Dungeon Adventure Path series in Greyhawk?

[Erik Mona]

Erik--

One of the BIGGEST drawbacks to the selling of Dungeon Magazine AT ALL is that the adventures are either too campaign specific, or not written for the right levels. Time and time again, these two factors are mentioned over and over as reasons why the magazine isn't purchased.

In fact, we've been including a "scaling the adventure" sidebar with every adventure for more than a year, so I'm not sure that we can do much else to solve that problem.

I'm not sure there's much demand for setting adventures in campaign settings other than Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. If letters to the editor are anything to go by, there doesn't seem to be much desire to see more Dragonlance adventures, and even less desire to see Kalamar adventures in the magazine.

My current philosophy is to concentrate on the "cool adventure" part first, and the "how does this fit into a setting" part second. If the adventure is neat enough, I strongly believe people will make it fit.

--Erik

 

[Brisk-sg]

I think setting the next Adventure Path series in Greyhawk would be a great idea. I would recommend that if such an adventure path is a somewhat site based adventure like the Shackled City that Dungeon also publish a Living Greyhawk Journal in the Poly section concerning the primary area for the adventure path.

 

[Coreyartus]

In fact, we've been including a "scaling the adventure" sidebar with every adventure for more than a year, so I'm not sure that we can do much else to solve that problem.

I've seen the current sidebars. While they're a great start, they hardly make each adventure "easy" to adapt. In fact, half the adventures I flipped through were dependent upon the specific politics, geography, and history of the individual setting (regardless of whether it was GH, FR or a made-up one) to work, making it very problematic to adapt anything in the adventure besides the bare-bones sequence of monster encounters. You'll notice the scaling sidebars specifically focus on adjusting combat encounters, with little to no information about how the adventures could fit into conflicts existing in other pre-established settings. One sentence in the introduction to the adventure doesn't make adaptation easy. It simply reinforces the idea that it's difficult to manipulate the story of the conflict in the adventure into another setting.

And we all know that the story of the conflict is the only thing that makes adventures different from a series of random monster encounters.

By choosing not to elaborate on how to adapt the story that connects all the encounters together, Dungeon (by default) limits the adventure to a specific place with specific monsters and specific NPC's. Like I said in my previous post, gamers are fickle; it's the rare DM that knows enough about his campaign ahead of time to anticipate which Dungeon adventures they're going to use, and plant the seeds necessary to flesh out a good, consistent, intrigueing series of adventures (that don't seem like they're simply lifted out of a magazine). Your Adventure Path series does that because it builds upon rumors and NPC's and occurances that have happened in previous installments. Can you see how room for that kind of flavor enhancement (which is the bread-and-butter of a good campaign) is virtually ignored in your non-AP adventures by not being acknowledged at all?

It's simply too much work, Erik, to re-write the story-line to fit individual campaigns. It won't matter how good the adventure is if it's too difficult to figure out how to fit it in. And quite frankly, once the nature and tone of the campaign is set, don't wise DM's consider what adventures are coming up for their players? Doesn't that imply that, at this point, previously published adventures from a long while ago are probably more useful than those of current issues, simply because a DM can build his campaign around them? Please help us figure out a way to avoid that somehow. I don't want to keep buying adventures that I have to create new campaigns to play...

Coreyartus

 

[Brisk-sg]

I've seen the current sidebars. While they're a great start, they hardly make each adventure "easy" to adapt. In fact, half the adventures I flipped through were dependent upon the specific politics, geography, and history of the individual setting (regardless of whether it was GH, FR or a made-up one) to work, making it very problematic to adapt anything in the adventure besides the bare-bones sequence of monster encounters. You'll notice the scaling sidebars specifically focus on adjusting combat encounters, with little to no information about how the adventures could fit into conflicts existing in other pre-established settings. One sentence in the introduction to the adventure doesn't make adaptation easy. It simply reinforces the idea that it's difficult to manipulate the story of the conflict in the adventure into another setting.

And we all know that the story of the conflict is the only thing that makes adventures different from a series of random monster encounters.

