Exploratory Site Based Adventures

[kitsune9]

Reynard, good post and I see your point.

Though sometimes it can be frustrating to try to get that story out for the players if they are not engaged to know the "why" of particular locations. Then no real story will emerge other than, "Let's go here, kill everything, take their gold, and level up." The players won't care about the old prison, it's history, or the tragic tale of two lovers sentence to die there. To the players, it's just blah blah blah, "Oh look, there's a goblin, kill it. How much did he have on him?"

 

[Reynard]

Reynard, good post and I see your point.

Though sometimes it can be frustrating to try to get that story out for the players if they are not engaged to know the "why" of particular locations. Then no real story will emerge other than, "Let's go here, kill everything, take their gold, and level up." The players won't care about the old prison, it's history, or the tragic tale of two lovers sentence to die there. To the players, it's just blah blah blah, "Oh look, there's a goblin, kill it. How much did he have on him?"

There's a good story in there, too. it's a story about greed and how those that value gold above all else will die for it.

Remember -- they are moving room to room, killing everything, taking everything, moving ever deeper into the complex. When they inevitibly die in the dark, it isn't just their mouldering bones they leave, but all the gear they brought and the wealth they had so far captured. How do you think hoards get built in the first place?

Try this, assuming you don't mind running this sort of kick in the doors style game:

1) It's the players, not the characters that earn XP, so whatever character they bring to the table is at their XP total.

2) Every time a party either succumbs to the dungeon, or they decide to "retire" their current expedition, roll 4d6 (exploding) for the number of months passed before the next party or expedition begins.

3) Adjust the previously explored areas based on the time passed. (Perhaps a chamber or area is re-occupied if you roll less than the number of months since the last expedition on a d20.)

4) Rinse/repeat.

It may not be a "deep" campaign, but i bet you will have some great stories to tell. It offers the GM an opportunity to really "go after" the players, and the players a real sense of accomplishment when they explore.

 

[steeldragons]

Reynard, good post and I see your point.

Though sometimes it can be frustrating to try to get that story out for the players if they are not engaged to know the "why" of particular locations. Then no real story will emerge other than, "Let's go here, kill everything, take their gold, and level up." The players won't care about the old prison, it's history, or the tragic tale of two lovers sentence to die there. To the players, it's just blah blah blah, "Oh look, there's a goblin, kill it. How much did he have on him?"

Haha. Yes.

This ties a it back in (along with your post above, Reynard, about towns being for "downtime"...Which I also agree with!) with the problem back in previous editions of when the town was just for resupply and train (and the occasional bender at the tavern, of course! haha). More than once I remember players saying, "I only need XYZ xp for next level, I go off and kill a sheep (or whatever) on the way back to town." thing.

We often ran into the issue of certain characters "leveling" before others. It's easy enough to hand wave, "Ok, you spend two months training. Magey and Thiefy level up and deduct X,000 gp."

But I also found it fulfilling, for the players who didn't have enough XP, as much as myself as DM, to have things happening in the "home base town" for the characters to do. It didn't necessarily have to be a side adventure or fighting anything, but holidays/festivals, helping out at the local temple for Clericy, wrestling or arm wrestling tournaments for Fightery.

Just general stuff to maintain the immersion in the world...and yeah, potentially gain some RP experience or regular XP if a side "adventure" did occur. Keep the game moving/characters evolving in between treasure hunts.

So, I think one can give things for the PCs explore "in town." It isn't generally "plot" stuff or significant as a hook, though it certainly could be used as such (or better yet, come back up in the future as one). But, like I said, it keeps the PCs active when some of them might be busy doing other things...help them feel that they are still advancing vs. "Ok, it's 2 months later and you head to the ruins of Deadguy cuz you heard there was treasure there."

As a player, that always left me feeling..."jipped" I guess, for lack of a better word. Two months have gone by and I've just been lounging around the inn? How much weight did my character put on! lol.

