Setting Design vs Adventure Prep

[Reynard]

The play experience you posted about sounds more like an underprepped adventure rather than an underprepped setting.

The adventure was fully prepared. The introduction to the next adventure was not, because the setting details surrounding that adventure hadn't been worked out yet. Which is the whole point of what I am talking about.

What are you players big on?

Which one? I've got a WoW addict/powergamer, a newbie, and a handful of old schoolers that like to interact with their environment.

Because - especially as this thread goes on - it sounds like you're using your game as a forum for your fiction (not as "story" but as setting design) rather than prepping fiction becaues your game needs it.

Actually, when I want to write fiction, I do. When I want to write game material, I do. Maybe you didn't mean it that way, but your suggestion there strikes me as a thinly veiled insult of the "frustrated author as DM" variety, to which I take exception.

 

[Ry]

I had no intention to insult whatsoever. I was just trying to connect the dots between what you said about your method and what you said about the problems you had in your most recent session.

 

[Ry]

If Reynard's process works for him, cool. People find their ideas in different places, and if pounding out a few thousand words that may never see the game table is his way, then cool.

If someone's process works for them, cool - absolutely. But if someone posts about their process, suggests a principle behind it, and puts it out as a suggestion for others, you've got to take a hard look at it. I think it's really important that we look critically at suggestions for gaming. If we don't, we're in danger of just saying "I'm OK, you're OK" and never figuring out what works and what doesn't.

Reynard talked about writing a lot of stuff to get his setting ready, then letting the adventure emerge or result from the setting. During play, once his adventure ended, he had a difficult time winging it because he didn't have setting material ready.

My contention is that if he had focused more on prepping his game material (problems to solve and threats to defeat), he could get by without having detail of the setting. More importantly, he could have gotten more game material - and by this I mean stuff that the players can be involved with and react to - ready for his players during the time he was writing about how the magical ecology connects to the way a lantern works.

 

[buzz]

My contention is that if he had focused more on prepping his game material (problems to solve and threats to defeat), he could get by without having detail of the setting. More importantly, he could have gotten more game material - and by this I mean stuff that the players can be involved with and react to - ready for his players during the time he was writing about how the magical ecology connects to the way a lantern works.

This has certainly been true for me, as I mentioned above.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

What are you players big on? Because - especially as this thread goes on - it sounds like you're using your game as a forum for your fiction (not as "story" but as setting design) rather than prepping fiction becaues your game needs it.

Yeah, which is exactly the sort of thing I have an issue with when people attempt to take someone to task for NOT using some sort of pre established setting. Right now I'm running an adventure path (Age of Worms) and the players are in a place called Diamond Lake. Most of the PC's are from or around Diamond Lake and are familiar with the Free City nearby but out of the 5 of them only 1 of them has ever been there. Point being theyre all from a small town and really don't know about anything outside of thier immediate scope. For now.

When the story progresses and they begin to inquire about things that ARE outside of the scope (and this either goes one out of 2 ways) you either already have an idea of what a specific PC or PC's are going to ask about gauging by the play so far, or you make a note of it and prep it for the next time. Unless it's something that's needed immediately, in which case you stop for a minute or two and quickly draft something or create an answer.

Are the pro-setting people implying that it's wrong to do this? and if so on what grounds is it wrong? Am I expected to believe that the pro-setting people in general have completely memorized thier setting bible and can instantly bring to bear any bit of information to satisfy thier players need?

Even if that's not the case and the pro-setting people give their players a primer before hand on the general things that are happening in the setting for them to explore, that goes to playstyle, which still leads to some winging unless the DM has detailed every last one of those setting hooks that are in said primer.

In the end as someone else said upthread this has more to do with the group and how much work the DM is willing to do before hand. One playstyle isnt better than the other in general, maybe in specific, but not in general. Just because I havent prepped an entire setting doesnt automatically make me a hack and slash DM, just because you've prepped an entire campaign setting doesnt make your game the end all be all of dramatic role-playing and versimilatude(sp?).

