D&D 4E Throwing ideas, seeing what sticks (and what stinks)

[MoutonRustique]

I think you're saying that the "loadout" of 4e adventures was overburdened with crunch (which is the easy part in 4e)?

Yes, this is, in essence, what I was trying to say.

Man, I need to use fewer words.

I think the format used by WotC for adventures pretty much sucked. They first had a whole description of everything in general terms, and then an entirely separate section containing detailed encounter crunch for each encounter area, AND in many cases they put the stat blocks at the end. This required a massive amount of page flipping and lead to a lot of editorial errors where the 'read through' description contained inconsistencies with the 'crunch section', and you often had to be reading both at the same time to actually grasp what they were talking about.

Later there were some adventures that were laid out in a better format, but I have to agree that they were mostly way too focused on trivia that didn't matter much or could be glossed, and not enough on explicating the encounter as an action sequence and plot element. Frankly I've run exactly one heavily modified 4e adventure (hmmm, no, 2).

Agreed.

I'm coming to the realization that most adventures that have a large number of small encounters that can get larger (alarms, guards that arrive after 2 rounds, etc.) could be pretty much strait-ported. The only thing to add (other than SCs for exploration and some of the interaction encounters) would be small notes saying that X or Y foe starts WAY over there and needs "trigger Z" to come over (use regular checks for the "simulationist" groove or random trigger for those that like them, or simply a small delay for those that use the "what the PCs don't know, doesn't matter" approach.)

With all this in mind are there really "edition X" adventures, or simply "adventures published under edition X"?

... I was typing, I got my answer : in effect, there is. Some editions of the game use an attrition model and a "need thingy Y to solve obstacle*" that doesn't really mesh with other editions (4e in particular). There are always workarounds and such, but then it's kind of proving the point that there's a non-negligible difference.

*Such as: monster X is unkillable w/o spell Y. You need spell Z to disarm the trap/get the object/pass the wall, etc.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Some editions of the game use an attrition model and a "need thingy Y to solve obstacle*" that doesn't really mesh with other editions
*Such as: monster X is unkillable w/o spell Y. You need spell Z to disarm the trap/get the object/pass the wall, etc.

They just need that model or that kind of niche protection to keep everyone involved and relevant, such things are merely unnecessary outside of that context, not innately problematic. You just dial it back in conversion. So the monster that is untouchable unless you cast Create Taquila & Lime on +4 Coconut of Defenstration, merely has it's regeneration shut down or it's resistance cut in half if you do so, making it still beatable without the niche-protection/player-skill/in-joke trick.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

They just need that model or that kind of niche protection to keep everyone involved and relevant, such things are merely unnecessary outside of that context, not innately problematic. You just dial it back in conversion. So the monster that is untouchable unless you cast Create Taquila & Lime on +4 Coconut of Defenstration, merely has it's regeneration shut down or it's resistance cut in half if you do so, making it still beatable without the niche-protection/player-skill/in-joke trick.

Right, OR if you WANT to go with that sort of thing, you CAN always make things that MUST be defeated in specific ways. There was an adventure like that in Dragon IIRC, with a basically unkillable golem that you had to outsmart. 4th Core is also based in large part on this sort of thing, though in that case they're super gotcha! type scenarios (the first 4C adventure for instance has 8 portals, 7 insta-gank your character, the 8th one leads to the rest of the adventure IIRC).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yes, this is, in essence, what I was trying to say.

Man, I need to use fewer words.

Agreed.

I'm coming to the realization that most adventures that have a large number of small encounters that can get larger (alarms, guards that arrive after 2 rounds, etc.) could be pretty much strait-ported. The only thing to add (other than SCs for exploration and some of the interaction encounters) would be small notes saying that X or Y foe starts WAY over there and needs "trigger Z" to come over (use regular checks for the "simulationist" groove or random trigger for those that like them, or simply a small delay for those that use the "what the PCs don't know, doesn't matter" approach.)