I will also throw in my 2 coppers to concur with your thought to bring back the training costs and treasure/gp=xp. Personally, we never did away with it...but I haven't played (for any length) later editions where this wasn't the case, either. So I don't have a lot of experience on which to base a comparison.

Anyway...yeah, good thread!

--Steel Dragons

 

[The Shaman]

Like the game-world itself, an adventure site should feel alive. The denizens should be doing stuff.

A monster may or may not be in its lair because it's out hunting - assign a random chance for either, and maybe even decide if it's been successful recently (fresh kill in the room - maybe the kill has treasure on it . . .) or not (HUNGRY!). The goblins on the first level have been fighting a losing battle with the orcs on the second, but the arrival of a clever hobgoblin leader is about to change all that. The lich may be on his throne contemplating immortality (unlife, the multiverse, and everything), or working in its laboratory, or studying in its library, and so on when the adventurers arrive in its crypt.

My favorite site-based adventure, The Lost Abbey of Calthonwey, does this in spades.

 

[pemerton]

I posted a couple of weeks ago about running an exploratory scenario in 4e.

What I want from a site-based module is a good map, and some evocative ideas for what's in the rooms - either stuff that I can easily tie into the ongoing thematic elements of my campaign, or some backstory that is relevant to the play of the module itself, and hence is likely to come out in the course of play.

I don't particular care whether or not it is combat heavy, provided it fits the desiderata above. And I don't particularly care about details - if there aren't many details (eg how high is the cieling? what picture is on the tapestry?), I can work them out on the fly; if there are details, I can "translate" from the module writer's ideas to my own campaign on the fly.

I would also prefer one or two compelling ideas than a whole lot of non-compelling detail. In the scenario I discussed in the above-referenced thread, the site in question is a manor house, and the most important thing about it is that it belonged to a powerful wizard who went mad and killed his apprentices. The stuff that made the module useful for me, in addition to this initial idea, was that (i) it talked about the culture/religion of these people, (ii) it had a map of the manor, (iii) it located some culturally/religiously relevant items on that map, (iv) it described where the bodies of the apprentices were to be found and what sort of condition they were in, and (v) it had a cool encounter with some spiders trapped inside a skull by gems. It also had other stuff - like personal effects on the bodies, additional contents of a laboratory besides the skull, etc - but this other stuff was much less important, and in play a lot of it ended up being glossed over. It also had a couple of monsters in addition to the spiders in the skull, which I used, but could easily have ad libbed if they weren't there and I wanted them.

And even with the spiders, that what was more important than the why - I can't remember if the module gives a reason why their are spiders in the skull, but I was able to work out one on the fly that fit with my campaign, and my tweaking of the culural/religious stuff to fit my campaign.

It's those things I can't easily work out on the fly - clever situations, clever tricks like spiders in skulls, nice maps - that I look for in a module.

 

[Reynard]

And I don't particularly care about details - if there aren't many details (eg how high is the cieling? what picture is on the tapestry?), I can work them out on the fly; if there are details, I can "translate" from the module writer's ideas to my own campaign on the fly.

The key to a good exploratory adventure is * relevant detail*. Otherwise, I prefer -- whether I am purchasing it or writing it -- concise descriptions: a) as you noted, sparse detail doesn't get in the way of one adapting the material to a specific campaign milieu, and b) less detail allows for more content in the same word/page count.

However, I think basic information, like the height of ceilings, is relevant, but that can usually be summed up rather shortly at the beginning and only ever mentioned again when in changes. Given that players tend to be canny sorts, things like ceiling heights, door materials and states, wall construction and lighting can all be very important!

But even the most efficient and clean presentation can fall flat if there is nothing interesting to find or do. Players should push their characters deeper into the site simply because it is fun to do so -- greater challenges and/or rewards, to see what is around the next corner or behind the next door, to discover one more secret in the place's history. The remains of previous, unsuccessful explorers littered about the place are a simple but effective tool, in my experience: 1) they are nice way to to transfer information (adventurers' journals) or important items (keys or puzzle pieces) and 2) they motivate PCs to do better than the poor schlubs mouldering in the dark.