Adventure Design

[RangerWickett]

Good considerations Ryan. Some questions; do you think of the "use" test and what PCs see, smell, hear, feel when designing adventures, especially when designing locals and encounters? How much do you give to information presentation and accessibility?

By 'use' test do you mean 'ease of use' for the GM?

Maybe I prep differently, but I generally assume that my job is to give the GM things that are non-obvious. I'm not writing an adventure that's meant to be run as you read the book. I figure the GM will read the whole book, get a sense of how all the pieces fit together, and then refresh his or her memory for individual scenes the day of the game.

Here's a sample from the first scene of ZEITGEIST. As background, by this point the players should have read at least part of the Player's Guide, made their characters, and come up with some basic idea of how they've worked together in this same unit as a group of sort of FBI-esque constables in a city named Flint, where an industrial revolution has recently begun.

I don't often use boxed text, but for the first scene I wanted to clearly set the tone.

[[Boxed Text]]
It is spring of the year 500 A.O.V. (After Our Victory). Seven years after the end of the Fourth Yerasol War, the shipyards in Flint have completed the first Risuri warship powered solely by steam engine, not sail. Your monarch, King Aodhan, has come to Flint to witness the official launch of this mighty vessel. Wooden-hulled but with a heart and skin of iron, the Royal Naval Ship Coaltongue will act as a deterrent against future aggression from Risur’s enemy across the sea, the nation of Danor.

The Royal Homeland Constabulary has been called upon to provide security, and you have spent the past several weeks working to make sure this event goes off without a hitch – canvassing the docks, performing background checks on the guest list, coordinating with the local police to set up a perimeter around the royal docks, and following various directives of your superiors.

Now, as a warm breeze off the sea mingles the scents of elaborate floral decorations with the pervasive coal soot that always hovers over Flint, you’re at the first of two checkpoints, working with Flint police to let in a crowd of local citizens who just want to line the streets and cheer their king.
[[End Boxed Text]]


Crowd Security
A crowd of hundreds wait at a security checkpoint. In half an hour they’ll line up along streets to cheer the king’s arrival, and the constables must make sure no one dangerous gets through.

{{There's a map of the area, showing streets and buildings and a big docked ship. It's not 'tactical' scale, though.}}

{{We also include a handout VIP Roster, with portraits and a short bio of the dignitaries who'll be in attendance.}}

To set the tone for the campaign, the first encounter is a quick investigation. Thousands of visitors have poured into the city, hoping to see the king. They’ve gathered in Royal Square, on the mainland side of a bridge that leads to the Royal Shipyard. The police are counting off exactly seven hundred people who will be let onto the bridge and into Fleet Square on the shipyard island so that they can cheer as the carriages of the king and other dignitaries arrive.

Four dock-workers – Coulton, Mercliffe, Iscalio, and a war vet named Dafton – have come to the event, ready to cause some trouble. They’re angry that the city police force has been cracking down on docker gatherings; indeed, all of them but Dafton still have bruises from a scuffle earlier in the week. Mostly they just intend to heckle and shout insults, but Dafton plans a more dramatic gesture: he wants to assault the city's Governor, Roland Stanfield.

Meanwhile Thames Grimsley, a grizzled sailor who is trying to organize an official dockers guild, has caught wind of the men’s plan, and he’s trying to get to them before they get themselves arrested or worse.

The four dockers are spread throughout Royal Square, waiting for the cops to finish their count before they link back up. Once the cops reach seven hundred, they’ll let the whole crowd through the check point and onto the bridge. The PCs have about half an hour to survey the crowd for possible threats and spot the dockers. If they fail, Thames Grimsley arrives just after the parade crowd is let in. The police won’t let him pass, but if the PCs investigate, Grimsley might be willing to help them.

If the PCs are lucky, they can pull the dockers aside early and avert a crisis, but once the crowd gets sent in, the four men will link up, making it much harder to deal with them without a brawl.

This opening ties into two of the 'character themes' of the setting -- Dockers and Yerasol Veterans. A PC with another theme, Skyseer, gets told about a vague vision he had the night before of "a crowd, a purple ribbon, the Beran city Seobriga, an empty bed, a broken tin whistle, and a girl with a lisp singing the Risuri royal anthem."