With all this in mind are there really "edition X" adventures, or simply "adventures published under edition X"?

... I was typing, I got my answer : in effect, there is. Some editions of the game use an attrition model and a "need thingy Y to solve obstacle*" that doesn't really mesh with other editions (4e in particular). There are always workarounds and such, but then it's kind of proving the point that there's a non-negligible difference.

*Such as: monster X is unkillable w/o spell Y. You need spell Z to disarm the trap/get the object/pass the wall, etc.

My big beef with non-4e (and actually most 4e) adventures is that they simply aren't appropriate at a basic organizational level for 4e. 4e is a game where you 'skip the boring stuff' and do the action/adventure stuff. Long sequences of dusty halls that you creep through and avoid traps isn't USUALLY the 'good stuff' in 4e terms (though I think it CAN be if used carefully, its just not 4e's bread-n-butter). Likewise a maze of fairly restricted rooms with little or no interesting terrain where 1 in 10 is a monster lair isn't really at all 4e's thing. Even a series of chambers with an encounter in each one still isn't really 4e's thing. VERY RARELY do published adventures deviate much from these patterns.

 

[MoutonRustique]

My big beef with non-4e (and actually most 4e) adventures is that they simply aren't appropriate at a basic organizational level for 4e. 4e is a game where you 'skip the boring stuff' and do the action/adventure stuff. Long sequences of dusty halls that you creep through and avoid traps isn't USUALLY the 'good stuff' in 4e terms (though I think it CAN be if used carefully, its just not 4e's bread-n-butter). Likewise a maze of fairly restricted rooms with little or no interesting terrain where 1 in 10 is a monster lair isn't really at all 4e's thing. Even a series of chambers with an encounter in each one still isn't really 4e's thing. VERY RARELY do published adventures deviate much from these patterns.

I feel like what you're describing are the poor adventures - of which, I will hastily add, there are quite many (sadly).

But on the whole, it's only kind of the "flip-side" of the presentation of 4e adventures : instead of massive amounts of "useless crunch", these adventures have massive amounts of "useless ~fluff~"(actually, that's probably best re-purposed as descriptions to be used during the exploration SC.) And the rooms with the "exploration challenge" (oozes that drop from the ceiling and such) can become decision points in the SC (or consequences of the rolls/decisions.)

The series of chambers will usually be agglomerated into larger encounters (which, IME they already were : they almost always have one or two dudes supposed to go get the dudes from the other room, or "the noise will bring", or something - that's one encounter hidden behind a sort of "no, no, it's two(+) encounters! .... that will probably happen within one or two rounds of each other..." *looks away*)

I think we'll concur on this : many adventures are actually a list of places and foes with little real story or purpose to them*. In that sense, they're not really adventures in the sense of being "scenarios" or something along those lines. They're just kind of "places".

*Real story or purpose as presented - of course, it is always possible that interaction with players will end up creating an awesome story and find powerful purpose; but that's true of everything, and thus not attributable to the adventure in any honest sense.

Side note: Have you had a chance to read the Zeitgeist adventures? On the whole, those are very much adventures there's purpose to what happens, the things, and the places.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I feel like what you're describing are the poor adventures - of which, I will hastily add, there are quite many (sadly).

But on the whole, it's only kind of the "flip-side" of the presentation of 4e adventures : instead of massive amounts of "useless crunch", these adventures have massive amounts of "useless ~fluff~"(actually, that's probably best re-purposed as descriptions to be used during the exploration SC.) And the rooms with the "exploration challenge" (oozes that drop from the ceiling and such) can become decision points in the SC (or consequences of the rolls/decisions.)

The series of chambers will usually be agglomerated into larger encounters (which, IME they already were : they almost always have one or two dudes supposed to go get the dudes from the other room, or "the noise will bring", or something - that's one encounter hidden behind a sort of "no, no, it's two(+) encounters! .... that will probably happen within one or two rounds of each other..." *looks away*)

I think we'll concur on this : many adventures are actually a list of places and foes with little real story or purpose to them*. In that sense, they're not really adventures in the sense of being "scenarios" or something along those lines. They're just kind of "places".