To be completely honest though, I do believe in a happy medium. It's something I used when I first started DMing when I was 13 and have gone back to recently and that's starting small and building the world around the players. I have a player who wants to obtain a magical tatoo. From the moment he mentioned it, I said to myself "that's an subplot that's going to lead to an adventure that's going to highlight just how useful that tatoo's going to be". I have another player who is a rouge who left the Free City and is laying low in Diamond Lake, it's already been decided that her actions in the Free City that resulted in her leaving will have certain ramifications elsewhere.

I guess it comes down to I feel that it's a waste of time to do all of the setting work BEFORE you start playing because I like tailoring certain aspects of the game to the players. I've done the setting prep thing and in most of (not all) the cases the hooks have been ignored and the players go off and investigate some minor detail right out of left feild anyway. That and players usually come up with better and more interesting plots (to them) out of thier own imagination anyway.

 

[Reynard]

My contention is that if he had focused more on prepping his game material (problems to solve and threats to defeat), he could get by without having detail of the setting. More importantly, he could have gotten more game material - and by this I mean stuff that the players can be involved with and react to - ready for his players during the time he was writing about how the magical ecology connects to the way a lantern works.

I guess my perception is that those threats and problems do not (for me) exist in and of themselves. they must be relative to something. In many cases it may be the setting, in others the PCs and occassionally something else entirely. As anyone, I only have so much time to devote to prep (although if I stopped visting gaming message boards I'd have more ) and so, in the example I gave, I made sure to prep the dungeon they were actually in, and the problems and threats in that dungeon, over prepping the setting. However, because I am running a campaign where one session flows into another (rather than being purely episodic -- and really only because we oplay for a mere 3 or 4 hours) I am not always able to finish, wrap, see you next time. In this case, I actually had to wrap 30 minutes early because the next adventure -- or its setting -- wasn't ready yet.

For me, the best possible scenario is being able to accurately assess what the PCs are going to get accomplished in any 4 hour session and prep that -- both setting and adventure. Unfortunately, it isn't always easy to gauge such a thing.

 

[Imaro]

Yeah, which is exactly the sort of thing I have an issue with when people attempt to take someone to task for NOT using some sort of pre established setting. Right now I'm running an adventure path (Age of Worms) and the players are in a place called Diamond Lake. Most of the PC's are from or around Diamond Lake and are familiar with the Free City nearby but out of the 5 of them only 1 of them has ever been there. Point being theyre all from a small town and really don't know about anything outside of thier immediate scope. For now.

When the story progresses and they begin to inquire about things that ARE outside of the scope (and this either goes one out of 2 ways) you either already have an idea of what a specific PC or PC's are going to ask about gauging by the play so far, or you make a note of it and prep it for the next time. Unless it's something that's needed immediately, in which case you stop for a minute or two and quickly draft something or create an answer.

Are the pro-setting people implying that it's wrong to do this? and if so on what grounds is it wrong? Am I expected to believe that the pro-setting people in general have completely memorized thier setting bible and can instantly bring to bear any bit of information to satisfy thier players need?

I don't think either is wrong, but I enjoy and find more use(for my playstyle) with at least minimal setting design. My question to you is what about when the PC's do something you don't expect...What exactly is considered a crime in Diamond Lake...Who governs Diamond Lake...Are we allowed to carry any weapon out in the open in Diamond Lake?These are all things that are reasonable questions for a PC to ask starting out. I think there is a difference in micro and macro setting design, but they're both still setting design.

Even if that's not the case and the pro-setting people give their players a primer before hand on the general things that are happening in the setting for them to explore, that goes to playstyle, which still leads to some winging unless the DM has detailed every last one of those setting hooks that are in said primer.

This gets into level of detail, but IMHO it's still useful to have at least a general sense of how things in my world work. It's sort of like game rules, they don't cover everything, but a good set will let you reasonably and logically draw conclusions for things not covered.

