fanboy2000
Adventurer
Over in an other thread, a debate started about story based games vs dungon crawls. That thread was closed because the original subject got in the way of any useful debate. Someone even posted that the original subject should have been story vs dungon crawl, then the posts might have been more useful.
Sense I'm mostly a D&D player, I'll use the terms from the 3.0/3.5 DMG: Site Based and Event based for the adventure/game styles.
I run a lot of site based games. The last one I ran was trditional dungeon crawl of the first order.
Preperation: I found 3 maps in the Map Folio I that fit together and used them for the floors in a dungeon. I added doors, traps, and secete doors based on my sense of aesthetics.
While most of the rooms would be empty, I figured that I should asign some rooms a clear purpose from when the dungeon was in use by it former inhabitances. I decided that the dungon was once a duergar strong hold before the moved to the underdark. Few people in my world no of any of the demi-human sub-races and so, I knew this would intregue my players. I also decided that they worshiped Thrym, God of the Frost Giants. (I justified dwarves worshiping a god of giants by saying that Thrym's portfoilo was similer to theirs and that they were in league with the frost giants.) As such, I put in an alter to Thrym, and a holy symbol to him in an other room. I gave the (un)holy symbol the property to freeze any non-evil living thing that touched in.
After that, I randomly decided the contents of each room by rolling on the appropriate tables in the DMG.
Lastly, I generated the dragon at the end of the dungeon. I decided on a Frost Dragon (ie a White dragon). I also generated it's tresure, inserting a couple of curesd items.
The Adventure Hook: A cleric says that he has a badly injured adventurer in his care and he's looking for a new party to help him on quest of his. When the party talks to him, the find a gnome named Gimble. He was with a few dwarves trying to enter into some old dwarven ruins when the party was ambused by a monster. Everyone was killed but him, and he was hurt badly. He wants the party to help kill the monster, enter the old ruins, and find out a few things about it. Oh, and we're going to kill things and take their stuff. My players go for it.
The Adventure: Once they get their, the PCs find out that the monster that killed the dwarves (and, apparantly, one elf judgeing from the bodies) was a Snowy Owlbear. With white feathers, and an even meaner disposition, it hides untill the PCs are mear feat away from the ruins.
The adventure went well. There was some kick-in the door action, but my players did a lot exploring. Also, they learned to be causious from 2 events that happened early in the adventure.
1. The place is filled with pit traps. Unfortunitly, the rogue can't get a search check higher than 21, and all the search DCs are 23-25. Ack! He looks and searches every square of the hallways as they go down them. I make him roll every single one and even roll a d20 to make him he's got a chance. (It takes time, but it's worth it.)
2. One of the first monsters they fight once they get into the ruins is the dreaded rust monster. Do they let the monk fight the rust monster? No, that would be logincal. Instead the heavly armored fighter and barbarian push their way to the front to fight it. The rust monster destroyes their armor and weapons. (Gee, I hope that we fight a monster who has armor and weapons in his treasure!) Uh, huh, right, sure.
They were better after that.
All, in all, it was a lot of fun. The rooms with the alter and (un)holy symbol made for some good roleplaying, as well did an encouner with the frost dragon's crony. Also, there was a non-combat encounter with some Svirfneblin who were on their last legs. They gave the PCs some useful information and knoweldge that there was a dragon in the ruins somewhere. A cleric of Thor joined the group and he insisted on destroying the (un)holy symbol to Thrym. It's destruction casused a frostball, dealing 5d6 cold damage to everyone with in 20 feet of the blast.
There was great roleplaying inbetween the encounters. Gimble dosen't sing for his bardic abilities, he tells jokes. The party started calling the benifits of his bardic music abilities, anger bonuses because the jokes were so bad.
Conclusion: As someone in the earlier thread said, even site based adventures can be stories. Dungeon crawls aren't limiting, and can contian a good bit of roleplaying.
I also ran an excelent event based adventure. It was a published adventure called Wedding Bells and it appeired in Dungeon #89 and was written by Jonathan Tweet.
Preperation: I'd been wanting to run the adventure for a while, I just didn't have the right place for it. Well, now I had one. I read the adventure and wrote some notes. It helps if the PCs have a personal conection to the bride or groom, so I decided to talk to a player who I knew had spicficly kept his background vague. The player was a gnome paladin named Vet who, we worked out, had a sister.
Adventure Hook: I seeded the sister part with him while the previous adventure was going on (Life's Bazaar, if you care.) And finaly had him recive the invite just after they completed the adventure. There was still some unfinished business, but they agreed to let some NPC friends handle it. (This wasn't just a plot device, the NPCs were going to play an important role in the events to come.)
