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

[buzz]

I loved this quote from a poster above...

Ooh! He picked me!

I dont understand #4. All of the classic modules had that. They just didnt spell out the interaction. They left it for the DM. There is no reason you couldnt sneak into Snurre's lair in Fire Giant, sneak into his bed chamber and perhaps cut a business deal with him to double cross the drow and then set up an ambush for the drow priestesses on level 3. You could do that. Nothing stopping you. If you DM chooses to run it as a hack and slash and you chosse to play it as a hack and slash, that isnt the module's fault.

Joshua already sort of said what I want to say, but hey...

In some ways, I think this is a bit of a cop-out. Yeah, you *could* write an adventure that presents me with a hole in the ground, a list of encounters, and then just let me go to town as a DM and make up motivations and personalities for all of them (Keep on the Borderlands, anyone?), but in that case, *why am I paying you to make me do all the work?*

I liked that Sunless Citadel provided some motivations for many of the inhabitants, and that some were wholly evil and just needed to get hacked, but some were noted as being willing to negotiate depending on the actions of the PCs. Particularly for an adventure aimed and newbie DMs, I thought this was really cool. I would also suspect that an adventure like the excellent Belly of the Beast by Mike Mearls would not have been very useful if he hadn't laid out the motivations of the various groups involved.

Anyone with dice and a pencil can design a hole in the ground with encounters. What I'm willing to pay for are interesting setups, detailed characters, and compelling hooks. To use your example, "The Star of Death" is pretty useless to me if it's just maps and stats. Heck, how much of the interior of that thing did we get to see, anyway? 10%? 5%? However, if it also contains story ideas, motivations, and hooks that could spark "Star Wars," then it's worth my while.

Now my favorite, a "story". Well, what story? Some people call this railroading. It is true the old adventures didnt have much in the way of "story." That is because old module design left that to the DM.

Again, there's a point where, if there's too much left to the DM, your product isn't really worth my money.

E.g., B1, Into the Unknown, provided maps and keyed encounter areas, but left the placement of monsters, treasure, and any sort of rationale for its existence up to the DM. As an introductory adventure for the newbie DM (its target audience, as it was part of the Basic set), it was completely useless to me, and I never used it. That's why people have fond memories of B2, Keep on the Borderlands, and not the former.

As for "story," I didn't really mean railroading or a fixed plot, per se. I simply meant an overall picture of the whys and wherefores of the adventure. Sunless Citadel provided a decent rationale for the existence of the dungeon and why it was inhabited. It provided a couple of different hooks. It provided some interesting background seeds that, in succeeding adventure path modules, actually got developed. It had goals. It had NPC motivations. It was holistic.

Sure, some of these elements may not fit in my campaign. However, it's usually easier for me to remove these elements than to provide them. If you provide them, only a certain percentage of DMs need to change anything, and they might not need to change much. If you provide nothing, 100% of the DMs need to provide 100% of them. Which option do you think seems more useful to me, as a consumer?

 

[kigmatzomat]

Wow. This has turned into a lively discussion. That is cool. I can respond to a few of the comments and make a few extra observations:
4. dungeon inhabitants you can interact with

I dont understand #4. All of the classic modules had that. They just didnt spell out the interaction. They left it for the DM. There is no reason you couldnt sneak into Snurre's lair in Fire Giant, sneak into his bed chamber and perhaps cut a business deal with him to double cross the drow and then set up an ambush for the drow priestesses on level 3. You could do that. Nothing stopping you. If you DM chooses to run it as a hack and slash and you chosse to play it as a hack and slash, that isnt the module's fault.

I think this tends to fall under "character motivations," something that gives GMs fits when the players do something weird. It doesn't need to be a 10 page biography detailing the anger BBEG holds against his mother for dropping him on his head as an infant but newer GMs need something to guide them.

Heck, one Dungeon module I ran in the early 90s had a black dragon that was an obsessive/compulsive coin collector. The PCs were supposed to negotiate, hand over some coin and be on their way to the real plot but they decided to fight it out (no chance of survival). I was looking at TPC until someone noticed his irritation at the messed up coin piles and fired off a windstorm spell to mess everything up. The dragon immediately breathed acid on the caster and moved in for the kill. At least until a kender-like elf said "Ohhh, your acid is melting all the pretty coins" pointing at the rapidly corroding silver. I mentally flipped a coin and decided that the dragon went catatonic and the players were able to escape mostly intact. That one minor detail proved to be the crux of the encounter.

