Adventure Structure

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Over in the Mike Mearls Miniatures thread, MerricB observed:

Honestly, it's far more a problem with the adventures that Dungeon & Wizards are presenting than with the structure of D&D 4E as a whole. Last Sunday, I ran a session of E1: Death's Reach where we had the following encounter types:

* Combat
* Role-playing
* Skill Challenge
* Combat
* Roleplaying/Skill Challenge
* Combat

That was awesome variety, and the players and I really enjoyed it. However, too many adventures have this structure:

* Fight
* Fight
* Fight
* Fight

(Apparently, we're not playing D&D, we're playing the Itchy and Scratchy RPG).

I agree with MerricB that the first style of adventure structure he presents is superior to the second. But I submit that this style of design is superior to either:

* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)
* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)
* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)
* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)

I think this is a problem with many modern adventures -- they are designed with a particular method of solution to a given obstacle (=encounter). Back in the days when you entered a cave to hear a goblin yell "Bree Yark!", combat may have been the default option but there was nothing inherent in the adventure design that wouldn't allow alternative methods to handle the obstacle (assuming a competent DM, of course).

What do you think? Are the days of truly flexible adventure/encounter design over?

 

[howandwhy99]

What do you think? Are the days of truly flexible adventure/encounter design over?

In regards to 4E and other games, which are based upon an episodic or encounter-based paradigm, your design offers more options.

I think the trick is in framing a specific unit of the game. Maybe 1. Present the scene. 2. Players initiate their actions. 3. The player actions denote the game mechanics used to resolve it.

I haven't read many recent modules, but I do remember reading a few when the game came out which included skill challenges in the combat encounters.

Maybe each particular encounter could be written multiple resolution means? And then some way to weave them together in case some players start the combat system, some the skill system, and others some other system?

 

[Janx]

Its been my sense that a gm ought to be prepared for the following basic responses to an encounter:
Talk
Fight
Sneak
Runaway/avoid
Trick

 

[onedtwelve]

It's been my experience that the best way to prepare for all possible outcomes of any single encounter is to understand how the situation relates to your world so that when the players do something you don't expect (they will always do something you don't expect, no matter how much you prepare) you can handle the outcome. You already know how the situation currently affects the world so whatever happens whenever the players are introduced to it will affect the world accordingly.

What I'm trying to say is the possible outcomes are not as important as how your encounters affect the world around them. The less you prepare, the more ready you'll be to face whatever happens.

 

[Lord Zack]

It's hardly a new idea. In many early campaigns, fighting everything could lead to a quick death. It would often be better to trick, avoid, or negotiate with a monster rather than fight it, especially since you get more xp for finding treasure than for killing monsters. This is the way I prefer to play now as well.

 

[Hautamaki]

It's been my experience that the best way to prepare for all possible outcomes of any single encounter is to understand how the situation relates to your world so that when the players do something you don't expect (they will always do something you don't expect, no matter how much you prepare) you can handle the outcome. You already know how the situation currently affects the world so whatever happens whenever the players are introduced to it will affect the world accordingly.

What I'm trying to say is the possible outcomes are not as important as how your encounters affect the world around them. The less you prepare, the more ready you'll be to face whatever happens.

Yes, agreed with this philosophy completely. When I'm designing a typical adventure/campaign, generally I start with the overall setting/situation, insert one or more villains with specific goals and plans to achieve them which will be accomplished if the PCs do not act appropriately. Then the PCs arrive, are presented with clues as to the identity or plans of the villain(s), and adventure hooks mainly take the form of ways for the PCs to discover/thwart the villains plans. After a few of these sub-adventures, the PCs should be ready to tackle the main villain.

The key here is that the villain is an intelligent entity who will adjust their plans depending on what the PCs do. And if the PCs don't do as I expect them to do, it's easier to adjust in this context because the next sub-adventure grows organically out of the goals and abilities of the villain. It's also easier to avoid a sense of railroading your PCs in this kind of paradigm because different but equally valid options can be presented to the PCs which both lead towards the same overall goal of thwarting the villain. For example, in my current campaign the PCs started out by rescuing a village's children from a small goblin tribe intent on using them in some sort of dark ritual. The next stage of the adventure presented them with 3 options; they could try to discover what became of the province's missing army; they could head to the main city for the upcoming 2 week fair/festival (and uncover the villain's plots to insert a puppet in the leadership council) or they could directly investigate their main suspect by sneaking around the villain's keep looking for evidence of villainy.

This gave them 3 different adventure-types; an overland adventure (I had inserted a short dungeon crawl aside into this adventure too though of course they wouldn't know that beforehand), a stealth/sneaking mission, and a city intrigue mission.

The players wound up going with the overland adventure first, where they have discovered the army is walking into an ambush, and themselves are in the process of trying to break through the pickets and return to the main city to warn them of an incoming monstrous invasion. If they had gone to the city first, the incoming monstrous invasion would have come as a surprise to the city, and in the confusion greater heroism and cleverness would have been necessary on the part of the PCs to thwart the invasion. Or perhaps they would be unable to do so and would have to flee the entire province to get reinforcements from a neighbouring province. If the PCs had investigated the villain's keep first, it could go any number of ways. The PCs might not discover anything suspicious at all and nothing much would change. The PCs might be caught and imprisoned by the villain, in which case they would have to escape somehow. The PCs might simply confront the villain in which case he would attempt to throw them off his trail and hire them to defeat his main rival who he would accuse of being the real villain, in an interesting role-play scenario. The players could then take that in any number of directions, though they probably at this point would not last long against the main villain in a straight fight so they'd be best off pretending to accept his offer and then betraying him later.

