What are your favorite OP adventure types?

[warfteiner]

Hey folks!

I am hoping that you'll be kind enough to share your thoughts on the types of adventures that you enjoy in an Organized Play format. Knowing that we only have ~4 hours budgeted for adventures (or even ~2 hours for some, as marked!), what do you think works well?

Personally, as much as I enjoy a good dungeon crawl I don't know that they're my "go-to" for OP. I think The Scroll Thief from season 1 caught a great balance of crawl/ investigate/ RP for me.

That said, a series of linked dungeon crawl-style adventures might be REALLY cool. But maybe that's because I've spent a lot of time playing games like Star Ocean 2, Beyond Oasis, various Final Fantasy challenge modes... and *so much* Undermountain for my home groups in AD&D and 3.5.

What do you think? What's worked really well? What format do you want more of?


--------------------------
RESULTS:

1. moral challenges ("shades of grey") - 1
2. branching adventures (A leads to {B or C} leads to {D with modifications}) - 1
3. even mix (exploration/ investigation/ dungeon crawl) - 1

-- please forgive the brevity of the results summary; more details in the posts below! --

 

[skerritthegreen]

My favorites are the ones that force you to consider moral or political choices; particularly with NPCs that have developed with you over a few adventures and you are invested in.

 

[kalani]

I can't say that I have a favorite adventure type. I tend to like ones that have a mix of combat, roleplaying, and a small amount of intrigue... Of all the Expeditions created to date however, the most entertaining one would have to be the upcoming DDEX 3-13 "Writhing in the Dark" (not yet released). It was the most entertaining adventure I have played in over a decade and hit all the notes perfectly.

While on the surface it is just a typical dungeon crawl, the puzzles are engaging, the atmosphere is disturbing, and the encounters are well written. It appears decidedly alien in its scope, and while it uses some fairly common monsters - it places them in encounters that give them a decidedly alien vibe.

 

[RCanine]

There are essentially three types of structures you can divide adventures into:

* Linear (one encounter after another, PCs go from beginning to end)
* Non-linear (where PCs can choose any number of encounters in almost any order, until they find/choose the final one)
* Branching (which is a linear adventure with decision points that alter what the next encounter will be)

Personally, I think the branching structure works best. Non-linear adventures feel fine, but they heavily incentivize a rushed playstyle because the assumption is that there are more encounters than time. Linear adventures are fine for one playthrough, but lack replayability and their win condition is usually binary (win/lose). A branching structure works well because those decisions points are also character building points, RP points, and can make an adventure incredibly replayable. It can also create varying "shades" of victory -- e.g. choosing a winning faction, winning at great cost, etc. Plus they're easy to limit the total number of encounters you can face, so that fits well into OP timelines.

There are also some encounter types I think are fun but don't work well for OP:

* Puzzles that rely on OOC knowledge/logic these tend to be played as either "did you play D&D 10 years ago?" or "everyone check their phones while player X hogs the one printout".
* Traps. These tend to play as "did you optimize perception?" "Let's spend an hour taking 5-ft steps until someone rolls above a 15 searching"
* Ambushes and secret doors. See the above for traps.
* Interview/Interrogation Encounters ("everyone check their phones while the bard rolls a bunch of charisma checks"
* Combats in close/cramped quarters (less of a problem in 5E, which usually boils down to a D20-off of basic attacks anyway)

... now, I've seen exceptions to all of these, but they are the common traps that 5E designers fall into. Some of the others are:

* PCs not getting clues/progressing toward a solution
* PCs not having a clear understanding of where they are/what their goal is
* The optimal strategy just to kill everything dead
* Requiring too many of the same skill / ability checks in order to get/find something

 

[kalani]

I love branching story lines as well. I also like to write story lines in which certain events will occur unless stopped by the PCs, and if stopped, another event occurs instead (usually one in favor of the PCs). I like PCs to feel like their presence and actions have a difference in the outcome, and for those differences to be apparent. If the results of the PCs actions is not transparent on the final outcome, it makes the choices seem irrelevant.

