Adventure Design Points

[jester47]

This is somthing I have been kicking around in my head for a bit. I was thinking that most sessions last 4-5 hours in a night. I noticed last session that big fights (where the number of opponents is > the number of PCs) took about an hour to resolve, smaller fights took about 30 minutes and typical roleplay/exploration encounters took about 30 minutes.

So I came up with a great rule of thumb for planning sessions. For every hour you have to play, you get 2 adventure design points. Small fights, roleplay, or exploration (travel, moving in a dungeon, etc.) all cost 1 point. Big fights cost 2. So in a 5 hr session you get 10 points that could be arranged like this:

small fight (intro)
small fight
big fight
trap room
forest travel
forest random encounter
RP encounter
RP encounter
RP encounter

just somthing to offer.

Aaron.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Actually, that looks more like "Session Planning Points" rather than "Adventure Design"...

Feasible, though.

About the only problem I have with it is that it requires adherence to a linear course of action by the PCs to remain functional.

 

[mmadsen]

Actually, that looks more like "Session Planning Points" rather than "Adventure Design"...

I thought the same thing. In order to achieve small fight, small fight, big fight, trap room, forest travel, etc., the adventure has to have multiple paths following that pattern (or a similar pattern). Otherwise, you end up with this problem:

About the only problem I have with it is that it requires adherence to a linear course of action by the PCs to remain functional.

 

[Painfully]

It's a nice theoretical idea that might make a DM feel more secure in the planning stage, but players have their own ideas, and they have nothing to do with "planning points" whatsoever.

 

[MarauderX]

Could there be a session tour guide to move things along? Cause players like to take time out to discuss their plans quite often before moving on, and interject comments a lot to cover all the bases before going forward. A tour guide would be perfect -
DM: What would you like to do next?
Guide: There is nothing left in this room, let's move along, shall we?
Players: Yeah, cool, let's go.

Minus the guide -
DM: What would you like to do next?
Players: Let's search the walls again, just in case. And I want to take one of the bed posts and carve it so it is pointed. Actually, let's do that with all 4 bedposts. Oh, and hey, are their wooden slats under the bed that we could use? What is the door made of? We could use that too, y'know...
DM: <checks watch, 20 minutes have passed> *sigh* ok, you make 134 wooden spikes. What would you like to do next?
Players: I want to tie a noose, just in case we need to hang someone in a hurry. We should also prepare some maltov cocktails. Oh, I want to tie some silk rope around the pommel of my sword so if I get disarmed it won't go far and I can pick it up with an AoO, can I do that?
DM: <checks watch again, another 20 minutes have passed> No, you will still have to pick up your weapon if it falls, and if you do use a string attached it may just swing into your leg, causing damage.
Player: Hmm... what if I tie it really really short, like just a 12" length to my wrist? It wouldn't even hit the ground, and if it was knocked away my PC could just hold his arm out so it didn't hit his leg. And all he would have to do is turn his hand over, and voila! he is armed again. Here, let me show you...<players construct small demonstration using a pencil and rubberband> See? It works great! And that's just with office stuff! Any adventurer would do it better, and we have 5 ranks in Use Rope. I'll go ahead and take 10 on the roll. That makes sense, right?
DM: <sitting down, as another hour had drifted by, and realizes there is only 15 minutes left> What do you say we stop early tonight? I have to get up early in the morning, and-
Players: No way! We're just about to go! Plus we never got to search the room the 5th time like I said we should! And I got this great idea to use rugs to trip opponents! See, you wait until they are standing on a rug, then with your prepared action you pull on the rug! It should be an automatic trip! Here, let me demonstrate...
DM: ok, write it down, and we'll cover it next time.

 

[jester47]

About the only problem I have with it is that it requires adherence to a linear course of action by the PCs to remain functional.

I thought the same thing. In order to achieve small fight, small fight, big fight, trap room, forest travel, etc., the adventure has to have multiple paths following that pattern (or a similar pattern). Otherwise, you end up with this problem:

but players have their own ideas, and they have nothing to do with "planning points" whatsoever.

Actually this point is illusory in my experience, as my encounters (unless I am "borrowing" a dungeon) are not tied to a geographic location (I have even had monsters follow PCs out of a dungeon). So if I have a small fight against 4 kobolds planned, its going to happen no matter what the players do. What the players do determines location and the CONTEXT I choose for the encounter. I typically start off with a hook and a few fairly detailed locations (somtimes these are dungeons). For example- I plan to have the party encounter 4 wights. No matter where they go, they are going to encounter four wights at some point. Even if they are in a dungeon (unless I am making the dungeon a major plot element in and of itself).

Session Planning sounds a lot better.

Aaron.

