Adventures don't Sell? Do you agree? Redman Article

[der_kluge]

Perhaps you guys could take the adventure writing discussion to another thread??


Orcus, I admit that I'm in the camp that is guilty of believing that Necomancer games are all geared towards a specific campaign setting, and I have more or less disregarded them for this reason. With your post, I'll consider looking into their modules with a more objective eye. I'm pulling up their site now.

That said, can you recommend any modules that are of a higher level (9th+), and don't take place inside any city, or have anything to do with any city? That is, city interaction absolutely has to be minimal.

 

[Ed Cha]

Modules now seem to be more then modules. They are sourcebooks that have modules in them. I have no idea if they are selling, but I'm buying them. Take a look at the Hamlet of Thimble for instance. It's a good adventure, plus has a lot of source material that can be used well after the module part is done.

Thanks for the recommendation, Crothian!

Andrew Girdwood at Gamewyrd said the exact same thing: "The Hamlet of Thumble is a new style of pre-written adventure for a new generation of D&D. (It's) more than just an adventure. It’s refreshing to find material that manages the medieval feudal system and fantasy races so well."
" http://www.gamewyrd.com/review/298

The World of Whitethorn series is an exercise of world-building through adventures. Basically, each time I try to provide:

1. A fully-detailed setting such as a hamlet, village, town, or city that is easy to plug-in to any campaign world.
2. A bunch of what I like to call "special encounters" (random encounters that are role-playing driven, but may also include combat.)
3. A short and fun adventure. I try to keep this portion relatively small because it is not as re-useable as other portions.
4. A few interesting rules and concepts such as morale checks and reputation points found in The Hamlet of Thumble. I like to use rules that don't change or amend the core rules, but rather supplement them. That's why I call these "supplemental rules" that can easily be used in any setting in addition to the existing set of rules.
5. A number of new monsters, magic items, spells, feats, skills or skill uses, and sometimes, new classes.
6. A GM Tips section to help both new and experienced gamemasters on topics such as "Starting a New Game" or "How to Encourage More Role-playing in Your Game" or "12 Signs of a Good DM".

So, really, these products are designed to be used over and over again, long after the adventure is finished. They're perfect for any "homebrewer"! You can pick and choose the parts you want to use and there are interesting pieces to read for inspiration or ideas.

There is more information here:

http://www.openworldpress.com

 

[Belen]

Yeah...take all the writing nonsense elsewhere!

Seriously though, I will look into contracts and such and see where that leads, although I am done talking about it in this thread for now. Anyone interested, please feel free to e-mail me.

Back on topic: I do think that smaller adventures can be feasible, especially if you choose to place them in a book o'adventures. Just include three 32 pages adventures in one book and we're good to go. You could even do a serial adventure in that manner, although it would be nice to make it so that you were not forced to play the rest.

Or an adventure crunch/ encounter book. Almost like the Book of Challenges, but a book of EL level encounters that a GM can port into their campaign. Maps and the ike would be good too.

Dave

 

[MaxKaladin]

I can't comment on the economics of it all, but I remember the AD&D modules, and (besides being generic) they were all good

No, they weren't. Its just that everyone has forgotten the bad ones. I'm sure if you went out and looked, you could find plenty of bad AD&D modules.

Some of the old stuff was great, some of it was ok, some of it was terrible. Just like today. Its just that modules like RttToEE and Sunless Citadle are today's Giants series or Slavers series. We've also got plenty of terrible modules that everyone is going to forget in 20 years just like we've forgotten some of the terrible stuff from 20 years ago.

 

[Nightfall]

I must say this is so awesome to read Clark's thoughts on this matter. (I knew he'd show up eventually. ) Overall I agree with many of his points, but I think the strongest thing I can say is Necromancer Game Mods have been and continue to be very well thought out and well written. And that's why I like em!

 

[Desdichado]

Perhaps you guys could take the adventure writing discussion to another thread??

Yeah, heaven forbid that Dave hijack his own thread!

 

[kigmatzomat]

Only folks like us who hang out on d20 websites are generally even aware of [PDF] adventures, and there's enough of them that it's hard to really know what's what. You can't flip through them liek you could a print adventure in the store so it's virtually impossible to judge in advance whether or not it will fit your campaign. .... $5 - $8 for a .PDF compared to $10 - $15 for a real, printed adventure that I can hold, flip through, judge, read, run and then keep on my bookshelf afterwards? No contest.

I agree with this, and I *like* digital products. I've got a subscription at Baen.com to buy sci-fi ebooks for my PDA and I'll buy PDF sourcebooks (Mmmm, Magical Medieval Europe==goodness). But, publishers can put out a preview for those products that don't give everything away, with modules you tend to run blind.

I've got a handful of the AEG adventures that I not only enjoyed immensely but created now-notable events for my campaign. *BUT* I rejected 3 out of 4 AEG modules until I found things that matched my campaign's flavor and long term plans. (Not to mention do quick QA/QC: I think it was an AEG module that gave out a weapon with a listed value of 7,000gp but if you tried to recreate the weapon in the DMG it was more like 700,000gp). I can't do that with PDFs.