*Real story or purpose as presented - of course, it is always possible that interaction with players will end up creating an awesome story and find powerful purpose; but that's true of everything, and thus not attributable to the adventure in any honest sense.

Side note: Have you had a chance to read the Zeitgeist adventures? On the whole, those are very much adventures there's purpose to what happens, the things, and the places.

Well, I'm not saying there aren't some reasonably decent adventures, but even tremendous classics like Ravenloft have a lot of fairly low level gritty details in them that you need to kind of grind through. My acid test is essentially "what would Steven Spielburg do?" There certainly can be a 'montage' in which the characters do basic stuff, research, shopping, maybe some sort of investigation, travel, anything that lacks decision points and doesn't change the narrative posture of the story (I'm sure Manbearcat has a forgy sort of term for this, lol). The problem is most adventures force you to grind through this stuff.

In fact in some sense it has gotten worse over the years. Early D&D had a mode of play that made 'survival grinding' most of the game, and its interesting in that format. However later it became more about grinding skill checks and fighting a lot, at which point it lost its charm. 4e's contribution here is to inject action/adventure. It was THERE before, but now its at the forefront.

You have correctly described the procedures for doing things like handling an exploration sequence in 4e, but old adventures simply aren't formatted and designed to support that. Sure, you can take A1 and make it into a more 4e-suitable adventure (and that series is probably one of the better ones to convert I would think), but why? Just write something new. You're going to be effectively creating new maps, new encounters, reworked plot details, etc. Yes, you can keep the villains, the basic scenario, and the overall location structure, but I'd want it all to be reworked to support the fantastic adventure themes anyway.

 

[D'karr]

I believe there are two, or maybe more, schools of thought about adventures. When I was running 1e most of the modules had a very brief introduction that gave the DM an idea of what was happening behind the scenes. From there the DM pretty much extrapolated the details himself, making them up as they went. Any real meat to the "story" was created by the DM either ahead of time or on the spot. Room descriptions were sparse with just basic details and contents. Some rooms would have more details such as tactics of reinforcement, etc. Monster statblocks many times were simply a name, quantity and number of HP. Take a look at the amount of "content" packed into a 32 page adventure of that time and you see how little detail you really got.

Then came Ravenloft, and Dragonlance, the good and the bad. In these there were much more details to the "story". In Ravenloft the details of Strahd's downfall are interwoven almost seamlessly into the discovery/exploration within the module. His diary has all these details but the players have to find it to get those, but since the DM has those details ahead of time he can play Strahd in the tortured soul mode that is befitting the character. However, the room descriptions and monster stats stayed pretty small. Look at the density of the castle for an example. The module is still slim (I think it was 32 pages) but the castle has hundreds of little nooks and crannies to explore. The map, IMO, was a work of art and really cemented my love for isometric views.

Then there's Dragonlance. In this case the story is "interesting" but it's all the story of the NPCs... Boring... Of course this is due to the fact that the story is actually a telling of the War of the Lance narrative with the PCs encountering the Heroes of the Lance as they are making history. Wait, aren't the PCs the ones that should be making history? Bleh, in any case the story is very linear and railroady. Important NPCs can't die, they will/might respawn again in another module of the series, etc. Still the room descriptions are very short and narrow for the most part. Look at the Tomb of Kharras (sp?), or Pax Tharkas (sp?) as an example of room density. Overall Dargonlance is my least favorite module series, but it is the one I mined the most for locations, NPCs and maps. Xak Tsaroth (sp?) the sunken city is a formidable adventuring location.

I skipped most of 2e, but I do have some adventures from that era. It seems to me that the "background story" started to take a front and center position instead of the "story of the PCs". I can't say I've seen anything memorable about any 2e adventures. It was during these modules that the room descriptions seemed to start getting larger with lots of fiddly details, but I can't really lay all blame here. The worst offender is coming up.