In any case, my point is that by far the best way to design an adventure campaign imo is to create a villain with a nefarious plot and cast the PCs as the Scooby Doo kids 'And I would have gotten away with it too if weren't for these meddling kids!!!!' and let them decide for themselves from a number of equally valid options how they go about thwarting the villain. From there, you'd simply design a series of encounters/sub-adventures of different types (dungeon crawl, stealth, city intrigue, overland, in my campaign) that most likely the players will make use of, but design them in such a way that the difficulty can be easily scaled for the PCs depending on what order they tackle these adventures.

 

[Azgulor]

What do you think? Are the days of truly flexible adventure/encounter design over?

Apparently, only if you're buying WotC adventures - or at least, adventures that follow the "standard" 4e design philosophy.

I haven't observed this phenomena with other publishers.

My most recent examples come from the Paizo stable, but Kingmaker - and later installments of Serpent's Skull, allowed for very open-ended approaches to encounter resolution. In their module line, Masks of the Living God, which proposes an undercover investigation, recognizes that not all players will enjoy or pursue such an option and provides advice for running the investigation via stealthy intrusion and straight up fighting.

Can a publisher cover every option? Of course not. However, a publisher should know better than to limit an encounter to a single approach to resolution.

 

[jasonzavoda]

Over in the Mike Mearls Miniatures thread, MerricB observed:



I agree with MerricB that the first style of adventure structure he presents is superior to the second. But I submit that this style of design is superior to either:

* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)
* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)
* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)
* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)

I think this is a problem with many modern adventures -- they are designed with a particular method of solution to a given obstacle (=encounter). Back in the days when you entered a cave to hear a goblin yell "Bree Yark!", combat may have been the default option but there was nothing inherent in the adventure design that wouldn't allow alternative methods to handle the obstacle (assuming a competent DM, of course).

What do you think? Are the days of truly flexible adventure/encounter design over?

The days of flexable adventure/encounter design are still, and have always been, resting in the hands of the DM regardless of the game system or scenario.

The DM must also judge what interests his players. Is it less talk, more fight or do the players enjoy expanding on the roles of their characters? Does the DM have a skill for puzzles, story-telling, intricate plots and detailed NPCs, and do the players have a stomach for such things?

So, an adventure can present obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, but from my experience a common player solution is fight, fight, fight. In writing and publishing an adventure with limited size in pages, easiest to cover the fighting portions of the obstacles and let the DM sort out whether these obstacles can be bypassed, used skills on or roleplayed through, rather than hacked down and looted.

All published adventures are dry paper and ink seeped into a page until a DM brings them to life with his own words and imagination. The best the creator of the adventure can do is provide the DM with structure, bones, a skeleton, for the DM to animate and flesh out as he sees fit. The shape of these bones, the look of the skeleton, polished ivory, yellowed, decayed and gnawed, human, monstrous or otherworldly thing, are the small touches that add character to an adventure, but do not and cannot make it live.

No, I have not found an easy formula for adventure design only some designers with a better touch at constructing bones than others.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I think that sometimes skill challenges just get in the way.
I ran a Living Forgotten Realms (LFR) game last night where the format was

Awesome Role-play
fight
fight - awesome fight
fight - awesome fight
roleplay
fight - climax fight

It was better than many LFR adventures I had played, skill rolls were limited to single checks. Lengthy skill challenges are common in LFR, but depend heavily on PCs, DM and writer all being on the ball. They also suffer from the party being forced into a pragmatic choice, so the adventure can finish in time.

The role playing at the beginning of my session was a blast! It involved no meaningful choices, but gave each character a chance to shine, showing off what sort of person they were, and defining their place in the world. This is very important to a pick up or one shot game where the characters and players are new to each other.
(most of this was on the fly as an alternative to the wall of text into provided)

 

[the Jester]

But I submit that this style of design is superior to either:

* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)
* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)
* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)
* Obstacle (can be overcome by fighting, skill use, roleplaying, or bypassed)

I think this is a problem with many modern adventures -- they are designed with a particular method of solution to a given obstacle (=encounter). Back in the days when you entered a cave to hear a goblin yell "Bree Yark!", combat may have been the default option but there was nothing inherent in the adventure design that wouldn't allow alternative methods to handle the obstacle (assuming a competent DM, of course).

What do you think? Are the days of truly flexible adventure/encounter design over?

I agree with your posit about each obstacle having many options for overcoming it.

I'll also agree that a lot of WotC adventures (and those in Dungeon) have been pure turds on rails.

However, there are exceptions. P2 is a great one, for instance; the encounters are more or less detailed for combat, but the potential for politicking is HUGE.

Mostly though, the use of the "delve format" has pushed adventures into this weird place where each encounter feels disconnected from the rest. Heck, most of the plot notes are in a separate book from the encounters! Also, the increasing reliance on Dungeon Tiles has done a lot to take away the sense that each dungeon or adventure is unique. "Hey, didn't we fight orcs in this same room last level?" "No, that was in the Tower of Dead Bats, you're in the Crypt of Unliving Smells." "But the room is the same, with the same crystals growing from the floor and the same magic circle!"