By choosing not to elaborate on how to adapt the story that connects all the encounters together, Dungeon (by default) limits the adventure to a specific place with specific monsters and specific NPC's. Like I said in my previous post, gamers are fickle; it's the rare DM that knows enough about his campaign ahead of time to anticipate which Dungeon adventures they're going to use, and plant the seeds necessary to flesh out a good, consistent, intrigueing series of adventures (that don't seem like they're simply lifted out of a magazine). Your Adventure Path series does that because it builds upon rumors and NPC's and occurances that have happened in previous installments. Can you see how room for that kind of flavor enhancement (which is the bread-and-butter of a good campaign) is virtually ignored in your non-AP adventures by not being acknowledged at all?

It's simply too much work, Erik, to re-write the story-line to fit individual campaigns. It won't matter how good the adventure is if it's too difficult to figure out how to fit it in. And quite frankly, once the nature and tone of the campaign is set, don't wise DM's consider what adventures are coming up for their players? Doesn't that imply that, at this point, previously published adventures from a long while ago are probably more useful than those of current issues, simply because a DM can build his campaign around them? Please help us figure out a way to avoid that somehow. I don't want to keep buying adventures that I have to create new campaigns to play...

Coreyartus

I agree with what you say about using new adventures in many existing campaigns...

However, I honestly don't think this can be realistically done with out greatly increasing the page count of each adventure. It sounds like what you want is something for adventure that explains how the plotline, NPCs, gods, ect. can be adapted to campaign X. Well... there are alot of Campaign X's out there. While it would not take much space to put in alternate names for each adventure (I have a recomendation for how this can be done actually), it would take alot of resources to change more then cosmetics (such as plot lines, mechanics, NPCs). I don't see it as practicle to expect a full conversion document to campaign X in all the adventures.

The recomendation I would make is this. I got this idea while running my last session of Night Below. Instead of using a side bar, put an alternative in brackets next to the campaign specific object. So when you are detailing a cleric NPC for instance; "... worship Boccob [FR: Mystra]". This can be used with any campaign specific information such as nations, organizations, and NPC names.

 

[Coreyartus]

The recomendation I would make is this. I got this idea while running my last session of Night Below. Instead of using a side bar, put an alternative in brackets next to the campaign specific object. So when you are detailing a cleric NPC for instance; "... worship Boccob [FR: Mystra]". This can be used with any campaign specific information such as nations, organizations, and NPC names.

That would be an excellent idea! It takes the onus off the particular setting itself and helps DM's see firsthand how they can adapt it to their own campaigns.

I understand about increasing page count to the point of being impractical. You are very right. My suggestion would be this: consider the d20 Modern core rulebooks. They are information packed, but they have to make their information work for many, many different types of campaigns. They purposely provide options for varying uses of NPC organizations, plot threads, monster usage and so forth simply in their writing style. The original core rulebook catered it's entire contents to three very different campaigns, and the free adventures that are published on the WotC website are specifically written to cater to a multitude of different campaign styles, which may/may not actually include the use of magic, psionics, etc! Talk about being generic!

If that type of d20 game can use the same ruleset (relatively) for three different kinds of genres, and people can still write adventures that cater to all three, why can't Dungeon magazine? The d20 Menace Manual is a perfect example of how to present generic storyline material without delineating a specific style of campaign. It's meaty, intrigueing, and specific, but provides worlds of options and doesn't become so particular and precise that the content can't work without using it a certain way.

In short, Dungeon should "lift out a level of detail" in their adventures that is inadvertantly detrimental to adaptation, and provide a more thorough method for DM's to choose their own campaign-specific details. And your suggestion would be a good start, in my opinion.

Just my two cents!

Coreyartus

 

[Welverin]

Cauldron isn't explicitly set anywhere in the World of Greyhawk. Would people prefer to see the next Adventure Path set in the core "continuity," or is that a less attractive option for you?

I'm all for setting the next set in Greyhwak.

Welverin

p.s. What happened to the Darkmatter mini game you vaguely hinted at way back when? Or at least seemed to hint at.

 

[TimSmith]

Adaptability

[/QUOTE]My current philosophy is to concentrate on the "cool adventure" part first, and the "how does this fit into a setting" part second. If the adventure is neat enough, I strongly believe people will make it fit.