Then in 3x the adventures became massive mostly because of the monster stats. This consequently lead to the delve format, which is the real culprit of adventure size and detail. Each significant room encounter is given this 2 page spread that has important information about the combat. First "problem" is that most assume combat in every instance. Granted this information is useful because monsters were so much more complicated in 3.x. If the DM was not aware of "useful" tactics or use of spells looking stuff up was a hindrance, so the format is definitely useful. The format also was helpful with presentation of miniatures as large maps of encounter areas were usually included in the adventures. But no longer is the DM pretty much given "carte blanche" to best make up what is happening behind the scenes. He is given a crapload of information to use in combat and also out of combat. Look at Paizo's run on the Dungeon magazine and you start to see the story trend, all leading to the adventure paths. However, imagine running Ravenloft using this format. No need to imagine, go look at Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. The 1e 32 page adventure has balloned to 200+ pages. If I recall correctly there was very little (maybe 3-4 additional situations) added to the content from the original.

4e kept the delve format. That can be counted as fortunate or unfortunate based on perspective. However, in 4e there was a difference. The system is particularly efficient in making those set-piece encounters memorable, and the delve format is particularly good for presenting information for those type of encounters. The real "problem", if all you give me is a hammer everything becomes a nail.

Due to presentation of the rules (combat & miniatures heavy, skill challenge mechanics that the designers didn't really know how to present well, forced combat encounters and poorly thought out initial adventures) everything became a set-piece encounter. Everything is presented in soul crushing detail, sometimes multiple times. Of course this is an exaggeration but IMO it is an apt one. Look no further than Keep on the Shadowfell to see that the set-piece encounter was here to stay.

Now I do malign KotS quite a bit, particularly for its repetitive and sometimes obtuse nature (see the first encounter Kobold Brigands (p.16), and then look at Kobold Ambush(p.24). Isn't this pretty much the same encounter with one kobold added/swapped?). But I have used the module multiple times because there is still enough there that is salvageable to make a really fun adventure. The story of Sir Keegan is a very cool thread within the adventure but it is buried in a forced combat encounter already presented in Dungeon Delve format ("Sir Keegan’s behavior depends entirely on how the adventurers react to him. His first statement should be a strong hint that he is not meant to be treated as an adversary. His second statement makes it clear that if the PCs don’t convince him of their true intentions, Sir Keegan is prepared to attack them." Wait, what? Did any of the designers ever play D&D?). Put a monster in our path that gives us hints, even strong ones, and on his second breath threatens to put the beatdown on us and all you're going to get is "roll initiative." What were these guys thinking? Why does this happen? Mostly because the adventure trains the players to shoot first and not ask questions (see kobold ambush and every encounter in between). For the first half of the adventure the players have encountered the same monsters at least 3 times (dull, repetive and boring), each time in combat. Now you want them to change tack based on strong hints and threats? Please, get real!

Kalarel, the main villain is a cardboard cut-out mustache twirling villain and has little to no appearance except as a ritualist in the big end encounter. I don't even remember any mention of Kalarel, by any of the other creatures, throughout the adventure (but I might be mistaken as its been a while since I read the whole thing). Ninaran, the BBEG's henchwoman, is another non talking or interacting cardboard cut-out ("A quiet elf hunter who usually drinks alone, Ninaran is not interested in conversation"). What a bunch of wasted opportunities. The first module series of WotC adventures (H1-E3) had many of the same problems. The Scales of War series on Dungeon magazine suffered from a somewhat disjointed storyline that was at times difficult to reconcile as a series. The Living Forgotten Realms adventures suffered from a different problem they tried, very hard, to emulate what WotC had done in its presentation format, and do that in 28-32 pages for multiple levels. Some of the stories/plots for the first adventures were OK, and some were pretty terrible, but the real issue was time management. The DM for these adventures only has 4 hours to get to the finale. So a lot of these adventures were built on a common template/blueprint of 2-4 combat encounters + 1-2 skill challenges. Everything was quite mechanical, predictable, and at times forced (nope can't use rituals here because, "break linear adventure"). Thankfully, the adventures in Dungeon, and LFR got much better as time went on. There are some that are fantastically imaginative.

