Setting Design vs Adventure Prep
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
buzz
Adventurer
I think the theater metaphor will only serve to confuse things.Mallus said:
To use two concrete examples, BD&D's Keep on the Borderlands and 3e's Sunless Citadel both limit themselves to detailing a) the dungeon and b) the town next to it, with a little bit of info on what you might encounter en route between the two. I'm probably not alone in having run these without any larger context specified. That a huge number of adventures produced both by fans and publishers for D&D over the decades are similarly macro-context-agnostic is probably also telling.
So, the questions are:
1. What, if anything, do these adventures gain by being placed in a larger setting? We know they can be played as-is, so the argument has to be that placing them in a setting adds some value.
2. Is the town next to the dungeon "setting" or "adventure"?
My answers would be: 1) Not much, unless the setting contains mechanical elements, e.g., you can be a warforged paladin as well as a dwarf paladin; 2) it's part of the adventure, and is not "setting".
My answer to #1 would probably only change if the purpose of the adventure was adapted to specifically highlight the setting in some way, i.e., served as a tool for its exploration. E.g., scenarios for Runequest and HeroQuest set in Glorantha obviously have interacting with that setting's rich history and mythology as a priority.
Like I was saying to Reynard, having exploration as a priority makes a big difference in this discussion.
Yeah, I tried to work with it and got a mild headache...buzz said:
I've played "Keep" through once, oh... about 21 years ago (I'm suddenly feeling old...). It's probably telling that about halfway through my friends and I got bored, so the DM placed every remaining monster (and treasure) into one cavernous room for a battle royal.
I like exploration in my RPG's... just not in a dungeon setting.
You mean the adventures meant for public consumption, right? The DM's I knew, myself included, wrote adventures explicitly tied to their campaign world, or modified published ones to fit. Most of the old AD&D modules I owned stated that DM's should both flesh out and place the adventures into their individual settings.
I'm not sure how to answer that since I wouldn't enjoy them 'as-is'... My assumption is that in-game actions which take place within a larger dramatic context are more engaging. It's a question of what and how much is at stake.
To me, context is king. Events that are essentially self-contained, that occur 'nowhere particular' aren't enjoyable. Finally beating Belloch in the midst of raging sandstorm in front of the Sphinx, thereby keeping the Ark of the Covenant out of Nazi hands... now that's entertainment.
Setting. Setting = 'place', of course, my campaign is set in a magical metropolis, so it figures
I'd say that.
'Adventure' is a list of possible conflicts.
buzz
Adventurer
I guess this is the macro-level disconnect again, then.Mallus said:
In the case of Raiders, I don't know that the setting assumptions (Nazis! The '30s!) are much more specific than the basic tropes assumed by D&D. I.e., I only need to know so much about WWII in order to enjoy the film.
We seem to really be talking about how wide a net you cast when designing an adventure. One of the issue that's tripping us up, I think, is that D&D comes with a *lot* of assumptions built-in. A truly generic engine (GURPS, HERO, FATE, etc) is obviously going to demand that some marco-level decisions be made prior to thinking about scenarios.
buzz said:
It isn't so much an exploration factor -- at this point anyway, I hardly have enough of my setting detailed well enough to say "go anywhere you want" (and, in fact, specifically asked my players to give me some advance warning if they were going to leap from the current, well detailed region to another) -- as it is, for lack of a better word, a "coolness" factor. if the PCs go into a hole in the ground to kill things and take their stuff, I want to be able to say who built the hole and why, and who uses it now and for what purpose, and know where the "stuff" came from and what its for. Even if I am lifting a town, dungeon or whole region from a published source, macro-level design allows me to do that.
Obviously, what's "cool" is subjective. i happen to like the "sword and sorcery" fantasy sub-genre best, so vile wizard kings and demonologists from ages long past are responsible for a good portion of adventury type locations and scenarios, and long forgotten empires and eally big freaking dragons are responsible for most of the rest. Having defined all that stuff helps me make published or "yoinked" material fit my campaign. In addition, I have a context in which to make decisions on a purely mechanical level: is this class from this book allowed? what about this bunch of spells from this thematic Dragon article? these neato monsters? And, even if I was able to spend 8 hours a day detailing my setting, I likely wouldn't because leaving holes means I can make up new cool stuff, steal other epoples cool stuff, or use new published cool stuff.
To boil it down to as simple a D&Dism as I can, macro-level setting design lets me make every +1 sword unique.
I believe they are. I also believe that the words 'basic tropes' and 'D&D' shouldn't be used in the same sentence, seeing that D&D is --by this point-- a deliberate hodgepodge mostly incompatible fantasy conventions ('It's fantasy in the tradition of Tolkien and Conan'... 'Huh?!'). It's like everything you've had before, all mixed up (I plagiarized that last bit from a cartoon in Harper's. It's my favorite definition of 'postmodern').buzz said:
Where am I going with this? Good question. I guess I'm arguing for a certain level of specificity for it's own sake, in the form of distinctive game environments. I'm applying the old advice for writers: be specific/use specific language! I've never seen 'generic' or 'easily ported' used as a compliments when discussing the merits of a fictional setting.
Designing from the 'bottom up', without regard for a macro-level framework, looks to me like an embrace of the utterly generic.
Sure. But knowing a little bit adds to the experience, doesn't it?
I just want my adventures to be entertaining (don't we all?). But I'm better at designing clever bits of setting flavor than elaborate set-pieces. I'm a little like the director who does quirky character films because he can't direct a car chase to save his life.
So material that some DM's might consider extraneous, I consider integral. I'll forgo drawing combat maps in favor of describing how a neighborhood got its funny name. And this material get used in the session. Sometimes these details are interactive, sometimes not. My players find it entertaining (most of the time). I had my current group in stitches over the legend of Cockswallow Dock. It's academic for me to ask if they would have enjoyed another combat in that session more, perhaps one on a rope bridge or a zeppelin, because that isn't my strength.
buzz
Adventurer
At this point, D&D is very much it's own genre of fantasy, and there are a number of setting decisions made for the user in the text. Races, classes, economics, religions, morality, nature of magic, etc. Enough that, IMO, saying "D&D" is as informative a term as "'30s Pulp". Ergo, I think you can hit the ground running with nothing but expectations set up by the PHB and play a successful game, in the same way that Raiders doesn't need to frame the context of Nazi Germany and Pulp as a meta-genre before showing Indy running from a giant, rolling boulder.Mallus said:
I dunno. I think that dismisses a lot of great adventures that have been published over the years.Mallus said:
W/r/t Radiers, I don't think so. I probably know more about WWII now than I did when I first saw the film at age 12, and I don't think that's made a difference. I don't think the film is really predicated on the viewer knowing anything more than Nazis = bad.Mallus said:
As far as D&D adventures go, I've played in campaigns where macro-level setting info made absolutely no difference, and I've played in ones where it enhanced the experience. Ergo, I don't see it as intrinsic to creating a good adventure.
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