System Free Scenarios and Settings: Curse or Cure?

[Psion]

To reduce the waste it maybe makes sense to set aside some doubts and ask, 'what's the best way to go multi-system or system free with scenarios and settings?'

For my money... the Citybook way. The NPCs are written up in a semi-generic format that gives you some baseline to re-create the NPC in your chosen system.

I'm using adventure seed from the systemless Freeport line (Pirates Guide to Freeport, Cults of Freeport, Buccaneers of Freeport), and often think to myself where it's not all that difficult to come up with game stats (especially for FC, which is easy) from the text, it's often painstaking poring through the game text looking for cues for game mechanics. Emulating the Citybook approach would have been "the way to go", IMO.

 

[Psion]

Systemless *adventures* would be a bloody pain. It's as much if not more work to convert an adventure as it is to design one from scratch; the heavy lifting is the number crunching (i.e. system-specific), the not-so-heavy stuff is the layout and design - which I can do myself. About the only use I could see for these would be as a source of ready-made maps I could then pillage for my own use.

Even disregarding the issue of porting systems, I've come to be of the opinion that adventure seeds, maps, and npc concepts are of more value to me than full blown adventures. Every time I run a fully statted out adventure, it seems like I struggle with assumptions buried in the text and deviations from expected PC actions.

Give me adventure seeds, settings, maps, and npcs and let me do the rest.

 

[Aus_Snow]

The thing about 3e was, it did not have an official monster design system

Monster Manual v3.5, pp. 295-302.

Among other things, of course. But that would be the logical place to start, at least.

 

[nedjer]

Even disregarding the issue of porting systems, I've come to be of the opinion that adventure seeds, maps, and npc concepts are of more value to me than full blown adventures. Every time I run a fully statted out adventure, it seems like I struggle with assumptions buried in the text and deviations from expected PC actions.

Give me adventure seeds, settings, maps, and npcs and let me do the rest.

Thanks Does seem like it's best to go one way or the other insetad of ending up with messy compromises.

 

[nedjer]

Monster Manual v3.5, pp. 295-302.

Among other things, of course. But that would be the logical place to start, at least.

Though you're technically correct I have to dis you for allowing the snout of the Edition Wars crocodile to surface in the calm waters of my polite, civilised thread.

 

[Ariosto]

Even disregarding the issue of porting systems, I've come to be of the opinion that adventure seeds, maps, and npc concepts are of more value to me than full blown adventures. Every time I run a fully statted out adventure, it seems like I struggle with assumptions buried in the text and deviations from expected PC actions.

That has long been my experience as well, except when the scenario stands outside the campaign context -- or an "adventure path" is the campaign context.

"Expected PC actions," though, is a basic problem with 'plotted' scenarios in which the designer has gotten too attached to his 'story'. It's a bad sign when boxed 'read-aloud' text refers to assumed PC actions. It is rather to the point of playing a game that one cannot predict the moves, and in a face-to-face game I expect a lot more freedom than in a "pick your path" book!

I think that stats are a bigger deal in a scenario when they're a bigger deal in the game. WotC has gone in not only for pretty complicated rules sets, but for packing a lot of complexity into "stat blocks". Hero System is another of many examples.

One can get around that with easy access to standard or stereotyped stats, especially if it's easy to interpolate values and so adjust 'on the fly' for a departure from a template "tinker, tailor, soldier, spy" or what have you.

Old D&D, with the Monster Manual, and Lords of Creation, with the Book of Foes, are a couple of examples of game designs with that facility. If you're working in a genre with pretty common assumptions -- and "D&D fantasy" is a big one! -- then a lot of stuff is likely to be "plug and play". Play calls for a goblin, a knight, a dragon? Plug in whatever you've got in your rules set.

If the designers have not provided such a "casting department for stock characters", then it is still something one can make for oneself. When you have occasion to write up a band of bugbears -- or whatever -- don't discard the stats afterward. You can save them for reuse, perhaps with a bit of adjustment, in another scenario.

I like games in which it's easy for me to 'eyeball' and improvise stuff of all sorts rather than digging for details in rulebooks. "Is that an African or a European swallow?"

 

[Totte]

I read this thread and it was most interesting, as I've been working on something that I considered making "systemless", as it is more of a description of some locations, some NPCs and a bunch of hooks.

Reading this thread made me rethink. I think I should go for systemless design, but then release, for free, stats for at least one system, as a separate download to circumvent the problems with any licenses.


Any thought on that?

P.S. http://4eyes.code66.se/ is down as someone with an excavator ate the cable that feed my servers the internet. They will be back online someday after february 12.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Is there value-in-use to a "system free" setting or adventure?

