A different model of adventure writing?

[Pielorinho]

So I decided to be done with the snipefest in the 1E vs. 3E thread, and I read an interesting article referenced in that thread (and linked to here). And I got to thinking about my ideal adventure structure.

SPOILERS FOR SPEAKER IN DREAMS AHEAD (scroll down past the second set of colons to avoid the spoilers)
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As a DM, I dislike location-based adventures: most of the ones I've looked at just don't seem plausible to me, or else require so much work on my part to achieve plausibility that I'd have been better off starting from scratch. And frankly, if I'm buying an adventure, it's because I don't want to do all the work myself.

I purchased Speaker in Dreams because it's a plot-based adventure: it contains a flowchart showing the events in the order it happens. Here's an adventure likely to be plausible, I thought, and likely to have a strong story!

Naive Daniel. Poor naive Daniel.

Beyond the tremendous plausibility problems (the city of 4,000 people is nearly 1% evil monsters and cultists, but nobody notices; the town guard finds a body drained of blood and covered in bite marks in a book store, and the people there are suspicious, and the town guard doesn't investigate further; the bad guy can telepathically communicate with PCs in their dreams, but rather than using it to suggest that they kill one another or something equally useful, he puts himself at great personal risk to give them a little thrill chill), it either assumes a mass series of coincidences or else it assumes that deadly events are completely rampant in the streets.

Most of the encounters are waiting for the PCs to show up. Grimlocks attack a theater right as the PCs arrive. The bad guys hang out in the temple until the PCs arrive. The ubervillain remains in the mansion, useless, until the PCs arrive.

So I've spent many, many hours puzzling over the adventure until I could figure out how to make it make sense to me. Figuring out what the supergenius villain should be doing. Figuring out how the bad guys will launch effective (and cinematic) attacks against the PCs. This is work that I thought I was paying someone else to do for me; other than figuring out the stats for the villains, and drawing a few maps, I feel like I paid $10 for just about nothing.
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END SPOILERS

So, site-based adventures leave me cold, and my experience with a semi-plot based adventure didn't do much for me. What's left?

I'm thinking of a default-failure adventure structure.

Such an adventure would detail a bad guy and a plan. It would give a timeline for the plan, like so:

Day 1: Bad guy ambushes guard captains's messenger and kills him and steals message.
Day 2: Bad guy approaches guard captain, tells captain he knows about the affair the captain is having with the baroness, and blackmails him: unless the captain arranges for the city gates to be open at midnight, the bad guy will tell the baron.
Midnight: bad guy leads his band of monstrous assassins into the city
Day 3: bad guy kills captain, monstrous assassins settle in
Day 4: Monstrous assassins begin assassinating local clerics

The plan would then have some obvious contingencies, such as:
-The bad guy leaves a spy watching the captain's office, to report any suspicious activities. If the party unsubtly approaches the captain, the spy will report their visit to the bad guy, and the bad guy will investigate.
-If the bad guy finds out about the party's reputation, or if the bad guy finds out that the party is planning an assault, he'll scry on them immediately.
-If the bad guy feels threatened by the party, and if he knows where they are, he'll direct these three monsters to assault the party, using their abilities in this unusual and clever fashion.

The DM would need to figure out less obvious contingencies.

Essentially, the idea is that the adventure would tell what the bad guy is planning on doing, what will happen without the PCs' interference, and how the bad guy is likely to respond to some of the more likely PC actions.

I know I'd find this structure much more useful to me: it's how I design adventures myself. It would be plot-based, but it wouldn't shove events onto the PCs: rather, it would rely on the PCs exhibiting the kind of suicidal curiosity so common amongst adventurers.

Would a structure like this work for other folks? Are adventures with this structure common? I dimly recall seeing some adventure like this awhile ago in Dungeon Magazine, something about drow, but I didn't read it closely, since it was for a power level much higher than what I was running.

Any comments or ideas?

Daniel

 

[byxbee]

Good idea, Rat B

I was thinking along those lines myslef recently.

I find Dungeon Magazine and any modules i pick up to be interesting reads, and then i steal the NPCs and come up with my own ideas for what they do.

In essence, i buy Dungeon to steal Maps, Monsters, and NPCs, and sometimes ideas.

It it so hard to write a complete adventure that takes into account everything the PCs may try to do. Most adventures fail miserably.

The problem is, people writing these adventures still TRY to write the "complete adventure"

What they should be trying to do is coordinate a cool location or scene with a cool NPC or set of monsters, etc.

An adventure written more like a timeline, with plenty of available plot hooks to expand upon, would be more to my liking.