--Erik[/QUOTE]

Absolutely agree with this, Erik. Not everyone wants the same level of detailed tie-ins as others may want and I certainly believe that is best left to the DM. At the end of the day, the quality of the adventure is paramount-without this you have nothing. For those DM's who prefer episodic play or even enjoy adapting "on the fly" this is all you need. For those who want more they probably need to do it themselves anyway, as one DM's idea of how greater events are progressing in the world is almost always going to differ from another's.

put an alternative in brackets next to the campaign specific object. So when you are detailing a cleric NPC for instance; "... worship Boccob [FR: Mystra]". This can be used with any campaign specific information such as nations, organizations, and NPC names.

This is a great idea! (Although where do you stop-there are alot of campaigns out there?)

In short, Dungeon should "lift out a level of detail" in their adventures that is inadvertantly detrimental to adaptation, and provide a more thorough method for DM's to choose their own campaign-specific details. And your suggestion would be a good start, in my opinion.

Just my two cents!

Coreyartus

I see what you are driving at, now, but by doing this wouldn't they run the risk of making it so that it would be TOO generic? By which I mean that NO ONE could run the adventure without having to do work on the setting and plot tie-ins etc. I honestly think it is better to make the adventure as self-supporting as possible and let the individual DM worry about how it ties into greater campaign events (if indeed it needs to, as it could be a side-trek from the greater plot. Not everything that happens can surely be tied to the machinations of the Grand Villain, after all!)

 

[Brisk-sg]

This is a great idea! (Although where do you stop-there are alot of campaigns out there?)

I definitely would not recommend it for more then two additional campaigns worlds. I would pick either official WoTC worlds or 3rd party worlds that particularly fit the adventure in question.

 

[Falkayn]

In fact, we've been including a "scaling the adventure" sidebar with every adventure for more than a year, so I'm not sure that we can do much else to solve that problem.

I'm not sure there's much demand for setting adventures in campaign settings other than Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. If letters to the editor are anything to go by, there doesn't seem to be much desire to see more Dragonlance adventures, and even less desire to see Kalamar adventures in the magazine.

My current philosophy is to concentrate on the "cool adventure" part first, and the "how does this fit into a setting" part second. If the adventure is neat enough, I strongly believe people will make it fit.

--Erik

Erik,

Firstly, let me say that I find the scaling the adventure sidebars invaluable and something the rest of the industry should look to when creating adventures.

My gaming groups first three choices for campaign worlds are:
1. Forgotten Realms
2. Homebrew
3. Greyhawk

So I guess you're on the money in terms of established settings. However, I expect that Arcana Unearthed/Diamond Throne will take off, and so should the new one for WotC. Unfortunately lots of these people won't write you letters/emails.

By all means, please do get the 'cool adventure' stuff right - but be aware that the more specific that cool stuff is in terms of setting, the less useful will be the end result. Adventures sets in Russian wildernesses, or with backgrounds that state 'how the world is' for the last few hundred years don't mesh easily with anyone's campaign (I'm thinking of a werewolves one that was there recently).

You are doing an outstanding job, the magazine is one of my most valued investments in RPG stuff. Thanks!

 

[TimSmith]

Erik,

Firstly, let me say that I find the scaling the adventure sidebars invaluable and something the rest of the industry should look to when creating adventures.

By all means, please do get the 'cool adventure' stuff right - but be aware that the more specific that cool stuff is in terms of setting, the less useful will be the end result. Adventures sets in Russian wildernesses, or with backgrounds that state 'how the world is' for the last few hundred years don't mesh easily with anyone's campaign (I'm thinking of a werewolves one that was there recently).

You are doing an outstanding job, the magazine is one of my most valued investments in RPG stuff. Thanks!

I absolutely agree on all counts. Good point about the examples you quote of more difficult adventures to adapt. They were interesting concepts but I would have to go against my normal position that "Dungeon" adventures are easy to adapt in about 20 seconds with these. I liked them but, as you say, so much was dependent on the setting that I haven't been able to use them. On the other hand, perhaps we don't need to get direct use out of all the stuff we see in Dungeon in order to enjoy the material?