8 page Adventures

[Stormonu]

While doing a little fact-finding for another thread, I happened to pull out my Silver Anniversary set and decided to look through the G1-G3 modules it had.

I got quite a shock. Though I'd looked through the modules many, many times before, I'd completely forgotten that they were about 8 pages long each (not including the map covers), with G3 being 16 pages.

At first, I thought it was a fluke. Then I noticed that S1 - White Plume Mountain was 8 pages as well...so I got looking only to notice that those old 1E modules were a lot shorter than I had remembered. Even B2 - Keep on the Borderlands; which included the caves, wilderness and castellan keep, racked in about 18 pages if you didn't include the "welcome to DMing" material.

And they were complete.

Now, while I'll certainly agree that modern modules look nice and in many ways they have matured (in the sense of writing skill/development, not necessarily in "theme"), they've certainly grown in bulk, being overstuffed with room-by-room renderings and full stats blocks.

I can't help but wonder, these days, if such slim volumes as those of yesteryear could survive in today's market. Do you believe that modern modules have gone too far with the mechanical content they contain? Do you believe the "everything at your fingertip" model (with full statblocks and delve-format maps) is the best way to go? Or perhaps some middle ground?

 

[Festivus]

While doing a little fact-finding for another thread, I happened to pull out my Silver Anniversary set and decided to look through the G1-G3 modules it had.

I got quite a shock. Though I'd looked through the modules many, many times before, I'd completely forgotten that they were about 8 pages long each (not including the map covers), with G3 being 16 pages.

At first, I thought it was a fluke. Then I noticed that S1 - White Plume Mountain was 8 pages as well...so I got looking only to notice that those old 1E modules were a lot shorter than I had remembered. Even B2 - Keep on the Borderlands; which included the caves, wilderness and castellan keep, racked in about 18 pages if you didn't include the "welcome to DMing" material.

And they were complete.

Complete... with cryptic stat blocks (although once used to them they were good to go) and almost no descriptions of the areas (much of it left up to the DM). Also, while the adventure was only 8 pages, I would have my Dungeon Masters Guide, Monster Manual, Players Handbook and a myriad of other books at my side.

I honestly prefer today's 4th edition encounters format, with everything I need printed on two pages for combat. No looking up stuff in any books while running the adventures. Even with 3.5 / Pathfinder, I find I still need to have some books at the table (though not all of them thanks to larger stat blocks).

Now, while I'll certainly agree that modern modules look nice and in many ways they have matured (in the sense of writing skill/development, not necessarily in "theme"), they've certainly grown in bulk, being overstuffed with room-by-room renderings and full stats blocks.

I can't help but wonder, these days, if such slim volumes as those of yesteryear could survive in today's market. Do you believe that modern modules have gone too far with the mechanical content they contain? Do you believe the "everything at your fingertip" model (with full statblocks and delve-format maps) is the best way to go? Or perhaps some middle ground?

I think that SOME do. Heck, I was just looking at an adventure the other night that had almost a full page of "boxed" text for the DM to read or paraphrase. What I prefer is the stat blocks I need, any terrain features, and any things else important to the encounter to be on a page (or facing pages), and a short summary in the front of the adventure. The current Encounters program adventures look a lot like that style, and are only 20 or so pages and 16 hours of gaming.

 

[teach]

I was thinking about this as well, but from silghtly different perspective. I never really got into the 1E stuff, but read the 2e campaign setting adventures like they were candy. I was reading a 4E adventure the other day, and I found my mind wandering after reading the first 3 or so pages of background stuff. At the table, the delve format is spectacular. It's incredibly easy to run an encounter, because everything is right there. However, it's not great reading all the time. I remember loving reading the 2e adventures, but honestly, I have no idea how they played out at the table, because I only ever read them, I never DMed them.

I wonder if, as the 4e DDI tools become more and more powerful, rather than actually putting all the stats and everything in the page, they just linked to the DDI compendium stats of the character. Maybe that wouldn't break up the storyline of an adventure as much?

I do miss those short adventures, because it meant when you bought Dungeon, you got 6 to 8 adventures, rather than the 3 or 4 you get now.