Adventure: I'm not spoiling anything by saying the adventure is designed with several non-combat encounters detailed. Where and when these encounters happen is up to the DM.
One thing that wasn't detailed in the adventure was the parents. Sense I used the relitive adventure hook, I had to include the Vet's parents in the adventure. I was given quite a bit of leway witht the players, so I gave them Yiddish accents, and had them constatly tell him how they so wanted him to be a doctor, I mean Cleric.
One thing the adventure also leaves up to the DM is how the world views adventures in general. Tweet discusses it in a sidebar and I decided that Adventures are like musicians, rare but you might know one who's sucessful if not famous. (Like a local musician who plays in clubs and makes some kind of living off of it.)
The last bit, the wedding itself, was great fun. The adventure gives a list of games that the PCs can play and be more or less on an equal footing with comoners. (Log battleing, catching a greased pig, etc.)
There as some combat, at the beging and the end mostly, but not much.
Conclusion: The event based adventure was a lot of fun too. Many of the encounters were humours. Also, seeing how people think of adventures in the world helped them understand what makes a good adventure diffrent from a bad one.
I really don't see why some people think story based gaming is less fun, but some how better, or why it has to lead to railroading. In the same group, with the same characters, in the same on going campaign I've had fun with both.
I think the problem some people have with event based adventures and campaigns ocures when the DM railrodes the PCs. It is posible to nor railroad the PCs. What the DM needs to do is detail various events that can happen, but not to tie the event down to spicifics. If the PCs do X, Y happens. If the PCs do Z, Y can still happen, but now you take Z into account. Of course if the PCs do Z, maybe A happens also. Of course if the PC do something that expcitly prohibits Y, then Y dosen't happen. The idea, I think is come up with enough events that you can drop some and alter others to make the story come alive.
Site based adventures arn't more limiting, they just require a slight ly diffrent mind set. The dungeon shouldn't be static, it should respond to the PCs actions. Monsters can move from room to room, hear what's going on, etc. Even randomly generated monsters should have a reason. The reason dosn't have to be complex (Owlbears aren't grear thinkers, after all), but the reason does have to be there. In my example, the monsters moved in from an entrance to underdark in the compound.
Anyways, there's my comparison. Flame away!
Sense I'm mostly a D&D player, I'll use the terms from the 3.0/3.5 DMG: Site Based and Event based for the adventure/game styles.
I run a lot of site based games. The last one I ran was trditional dungeon crawl of the first order.
Preperation: I found 3 maps in the Map Folio I that fit together and used them for the floors in a dungeon. I added doors, traps, and secete doors based on my sense of aesthetics.
While most of the rooms would be empty, I figured that I should asign some rooms a clear purpose from when the dungeon was in use by it former inhabitances. I decided that the dungon was once a duergar strong hold before the moved to the underdark. Few people in my world no of any of the demi-human sub-races and so, I knew this would intregue my players. I also decided that they worshiped Thrym, God of the Frost Giants. (I justified dwarves worshiping a god of giants by saying that Thrym's portfoilo was similer to theirs and that they were in league with the frost giants.) As such, I put in an alter to Thrym, and a holy symbol to him in an other room. I gave the (un)holy symbol the property to freeze any non-evil living thing that touched in.
After that, I randomly decided the contents of each room by rolling on the appropriate tables in the DMG.
Lastly, I generated the dragon at the end of the dungeon. I decided on a Frost Dragon (ie a White dragon). I also generated it's tresure, inserting a couple of curesd items.
The Adventure Hook: A cleric says that he has a badly injured adventurer in his care and he's looking for a new party to help him on quest of his. When the party talks to him, the find a gnome named Gimble. He was with a few dwarves trying to enter into some old dwarven ruins when the party was ambused by a monster. Everyone was killed but him, and he was hurt badly. He wants the party to help kill the monster, enter the old ruins, and find out a few things about it. Oh, and we're going to kill things and take their stuff. My players go for it.
The Adventure: Once they get their, the PCs find out that the monster that killed the dwarves (and, apparantly, one elf judgeing from the bodies) was a Snowy Owlbear. With white feathers, and an even meaner disposition, it hides untill the PCs are mear feat away from the ruins.
The adventure went well. There was some kick-in the door action, but my players did a lot exploring. Also, they learned to be causious from 2 events that happened early in the adventure.
