Adventures v. Situations (Forked from: Why the World Exists)

[Scribble]

Adventure: "You must battle through the necromancers hold to retrieve the holy gizmo from his corpse."

Situation: "There is a a necromancers hideout nearby and he has a holy gizmo"

When you create an adventure you tell the players what they should do. When you create opportunities the players are free to do what they want, including ignoring it or even talking or joining the enemy, things which will only upset looks when they try that in an adventure.

Rails.

Maybe you guys just write bad adventures?

When I write adventures they don't involve rails, and they do involve the players being free to make whatever choice they'd like... I think I might be more inclined to agree with Ourph here.

 

[Irda Ranger]

The difference is the order of cart and horse. You can end up in a similar place, but you get there by either the DM taking the lead or the PCs.

I'm like Ghost; a "Situations" guy. I'll start the PCs off in a town or keep and present the world to them. Rumors, recent events, etc. From there it's up to them to decide on a direction and goal. I have no idea at all where the campaign is going, and I have no visualization of how it's going to end or who the main BBEG is going to be. That's all developed during the course of "adventuring", which can often start as simple as "Let's see what's over that hill" or "Caves, eh? I wonder what's in there?" but often leads to very specific goal oriented campaigns like "The Empire of Ish needs to go. Let's overthrow it." or "The Tharzidun cultists are clearly making a major push to take over the Kingdom of Bren. They must be stopped."

But in all cases the PCs make those choices, not me. Naturally this doesn't work if the PCs are passive and wait for me to tell them what "the Adventure" is going to be for the evening. They need to have motives and goals of their own.

There's a lot of "winging it" involved, as The Ghost mentioned, due to the uncertainty of direction, but I'm fairly prepared for most eventualities. I have a monster deck (3x5 index cards of all the common monsters in the area), tons of generic maps (from 100-mile scale to 5' scale), a gross of random generators and a good imagination.

I do find that the DMing style evolves away from "Situation" towards more "planned Adventure" over time, but that's only because I have a better sense of what the PCs want to do and where they want to go, so I can plan ahead better. I'm also able to flesh out a dungeon between sessions better if the PCs have decided to go into it and stop gaming for the night mid-delve. But at no point have to told, bribed or asked them (via NPC or sotto voice) to go that way, and they're free to change tactics or goals at any time.

-------------

"Adventures" are like most of the adventures you could have bought from Wizards recently. PCs show up and are presented with a mission of some sort by an NPC. It's not a 'bad' way to run D&D, but it's certainly different than how I run it.

 

[Scribble]

Irda I mostly agree with you, but not entirely... It just sounds at this point like some people want to say situational vrs adventure is a "thing" so they can say other people are wrong in yet another fashion...

When I write an "adventure" it's often just like some are saying "situations" are. There's a necromancer in a tower he's got a thing.

So I do up the tower with challenges and stuff should the PCs decide they want to steal his thing. I'll put some stuff down I consider logical like the DC for scaling the wall (there's a window so they might weant to scale it) the DC for breaking down the door etc..

Of course no where am I assuming that 1 the PCs WILL decide to do any of those actions, or 2 that the PCs will even decide they want to go get that thing from the necromancer in the first place.

I even try to give them more then one lead to follow ie more then one adventure they could set out on... Maybe there's also a band of orcs causing problems on a trade route etc. I do that one up to. (Or at least I do most of the, up. I rarely ever detail an adventure entirely. I do what I feel I can get away with, and expand as they join on.)

I put out various clues if they search for them, or ask about. They're free to go on those adventures or not at which point I'll improvise something.

I'm not really seeing anything that is all too different between the two concepts. The only thing I see is that some people can't seem to seperate the idea of an adventure and a railroaded adventure. Adventures aren't railroads unless the DM forces the PCs in some way to go on them.

 

[Ariosto]

I would say that the eventual shift toward "planned adventure" is IME not a shift to it. It's really just a shift in the focus of my preparation, which can shift back if the players' actions warrant that. The key distinction remains that the players are "in the driver's seat": as Game Master, my role is to be a referee between them and the world.

The "situation" approach tends to call for more work ahead of time. That may not be the case if one relies chiefly on improvisation. However, more improvisation tends in practice back toward GM direction.

That's one reason probabilistic tables are so popular in wide-open play. They're a way to give the environment a sense of autonomy and integrity even as it's created on the fly. They help to keep the referee "honest," play "fair."

The work put into a situation, as opposed to an adventure, is less likely to be "wasted" if events take a different turn than predicted. The adventure has a plot line that, if players deviate from it too much, becomes useless beyond the point of departure.

The amount of wiggle room can vary, but it's basically in inverse proportion to the significance of what players do or don't do. Obviously, the plot is guaranteed to proceed if it does not matter what the players do!