(BTW: if anyone knows which issue of dungeon that is, please let me know.)

I know that 90% of the time it'll be completely useless but the other 10% of the time it makes or breaks the situation. It's worth it to me to buy the mods where the authors spent the extra 10 minutes to briefly describe key NPCs motivations.

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, I think there's a disconnect of sorts here; buzz is praising some aspects of The Sunless Citadel as ideal for beginning GMs, while Clark is saying those same things are bad because they're handholding experienced GMs through the module. It's true that what's great for a new GM is superfluous at best for an experienced GM.

 

[buzz]

It's true that what's great for a new GM is superfluous at best for an experienced GM.

FWIW, even though I was new to 3e, I'd been DM'ing AD&D since I was 10 at the time I ran Sunless Citadel, and I still found all the hand-holding useful.

I guess my main point is simply that, if I'm going to pay money, you need to give me more than a hole in the ground.

 

[Desdichado]

In which case you weren't an experienced GM with that system, at least!

 

[buzz]

In which case you weren't an experienced GM with that system, at least!

my hat of yur atitue know no limit!!1

 

[zenld]

Wow. This thread is longer than any adventure I have ever read and many of the sourcebooks too. And is probably as good or better than many of them. But not as good as others.

Jjust to point out, anyone who has been complaining about level of adventure and amount of magic being not what they want for their campaign has obviously not been to direkobold.com. Party level? Scalable. Magic? Scalable. Monster difficulty? Scalable. Trap DCs? Scalable. And most of them are pretty good adventures. Almost all of them can, with little or no modification, be dropped into any campaign. So like has been previously stated, put your money where your mouth is. It breaks down to a couple bucks an adventure at most, and can be redone over and over again for new parties or camapigns. You want value? Come and get it. And for those who want to write, submit to Ross. I am sure he would love to have them. He is always loking for new talent. Ask Wil. He was a nobody before he started writing for direkobold. Now look at him. (j/k Wil, please don't hurt me.)

And the site is getting better. More options, etc. So go check it out. Its put up or shut up time. You want more adventures, here they are. You want an impact on what type of adventures the company will put out, here is someone who will listen.

As someone earlier said its a hobby not a charity. Yes, we all do it because we love it, but if you want it to grow, you have to support it and vote with the best tool you have...your money.

And no, I am not being compensated for my opinion. This is an unsolicited and unpaid endorsement.

 

[FDP Mike]

Adventures are crunchy, too!

Originally posted by Orcus
Now my favorite, a "story". Well, what story? Some people call this railroading. It is true the old adventures didnt have much in the way of "story." That is because old module design left that to the DM.

[. . .]

This is really the key to modern module desing. "How much story." The modern purchaser (and I make no judgments on the modern purchaser, I am just stating what is true) does not want no story. You must have some. Similarly, the modern purchaser does not want a "railroaded" story forcing them to do certain things. This is the hardest balance to walk as a module designer.

Originally posted by Buzz
I guess my main point is simply that, if I'm going to pay money, you need to give me more than a hole in the ground.

Clark is quite correct in noting the sort of tightrope that current adventure design walks between too much story (i.e., railroading) and not enough story (i.e., just a hole in the ground). Finding the balance presents no easy task, but this is one reason why the conception of what a "module" constitutes now evolves more toward the "sourcebook" end of the spectrum.

If you look closely at how some publishers label the type of product they give you, some of them will use the words "fantasy roleplaying sourcebook" for an adventure. Sure, marketing concerns lie behind such terminology: gamers apparently currently want "crunch," so a publisher searches for a way to convince them that adventures are just as "crunchy" as splatbooks. In a way, then, gamers also need to readjust their thinking of what an adventure offers them.

At their core, I think that the really good adventures do in fact provide really good stories ... or at least the outlines of really good stories that gaming groups will fill in themselves. Story includes engaging characters doing intriguing things that have certain consequences, good or bad, in which the players may become invested. When NeMoren's Vault first came out, and since, a recurring element of praise for it focussed on the interest generated by the story -- how everything made sense and fit together. Yet everything remains open enough for the players to make their own choices (i.e., write their own version of the story) without truly being railroaded toward any particular course of action. So, I think if we sit down and consider how the successful adventures achieved their success, I suspect we'll find that they all offer at base the bare structure of a good story: a worthy goal incited by a believable if not exciting conflict; a cast of adversaries and allies that, if given understandable motivations, make the goal something the players want their characters to achieve.

