Real tale of Old School feel?
- Thread starter Quasqueton
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Gentlegamer
Adventurer
*Cue "Kirk vs. Spock" fight theme . . .Henry said:I got the rag to tie their right wrists together, now if someone else can bring the shivs and the dramatic music...
S'mon said:
Any objections if we stop worrying about motives, agendas, and all that stuff and just focus on the more interesting (if less flameworthy) comments in this thread? Just a crazy thought...
I'm going to try to put Quas's objections (as I understand them) in a framework that might make some sense. Instead of determining if a specific module is "well-designed", let's look at two systems.
Original D&D brown/white box vs 3.x D&D
Would anyone honestly say that 3.x is not better designed? It has a (mostly) core mechanic, simplified multiclassing rules, better (though still imperfect) balance among the classes, well-defined conditions and statuses, and so on. It is much more comprehensive than the original three booklets. It takes advantage of 20+ years of experience in designing rpg's.
But is it more fun? That's an entirely different question, and far more subjective. Quas has admitted that a module can be badly designed and still be fun to any particular group. His objection is when someone equates "fun" with "well-designed". The two are by no means synonymous. In fact, I can think of many games I've played that were fun, not because they were well-designed, but despite the fact that they weren't.
Part of the problem here (and in the Desert of Desolation thread) may be that we haven't yet defined what is good design. Quas has listed a number of items that he feels show poor design, and Gizmo has questioned whether or not those examples matter. So what does matter in good design? What examples can someone present of good or bad design? Maybe if we can better define this, we'll be able to get past the comments about agendas and motives.
Gentlegamer
Adventurer
Fixed it.gizmo33 said:
Andre said:
One thing that might be a difference between Quas- and I is that I prefer a much lighter-weight adventure that doesn't tell the DM stuff that I can be easily extrapolated from what's given. X2's design gives me the freedom to add and delete encounters pretty easily. Most modern designs have such a heavy integration between encounters, plot, and campaign world that it's hard to change anything without breaking the whole thing. Ironically, this is one of the critiques of 3E as system, although I don't think the two are really inter-related.
I prefer a story to be told in as little space as possible when it's a DnD module. For example, an old-school module would say "there are 2 bandits with 2 HD and 2 bandits with 1 HD". What a more modern module says is "One of the bandits names is Bob, and he's gotten two run-away apprentices to join their group. They used to be apprentices of John the Smith, and one of them has a pouch with 10 sp stolen from the smith before they fled." Followed by a column or two of stats.
Now the thing is, given space considerations, this extra information is excessive. The purpose of the module probably has nothing to do with the bandits anyway. In the unlikely event that more information is needed (ie. the bandits aren't just killed), the DM SHOULD just manufacture a mundane explanation for the presence of the bandits. Mundane explanations are realistic - and they don't run the risk of distracting PCs from the core adventure the way an overly contrived background would.
So to some extent, what makes modules like X2 cool is what they _don't_ say, and what they leave to the imagination of the DM who can weave it into their homebrews. To this day I can take a classic module and weave parts of it into my campaign - and I've done so, especially with the tantilizing details of the I3-5 series. I really have a much harder time doing that with more modern stuff.
Patryn of Elvenshae
First Post
S'mon said:
Er, no, not that I can tell - but it is his standard response to Dialgo, et al.
Spell
First Post
Quasqueton said:
and some of the new ones are equally atrocious, too. what's your real point? you made some interesting ones about designing, but none of them had anything to do with old school.
are you saying that not all the old material is great? well, you're not making a big discovery: every gamer i have known in the last 15 years had his favourite old school "black sheep". those that say that "all was good" usually do so remembering their youth, not the actual rule or module design.
are you saying that the recent "return to the old school flavour" treads suffer from the same syndrome?
seriously, i don't understand why you started this tread with this title, if your gripe was the design of that module. maybe you chose a wrong title?
(by the way, i found X2 silly, too, even when i first read it (i was 14). despite that, if i would run it, i would cannibalise it and make it much more horror-themed, something like stephen king's rose red. i'm sure my players would love it, despite all the absurdities in it)
Spell
First Post
arnwyn said:
i wish that sometimes the newer adventures added a bit more freedom to customization to the DM. just to make an example: having to come up with a reason why a group a wandering wizards appears here or there might give you the opportunity to develop a lot of material for your campaign (maybe they are from a secret organization and they are looking for an artefact. maybe they are that group of adventuring mages the party encountered in that other adventure, three months ago...), as opposed to simply reading the author explanation.
i know that there are extremes that should not be tolerated, but i started to play a roleplaying game because it made me able to create a world of fantasy applying my judgment and imagination to existing sources. if every adventure was so perfectly designed that i could switch off my brain and simply play it with the other players, in all honesty, i would either:
1. stop reading them.
2. read a novel, instead.
the best adventures (or setting supplements, for that matter), in my opinion are not necessarily those that require the least work on my behalf, or that are perfectly designer. the best modules are those that spark my imagination and make me go "holy cow, i will not rest until i have run this stuff with a group, no matter how much i have to fix"
naturally, the more i have to fix, the more my imagination needs to be awoken for me to start to do the job...
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