1. The place is filled with pit traps. Unfortunitly, the rogue can't get a search check higher than 21, and all the search DCs are 23-25. Ack! He looks and searches every square of the hallways as they go down them. I make him roll every single one and even roll a d20 to make him he's got a chance. (It takes time, but it's worth it.)
2. One of the first monsters they fight once they get into the ruins is the dreaded rust monster. Do they let the monk fight the rust monster? No, that would be logincal. Instead the heavly armored fighter and barbarian push their way to the front to fight it. The rust monster destroyes their armor and weapons. (Gee, I hope that we fight a monster who has armor and weapons in his treasure!) Uh, huh, right, sure.
They were better after that.
All, in all, it was a lot of fun. The rooms with the alter and (un)holy symbol made for some good roleplaying, as well did an encouner with the frost dragon's crony. Also, there was a non-combat encounter with some Svirfneblin who were on their last legs. They gave the PCs some useful information and knoweldge that there was a dragon in the ruins somewhere. A cleric of Thor joined the group and he insisted on destroying the (un)holy symbol to Thrym. It's destruction casused a frostball, dealing 5d6 cold damage to everyone with in 20 feet of the blast.
There was great roleplaying inbetween the encounters. Gimble dosen't sing for his bardic abilities, he tells jokes. The party started calling the benifits of his bardic music abilities, anger bonuses because the jokes were so bad.
Conclusion: As someone in the earlier thread said, even site based adventures can be stories. Dungeon crawls aren't limiting, and can contian a good bit of roleplaying.
I also ran an excelent event based adventure. It was a published adventure called Wedding Bells and it appeired in Dungeon #89 and was written by Jonathan Tweet.
Preperation: I'd been wanting to run the adventure for a while, I just didn't have the right place for it. Well, now I had one. I read the adventure and wrote some notes. It helps if the PCs have a personal conection to the bride or groom, so I decided to talk to a player who I knew had spicficly kept his background vague. The player was a gnome paladin named Vet who, we worked out, had a sister.
Adventure Hook: I seeded the sister part with him while the previous adventure was going on (Life's Bazaar, if you care.) And finaly had him recive the invite just after they completed the adventure. There was still some unfinished business, but they agreed to let some NPC friends handle it. (This wasn't just a plot device, the NPCs were going to play an important role in the events to come.)
Adventure: I'm not spoiling anything by saying the adventure is designed with several non-combat encounters detailed. Where and when these encounters happen is up to the DM.
One thing that wasn't detailed in the adventure was the parents. Sense I used the relitive adventure hook, I had to include the Vet's parents in the adventure. I was given quite a bit of leway witht the players, so I gave them Yiddish accents, and had them constatly tell him how they so wanted him to be a doctor, I mean Cleric.
One thing the adventure also leaves up to the DM is how the world views adventures in general. Tweet discusses it in a sidebar and I decided that Adventures are like musicians, rare but you might know one who's sucessful if not famous. (Like a local musician who plays in clubs and makes some kind of living off of it.)
The last bit, the wedding itself, was great fun. The adventure gives a list of games that the PCs can play and be more or less on an equal footing with comoners. (Log battleing, catching a greased pig, etc.)
There as some combat, at the beging and the end mostly, but not much.
Conclusion: The event based adventure was a lot of fun too. Many of the encounters were humours. Also, seeing how people think of adventures in the world helped them understand what makes a good adventure diffrent from a bad one.
I really don't see why some people think story based gaming is less fun, but some how better, or why it has to lead to railroading. In the same group, with the same characters, in the same on going campaign I've had fun with both.
I think the problem some people have with event based adventures and campaigns ocures when the DM railrodes the PCs. It is posible to nor railroad the PCs. What the DM needs to do is detail various events that can happen, but not to tie the event down to spicifics. If the PCs do X, Y happens. If the PCs do Z, Y can still happen, but now you take Z into account. Of course if the PCs do Z, maybe A happens also. Of course if the PC do something that expcitly prohibits Y, then Y dosen't happen. The idea, I think is come up with enough events that you can drop some and alter others to make the story come alive.
Site based adventures arn't more limiting, they just require a slight ly diffrent mind set. The dungeon shouldn't be static, it should respond to the PCs actions. Monsters can move from room to room, hear what's going on, etc. Even randomly generated monsters should have a reason. The reason dosn't have to be complex (Owlbears aren't grear thinkers, after all), but the reason does have to be there. In my example, the monsters moved in from an entrance to underdark in the compound.
Anyways, there's my comparison. Flame away!