 

[Jhaelen]

I can't help but wonder, these days, if such slim volumes as those of yesteryear could survive in today's market.

Well, Hammerfast was a brilliant product with a low page count that show how much you can do within a limited amount of space. It also shows what the format is good for: Describing an adventure site full of npcs, motivations and adventure hooks.

I don't think it's a good format for an actual adventure module, though. For adventure modules I prefer detailed descriptions of encounter areas and opponents.

 

[IronWolf]

For me a lot depends on what I am looking for in an adventure at the moment. I am currently running an AP, in this I appreciate the in-depthness of it. The full stat blocks, the combat actions, to a degree the motivations of various critters and NPCs and most of the storywork complete with some loose ends for me to look at.

Now on occasion I want to drop something in to add a little more depth to one area or to fit a possible idea. If I turn to published adventures then a little more barebones is a good here as I find them easier to drop in if they aren't overly detailed. Tweak a thing here or there and it just seems easier to do with a less detailed adventure.

So I see a place for both styles - it really just depends which niche I am trying to fill.

 

[Stormonu]

Complete... with cryptic stat blocks (although once used to them they were good to go) and almost no descriptions of the areas (much of it left up to the DM). Also, while the adventure was only 8 pages, I would have my Dungeon Masters Guide, Monster Manual, Players Handbook and a myriad of other books at my side.

Actually G1-G3 didn't even have the stat blocks, just the hit points! As for room descriptions, the ones in G1 seemed adequate...anything specific you can point out missing in those old descriptions?

Examples

[sblock]
UPPER WORKS GENERAL: The map shows the huge timber stronghold of the local clan of hill giants. All outer walls are of logs of at least 3' diameter. Inner walls dividing rooms and the like are about 2' thick, and doors are great iron-bound log affairs of 1' thickness—single doors being approximately 7' wide and 6' high.
All inside floors are of stone. Ceiling height varies from about 16' at the edges to 32' at the center, and there are great blackened rafters above which hold up the roof. The Steading is in a nasty damp area, where hard rain is a daily occurrence and wet fogs a nightly event. All wood in the place is very damp.

HALL OF THE SUB-CHIEF ENTRY
Numerous interesting things fill this place. There are 2 tables, 5 chairs, 2 stools, and rugs, hides and skins on the floors and walls. The tables have pottery flagons and platters on them, and pots and kegs are all about the place. There are torphies on the walls: heads (dwarven, human, and various animals and monsters), skulls, skins, and some arms and armor. Directly across from the fireplace are 8 shields, one of which is +3 magical (but only a detect magic spell will reveal it as such). There is a brass jar on the mantle of the fireplace, but it has no value. A skull there is also valueless, but inside is a large gem worth 2,000 g.p. — one of the kids was
playing with it and stuffed it inside the skull and it has been forgotten.
[/sblock]

Does anyone know what adventure had the first boxed text descriptions?

Finally, I guess I'm just old. Having the stat blocks handy certainly is nice, but I don't have a problem with having the MM open next to me (or bookmarked) to know the monster's capabilities, especially when a stat block would fill 1/2 a page or more (and it's a standard block, not something custom). Reading mechanics have always made my eyes glaze over, from character creation to reading adventures.

Heck, the old stat blocks (AC: 6, HD: 1+1; hp: 5,6,3; THAC0: 19; #Att: 1; Dam: 1d8+3; SA: infravision 60'; SD: nil; Align: CE; ML: 12; XP: 35) were fine for me. I'd just tend to gloss over them until I actually needed them in the game. The stat blocks don't seem any less cryptic these days to me than back in my AD&D days - if you know the game, you know what the abbreviations mean, and if you don't know the game you don't know what all that nonsense is for.

 

[prosfilaes]

Stormonu, your examples strike me as ready for improvement, certainly. For HALL OF THE SUB-CHIEF ENTRY, I'd like a description I could read to players without revealing all the magic junk in the room. It can sometimes be hard to create that on the fly. As long as we're greyhawking the place, what arms and armor are on the wall can be essential to know. Having just watched The Magic Sword,* I remember vividly that shields can carry a lot of insignia that carry a lot of meaning, but the eight shields are featureless and indistinguishable here. A large brass jar certainly does have value; PHB 3.0 calls a ten lb iron pot 5 sp, so anywhere from 3 sp to 2 gp depending on size? Lastly, "one of the kids was playing with it and stuffed it inside the skull and it has been forgotten." seems like a completely extraneous detail. I can understand why he would say that DM to DM, but it will never have any effect on the game.