The truth of the matter is that a DM can make whatever he wants out of the adventures. To this day I don't think I've used an adventure exactly as presented. When I was running 3.x and during the whole time I've run 4e I've blatantly taken from adventures as needed, and convert adventures all the time. Many times on the fly. The most fun I've had in a while was when I converted (A1-A4) the slavelords adventures to 4e, and used some of the NPCs in very creative ways with hooks to the PCs. That thread is still playing out.

But experience has taught me how to do this effectively. What does a new, inexperienced DM, have to supplement that gap? I believe that is why adventures have so much fluff detail. To make the DMs job easier. Does it always work? I'm not sure. Sometimes too much detail can lead to straitjacketing (see Dragonlance for an example). The other side of the coin is that too little detail and the DM might feel cheated. Why am I paying $25 for this adventure that has minimal details?

So for publishers I think it is a rough balancing act.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, you certainly beg us to answer the question "how can the rules be structured so as to most support adventures being interesting". One thing that I would note is a big disconnect between 1e and 4e. In the 1e DMG you're PRETTY MUCH given all the tools and lessons needed to write a TSR module circa 1979. You learn how to make maps, dungeons, traps, wilderness locations, lots of 'gotcha!' type monsters suitable to this sort of play are provided in MM, etc. There is some discussion of plot, NPCs, etc to at least a level that you would find in the G, D, or early S series modules of that era.

4e DMG certainly covers the basics of encounters, and in all fairness there's plenty of ADVICE, but you can't build something even close to a delve format adventure using what you're told in the 4e books. There's a whole lot of organizational and other aspects that aren't really covered. Beyond that, the delve format itself simply doesn't match up well with 4e at all.

I'd argue that 4e really requires more of a 'plot map' sort of flow diagram kind of organization, where the big picture is described in total, then various major 'action sequences' are laid out, and then the 'cookie' that holds all these raisins is described, the body of SCs, cut scenes, foreshadowing, and plot points of various kinds that make it all hang together, along with the overall scenery and feel of the whole thing. Then the encounters should be presented in onion fashion as well, with a general description of the action, the plot, the conflict, etc that is going to play out in that encounter, and possible different outcomes and how they lead to other action sequences.

Its really not a map-driven game at all, but the tools for building adventures that work with its conceits are really pretty fragmentary and nascent. You have to read a LOT into it to figure it out, and experiment a whole bunch.

(and then there's Pemerton, but he seems to be rather MIA right now, no doubt he'd entirely re-arrange everything I just said into some completely different sounding but exactly equivalent form).

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's funny, one thing that struck me about 4e was how very easy it seemed to be for new DMs. We'd get a new player at Encounters, and the next season the new player would be a new DM. Maybe they weren't ready to write modules, but they sure weren't having any trouble using them - 'delve' format notwithstanding.

 

[MwaO]

It's funny, one thing that struck me about 4e was how very easy it seemed to be for new DMs. We'd get a new player at Encounters, and the next season the new player would be a new DM. Maybe they weren't ready to write modules, but they sure weren't having any trouble using them - 'delve' format notwithstanding.

Yeah - most monsters are 'at-will, 2nd at-will, encounter, cool special effect' - even ridiculously over leveled Wizard is still only about 8 powers instead of 30 choices. I spent hours writing up a couple of 3.5 Archmages for a mod and I can spit out a high level Wizard NPC in 10 minutes without even thinking hard.

Mainly because the general assumption in 4e is that NPCs aren't really going to survive much longer than 5 rounds and giving them 30 abilities is just a waste.