Or, put more simply: story can also be "crunch."

GMs need story ideas just as much as they need NPC stat blocks or fully detailed dungeon levels. Who knows what will spark in a GM's mind an idea for an entire campaign arc? Maybe a GM has lately looked for a way to integrate an undead cult into her game (see "Swords Against Deception" in To Stand on Hallowed Ground, for instance). What's the best way to do so that will not only make sense logically but will also grab the players' interest? Adventures can thus provide excellent resources for answering such questions, even if a GM never runs them as is.

Everything that an adventure requires for the making (and remaking) of its story also qualifies as crunch: maps; area descriptions; NPCs; new monsters; new PrC's, feats, spells, equipment, magic items ... and so forth. Sure, it's all meant for use in the particular vision of the adventure's story held by the author(s). Yet it's also all "reusable" content in any form that a GM sees fit.

If we think of Buzz's "hole in the ground" as the crunchy part of an adventure, then, yes, most definitely adventures need to offer much more than merely rooms, monsters, and treasures to be of real value to a GM. There must be a thread that ties everything together, gives each part a reason for being within the greater whole -- i.e., the story.

That adventures don't sell well risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, so to speak: once everyone believes this supposed fact, not only will we see fewer and fewer published adventures, but consumers may stay away from them owing partly (if not mostly) to the stigma they carry as sort of "second class" products compared to setting books and splatbooks.

For all their useful and reusable crunch, splatbooks are pretty much just information. Exciting information at times, true, but not information about which players will reminisce years later over beer and talk of how their characters barely saved the land from a sweeping undead menace by the barest of luck.

Adventures today, then, should serve two purposes: (1) story and (2) sourcebook. They already do the second element; I think consumers only need to readjust their (inherent) thinking about adventures to recognize it, partly because it can include the first element. We risk losing the first element, though, if consumers keep pushing more and more for "crunchy bits" instead of "fluff," quite simply because publishers will do what they must to meet the demands of their readers and to make money.

I would like to see adventures sell more. In many respects, they form the foundation of D&D -- epic fantasy stories, shared by many in a myriad of different final results. They should be selling better. To do so, however, I suspect that publishers somehow need to alter perceptions of what adventures offer to the consumer ... not an easy task when the most dominant force in D&D/d20 eschews them in favour of crunch-heavy products.

Hmm, is there a point in anything I just wrote? We'll see, I guess.


Take care,
Mike

 

[Orcus]

Buzz, I was never saying you were wrong, that handholding is bad and that "give me more than a hole in the ground" is wrong.

All I am saying is that that is one theory of module design and it is one type of customer expectation.

And that leads to problems for adventure writers.

Because there is just as large a camp that says "just give me the hole in the ground because the plot you write wont fit my game anyway." or "dont railroad me."

It is the real crux of the problem for module writers.

I think one reason we have succeeded is we have tried to ride the fence and have done so rather well--enough flexibility for those who want no forced story and enough story and motivations to satisfy those who want them.

And believe me, that is one thin tightrope to walk.

The other problem is that people will judge an adventure not for what it is but for how it fit in their game.

An example is our Wizard's Amulet. That was a free downloadable adventure that was released the first hour of the first day of GenCon (right after 12 am) the day 3E was released (the earliest anyone was allowed to have anything for release). In fact, it was the first d20 module available. It was designed to be downloaded and to get you up and running in 15 minutes. It had hooks and pregens and had a railroaded story. But the concept was that it was a jumpstart adventure (it was also free).

But people still griped that the plot was too forced. Of course it was! That was how it was designed. So you see, people dont care what you tell them, they care only about how things fit them. Which isnt bad, it is just something to keep in mind.

Clark

 

[buzz]

But people still griped that the plot was too forced. Of course it was! That was how it was designed. So you see, people dont care what you tell them, they care only about how things fit them. Which isnt bad, it is just something to keep in mind.

Understood. Griping is sort of the "death & taxes" of the hobby (and Web forums).