UPPER WORKS GENERAL is missing...almost everything? There's no descriptions suitable for reading to players. The numbers are hopelessly exact; humans can't judge 15 feet just like that. (For one example, Michelangelo's David is almost 17 feet tall, but a height of 14 feet was believed by almost everyone until he was scanned into a computer and the rig was too short.) All the dimensions seem designed for a party who is going to try to cut through the walls or bash down the doors, so why not any concrete information about how hard that's going to be or how long it will take?

* I do hope that citing this Bert I. Gordon "masterpiece" doesn't get me kicked from the forums.

 

[Beginning of the End]

For HALL OF THE SUB-CHIEF ENTRY, I'd like a description I could read to players without revealing all the magic junk in the room.

While I agree that the format could certainly be better organized, there is a huge difference between "there's no boxed text prepped for reading to the players" (which is what you're saying) and "there is no description all" (which is the claim Stormanu was countering).

Frankly, I feel the Delve format is overgrown like a tumor. There is a sweet spot between 1E's "sift this big block o' text on the fly" and Delve's "I wanna hold your hand" bloat. IMO, that sweet spot consists of taking 1E's informational content and giving it a better organizational structure.

I want (a) boxed text for the PCs; (b) a brief bullet point list of other features of the area; and... Actually, that's pretty much it. Maybe a short list of "this would be nifty" tactical ideas if you're feeling fancy (not round-by-round tactics that become irrelevant as soon as the PCs do something unexpected; which is to say that the PCs do anything at all).

 

[Festivus]

Now I am in the mood to look at some of my old adventures. I don't recall them being as short at the OP stated, but then I was young... and far more imaginative. For me, the most important things in an adventure are a) the plot, and b) what information is there that I can convey to the players about the current situation.

The encounter stat block thing is essential for me when running combats, but when I am not, I am often found at the front of the adventure book, or just reading my notes and asking players what they want to do next. I really don't think there is anything wrong with those bloated combat sections, particularly for newer DMs, and I also suspect that a lot of those 8 pages can be found in the adventures that exist today.

 

[Aurumvorax]

The adventures were smaller because

A) The stat blocks didn't take up the entire page. You didn't need to know a monster's umpteen power or special ability to run them. In fact, by the time this sentence ends, the paragraph I just typed up could contain the entire abilities of the most powerful monsters.

B) 4e prints a large map followed by smaller room-by-room maps because battle grids are so much more important. You need to know the exact number of squares are in an area, what traps are there, how the traps will interact with the player, etc.

C) A good deal of information is filled in by the DM. B2 had a page full of possible wilderness adventures and the dungeon's denizens would take their treasure and run, restock, or even be overrun by neighboring monsters! It wasn't unreasonable to assume that the kobold compound would get taken over by the orcs if the players significantly weakened them. AD&D was more sandbox-y and you were encouraged to constantly refresh the dungeon to keep the players on their toes.

D) The text is smaller. 4e's text is huge compared to the old modules.

Don't say there was a lack of information because this is wrong. Lets not forget that the main portion of Hommlet was stated out in its entirety complete with people who live their, the treasure they keep, and their basic mannerisms. Old edition module writers would go into detail about what the monsters would do in certain situations. For example, if the PCs screwed with the giants enough in G1 they would either tail the PCs back to their secret camp and launch hit-and-run attacks of their own or they would trap their stronghold and straight up leave, reinforcing the next dungeon in the module's line.

Also, saying these older adventures were short is wrong. Clearing out the Caves of Chaos took my group a month from levels 1 to 4 and we played three times a week after school for 4 to 6 hours.

4e modules have so much material and formatting restrictions that it instantly bloats the material. If you take out all the stat blocks and simply say "Turn to MM Page # Whatever" then you'll be surprised to find that even 4e's adventures are short.