In a situation, there are likely to be events that follow preordained courses if the players do not interfere. That differs from a plot line in that it is perfectly acceptable for affairs to go in quite different directions. Whatever happens, that is the story.

 

[Ariosto]

Scribble: You seem rather arbitrarily to have dismissed the widely accepted meanings of the terms in this context. That suggests the question:

How do you define them?

What do you consider the difference between an "adventure" and a "situation" in this regard?

A semantic quibble does not seem likely to me to further the discussion of referents at hand, but I am prepared to be enlightened.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't mind either one, and think that each has its place.

For example, I think that it is a bad idea to start a campaign using a pure 'situation' rather than an 'adventure'. I think when player's are new to the setting, you want to grab them with an easy to follow hook and get them immediately into action either with a heavily scripted event or a hook that gets them into a small dungeon or both. This builds excitement for the players and it gets the characters and players involved.

But you don't want to spend 100% of the time dragging the players around with a hook. Over time I think you need to put the players more and more in charge of deciding what happens next and where they want to go from here. To do that you need a sandbox for them to play in. Eventually, as the players become connected to the setting, the players are effectively scripting most the adventures, and you are just filling in the details. There still might be times when you want to throw a story at them for one reason or another, and the campaign will run on rails for a while, but as the character's level up that becomes less and less interesting compared to the story that proceeds from the character's deeds thus far.

 

[The Ghost]

Irda I mostly agree with you, but not entirely... It just sounds at this point like some people want to say situational vrs adventure is a "thing" so they can say other people are wrong in yet another fashion...

Part of human nature is to take complex ideas and place them in neat little phrases to make them easier to understand. It is not so much an issue of right or wrong - I tried to head off in my initial post in this thread. The discussion in this thread and the one it was forked from is clarifying the complexities of DnD so that we better understand how we do things. I happen to find these two discussions quite interesting, they are forcing me to examine how I go about playing the game and discovering what aspects of the game I enjoy.

 

[FireLance]

Not trying to be snarky here, but as soon as the DM tells the PCs about a "situation", doesn't it become an "adventure"?

Is the key difference the number of options that the players have when deciding what to do? In other words, if the players ask the DM if they have heard any interesting rumors, and the DM tells them of a mansion that might be haunted, a cave that is said to be infested by goblins, and and old ruin where a treasure is supposed to be buried, these are "situations", but if the DM only mentions the haunted mansion, it becomes an "adventure"?

Or is the key difference whether the players take the initiative to find out about adventure sites, or whether the DM actively presents them to the players? In other words, if the players ask the DM for rumors and he tells them about the haunted mansion, the goblin caves and the old ruin, he is presenting them with three "situations", but if the DM starts the session by telling the players that they are approached by three people: a woman whose boys are lost in the haunted mansion, a farmer whose farm has been raided by goblins, and a noble who wants to fund an expedition into the old ruin, he is presenting them with three "adventures"?

 

[Cadfan]

I think the difference is mostly semantics. Mostly. Because a lot of people who claim to run "situations" really don't, and because a lot of people who are labeled as running "adventures" really aren't.

The "situations" that aren't generally go like this: "There's an evil necromancer over there. You can raid him if you want. Or not. Its totally up to you." And then two sessions later, "Undead hordes are burning down your town. If you don't like that then I guess you should have raided the necromancer. Aren't you glad that I've made your decisions meaningful by providing in game consequences? What? How is this different from railroading? Its too obvious for me to explain to the likes of you."

The "adventures" that aren't generally go like this: "The king wants to hire you to raid the necromancer. Oh, you don't want to? You want to go become pirates instead? I... I guess... alright, you are pirates now. What do you do?"

Though for the record I tend to run unashamed "adventures" by the definitions used in this thread. But I don't think it makes a difference if you really think about what's important and about how I do things.

I tell the players up front what I'm considering running, ask their opinions, give them a synopsis, and THEN we create characters and start the game. The "freedom to choose what you will" is the player's right, not the character's. I generally find that this leads to more cohesive groups, plots, and games.

 

[Ydars]

Not trying to be snarky here, but as soon as the DM tells the PCs about a "situation", doesn't it become an "adventure"?

No it doesn't: a situation only becomes an adventure when the Players choose to explore it. Otherwise, it remains as just a situation. The key thing is choice (and NO, I don't mean the illusion of choice).

The point is this: if you prepare everything ahead of time, to create an adventure, then you, as a DM, are heavily invested in making things happen in a certain way because otherwise your prep work is wasted.

Many people claim this is not the case, but I can only say that the more I prepare, the more I railroad unconsciously, and this happens no matter how hard I try to resist the temptation. But I don't think that adventures are therefore badfunwrong: at certain times and for some groups, running along the rails for a while is fine as too many choices all the time can become confusing and annoying.

I like both "adventures" and "situations" as different approaches that should both be used at different times during the same campaign. As long as neither goes on for too long, then both have their role to play (pun intended ).