In the end as someone else said upthread this has more to do with the group and how much work the DM is willing to do before hand. One playstyle isnt better than the other in general, maybe in specific, but not in general. Just because I havent prepped an entire setting doesnt automatically make me a hack and slash DM, just because you've prepped an entire campaign setting doesnt make your game the end all be all of dramatic role-playing and versimilatude(sp?).

My question is this do people who don't do setting design assume their PC's will go with the adventure they have designed? I have found that this isn't always the case. In a setting I can have numerous seeds(fleshed out or not fleshed out as fits my playstyle) that the PC's can choose to explore. If I design just the adventure then that kind of almost forces my PC's to go that route, and what if what I think would make a good adventure isn't what they want to follow up on? What if in your campaign above they start out for the Free City right away...or is this not an option?

To be completely honest though, I do believe in a happy medium. It's something I used when I first started DMing when I was 13 and have gone back to recently and that's starting small and building the world around the players. I have a player who wants to obtain a magical tatoo. From the moment he mentioned it, I said to myself "that's an subplot that's going to lead to an adventure that's going to highlight just how useful that tatoo's going to be". I have another player who is a rouge who left the Free City and is laying low in Diamond Lake, it's already been decided that her actions in the Free City that resulted in her leaving will have certain ramifications elsewhere.

Yeah a balance is definitely the way to go, but I've seen more "setting is useless posts" than "adventure design" is useless posts in this thread. I don't think those advocating a setting are saying adventure design is useless, just that well, IMHO setting design is just as important.

I guess it comes down to I feel that it's a waste of time to do all of the setting work BEFORE you start playing because I like tailoring certain aspects of the game to the players. I've done the setting prep thing and in most of (not all) the cases the hooks have been ignored and the players go off and investigate some minor detail right out of left feild anyway. That and players usually come up with better and more interesting plots (to them) out of thier own imagination anyway.

This statement seems to argue for more setting prep and less adventure design. If the setting is fleshed out it's easier to know what the PC's are going to encounter when they go off on a tangent. I don't see how the actions of your players(as described above) advocate advenure design over setting design.

 

[Ry]

I find it's easier to know what the players are going to encounter when they go off on a tangent when you have prepared modular material.

For example, one of my "Problems" starts with a saddled horse with no rider coming down towards the players. The horse is slightly wounded (a piece of a broken arrowhead is stuck in its flank), and is skittish. When the players examine the animal they see an emblem relating to an organization they are familiar with (like a knight's clasp, a wizard's sign, etc.)

That kind of encounter puts a problem in front of the players: Should we track this horse back to where it lost its rider, or take the horse, or just leave it here and hope everything is fine?

The NPC horserider has abilities that can be a resource to the party, and has been left for dead in some skirmish with humanoids or the players' enemies. If the players track back, they can save him/her. Depending on how you want to handle this, this can be a small enemy camp with the NPC as a visible prisoner, or and empty battlefield where the players can find one of the stripped corpses is actually still alive.

It's adventure prep, it's easily adaptable, and it can fill a space if you think there's a gap. It can lead on to more content (the vanguard of an approaching army) or not (2 bandits ambushed him) at your discretion.

 

[Reynard]

It's adventure prep, it's easily adaptable, and it can fill a space if you think there's a gap. It can lead on to more content (the vanguard of an approaching army) or not (2 bandits ambushed him) at your discretion.

I'd actually call that a third gategory: "game prep". it isn't part of the adventure you're running, it isn't setting material, but it is something that supprts your game -- like statting out NPCs for general use, designing small dungeons or monster lairs to toss in the wilderness should the PCs go meandering off, or creating encounter tables of various sorts. It is a time investment I wholly endorse by the way -- do enough of it and you don't have to make "adventures" per se.

 

[Ry]

I slotted it into "adventure prep" mostly because I don't do any other kinds of adventure prep anymore... it takes the slot of what used to be adventure prep.