventure modules still hold up today is that they really can, for the most part, be easily dropped in almost anywhere in a campaign"-efan

 

[CardboardTube Knight]

I thought the point of a published adventure was to have something to run without all the prep work of having the write it out yourself? You get to run a game that could stretch from 1-20 without having to do all the little bits like coming up with reasons and outlining a plot.

If the players start asking questions of the barmaid or decide to go off track the little bits of information here in Pathfinder can help you be ready for it without rail roading them, having to tell them that this isn't part of the planned game or shooting down anything that they think might be a lead that is actually just a dead end.

I've been in games where we thought some person was suspicious and went on a wild goose chase, it's more realistic if you're allowed to do it and the adventure you're running had plans in case you did.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I thought the point of a published adventure was to have something to run without all the prep work of having the write it out yourself? You get to run a game that could stretch from 1-20 without having to do all the little bits like coming up with reasons and outlining a plot.

If the players start asking questions of the barmaid or decide to go off track the little bits of information here in Pathfinder can help you be ready for it without rail roading them, having to tell them that this isn't part of the planned game or shooting down anything that they think might be a lead that is actually just a dead end.

The problem is that you can usually just make that stuff up, because it doesn't have to fit with anything. It's only once your players are working within the adventure that you need things to be coherent.

 

[CardboardTube Knight]

The problem is that you can usually just make that stuff up, because it doesn't have to fit with anything. It's only once your players are working within the adventure that you need things to be coherent.

The problem with that is that if you change one thing somewhere else to answer them or do what they need you to do then you have to make sure that one thing doesn't come up later or is consistent. You don't have to use the things you're given, but you're given so much that if you didn't have an idea it might even stir something up or spark some side quest or whatnot.

 

[Mouseferatu]

One need only bust out White Plume Mountain or Against the Giants to get a firm grasp on what great adventure-writing should look like.

They look, to me, like an array of random and/or largely repetitive combat encounters, occasionally interspersed with uninteresting puzzles.

Yes, I'm about to get lynched. But it's true; I've been gaming well over 30 years, and I firmly believe that a large number of the "classic" modules are considered good only because of when they came out, and really don't actually have nearly as much to offer as many people maintain.

I'm not saying that the "novel disguised as module" is the right way to go. But I think many of the shorter/classic modules go too far the other direction.

 

[Charles Wright]

I honestly prefer sandbox adventures with narrative hooks and a big, central place to adventure. Tomb of Abysthor and Lost City of Barakus being my two favorite examples of the setting.

I also like the more recent version of Rappan Athuk which more explicitly encourages quick delves with return trips to town.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

G'day, all!

A few of the adventures I've been reading recently draw very heavily from what I call the "Pathfinder" method of writing adventures. That is, they have long, wordy descriptions of the backgrounds, histories and personalities of the characters and adventure. These descriptions can be very extensive.

I'm curious how people feel about this method of adventure writing. Do you enjoy the extensive backgrounds? Do you think they're too much? How do you find they help you as a DM prepare and run the adventure?

Cheers!

For me, a Pathfinder adventure path is made up of the content needed to write three solid adventures and then another three adventures' worth of padding and XP grind. Does that sound like I am criticising them? Not at all. I steal liberally from Pathfinder AP adventures and these "long, wordy descriptions" can often inspire something more, um, cogent in my own games.

So, yes, if I was buying Paizo APs to actually run them I would have given up on Paizo a long time ago but I get them to steal ideas, art, and maps for my own games.

 

[delericho]

Hypothetical example: I don't care a whit about Gragi the Giant King's life history or how he came to be King...

The thing is, that's potentially useful information - if it means there is a deposed king somewhere that the PCs can ally with, or a disloyal faction, or... well, something.

IMO the problem is less that they provide information of this sort, but rather that, very often, it's just background lore that never goes anywhere.

I thought the point of a published adventure was to have something to run without all the prep work of having the write it out yourself?

Yeah, it's the flip-side of the above: the issue is less that the adventure provide that information, but more that it's useless information in too many cases. You get told that Brenda the barmaid has a husband and four children back home and an abiding love of pumpkin pie... but absolutely none of those things have any relevance to anything that's happening. And, yeah, the DM can use that to make up some links if the PCs start asking questions, but the DM could just as easily make up those links without that information being given at all.

But the biggest problem, IMO, is that you tend not to get a paragraph of useless information that can be safely ignored in most cases. Rather, you get a paragraph of mostly useless information with one crucial detail embedded in it. And, of course, that one crucial fact isn't highlighted in any way - it's just one more statement amongst several. Which makes it harder to prep (since you have to read the whole thing carefully) and harder to run (since you can't see the crucial detail at a glance).

Assuming that the purpose of these things is to be used, rather than just read, adventure designers would do well to bear that in mind. Indeed, they could do worse than to just put this is a clue! in big, bold letters beside the important point.

