Setting Design vs Adventure Prep

[Brazeku]

We can argue back and forth over whether the adventure or the setting "owns" the hook, but I'll dispute you on two counts:
1) A hook that is attached to an adventure is much more likely to be used. A hook without an adventure behind it is a backless maiden until you write the adventure. So write the adventure first, create the setting as an afterthought. I know this breaks with tradition, but this tradition of setting uber alles, IMO, is wrong.
2) The only way the PCs can really affect the world is in the context of the adventure. The PCs should affect the world through their heroics. Heroics require encounters...plots, traps, fights, twists, locations, NPCs, and these are the trappings of an adventure. The setting can theorise about lamp posts and elven migrations all it likes, but until these things are rooted in something solid, there's nothing truly there.

As a preference, I like to have the setting material to help generate adventures. Later in this post, I'll tell you what setting material I usually use. And point 2 is somewhat moot- what we're arguing is almost certainly scale. As opposed to having character actions which function inside an adventure (with an adventure being an assault on a keep or whatnot), a setting as I use it would be, basically, a really large, vague adventure.

By concocting adventures and status quo "encounter-level" locations (i.e. status quo adventures) which players can interact with, the outcome of the PC's interaction with which affects the setting.

I would include this as setting prep.

By determining the type of adventures you want to run, an then adapting the setting to support them. If you want an adventure based on the PCs distracting elven refugees from a bugbear force, then adapt the setting to include bugbears on the march and elven refugees. This is the way it should be: horse before cart. The adventures are the place in the campaign where the rubber meets the road, so should be put first and foremost in terms priority and of meeting their needs IMO.

I actually think we're on the same page. I build the setting with the idea that it's going to do something in particular- the difference is that, as opposed to a task, the inspiration begins with an image, usually of a place- then I ask 'what can we do there'?

Campaign arcs of a bunch of adventures bolted together, or in a less railroady campaign, an "adventure playground" which the players can interact with, and the results of their interaction determining the course of the campaign arc. Afterwards, once you've invented the villains and organisations which the adventures need, maybe you can invent entire cultures and towns to support these NPCs. All of this can be improvised if you've spent all your time on elven migrations set a thousand years ago, but such time is much better spent elsewhere IMO, for reasons I've detailed.

I don't generally worry about extensive history unless the players are making motions to interact with it. The adventure playground that you're describing... is setting.

Invent the NPC first, then the culture which he or she requires. Yes, you can have a single BBEG as the cause of an entire culture, because the BBEG is more important to the campaign than his culture is, in most cases.

I don't really run campaigns that focus on BBEGs. Culture is pretty important to my campaigns because it helps determine the way NPC X is going to act, and determines large scale background conflicts- the sense that the world is larger than the actions of the players. If the players do run up against adversaries, usually that adversary grows out of the environment that the players have come across. In fact, I rarely stat out NPCs unless it looks like there's going to be a fight.

By inventing the consistent setting as a result of the needs of the adventures. This is not a tall order; if your campaign arc requires a recurring NPC who is a gnome with a crazy uncle who invents stuff for him, you put gnomes and a crazy uncle gnome somewhere in your setting. If your adventure calls for pegasus knights, you can incorporate them somewhere into the setting.

Or the setting can generate the adventures. This helps give your adventures flavor.

Much more stifling is needing a pegasi knight in your adventure, and in fact an entire fortress of eyrie knights fighting dragons like that Elmore painting, but knowing that your campaign setting has nowhere for a culture with pegasus knights to come from, let alone an eyrie city on the map. You discard the idea, your adventure suffers, and the campaign is worse off for it.

In 16 years, this has never happened. Setting tends to be fairly flexible due, as you pointed out, to its sweeping nature. During travel I have a few places that I've listed in the area, and I'll drop them in as I see fit, then alter the setting to accomodate. Then they become part of the setting.

Yes, it is. Too much time is spent on macro-level material of dubious usefulness because PCs cannot interact with it until it's micro-level manifestation is invented, and such material is put up as higher in priority (and has much more time spent on it) than the micro-level material that PCs actually interact with, imposing arbitrary restrictions on the actual nature of the campaign. This has it precisely backwards, IMO.

I don't even think we're really arguing. I think our terms just became crossed.

Anyway, I'm going to tell you what I consider setting. Keep in mind that I am an improv DM- I guess you could say setting is my adventure prep.

