If YOU Can't Write an Adventure, Why Should I?

[MonkeyDragon]

Here's hoping this isn't too tangenty...

One of the reasons that I never use published adventures is that they all seem to either have too many details that don't jive with whatever campaign I'm running, or it's just not written for my party: I have six PCs, not four. These adventure's great, but it's written for a 10th lvl party and mine is only 4th. All that jazz. OR, the adventure is meant to be a fairly advanced overarching story, and all I want is a dungeon that can be placed as part of MY story.

What I'm thinking of producing for my local convention are small adventures that are self-contained and kind of fill in the blank. They'd have the map, any appropriate handout illustrations, a couple of possible plot hooks, and all the descriptions of NPCs, room fixtures and treasures. It would have encounters placed on the map and the basic appearance of monsters and traps described.

What it would not have are any stats or specific monsters. All the DM has to do is plug in beasties appropriate for their party. So room #x: room description X. room contains an encounter with an EL Party lvl +2. Main monster are the undead remains of X. There is a treasure chest with an open lock DC (moderate difficulty). The chest contains a pearl necklace of (appropriate value).

The plot hooks would be simple and self contained enough that the whole dungeon could be dropped into an existing campaign, or easily adapted to fit a broader story.

Of course, I wouldn't think that this is a theory that could be applied in the big business, but then I would only be asking probably $3-$5 for the whole mess. Then again, maybe this is a completely rediculous idea that no one would be interested in. I suppose I'll find out at the con.


We now return you to your previous discussions typed by sensible folks not burnt out by 3am post game ramblings!

 

[frankthedm]

well, up until recently, any adventure published was competing with Dungeon magazine on the value for price on FLGS shelf.

 

[Fenes]

I prefer not detailed adventures (I can almost never use adventures without adjusting them to my specific group/campaign), but plot hooks and tools such as pre-made NPCs and maps and locations. Those are what I use of adventures anyway - my group is not that into combat, so 90% of any D&D adventure module is useless to us.

 

[Baumi]

I have 100+ different Systems at home but I lately play nearly exclusively Savage Worlds and D&D because both system have so many Advantures/Campaign prewritten and since I GM 1 1/2 Times per week I really need these!

D&D has the advantage of the massive amount of Products/Adventures written for it including the Dungeon Magazine, while Savage Worlds has complete Oblivion like Campaigns (one free roamable World with many sideplots, an Adventuregenerator and one mainplot).

 

[Darrin Drader]

Right now the plan for Reign of Discordia is to have at least one adventure for every sourcebook we put out. I personally think adventures are a very important part of fleshing out a setting and showing that setting in motion, so as long as I have any say in the matter, we'll be doing them.

 

[Fenes]

I have 100+ different Systems at home but I lately play nearly exclusively Savage Worlds and D&D because both system have so many Advantures/Campaign prewritten and since I GM 1 1/2 Times per week I really need these!

[shameless plug]
For saving time during preparation, check the link in my sig. It works for me, and I GM twice a week, in addition to some online PbP and chat stuff.
[/shameless plug]

 

[Switchblade]

For me much of the entertainment from GM'ing is crafting the story and making stuff up, pre gen's pretty much defy the reason I GM. Likewise while playing I've played in scant few pregen games. I actually prefere a company doesn't waste time on adventures which aren't needed and concentrates on more background sourcebooks and setting material.

As for lack of time it is supprisingly easy to make decent games up as you go along with enough practice.

With such a wide range of characters, personalities, power levels and story styles pregens so rarely match the style of the game that their potential market is always going to be a tiny fraction of GMs even if they are any good.

 

[talien]

To clarify, I'm not talking about Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings. There is a sufficiently huge amount of material over the past several decades that even if there aren't adventures published for the campaign, you can convert the adventure over without too much trouble. There are of course setting where this is harder, like Planescape or Spelljammer, but there’s still plenty of material in comparison to some other game systems.

The Call of Cthulhu game has lots of scenarios and it spoiled me when I looked outside of it. I have noticed that some companies use the Dungeon approach, wherein they produce a magazine that supports the variety of campaign settings the company puts out. So for example, The Rifter supports Rifts, Signs & Portents supports Mongoose’s Lines, GURPS has Pyramid, Deadlands had Dime Novels. I find myself referring to those magazines for other game systems. And of course, for a time Wizards had their own web site, which released a huge pile of free material for D20 Modern and D&D 3.5.

The frustrating thing isn’t support for specific game lines, but settings. So for example, I can get by just fine with my conspiracy type game, because even though there aren’t a whole lot of adventures for Conspiracy X and Bureau 13, there are plenty of Cthulhu Now scenarios I can use. Conversely, I’ve slotted in Feng Shui, Conspiracy X, and GURPS Black Ops scenarios into my campaign.

So maybe there’s value in pointing out settings that aren’t supported by scenarios but actually has online support from fans who produce scenarios for it or by the company’s web site.

I was surprised by the amazing amount of detail for Heavy Gear http://www.dp9.com/Products/HGRPGstart.htm and Jovian Chronicles http://www.dp9.com/Products/JCRPG.htm. Gear Krieg seems to have less material overall, so I’ll give it a pass for that reason and because there is enough World War II Pulp material that you could support it with scenarios from other books. I have no idea what scenarios could possibly support two mecha-heavy settings…Rifts (he asks with hesitation)?

Suggestions? Any other adventures for similar game lines/settings that can be cross-pollinated so that a GM wanting to play in a particular setting can easily convert adventures for it?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So, what's Paizos secret? How can they "live on" adventures?
What did make the Adventure Paths special?
Or can't they actually live on adventures alone (which is why they aiming for the Pathfinder RPG)?

Outside of D&D and GURPS, most games seem to come with a built-in setting.
Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Das Schwarze Auge, Midgard, Warhammer, Torg.
In our group, these games were only as "successful" as the number of adventures we found for them. But the "in-group" success is probably not the same as market success - since to play any of these games, we needed the core rules/setting book anyway.

But a system with an in-built setting has a considerable advantage - it makes it likely that people that have the core rule book will be interested in adventures for the setting. If you use a more or less generic/setting-less game (d20 Modern might be the "worst" case), you have no idea what your customers are doing with it, and can't provide adventures that can appeal to them. But having the setting defined isn't enough - you need enough customers of your setting to have a reasonable chance of selling your adventures to them.

I think one of the strength of Paizo's adventure path is that you got the setting together with the adventures. Shackled City, Age of Worms and Savage Tides might have been set in Greyhawk, but for the most part, only the adventure path material mattered. It defined everything the player and DM required to know about the world. And as I understand, Pathfinder is similar.

So, maybe one trick for succesful settings with adventures is using the adventures itself as a method to describe the settings. A Bottom-Up approach on world design. This way, people don't have to try to fit the modules into their world. The modules are the world. This might not appeal to people with a homebrew world, but you can't create modules that can directly target them, anyway.

 

[Psion]

I'd say my preferences are changing over the years... I am using published adventures more than I used to, mainly due to divided interests and other demands on my time.

But I'll say this, because there are doubtless people out there like me with more time: I like a good setting because they laid the groundwork for a good adventure instead of giving me a packaged one that rarely fit the players and my mood as written.