Of course there is. But that's a misleading conclusion if the thesis is that "system free material is a commercially preferable option".

When the value-in-use of the product is for it's general setting, maps, characters and plot hooks, there is no need to make the jump to say that "system free" is just as good and just as commercially viable an option as one that is system based -- at the time of its commercial release.

I put it to you that when I go look at older material from a much older or OOP version of a RPG (whatever the case, an adventure that is statted for a version of a game I don't use), it is for all intents and purposes, "system-free" as I am using the product.

My point: A product can support a system and hook in players in that fashion and gain commercially important sales. Even still, people can use that system specific book as "system free" if they are not using the system it was specifically written for.

In that fashion - you get the best of both worlds. It also explains why the decades of published adventures still remain to add an ever-expanding "glut" of viable adventure material that current material must still compete against.

This is the real reason that WotC does not make available older .pdf adventure material that is, for most purposes, "system free" in how it is now used. That 1st and 2ed material is used as "system free" adventure material and thereby competes with current material. That's why it is not availalbe for download on WotC's site anymore.

The value in use of fluff is eternal, where as the value in use of crunch is specific to a particular point in time (more or less). But that does not mean that creating crunchless adventures is ever wise from a marketing standpoint.

 

[Ariosto]

But that does not mean that creating crunchless adventures is ever wise from a marketing standpoint.

Neither -- even if true! -- does that statement mean that it is never wise from a business standpoint.

It seems to me that anyone contemplating such a move would do well to have a look at the actual results of previous efforts.

I think that, above all and as the final consideration, one should do whatever makes for the most excellent product in one's own view -- for that vision should be in the first place one of greatness rather than of mediocrity.

Had Gary Gygax and Don Kaye followed the conventional wisdom, Dungeons & Dragons should never have been published!

 

[jpatterson]

Hello, I know I'm way late, but I haven't frequented this community (for some unknown reason...), but I did a search for an adventure I wrote in Google and was extremely surprised to see it actually come up somewhere besides my own site or RPGHost/Archive where I uploaded it!


Jan 26, 2010, jdrakeh kindly mentioned my Winter's Cold Heart scenario, and had positive things to say about it, and I just wanted to say I appreciate it, that someone was ... able to... appreciate it... or something like that. I don't think even *I* have the other version he talks about, with the "better authorial voice", whatever that is. I know one thing - the non-game-immediately relevant text was just plain way too long; as you can tell, I tend to core dump when I write or "have a good idea".


I'll skip the amusing and interesting anecdotes which all writers have, which are actually neither, and address the point of this thread, which is the systemless design in an adventure. To be honest, although WCH is systemless, and I didn't really struggle with that decision, I've since reconsidered and now it's a tossup, leaning noticeably toward system specific.


Reason number one is that I read through it the other day and *I* did not know what basis or relatable scale was being used in the generic ratings I gave the creature. That was a pretty bad oversight on my part, and I think in a way, THIS is probably THE most risky part of a systemless scenario where you use some sort of stats, even pseudo-descriptives like I did. People (GM's) are used to a stat block for a system, and understand it and the relative "power level" the minimum and maximum scores encompass, and where the ratings fall and how to eyeball that and fairly easily translate that into any other system they want, so systemless scenario design is questionable to me, now. I originally wrote it for WFRP2, but I think, honestly. I was just lazy and didn't want to put in all the stats, so I just fudged it with the "maverick" idea of systemless ratings.


I do feel systemless gives GMs much more elbow room and ability to interpret values, without resorting completely to fiat and just assigning scores, immediately. The other upside is that the systemless ratings are vague and broad, intentionally crunchy, because the GM has to figure out the most suitable stat block for the current adventure and players, so can feel confident with a potentially higher or lower system score than what he might have imagined on first blush, looking at the scenario.


It is really more of an "optical illusion", giving the GM implicit "permission" to use whatever values he wants to interface appropriately, without feeling wrong or unfair (this is only for those GM's that DO feel like this when they fudge things or don't go "by the book" of course).


Anyway, thanks for reading, sorry to interrupt any flow and current theme of the conversation for an old matter, but I am just still floored. -JP


PS: I ran... well, attempted to run WCH as a forum game, even using a simple system (basically Dan Bayn's Wushu), and while the freedom of narrative stance was very popular with the players, it was apparently a little TOO open and the pace was apparently much too slow for a play-by-post forum adventure, as the four people playing all just slowly started logging in less and finally just quit - I suppose it might be my own iffy GM skills too though.