General culture- determines how NPCs act as a baseline
A few locations- stages for the PCs to investigate. Brief history.
Some notes on architecture- for when I have to generate maps (I do not do maps ahead of time anymore, I like to be able to end an area if the players seem to be flagging), also for description
Some notes on politics- to determine purpose of events, NPC motives
Stock opposition- longest process. For players to fight if necessary (I prefer not to use the MM). These will usually include a few notes on why they are in location X, and how they act.
A few events- things that can happen, and why they are happening.

That's about it. In about an hour of prep I can run most any adventure. I invent NPCs on the fly.

 

[rounser]

I would include this as setting prep.

Generally it's not considered such, as a glance at any published campaign setting "bible" will show.

For purposes of this discussion, it's convenient to pretend that encounter level stuff is setting prep, but in the published D&D world this usually isn't the case. Magic of Faerun has, for example, an encounter-level bard's college. The FRCS has almost nothing at this level of development, and it's typically the FRCS model people have in mind when they refer to setting prep. Encounter level descriptions of towns, such as Hommlet, are generally included as part of an adventure. Those few supplements that aren't (such as the Shadowdale book in the 2E FRCS box) really stand out as something non-typical.

You can argue that your home efforts aren't like this, but it's typically what's meant by detailing a setting. But this discussion has descended into the splitting of hairs - an ogre's den is technically "part of the setting", but most won't be working on anywhere near that level when they "design a world" if they've chosen a top-down approach, as most do and this thread implies.

Macro-level setting development is a suboptimal use of time resources <- there's my argument in a nutshell. You believe it isn't, that the time is well spent, and that setting should dictate adventure form and function <- this is the traditional view. I think we'll agree to disagree on this one.

 

[Mark CMG]

I don't think that was his point

I got his point. I just don't agree with the premise that such agreements "usually" exists. I think it best for folks to speak from their own base of knowledge, first hand or otherwise, and not conjure pseudo-data to make their point. There's no need for it, as we're not in a process bound to change the minds of others so much as merely giving our own opinions based on our own experiences so that we might compare them and know that those experiences exist. This isn't a contest to be won or lost.


And, as to the additional point I was making in conjunction, I re-emphasize that if a group has an agreement, unspoken or otherwise, and someone breaks it, then it is likely something to be dealt with out of game.

 

[Imaro]

All four of those categories are broadly defined. All four are modular.

(pulls out his fourfold deck)

Problem: Many dungeons have portals to a slave market maintained by yugoloth slavers and other fiends. This place is like an intricate anthill of caverns and twisting passageways, with major crossroads guarded by Molydeus demons (CR 19). The players can stumble across an old portal in a dungeon, or if they find themselves chasing captives in a dungeon, they may have to buy them back before they are sold off to some horrible demon.

Threat: A strange virus is spreading, which spreads via sound - the infected speak only Abyssal, and unless they know the language cannot even understand themselves. (DC 14 WIL save upon hearing, Cure Disease removes). If enough people are screaming abyssal at once, Tanar'ri may be summoned.

Resource: An organization of rangers and scouts marks trees, stones, or caverns in the area with Sylvan runes. These give simple clues as to an alternate entrances to a dungeon or warn of nearby dangers. If spotted (Spot DC 20), later runes are easier to find (DC 15).

Reward: From a high outcropping of rock, a character can see for miles and miles in all directions. The air atop the rock is clear and fresh - the first player to climb it receives an extra action point.

This isn't adventure prep, this is hook prep. How do these things in any way form the prep for an adventure(except for the aformentioned hook)? None of these things are about the players goals or what they want to do or explore. they're random seeds thrown out without cohesion.

The difference between what I consider setting prep and what you have is that my seeds have a cohesive and underlying logic to them because my world is fleshed out. How in any way are these things driven by your players?

If I was playing in a game where the last one happened(fresh air for an action point) does that mean every high outcropping of rock gives me an action point? Should I expect that? how do I determine the ones that do from the ones that don't?

Now if certain rock formations had a history behind them that explained this, then I know it's only these rocks now and why what happened, happened.

 

[rounser]

I got his point. I just don't agree with the premise that such agreements "usually" exists. I think it best for folks to speak from their own base of knowledge, first hand or otherwise, and not conjure pseudo-data to make their point. There's no need for it, as we're not in a process bound to change the minds of others so much as merely giving our own opinions based on our own experiences so that we might compare them and know that those experiences exist. This isn't a contest to be won or lost.

Okay, then look - do your players ignore your adventure hooks and take a hike to Hepmonaland or the Nine Hells if they feel like it, regardless of their level, apropos of nothing?

Do most groups you interact with or you've heard of behave this way? Do published books assume this behaviour is typical, or do they assume that players will be led by the nose?

