Not specific to your rules-set?

[Ariosto]

The second volume of Goodman Games's Points of Light offers nods to 4E, but nothing remotely like the "stat blocks" in most RPG products.

I am one of those old folks whose views of the hobby were formed in the ferment of the 1970s. When later volumes of Chaosium's All the Worlds' Monsters included articles on converting the D&D-style descriptions into terms suitable for use with Tunnels & Trolls and RuneQuest, the predicate assumption that folks interested in doing so would be reading the books in the first place was unremarkable.

I wonder just how close that is -- at least among the subset of gamers who visit ENworld -- to being unthinkable today.

Will you "judge a book by its cover" to the extent of simply passing up, without further investigation, something advertised as for Some Other Game? How about an offering billed simply as of potential utility in "any fantasy game"?

 

[Gilladian]

I see what you're saying - a "generic adventure" should appeal to all, regardless of system we're using, but the raw truth is, it won't. I run 3e. I'll happily pick up and use something that is 3e, pathfinder, or perhaps even one of the d20 variants.

I won't bother with something for 1-2e, or 4e, nor for any other system. The design "perspective" just isn't the same. I know thtat the amount of work converting it could be enormous.Maybe not, too, but I won't know until I spend time reading, thinking and analyzing. I've got too much material already that I could convert. I've been collecting it for 30+ years.

Sorry...

 

[kitsune9]

I see what you're saying - a "generic adventure" should appeal to all, regardless of system we're using, but the raw truth is, it won't. I run 3e. I'll happily pick up and use something that is 3e, pathfinder, or perhaps even one of the d20 variants.

I won't bother with something for 1-2e, or 4e, nor for any other system. The design "perspective" just isn't the same. I know thtat the amount of work converting it could be enormous.Maybe not, too, but I won't know until I spend time reading, thinking and analyzing. I've got too much material already that I could convert. I've been collecting it for 30+ years.

Sorry...

Yeah, I agree with this. There's too much content out there for the system that I play that I no longer have to worry about the hassle of conversion. I no longer need to buy or find adventures outside my preferred game choice.

 

[coyote6]

Will you "judge a book by its cover" to the extent of simply passing up, without further investigation, something advertised as for Some Other Game?

No, though the particular value of "Some Other Game" will tend to make me more or less interested in looking at it. If it's for a game I'm playing or intending to play soon, I'm obviously more interested; OTOH, if it's for a game that would be hard to convert, and I'm never going to play, and it's on a subject that barely interests me, I might not try real hard to find out more.

But otherwise, I'm happy to swipe stuff. E.g., in the late '90s, I bought a couple of AD&D 2e settings, when I found 'em cheap, not for use in AD&D (which I hadn't played any flavor of in a decade or so), but for inspiration and use in another game (I was running a couple of campaigns that featured world-jumping, so I could always dump existing PCs into a setting and use it for a while).

(Oh, and I guess for a few improbable values of Some Other Game, I would pass, sight unseen -- e.g., I wouldn't bother looking at a RaHoWa or FATAL supplement, should such actually exist.)

How about an offering billed simply as of potential utility in "any fantasy game"?

Again, depends on topic -- if it's a Tomb of Horrors-esque dungeon, I'd probably pass, as that's not really what I'm looking for. But for the new 4e* game we'll be starting in a month or two, I'm going to be using a lot of Freeport stuff, along with ideas and bits nicked from Eberron, 4e D&D, Earthdawn, and maybe other things. (I was just wishing the old TSR PDFs were still available, as I was wondering what I could plunder from Gamma World, since the new campaign will have post-apocalyptic bits.)

*GURPS 4e, that is

 

[El Mahdi]

Personally, I prefer generic "For Any System" products. I'm going to tweak and adapt them anyways, so generic works just fine. What matters for me isn't a system or mechanic, what does matter is whether the product has something I haven't seen before, or something new and useful (read unique) for my game. But products don't have to be generic to fulfill my criteria, which is why I steal stuff from all kind of places.

 

[karlindel]

It depends on how specific the adventures are to the ruleset/world they are set in, how well-supported the ruleset I am using is and how closely the non-specific adventure can be made to fit the ruleset.

For example, I am unlikely to purchase a generic adventure to use in a 4E game, as there are plenty of 4E options out there to work with. However, I might consider grabbing something that sounded particularly interesting, as conversion to 4E is not particularly difficult.

When I was playing 3E, on the other hand, I almost never picked up generic adventures, as the conversion process is very time intensive, removing the utility of such supplements compared to the plethora of already built options for the system that I could use with only minor tweaks.

On the other hand, I sometimes purchase generic adventures to get ideas for game systems that are not as heavily supported. For example, I picked up western and horror adventurers to get ideas for Deadlands and Champions adventures to use with Aberrant or other superhero games.