A friend gave me one of the Freeport supplements and I love, *love* it. BUT I won't buy any more until my current campaign is over. It just doesn't work with the over riding plot. I've tried, oh, how I've tried, to replace the Freeport serpent men with something in my world but it just doesn't fit; too many things break and, at least in what I've got, they are a huge factor in the plot lines.

I think there are two markets for modules.
1 - The Dungeon/AEG market for small, relatively cheap modules that have enough information the GM can slack off for a game session or 2 if they want without taking over the entire campaign. I fall in this category because I write my own stuff but every now and then the players want a break from the main plots so I need to give them something mostly unrelated.

2 - Necromancer/Freeport module series that are more expensive but include a large number of plot hooks and local settings (this includes Shadowrun's Harlequin series). These can provide a few months' gaming without radically altering most settings. This works out great for lesser experienced GMs with fairly experienced players who would have trouble with rational transitions between modules. As long as the players get a mild amount of coaching "the campaign will be set in the region of blah, do not plan on leaving anytime soon" they work out quite well.

Both are hard to do; the first because you have to come up with quality on a budget without going broke and the second because you have to walk that thin line between "sourcebook with included modules" or "modules with useful local flavor."

 

[Psion]

On the issue of modules that are more than modules -- I don't mind if a module adds a few more tidbits, but if you have too much of a ration of "extras" to "adventure", I generally find such adventures less useful.

This is for two reasons.
1) As a corrolary to Clark's observation that people want adventures that they can just drop in. A town, a few spells and magic items, or a prestige class are not things that are generally going to stop this. OTOH, if your adventure includes detailed nations, new core classes, etc., these ARE things that I would have to either work into my campaign or work out of the adventure (or tolerate the discontinuity.)
2) When marketed as an adventure, I expect an adventure. If an adventure has more (say) background details than adventure, I feel I am misled. I am more tolerant of a setting sourcebook with a sample adventure than an adventure with more setting than adventure. (This is part of why I generally don't recommend KoK adventures unless you go into the purchase knowing you are really paying more for a KoK setting supplement.)

 

[Kerrick]

[begin shameless plug]*cough*QUICKSHOTS*cough*

Quick Shots is a series of short encounters (with variants) that can be plugged into any campaign (admittedly, they're for Modern, but we're working on that). Mission File Bravo, coming next month, will also have campaign hooks so that these encounters can be blown up into full campaigns (or not, as the DM sees fit). Not only do you get 20 encounters, but you also get at least one monster, 1 Aclass, and 1 magic item (and often more). The price? $4.95 {/end shameless plug]

Now, I'll agree that D&D as a game has matured, and the gamers with it. I'm 29; I've been playing since I was 14. I collect all those old modules, because (let's face it) they were really cool, and a hell of a sight better than the garbage TSR was churning out during the 90s (with a few exceptions, like Gates of Firestorm Peak and Shattered Circle). But I also got stuff like Night Below (remember that one? The valley of Haranshire, where there was a threat from the Underdark... never played it, but it was a great read) and Return to the Tomb of Horrors (another good one). Granted, those last were probably a little long on backstory, as compared to, say Dungeon of Death (backstory: a paladin and his companions have disappeared in a remote valley and the PCs have to find out what happened to them), but they still had enough in there to keep the group going for months.

I really liked (most of) the old modules from back in the day. Who cared that they were linear dungeon crawls? They were FUN. Keep on the Borderlands? Pish... the PCs cleared it out and used it for their own base of operations, then led sorties out into the wilderness from there. Tomb of Horrors? The single most deadly dungeon ever created? Who cared that it had no plot - the players and DM were too busy making fun of how messily everyone else bit it. I must say, however, that I was really disappointed with RttoEE - I was going to run it for one of my attempts at DMing, so I started to read through it. My god, that thing is boring. What's the plot? Go beat down a bunch of monsters and bad guys to keep Zuggtmoy from coming back yet again. Ho-hum. It's just a rehash of a module that should never have had a sequel (like many movie sequels that should have never have been made...) because any sequel would be but a pale imitation of the original.

So what was my point? Did I even have one? I'm not sure... I tend to lose the thread of my post when I do other things at the same time and take an hour to type it out, so I'll end this while I still remember that I'm doing this .

 

[buzz]

Yep. Like I mentioned, "nowadays" FR will only be releasing about 3 books a year, with no supporting adventures (though we'll see about the new Living City ones). I call that "middle of the road", for sure.

Hmm. I guess we have differing definitions of what constitutes "support" then. I think a good DM could make due with the FRCS alone and be set for years. Even at the rate of three a year, WotC is putting out FR books faster than I can read them (taking into account all my other purchases), much less use them. And let's not forget that FR articles still appear in Dragon, Dungeon, and on the WotC Web site. The FR site gets new stuff on a weekly basis.

But I guess this is a discussion for another thread.