 

[Imaro]

Status quo adventure locations. You can read that as "setting material" if you want, but when was the last time your setting material prep included specific traps, treasure, monster stats, NPCs, all by location, at encounter level? If it were in Dungeon magazine or a module, you'd call it an adventure. Stuff this specific doesn't appear in campaign setting books, except as a sample adventure in the back. The exception which proves the rule is something like the Wilderlands, but that's very much the exception to the rule.

"Well, not exactly, it's mostly about the elven migrations a thousand years ago, and how the culture of the halflings relate to the orcs, and Prince Zebedee's favourite color and so forth meaning he's going to declare war on Zoom-Zoomaland." I thought so.

What are you talking about. Apparently you and Rycanada also have different ideas of adventure prep, cause nothing he described in the answer post had stats, NPC's, treasure or monster stats.

IMHO, setting prep encompases adventure prep if you want to get that detailed, the reverse doesn't apply. So it's win/win for me when I do setting prep.

 

[rounser]

This isn't adventure prep, this is hook prep.

A hook without an actual adventure behind it is not a hook. The promise of "an adventure I might make one day" doesn't count, unless you improvise the lot. Thus, "adventure hook", implying a real, honest-to-goodness at least semi-prepared adventure is behind it. A "plot hook" sounds like something a novelist might use.

But again, this thread is being nickeled-and-dimed to death over semantics.

 

[rounser]

IMHO, setting prep encompases adventure prep if you want to get that detailed, the reverse doesn't apply. So it's win/win for me when I do setting prep.

Oh dear, now this is just getting silly. Everything's setting prep now, including adventures. Moving the goal posts much?

 

[Reynard]

Okay, then look - do your players ignore your adventure hooks and take a hike to Hepmonaland ...
Do published books assume this behaviour is typical, or do they assume that players will be led by the nose?

First off, those are very different questions. What is published has no bearing on the subject of this thread -- I should know, I started it -- because what we are talking about is what a DM does for his home campaign.

More to the point, i think what he was saying is that the hooks aren't ignored, the situation is such that the PCs can meander off to wherever because there's a detailed setting there that allows the DM to continue to run the game regardless of where the PCs tromp off to.

Again, there's some discrepencies in terminology and basic assumptions, and I think, for the sake of this discussion, we're better off actually defining our terms, individually, when we use them -- rather than making assumptions about what we and others think those words mean.

If I say adventure design, I mean "a situation with planned and established details, with a beginning, middle and presumed end". I do not mean "an owlbear's lair in the woods" -- the owlbear's lair is not an adventure. It is part of the setting, one that the PCs can interact with. The adventure happens when the PCs learn that the Poachers guild (part of the setting) of Lake Mauran (setting) will pay handsomely for owlbear pelts (setting), but one must contend with the Druid of Wayward Wood (setting) in way or another. that's the hook, based on the setting, that leads to an adventure, which may or may not need any more prep than that-- after all, owlbear stats are in the MM and the DMG has druid stat blocks -- depending on the DM's personal style.

 

[Ry]

This isn't adventure prep, this is hook prep. How do these things in any way form the prep for an adventure(except for the aformentioned hook)? None of these things are about the players goals or what they want to do or explore. they're random seeds thrown out without cohesion.

The difference between what I consider setting prep and what you have is that my seeds have a cohesive and underlying logic to them because my world is fleshed out. How in any way are these things driven by your players?

If I was playing in a game where the last one happened(fresh air for an action point) does that mean every high outcropping of rock gives me an action point? Should I expect that? how do I determine the ones that do from the ones that don't?

Now if certain rock formations had a history behind them that explained this, then I know it's only these rocks now and why what happened, happened.

The players arrive at the game, and we sit down and do any levelling or character building that's required. That gives me some ideas of what they want to see. We chat about the relations between the characters. That gives me ideas what they want to play off of. We talk about the characters backstories (in the case of the first game), or the party's recent adventures or off-screen life (after the first game). All of these things have tons of player input, and that gives me an idea of what they're interested in doing. I take that knowledge, and a pile of these Problems, Threats, Resources, and Rewards, and I run the game.

You seem really bothered by my outcropping of rock! Let me explain. I'm not telling the players "outcropping of rock = action point", I'm presenting it as "Hey, first to the top gets bragging rights, and here's a place where bragging rights = action point." It's just a motivation for players to have a little friendly competition, which is a nice thing to put in (i.e. a reward) after a hard struggle.

In my design, I'm very conscious of the fact that rather than there being a fantasy universe that obeys its own holodeck-like rules, there's a few 20-something guys sitting around a table trying to have fun.