 

[Desdichado]

I would love an adventure like that. We oughtta get Morrus to hold a competition "for glory" here on the boards, or on the website.

Maybe we could have another Iron DM using this structure? It'd be tons of fun, and would give board members some useful stuff to take home to their games.

 

[Agnostic Paladin]

Pre-planned plots like that are useful — to an extent. I use them for large-scale campaign events (wars, grand conjunctions — things of that sort), but I think they're a bad idea for an entire adventure. Its too easy for PC's to go wandering off at the wrong time or miss the clues that you thought seemed pretty blatant when you were writing the adventure. The players won't know what happened, other than they failed to stop something that they didn't even know they were supposed to stop. By having event timing based partially on PC action, you give the players the same impression as a fully pre-planned plot, without the concern of them never actually managing to alter any of the events. I think its best to write up the initial state of a location or town or whatnot that the characters will find when they first become involved, and determine the effects that their actions and those of the npc's will have from there. Timed events are still good of course; once the PCs take out person X, person Y finds out about it in $ days, unless the PCs take out the messenger first.

 

[Pielorinho]

Something else that occurs to me: as a courtesy, I'd like adventure designers to point out to me the unfinished parts of an adventure.

For example, I ran what I think was a reasonably fun adventure with my players recently, involving a cult that was trying to take over the city. In order to get them involved, I had to get them to visit a certain temple of a lawful good God -- but my reasons for having them visit the temple were so inextricably tied to their character backgrounds that there's no way it woudl've worked for a different group.

If I tried to publish the adventure, I'd need to come up with a very generic hook to get them up to the temple. Or I could say something like:

"You're the DM. Get the damn party to visit the temple. Here's five possible motivations you can throw in their way, but if you can't get them to visit the temple, the adventure's not gonna start."

That would be a hole in planning for the adventure -- but I think it's a hole that any competent DM could fill. It'd just be good to show DMs ahead of time where the holes are.

Daniel

 

[LostSoul]

That's the way I write adventures.

I can't believe the number of times the PCs have "screwed up" and allowed (or actually helped) the bad guy to complete his plans.

It's really quite cool.

 

[Pielorinho]

By having event timing based partially on PC action, you give the players the same impression as a fully pre-planned plot, without the concern of them never actually managing to alter any of the events.

Hmm...I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this. Can you give an example?

I do agree with a lot of what you say, though -- and that's actually a difficulty I encounter in my adventures, although sometimes in the other direction. If the PCs go following the wrong lead, they may spend three sessions without seeing any action: if they don't get close enough to the bad guy for the bad guy to notice them, then the bad guy won't retaliate.

I don't like the idea of having every encounter in an adventure appear no matter where the PCs go, but on the other hand, I guess there's something to be said for adding clues in if the PCs are having trouble (or making clues subtler if the PCs are breezing through an adventure). I kinda figure you should do either of these things only in drastic cases: if it won't ruin the session to play things straight, then you should play things straight.

In my current game, I've been able to play things straight: the bad guys have a plan that they're following as best as they can, and they are altering it in response to the PCs' actions, and they're being as subtle and sneaky and tricky as they can manage. And it's just about right: the PCs are slowly getting closer to the truth. If they were floundering, I might relent, and provide them with an additional clue (perhaps an NPC witnessed a key event, and finally finds them to tell them). If they were scorching their way through the adventure in a single session in a way that would be unsatisfying to them, I might give the bad guy an additional power or two that would prolong the adventure.

So, how about modifying the plot-based adventure idea: give a plan for the bad guy, a timeline for the plan, a set of contingency plans the bad guy might take in response to PC actions, and a set of mercy-clues or rat-bastard tricks the DM can use to modify the pacing in extreme circumstances?

Daniel

 

[Victim]

I like the matrix theory of adventure design myself, but I'm too lazy to DM and even if I wasn't I'd be too lazy to use the matrix. Instead of setting a timeline, it looks at the goals of version groups and he consequences of any actions.

Timelines are too merciless, IMHO.

 

[LostSoul]

The way I see it, this is a site-based adventure with time and action triggers.

 

[Psion]

I'm thinking of a default-failure adventure structure.

Funny you should mention that. In the "world versus story arc" thread a day or two ago, I was just saying that I don't make plots, I make situations, and plan what happens if the players DON'T get involved.

I'm not so sure it would be viable for general use, but when you write the adventure yourself, I find it invaluable. I sort of rely on knowing the villains' motivations and capabilities to serve as a guide to how they react. If I tried to write all that up in a professional format, it seems like it would take REAMS of paper.