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

[Hstio]

I agree that adventures help to bring a setting into more focus; especially for settings that aren't your traditional high fantasy or space opera. I'm reading Tribe 8 right now and I'm overjoyed that there are adventure paths to help me wrap my mind around the richness of the setting and run an adventure that makes full use of the material. One recommendation might be to have a few sample adventures available for download when you launch a new setting (For example Witch Hunter has a few on its Dark providence page, Hollow Earth on their web page, etc). The adventures don't have to be that long, just enough for an evening of play. However, I ultimately agree that the burden is on the GM to take it from there and run his own adventures or adapt ones from other settings/magazines.

 

[Fenes]

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 on that rarely fit the players and my mood as written.

I found that I had to spend more time rewriting/adapting bought adventures than when I simply mined such for plot hooks, and made the rest up from scratch. Far too often, neither my party's motivation/background, nor composition, fit the adventure, and that'0s even without going on about our house rules (we don't use half the magic items the core system presumes, nor do we have a healer in the party).

 

[roguerouge]

I tend to think that adventures are a leader into other products: minis, maps, setting expansions, other modules. Think of it like a movie, which sells DVDs, soundtracks, TV rights, Happy Meals, collectibles, spin-off books, etc.

 

[The_Gneech]

I've never understood the "adventures don't sell" thing, regardless of whether it's true or not. Adventures make up about 85% of what I buy. The other GM in my group is the same way ... and the players don't buy anything. Pretty much been like that forever, no matter what group I was in. I have a hard time believing my experience is that far from the norm.

Even if I don't use an adventure straight off the shelf (which I almost never do), I'm always on the lookout for neat plots, good maps, an interesting critter or what-have-you. I've bought modules for games I'll never play, just because it was an interesting premise and I could yoink it for something else. I buy modules that sit on the shelf for a decade before they get played.

They are far and away the most useful thing a game publisher can produce.

-The Gneech

 

[Dr Simon]

Just some musings on this topic:

An 'adventure' package (I guess we could use 'module' after the old 1e usage) is really a beast of three heads:

1. Stats and maps
2. A pre-written background/set-up/plot hooks
3. An expectation as to how players will interact with the above.

All campaigns are subtly different, so it is likely that many GMs will want to change some or all of the above due to

1. Adjusting for power level/house-rules/writer error
2. Making it more in line with the campaign
3. Knowing the players

Although D&D3 came up with the concept of the standard party, it's quite a tricky act to get all things together on one package. Better, perhaps, would be to produce a campaign pack like the old Traveller adventures or Griffin Mountain. You had all the Element 1 you needed, plus seeds for element 2. The rest came out in play - they were more like an RPG sandbox than specific adventures.

Ruins of Intrigue does the same for the Arcana Evolved setting. Also, within such a package you could have varying degrees of pre-written adventure; maybe some short, fully-fleshed scenarios to start you off and give a flavour of the setting.

 

[Delta]

I think the other thing is that good adventures are harder to write that setting sourcebooks. I think I've heard Ryan Dancey say this. I know it's true in my own experience. There's more necessary attention detail and how the pieces exactly fit together. So in addition to lower raw sales figures, they also take longer to work on, and are in some sense more expensive to produce -- it would seem.

 

[talien]

I think the other thing is that good adventures are harder to write that setting sourcebooks. I think I've heard Ryan Dancey say this. I know it's true in my own experience. There's more necessary attention detail and how the pieces exactly fit together. So in addition to lower raw sales figures, they also take longer to work on, and are in some sense more expensive to produce -- it would seem.

I agree -- as someone who has had his adventures published, I also agree it's not as easy as it might seem.

But taking that thought to its logical conclusion, I feel within my rights to hold it against a company if they DON'T produce adventures for their own product line. If the company publishing the setting isn't qualified to produce adventures/scenarios, then what hope do I have? At the minimum, I want to see how it's done so I can use it as a template to write my own adventures.

Bottom line: I expect companies to suck it up, regardless if it's profitable or not, because it's a feeder into all the other parts of the product. I do NOT need five world books, six class books, and thirty monster manuals -- I need scenarios that show me how I can use them.