For example: Lets say that an enemy force is amassing siege engines. The PCs destroy said siege engines, and when the siege occurs later - the allied forces are thankful that the enemy failed to bring siege engines as they would have been overwhelmed. Instead of siege engines however, the enemy was forced to use a backup plan of some kind, or to bring out a partially finished super weapon (instead of using it later once completed).

 

[RCanine]

I love branching story lines as well. I also like to write story lines in which certain events will occur unless stopped by the PCs, and if stopped, another event occurs instead (usually one in favor of the PCs). I like PCs to feel like their presence and actions have a difference in the outcome, and for those differences to be apparent. If the results of the PCs actions is not transparent on the final outcome, it makes the choices seem irrelevant.

100% agreement. Your examples are also great because they show how an author can add time pressure, which is important to avoid the five minute work day.

 

[warfteiner]

Interesting notes so far, and a very nice use of examples for branching storylines that use later effects. Thanks!

C'mon, folks, I know there are more opinions out there!

 

[Pauper]

Dude, it's been three hours, and this is a big question -- give us some time to think about it!

Edit: Will need some time to provide a more detailed answer on what I like, mainly because I like different kinds of adventures depending on whether I am DMing or playing, but I can say that the one style of adventure I dislike both as a DM and as a player is the 'branching' style adventure.

As a DM, I dislike branching adventures because they require me to prep lots of material that I likely won't use in the game session -- few things are more discouraging than getting to the end of a long week and realizing I still need to pull minis, prepare maps, and generally refresh my memory on roughly 8+ hours worth of encounters, of which I'm only going to use about half of what I prep for the Saturday Expeditions session at the FLGS. I'm always tempted to shave a couple of hours off my prep time by simply trying to decide which path I want to encourage the table to take, and hope they follow my lead. It helps a little when an adventure branches out after an initial encounter and then collapses back to a single final encounter, so there are just different paths taken through the adventure rather than actual different adventures, but that just leads into what I dislike as a player.

As a player, I dislike branching adventures because they make a false promise: you can make a meaningful decision as to how you interact with this adventure! I say it's a false promise because, for starters, many such adventures start with a branching path but converge to a single final climactic encounter, which is the same for every branch. So it doesn't matter what decisions you make, you end up in exactly the same place (though maybe with slightly different details depending on the branch you chose). Secondly, branching adventures cause conflict -- when some party members see a specific branch option as being optimal for their character's backstory/RP motivation, or even more commonly, when only one branch contains a specific item that a player wants for his character (I'm trying to think of the Season 2 adventure where you don't get the spell scroll unless you encounter a specific area); in a linear adventure, we may be on the plot wagon, but at least we're all on the plot wagon together. Lastly, it's frustrating to play a branching adventure and discover that the branches you chose to take weren't the 'official' branches the adventure's first sets of players followed, and as such you now have to retrofit your own adventure experience to match the 'canon result'. (Best example of this: my Oath of Vengeance Paladin killed Spernik twice in Season 1, and, if it hadn't been for a persistent DM, likely would have to kill Ellison Berenguer twice as well.)

I would much rather see a well-written, well-tested linear adventure than a similarly written and tested branchiing adventure, and I say this knowing that branching adventures also take more time to effectively playtest.

Just my $0.02US, and more about what I'm looking for in a mod later when time permits.

--
Pauper

 

[Anthraxus]

Story. I like a good story first. Roleplaying hooks. I do like branching stories every once in awhile, or ones where you can come at encounters in different ways- semi-sandboxy.

I like mods with some exploration, investigation, or dungeon-crawling, maybe a mix of all of them.

While I don't mind combat, I definitely don't like it when there are more than 4 combats in a 4-hour mod. :\

 

[RCanine]

(Best example of this: my Oath of Vengeance Paladin killed Spernik twice in Season 1, and, if it hadn't been for a persistent DM, likely would have to kill Ellison Berenguer twice as well.)

While I see your point but agree to disagree with most of your post, I'd like to point out that this isn't the fault of a branching adventure, but rather poor design; if an NPC is intended to return, it shouldn't *be* killable. I know this is a controversial point, but I'm a firm believer in DM-ex-machina when it comes to killing storyline NPCs.