 

[Imaculata]

Actual example: the final set-piece battle in Keep on the Shadowfell - the write-up horribly fails to answer the most obvious of what-ifs, including but not limited to
- what if the party attack the thing coming through the gate; what is its AC, how much damage will it take to convince it to go away, etc. (one PC in my game put about a dozen arrows into it)
- what if the party fail to prevent it coming through or just don't get there in time, what happens then
- what if the party want to close the gate, is there a mechanism to do so and if so, what is it
- what if the party want to finish opening the gate (and one unwise PC in my game actually tried this!)
Which meant that when I ran it I had to make all this stuff up on the fly, and I don't need a module for that. (what I did was insert an opening/closing mechanism that Kalarel's ceremony had triggered but that he was only part-way through using; a race then developed between two PCs with one trying to close the gate and one finish opening it, and the closer won by one segment! As for the creature-thing I just dreamed up a very large number of hit points and a very poor AC (it's stuck in a gate, for crying out loud!) and let the archer have at 'er.)

Lan-"one of the reasons the early 1e adventure modules still hold up today is that they really can, for the most part, be easily dropped in almost anywhere in a campaign"-efan

This is one of my biggest problems with prewritten campaigns. They often have a lot of fluff, but lack useful information. A character's history is only interesting, if it is relevant to the plot. What I really need to know is what a character looks like, and how the character would respond in certain situations.

I also think that prewritten campaigns often only focus on a linear path, and do not take into account the possibility that the party may stray a little. It is as if a complete linear approach is expected, and even encouraged. Since campaign modules often serve as a learning aid for aspiring DM's, before moving on to writing adventures of their own, I think this creates a bad foundation.

Campaign modules should include more information that allows DM's to react to what ever the players want to do. I'd prefer if they were set up more like my own adventures: a mini sandbox. You have a clear goal, and an area in which the adventure takes place. But within this area, there are many locations and characters that may or may not end up being visited by the players. This allows the story to breath, and not be constricted by a module that is simply written too linear.

Some Call of Cthulhu campaign modules did a better job at this, by including a lot of what-if scenarios (and multiple endings), and describing how certain characters would react to certain information, or situations. They would also sometimes mention if a character is essential to the story, or expendable.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Unless Skeeg is the adventure's mastermind, then this would be a fail for me. It needs to list what he knows about his superior's plans, and what he knows about any strongholds, prisoners or treasure in the adventure, because that is the information my players will be interested in if he is captured. Similarly for his henchmen.

If Skeeg isn't the "mastermind", then I honestly would like to know how "what he knows about his superior's plans, stronghold, prisoners, treasure..." having a write up of, say, two or three paragraphs, will matter? If he is killed by a lucky crit from the archer, then the adventure just wasted three paragraphs of space. Additionally, even if the PC's capture, interrogate and get the info...after that, those three paragraphs are now wasted space. That info can't be "re-used"; it's a one way trip.

But by having a much more vague description and leaving the details up to the DM, more "adventure-running stuff" can be included. If, in stead of three paragraphs, there was another pair of rooms, or another possible encounter, or hell, even a small "Random Rat-Man Belt Pouch Contents"...those could be re-used with much more ease.

Now that I've said that... I will like to say that I prefer "light, fast, and loose" style adventure writing for my D&D-style games. For Call of Cthulhu...no. I want *much* more in-depth background/story. For my Marvel Super Heroes Advanced games, I want more focus on character motivation. For my sci-fi games... I like something in between. For some other fantasy rpg's I like (such as Powers & Perils, or HARP, or Runequest), it depends on the campaign style I'm going for; most of the time is's somewhere close to "D&D'ish", but just on the edge of where I like my sci-fi stuff.

But, for 5e in particular, I find the "light, fast, and loose" style of adventure writing to be an awesome fit. I just finished running a 7 month or so long 5e campaign. I started with "Idol of the Frog God" as a base (also available on Dyson's Delve website). Then it moved into the "Dwarven Citidel Ruins of Kuln". The dwarven ruins was a map set put out by "0one Games" ( http://www.rpgnow.com/product/2643/0ones-Blueprints-Dwarven-Stronghold?term=dwarven+&it=1 ). It is basically just maps. It has a "Level room # function" page for each level. They are written up with, just this:

"3. Great Hall ______________________________ "

Room number, name of room/area, and one long, blank line for me to write in any info/detail. I just used my own letter code for what is in the room and determined specifics as needed or a day or so in advance of play. So "3. Great Hall : P, M, T". The "P" meant there was a traP in the room. The M, for Monster. And the T was for Treasure. I also had Obstacle, Hazzard and tricK (O, H, K). I had a 'cheat sheet' I could write up and keep at the side for a list of monsters. This allowed me to change things easily as the PC's explored areas and cleared them of monsters. I could go back in and "restock", as needed. I could have other monsters from other areas move into new rooms. In short, I could just use what I had written down, but decide on the specifics as needed. This allows me great freedom to guage my players excitement (or not) levels for certain encounters or other things... all without "wasting words" that would have had to have been rewritten anyway after the first few delves into the ruins.

Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. Suffice it to say, I'd rather be staring at "3. Great Hall _____________" than staring at a three paragraph write up thinking to myself "Yeah, that was fun...but that happened 6 sessions ago and now I just have to ignore it all".

^_^

Paul L. Ming