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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FDP Mike" data-source="post: 1121268" data-attributes="member: 325">Adventures are crunchy, too!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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Take care,Mike</blockquote>

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