 

[Desdichado]

Full-time job here. Not a new father, but I am a father of four. Heck, my oldest son, who's just turned twelve? He takes a lot more of my time than a baby ever did anyway. Wait 'til you're running them around to sports programs, music lessons, Boy Scouts, etc. as well as helping them with homework, school projects and juggling their burgeoning social life as well as your own.

So I understand the time constraint. What I don't understand is why that leads to a preference for published adventures; to me, it takes more time and effort to run a published adventure well than it does to crib a few maps and statblocks and write up my own material to connect them. I don't run prepared adventures (very often) for two reasons, 1) it's never as good; there aren't any ties to the setting and/or the characters unless you modify it a fair amount anyway, and 2) it's more work. Studying the module and how it's supposed to run is more time consuming that writing something up yourself. Anyway, as to the conclusions and reasons you posted for them, I don't see any connection here. You may want published adventures for your setting, and hey, that's fine; you're free as a consumer to demand whatever types of products you want (I certainly can't claim to be a "model" customer with "standard" tastes across the board in RPG products by any means) but the correllations and connections you build seem to be based on faulty reasoning, in my opinion. To whit:

On a customer service level, if you're not willing to produce scenarios/adventures for your games, I start to suspect A) it's too hard to write balanced adventures, which sure as heck doesn't build any confidence in your company, B) you don't actually have the expertise to take your game system and write a scenario for it, and C) that means I shouldn't bother trying to craft my own scenarios if you can't be bothered to do it.

A) Confidence in... what? The skills related to building a compelling and interesting campaign setting vs. the skills needed to write good adventures are not the same set at all. That's a bit like saying that you don't trust your auto mechanic because he admits that he doesn't know how to fix your washer and drier. So what? How does that impact his ability as an auto mechanic? B) Same as above. They may not. So what? How does that make the setting any worse? As far as I'm concerned, nobody has expertise with writing adventures for my group unless they take into account the playstyles and characters in my group. Even the supposed best in the business (Paizo's adventure path writers; we just ran a long-running Age of Worms campaign, by the book) failed at many junctures to provide a compelling play experience for us. C) How does this follow, at all?

I mean I get it; adventures is what you want. If you don't have adventures, you don't want the setting. That's fine. But just say so, don't try and construct a faulty logical framework for your preferences. Just say, "I like adventures and for me to use a setting, I want adventures custom-made for that setting available for my consumption" and leave it at that. You're not wrong to want that, that's just what you want. That's perfectly fine.

 

[Ydars]

The problem with adventures is that they are specific. The good thing about adventures is also that they are specific. In other words, you can't escape the fact that many gamers will not like or use them because of some little design tweak that doesn't chime with their group/world/circumsatance etc and so they enjoy a fraction of the market of a sourcebook. Since it is MUCH harder to write a generic adventure than it is to do the same with a source-book, I can sort of understand why WoTC doesn't like producing adventures.

Having said this, as an older gamer, I am amazed that adventures aren't the top selling product. I can't believe that many players buy sourcebooks. Surely most books are bought by DMs? And since DMs like me are always looking for ideas, even if we don't actually run the adventure as written, it seems strange that they are SO unprofitable.

I would love to hear from anyone with publishing experience tell us why this might be.

I personally dislike the general nature of most sourcebooks because they are far too general. What I really want is a general sourcebook with lots of adventures built in so that I can pick and choose them.

I really like Ptolus and Mysteries of the Moonsea for this reason, although Ptolus erred too much on the sourcebook side and Mysteries too much on the adventure side to be exactly right for me.

I guess DMs are just too damn creative for their own good and so adventures tend to confine rather than release their imagination. I must admit that I always feel less satisified when running a published adventure than when coming up with something of my own.

 

[Ydars]

Actually, now I think about it, Hobo is SPOT on (as usual).

It does take much longer to learn someone else's thought processes than it does to invent something for myself.

I have NEVER run a published adventure "as written" because it always needs a tweak and understanding that takes more effort than cobbling something.

That and the fact that, for reasons I will never understand, I just HAVE to fiddle with other people's adventures.