D&D General Orcs on Stairs (When Adventures Are Incomplete)

[Retreater]

This is springing from a lively disagreement I'm having in the Rime of the Frostmaiden Post-Mortem regarding a "really big deal" (no spoilers) that the module doesn't elaborate upon in any way that can seriously change the focus of the campaign.
It brings to mind a recent conversation I was having with a friend while driving 6 hours to GaryCon. He was telling me about a bad adventure with a poorly constructed encounter, which I'll refer to as "Orcs on Stairs." This encounter had an element that could end the campaign (or at the very least, many characters' lives) with next to no detail. So an "Orcs on Stairs" will be a stand-in for "incomplete details."
In his case, he was a new DM who was starting in the era of 4E. He didn't remember the name of the adventure, and some details may be wrong, but you'll get the idea.
The characters are climbing stairs on the side of an impossibly tall tower (or mountain pass, whatever). The orcs have crossbows that are built with enough force to push characters off the ledge.
The adventure clearly states that the stairs are "probably tall enough that falling would likely be fatal." But it doesn't give the distance. It doesn't give what the falling damage would be. What do you do? I guess a new DM like my friend is to shrug their shoulders and say "I guess you fall off and die?"
There are gaps in published adventures that any halfway decent writer should pick up. Like obviously when you are dealing with an encounter where falling is important and you have creatures designed to push characters off a narrow walkway, you need to give information about height. If you refer to rules about catching yourself, falling damage, etc., that's bonus. But you at least have to provide the height.
So in the case of "Rime" we see that the writers completely negate an important component of the plot, something that no good aligned party will be able to pass up. Something that is set up like a mystery with no follow-up information.
What are some other examples of Orcs on Stairs you've seen?

 

[Urriak Uruk]

This is springing from a lively disagreement I'm having in the Rime of the Frostmaiden Post-Mortem regarding a "really big deal" (no spoilers) that the module doesn't elaborate upon in any way that can seriously change the focus of the campaign.
It brings to mind a recent conversation I was having with a friend while driving 6 hours to GaryCon. He was telling me about a bad adventure with a poorly constructed encounter, which I'll refer to as "Orcs on Stairs." This encounter had an element that could end the campaign (or at the very least, many characters' lives) with next to no detail. So an "Orcs on Stairs" will be a stand-in for "incomplete details."
In his case, he was a new DM who was starting in the era of 4E. He didn't remember the name of the adventure, and some details may be wrong, but you'll get the idea.
The characters are climbing stairs on the side of an impossibly tall tower (or mountain pass, whatever). The orcs have crossbows that are built with enough force to push characters off the ledge.
The adventure clearly states that the stairs are "probably tall enough that falling would likely be fatal." But it doesn't give the distance. It doesn't give what the falling damage would be. What do you do? I guess a new DM like my friend is to shrug their shoulders and say "I guess you fall off and die?"
There are gaps in published adventures that any halfway decent writer should pick up. Like obviously when you are dealing with an encounter where falling is important and you have creatures designed to push characters off a narrow walkway, you need to give information about height. If you refer to rules about catching yourself, falling damage, etc., that's bonus. But you at least have to provide the height.
So in the case of "Rime" we see that the writers completely negate an important component of the plot, something that no good aligned party will be able to pass up. Something that is set up like a mystery with no follow-up information.
What are some other examples of Orcs on Stairs you've seen?

Sometimes an adventure being incomplete is helpful. In the Orcs on Stairs example, it gives you the freedom to set whatever height you want. So if you think this fight is unfair, you can set the height to be lower so that players can survive the fall. If you want PC death a possibility, set it so falling will kill.

In Rime I don't know what you're referring to so won't comment.

I guess a good example of "incomplete" for me is Dragon Heist, which doesn't give a lot of info on what to do if the PCs get the macguffin early, which is a real possibility.

 

[pukunui]

I guess a good example of "incomplete" for me is Dragon Heist, which doesn't give a lot of info on what to do if the PCs get the macguffin early, which is a real possibility.

Dragon Heist has a whole sidebar explaining what to do if the PCs get the macguffin early: The macguffin refuses to let the PCs attune to it because they haven't "earned" the right to do so yet. Instead, the macguffin keeps trying to take over the PCs' minds. Once it succeeds, it forces them to get rid of it, then makes them forget that they ever had it, so that they have no choice but to stay on the plot train and do the Benny Hill chase sequence in order to "earn" the right to attune to the macguffin. The DM is also supposed to tell the players to roleplay their PCs' memory loss.

 

[Medic]

I'm not going to smugly recline in my chair and pretend that most published adventures are winners. In fact, I would go as far as to say that there is a figurative ocean of milquetoast junk that has gradually gotten deeper over the decades. This "Orcs on Stairs" phenomenon happens for a multitude of reasons, but if I had to pinpoint the primary cause, I would assert that it happens because many modules are designed to be read and enjoyed, not actually run by a DM. I could elaborate and excavate some evidence eventually, though I'm a bit predisposed at the moment.

Sometimes an adventure being incomplete is helpful. In the Orcs on Stairs example, it gives you the freedom to set whatever height you want. So if you think this fight is unfair, you can set the height to be lower so that players can survive the fall. If you want PC death a possibility, set it so falling will kill.

In Rime I don't know what you're referring to so won't comment.

I guess a good example of "incomplete" for me is Dragon Heist, which doesn't give a lot of info on what to do if the PCs get the macguffin early, which is a real possibility.