Then we explain some possible ways the party could locate the men, and include skill checks the PCs can roll to get hints. Like:

Create a Threat Profile. (Knowledge (History or Local) or Profession (Soldier), DC 13)
A PC who succeeds this check has a clear sense of the different groups that might want to threaten this event, and can brief the other PCs and local police so they can narrow their search. A PC who attempts this check get a +2 bonus to this check if any member of the party has the Docker theme feat, and another +2 bonus if anyone has the Yerasol Veteran theme feat.

Once any PC makes a successful check, give the party the following information.

Dockers are usually burly working men with eclectic fashion, who have hostile views toward new technology because of the harsh living conditions in the city's increasingly-crowded slums. Primalists, who oppose technology simply because it is not part of their religion, have hairstyles with sharp angles, wear sandals, and adorn themselves with druidic religious icons. Fey saboteurs - who have connections to wild faeries that are physically harmed by the presence of screeching gears - are typically elves or half-elves with impeccable grooming from their rituals, though they often try to hide this by dressing in soot-stained clothes. War veterans, who resent that the Coaltongue is built with the assistance of engineers from the nation of Danor, will usually be either in the mid- to late-twenties, or late-fifties/early-sixties depending on if they served in the Third or Fourth Yerasol War, and are usually in better fighting shape than common citizens.

It's certainly more involved than simply describing a dungeon room and having a monster or trap, but I was trying to accomplish a lot in one scene - set the mood to be investigatory where you're in civilization so just killing people you don't like isn't kosher; provide a lot of details of the setting without it being an infodump; and laying the first threads of conflicts and themes that run through the whole adventure path.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

Use test is simply consideration of how a PC would interact with what is presented. Thank you for being such a good sport Ryan. I think part of the discussion is really a difference in POV? I have enjoyed your modules btw; they have great feel and flavor and have good internal consistency and creativity.

Ultimately what does need attention regardless of approach to me, is what the players see, feel and interact with. For example, what an NPCs name, profession and background is might be less
Important than how they smell, act, behave and are doing. So often, situations are static when they are hardly ever that way.

 

[Jhaelen]

Personally I like adventures that feel like a setting book. I also enjoy when they blend in adventure possibilities.

Yup. I really liked what WotC did/tried with their "Adventure Sites", i.e. Hammerfast, and it's follow-up. Chock-full of adventure ideas, npcs, rumours, a mapped base, a small campaign outline, etc.

But that approach also has a small disadvantage: It requires some preparation. There is definitely also a market for modules that can run with little or no preparation. For the latter I prefer them to contain everything required to run them, i.e. full stat blocks.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yup. I really liked what WotC did/tried with their "Adventure Sites", i.e. Hammerfast, and it's follow-up. Chock-full of adventure ideas, npcs, rumours, a mapped base, a small campaign outline, etc.

But that approach also has a small disadvantage: It requires some preparation. There is definitely also a market for modules that can run with little or no preparation. For the latter I prefer them to contain everything required to run them, i.e. full stat blocks.

I agree different approaches have advantages and disadvantages. And there is certainly a market for modules that can be run with little preparation (for good reason). With modules I think so much of it comes down to personal preference and what inspires you as a gm. For example, some people have raised objections to random encounters, or encounters that don't seem to fit into the story of the adventure. I can understand that objection, but personally I love random encounters (both as a player and as a GM) and I find encounters that always plug into the story or plot to feel a bit too heavy handed. Once in a while I won't mind, but I like to feel like I am exploring a world, not locked into a storyline.

 

[iserith]

Good topic. Can you elaborate on what you consider to be a "wall of text" and what alternatives there are to explaining the author's vision of the adventure to the reader? If, for example, every sentence is useful, does that mean it's a "wall of text," or does it require a certain amount of less useful "fluff" in there? I'm trying to get a feel for when something crosses over into the wall of text category.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

Sure...here are two descriptions I have taken from two different adventures that describe locations:

The Windmill. On at low mound by the submerged bank there stands a wooden windmill with black-striped tar-sealed planks. The four sails of the mill are shocked and patched, ruined
by the flood. One remains whole. In the water at its base swarm one hundred metre-wide white crabs. The sails of the mill creak slowly round. Each one dips a foot beneath the water as it turns. A handful of child sized crabs grab on and ride the sail. They climb it as it turns, trying to get inside the mill. Just below the sail crank, visible as it spins, is a window with a whiteface. A desperate woman, Tana Che Urla, wields a pole and tries to knock the crabs before they reach the gap. Inside the mill are fifteen defenceless children, one old woman, and no food.