 

[Janx]

Uh, jester, I hope you don't literally mean that whatever your PCs do, they will have that encounter....Taken to an extreme might end up being bad DMing.

Taken as a fuzzy logic rule, it works fine.

Meaning, it's OK to write a random encounter for 4 kobolds in the forest. No matter what path the PCs take through the forest, they'll run into the kobolds, because you will put their ambush along their path (the kobolds scouted ahead...)

It's another thing entirely to dictate that the party WILL run into 4 kobolds, no matter what. What if the party took precautions (kobold repellent or something). Making 4 kobolds show up anyway (at any point) just because you rolled them up would be illogical and smacks of railroading. Players hate that.

If a party avoids a danger, then they avoid it. You can always throw a different one at them.

Also note that finding a way to re-use an encounter is not the same as railroading (which is why you're not wrong in what you're doing, only that your choice of word can be misintepreted). So the players run away from the dungeon before finding the BBEG. Perhaps he goes looking for them (or was out, and is coming home as the PCs are exiting). That's OK. But you have to make sure that plaer actions do make a difference, and that can mean they avoid or foil some of your encounters. They can tell the difference when you're forcing them to fight the monster they avoided earlier.

Now your core idea has merit. I see it more as a way to estimate adventure length for dealing with time constraints. My adventures are written to fit within a 4-6 hour timeframe. So I estimate encounter lengths and only include enough to fit in 4 hours. That gives me 2 hour spillover if something does take longer.

Janx

 

[jester47]

Uh, jester, I hope you don't literally mean that whatever your PCs do, they will have that encounter....Taken to an extreme might end up being bad DMing.

Taken as a fuzzy logic rule, it works fine.

Meaning, it's OK to write a random encounter for 4 kobolds in the forest. No matter what path the PCs take through the forest, they'll run into the kobolds, because you will put their ambush along their path (the kobolds scouted ahead...)

It's another thing entirely to dictate that the party WILL run into 4 kobolds, no matter what. What if the party took precautions (kobold repellent or something). Making 4 kobolds show up anyway (at any point) just because you rolled them up would be illogical and smacks of railroading. Players hate that.

If a party avoids a danger, then they avoid it. You can always throw a different one at them.

Also note that finding a way to re-use an encounter is not the same as railroading (which is why you're not wrong in what you're doing, only that your choice of word can be misintepreted). So the players run away from the dungeon before finding the BBEG. Perhaps he goes looking for them (or was out, and is coming home as the PCs are exiting). That's OK. But you have to make sure that plaer actions do make a difference, and that can mean they avoid or foil some of your encounters. They can tell the difference when you're forcing them to fight the monster they avoided earlier.

Now your core idea has merit. I see it more as a way to estimate adventure length for dealing with time constraints. My adventures are written to fit within a 4-6 hour timeframe. So I estimate encounter lengths and only include enough to fit in 4 hours. That gives me 2 hour spillover if something does take longer.

Janx

Its a bit more dynamic than that. In a simplified example, say I have a main Bad Dude- who I know has 4 Kobolds working for him. He is out to get the heros. The PCs start in Waterdeep. The Bad Guy lives in luskan but has a front in Neverwinter, thus all clues lead there before they lead back to Luskan. But he also has ops in Silverymoon. So the players could go there looking for a lead. Either way, the kobolds are there waiting for them. Thats what I mean. This is not railroading, but more stroytelling. My players my very well decide to go to the sunless citadel. Say they do that. There they make friends

Spoiler

with the kobolds

. The bad guys kobolds show up and mess up the relationship with the party's allies. It is simply a way of making sure my plans don't go to waste and my players have free reign in the CS.

Aaron.

 

[Emirikol]

It looks like solid adventure planning. For Living Greyhawk, we have 4 hours to complete adventures. Our rule as scenario authors is about 3-4 combats, leaning towards 3 at higher levels because of the length of combats.

Thanks,

jh

 

[Psion]

It's another thing entirely to dictate that the party WILL run into 4 kobolds, no matter what. What if the party took precautions (kobold repellent or something). Making 4 kobolds show up anyway (at any point) just because you rolled them up would be illogical and smacks of railroading. Players hate that.

How I weep for DMs who never experienced MegaTraveller's cinematic nugget format.

MegaTraveller's adventures were formated in cinematic nuggest, with little diagrams defining how they fit together. Some encounters might necessarily HAVE to occur after others, due to the fact that one does not know how to get to the second nugget after the first, or lack the motivation until the events of the first occur.

Other nuggets can be optional or possible encounters, etc.

In the context of alloting points to an adventure, you could evaluate a nugget for how many time blocks it gets, and plan a slight overage of what your session is planned to take.