Well, that's the thing. If I paid money for a module, I'd like those details laid out for me beforehand, or at least provide flavor text that conveys key information without the need to use precise measurements. "The Lich's Doom Spire extends into the thin air of the chilly stratosphere" informs me that anyone who falls off is going splat unless they have Feather Fall prepared. Otherwise, why shouldn't I just make my own adventure for free when I'd have to spend the time to fill in the gaps either way?

 

[Unwise]

At this point sinking the boot into Horde of the Dragon Queen is probably passe'. What I did notice from an earlier reading of that was a complete lack of "why?". We are told what the villians are doing, but we have no idea why they are running around in circles. There seemed to be a lot of off-ramps in the adventure where PCs might decide they are done with it, it did not supply many "whys" as to their motivations.

The worst example I can think of for an adventure was in the Tomb of Annihilation where it just assumes that the PCs start the adventure by purposely getting captured to infiltrate a base. The adventure makes not allowance for any other way in, or give any indications that getting captured would be anything but suicide. (Or was the a ToA themed adventurer's league module?)

 

[jgsugden]

Every adventure path, module, one shot, etc... is incredibly incomplete. Players and their characters have agency and and can decide to do anything - and I have yet to see any product that covers all possible things PCs might do.

Even when the materials do a better than average job, DMs will modify the bones, or fail to catch every little detail, and the good tools written into the materials may go unused.

I've run LMoP a few times. I've played it a few times. Those first caves - I've seen them play out a bunch of different ways. Some of them were pretty 'out of the box', but I've also seen the PCs chased down the road, the PCs led into an ambush, PCs kidnapped and dragged 'elsewhere' ...

 

[JThursby]

Hoard of the Dragon Queen comes to mind, specifically the part with riding wyverns. You pass an animal handling check and get to participate in the next part of the adventure or you fail and don't.

 

[Retreater]

The worst example I can think of for an adventure was in the Tomb of Annihilation where it just assumes that the PCs start the adventure by purposely getting captured to infiltrate a base. The adventure makes not allowance for any other way in, or give any indications that getting captured would be anything but suicide. (Or was the a ToA themed adventurer's league module?)

Regarding ToA...

Spoiler

If you're thinking about ToA proper ... you might be remembering the Yuan-Ti's Fane of the Night Serpent section. I think it suggests getting taken in as prisoners as the Yuan-Ti are looking for sacrifices for their ritual. My group handled that by sneaking in and playing the factions against each other.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In his case, he was a new DM who was starting in the era of 4E. He didn't remember the name of the adventure, and some details may be wrong, but you'll get the idea.
The characters are climbing stairs on the side of an impossibly tall tower (or mountain pass, whatever). The orcs have crossbows that are built with enough force to push characters off the ledge.
The adventure clearly states that the stairs are "probably tall enough that falling would likely be fatal." But it doesn't give the distance. It doesn't give what the falling damage would be. What do you do? I guess a new DM like my friend is to shrug their shoulders and say "I guess you fall off and die?"
There are gaps in published adventures that any halfway decent writer should pick up. Like obviously when you are dealing with an encounter where falling is important and you have creatures designed to push characters off a narrow walkway, you need to give information about height. If you refer to rules about catching yourself, falling damage, etc., that's bonus. But you at least have to provide the height.

Honestly I don't understand the problem. The tower's/mountain's exact height is not relevant for any plot points other than whether falling off it can kill the PCs. The PCs will know before they even attempt the climb whether a fall is likely to be fatal (it doesn't take a rocket scientist to estimate that sort of thing), and the exact numbers will be irrelevant for most characters--it doesn't matter whether it's 500 feet or 5000 feet, that's death for essentially all characters (even a level 30, Con 30 Warden--the beefiest "baseline" character in 4e, before feats and such--has only an 11.4% chance of surviving a 500-foot fall. Any character less hardy than that and it's essentially guaranteed death...so why does it matter what the precise number is?

This sounds, to me, like one of the fundamental ideas behind what Dungeon World calls "Draw Maps, Leave Blanks." That is, you know enough about the mountain(/tower) to know what it can do, in this context. You leave blank things that don't need to be specified until such time that they do need to be specified. For example, if the player characters tried to climb the outside of the tower, rather than the stairs--maybe hoping to go unseen by the orc crossbowmen--then the actual height of the tower would matter because that's how far you have to climb up. Knowing the exact elevations in the given example, however.....doesn't seem to add anything useful in context. Unless I'm hugely missing something? I just don't get why these numbers matter so much to you. "This fall is almost certainly deadly" is sufficient.

So in the case of "Rime" we see that the writers completely negate an important component of the plot, something that no good aligned party will be able to pass up. Something that is set up like a mystery with no follow-up information.
What are some other examples of Orcs on Stairs you've seen?

Not knowing what the plot point is, and finding the "Orcs on Stairs" example to be a request for detail that sounds unnecessary to my ear, I cannot actually give any real response here.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Dragon Heist has a whole sidebar explaining what to do if the PCs get the macguffin early: The macguffin refuses to let the PCs attune to it because they haven't "earned" the right to do so yet. Instead, the macguffin keeps trying to take over the PCs' minds. Once it succeeds, it forces them to get rid of it, then makes them forget that they ever had it, so that they have no choice but to stay on the plot train and do the Benny Hill chase sequence in order to "earn" the right to attune to the macguffin. The DM is also supposed to tell the players to roleplay their PCs' memory loss.

Yep, this comment does sum up the worst parts of Dragon Heist. And I actually like that module!