The above, to me, is great adventure design, clear, concise, focused on what is happening, and what the PCs see, feel and interact with.


And attached is a single room description/encounter. Note that there is a second page to that single room encounter as well. The latter, to me, is the wall of text syndrome that has tons of passive text, the call out text being a static description of the room (though there is a lot of activity going on that is hard to glean at all) with codification of all sorts of useless information including how much weight a table can hold, lots and lots of verbiage about what an NPC might say (though there is little description of what she looks like/acts like/and will stand out to the PCs...i.e., the "use test"), ancestry of bad guys (same "use test" other than what the generic monster name is) that the PCs will likely kill in 5 minutes etc. and an average GM would have to spend about an hour of prep time to run this one single room, along with taking notes and also having to wade through useless information that will never come into play. Such information adds nothing to most games and in fact detracts from game play (try running this and having to look for information in that text).

 

[iserith]

Sure...here are two descriptions I have taken from two different adventures that describe locations:

The Windmill. On at low mound by the submerged bank there stands a wooden windmill with black-striped tar-sealed planks. The four sails of the mill are shocked and patched, ruined
by the flood. One remains whole. In the water at its base swarm one hundred metre-wide white crabs. The sails of the mill creak slowly round. Each one dips a foot beneath the water as it turns. A handful of child sized crabs grab on and ride the sail. They climb it as it turns, trying to get inside the mill. Just below the sail crank, visible as it spins, is a window with a whiteface. A desperate woman, Tana Che Urla, wields a pole and tries to knock the crabs before they reach the gap. Inside the mill are fifteen defenceless children, one old woman, and no food.

The above, to me, is great adventure design, clear, concise, focused on what is happening, and what the PCs see, feel and interact with.

And attached is a single room description/encounter. Note that there is a second page to that single room encounter as well. The latter, to me, is the wall of text syndrome that has tons of passive text, the call out text being a static description of the room (though there is a lot of activity going on that is hard to glean at all) with codification of all sorts of useless information including how much weight a table can hold, lots and lots of verbiage about what an NPC might say (though there is little description of what she looks like/acts like/and will stand out to the PCs...i.e., the "use test"), ancestry of bad guys (same "use test" other than what the generic monster name is) that the PCs will likely kill in 5 minutes etc. and an average GM would have to spend about an hour of prep time to run this one single room, along with taking notes and also having to wade through useless information that will never come into play. Such information adds nothing to most games and in fact detracts from game play (try running this and having to look for information in that text).

Thanks for the examples. What would you say about the attached challenge (rough draft)?

Side note: The blank space is reserved for abbreviated stat blocks that link to an appendix where the full stat blocks can be found.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

Thanks for the examples. What would you say about the attached challenge (rough draft)?

Side note: The blank space is reserved for abbreviated stat blocks that link to an appendix where the full stat blocks can be found.

I think it has potential; it's hard to visualize the room perhaps because of a lack of context. I have a hard time telling what the difference is between the upper and lower room and what portions of the room are flooded...for example, if the whole room is flooded, why are the bodies floating in the upper room? (or for that matter how can anyone tell the difference). The question I have is simple- describe what the PCs see/hear/feel/smell the moment they walk in the room. What is Nilbool the Greedy doing? Don't worry so much about the codification, describe the action and interaction and consequences. ( I liked the book elements too, perhaps focus on making them a bit more descriptive and unique?).

 

[Umbran]

The question I have is simple- describe what the PCs see/hear/feel/smell the moment they walk in the room.

Aside: You can tell them what they feel in terms of external physical sensations (like, say a chill damp breeze brushing over their skin), but generally one should avoid telling them what they feel emotionally, unless there's some sort of emotional compulsion in effect.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

Aside: You can tell them what they feel in terms of external physical sensations (like, say a chill damp breeze brushing over their skin), but generally one should avoid telling them what they feel emotionally, unless there's some sort of emotional compulsion in effect.

Yep...feel as in physical sensations, not emotional....unless something is screwing with them, like a book or a shark