WoTC Adventure Design

[McBard]

Two recent articles have discussed 4e encounter design (Mike Mearl's) and the 4e default campaign design (Rich Baker's). I'm interested now to know the design team's take on adventure site design: that is, their take on what should constitute a typical site (whether dungeon, temple, ruin, or whatever), and more specifically on how encounter-dense it should be.

For instance, take 3.0's 32-page, introductory adventure The Sunless Citadel. This adventure consisted of a single site of 2 dungeon levels, the first level with about 40 numbered rooms and the second with about 20 numbered rooms.

I'd be interested in seeing a move away from these numbers. That is, I'd like to see the "default adventure site design", if you will, espouse more adventure sites per 32-page book, but with each site having much fewer individual rooms.

I realize Mearls leans towards this approach in his article (where he speaks of grouping 3 rooms as 1 encounter), but I'd like to see something even more lean than this. I suppose if I were to rewrite The Sunless Citadel for 4e, I'd divide it into 3 different actual sites (of three different natures and locations, and so probably have to change the module's name!), and with each site only having about 5-10 numbered "rooms" (5 if of Mearls' mega-room approach or 10 if not).

I think this would help the game's pace. I reached the nadir of my 3.5 enjoyment in the various Adventure Paths (esp. Age of Wyrms) wherein you'd slug it out for 30+ rooms over 3 or 4 4-hour game sessions...only to uncover a single, vague clue to the campaign' story. Granted, I'm talking about Paizo's Adventure Path series, and so am comparing an orange to WoTC's apple, but my point remains:

4e adventure modules should have more discrete sites with fewer (more "coolness dense") encounters at each site.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I agree. Personally, after about the 3rd game session in the same place, I start getting board with it. If some of the newer adventures were designed with multiple two game sessions sized locations in mind, I would be pretty happy.

Or maybe I'm just developing ADD.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

That is a trend I have been trying to follow in my FTF games, smaller, focused dungeons. Tehy work better, and avoid the boredom of room after room after room.

I must say the new paradigm of more monsters to fight is good also, and I hope they really keep advancing monsters through the years. Because if you look at the pathetic feat selections of MMI monsters, you don't have to wonder why they get killed so easily.

 

[howandwhy99]

No one says you must stay in a dungeon. You can stop and go back to each as many times as you like.

 

[McBard]

No one says you must stay in a dungeon. You can stop and go back to each as many times as you like.

That's true. However, I guess my point is that I hope the 4e design team turns their fun-factor microscope on 3e adventure site design concepts in ways they've done on other elements of the game.

If Mearls et al conclude that fighting 4 monsters is funner than fighting 1 monster (and I agree with him), then I think exploring 3 smaller, but enviornmentally different sites is funner than exploring 1 larger, fairly monolithic site. Granted, a single site can have some variation within it...but at the very least I'd like the norm to move towards fewer actual encounters to slog your way through at any given site. And just increase the number of different sites.

I suppose my thread here mostly applies to the (ever growing) Adventure Path approach to modules. I remember a point in the Age of Wyrms campaign--fairly early on--where the party explores this triple-pronged dungeon, each prong dedicated to an evil deity. (In fact, I think Mearls wrote this episode himself!). We spent about 4 game sessions of 4 hours each battling our way through the dungeon, and the shear density of the encounters just derailed the story. I recall turning to the players in the 3rd or 4th session and asking..."what the **** were we looking for, anyway?". We just shrugged our shoulders and picked up the dice. But it wasn't very much fun.

I think the whole process would have been more enjoyable if the actual adventure site had been trimmed down or split into different locales. The extreme end of my point is this: bash the door down to the dungeon/ruin/tower...make your way through about 6 or so supercool, mega-great-Mearlesque 4e encounters...find a clue to the on-going story...and move on. ALL in a single session of 4 hours (or perhaps two sessions).

I think if a single adventure site takes more than 8 hours of game play, players' eyes start to glaze.

 

[Gundark]

I have to agree with this line of thinking. Things like the WLD would bore me to tears. I'm hoping that 4e takes a page out of Iron Heroes book and make environment more of a factor.

oh it was Age of Worms which killed 3.5 for me..as well for the reasons that you mentioned above..a reason which I have been hesitent to jump on the pathfinder bandwagon.

 

[RangerWickett]

Hm. I know some people have said they like the 6th adventure of War of the Burning Sky the least. It's a dungeon crawl with about 40 rooms, though at the end you get a pretty major movement forward in the campaign's plot, and along the way those rooms aren't just people waiting to fight you; there's narrative along the way, and some puzzle solving.

I remember running Sunless Citadel, and in the basement level, the PCs went into a room and I read the boxed text, because I was playing up the 'old school lame gaming' style for laughs. It was some octagonal room, and they killed the critter in there, then went on to the next room. Then, in exactly the same tone as before, I reread the previous boxed text, because the room was identical to the last one. That wasn't fun.

I prefer to keep adventures dynamic. I mean, when I run my own games I usually just come up with a 'fight' for each session, and let the rest of the session be role-playing, but for adventures I write, I try to keep encounters distinct from each other.

Speaking of which, back to writing.