Kol Korran
2015-11-07, 02:05 PM
The inspiration for this thread came from a few discussions I read in other threads, recent personal experience with a Paizo AP, and a thread Yora wrote quite some time ago, but with quite interesting ideas. (Credit where credit is due. Good ideas there! I'll get to that later)
My group usually ran adventures and adventures we wrote on our own. But we're grown up (mid thirties), and have quite a lot of RL responsibilities, and so I felt I won't have enough time to properly prepare, and suggested we'll run one of Paizo's adventure paths instead. The reasoning was- "Hey! That will save me lots of time! They got locations, NPCs, battle stats, treasure and all of that written down, right? I just need to read up a bit before, and I'm ready, right?" one of my players, who GMed for another group, and tried something similar before, warned me: "It won't save you time. In fact, it may take you even more time!" It seemed nonsensical to me, and we were hyped by the concept of the AP (Wrath of The Righteous, if you're interested, I keep a log, with a link in my sig, but not necessary here). And we've began to play.
Everything written down, should be a breeze to prepare, right? Well... no... really not. :smallannoyed: My player was right- on average it takes me even more to prepare. Why is that so? Well, after some time playing, I've come to the following observations:
1- It's not your idea, it's someone else: This sounds obvious, but it has significant implications. The main one is that when you prepare an adventure yourself, the ideas are very fresh in your mind, they came from it! You understands the reasons, the flavor, the pacing, the situation and more, in which everything is set. You feel your adventure, and so you can more easily change it, respond to unexpected actions, and understand and feel it better. With modules, the material is often foreign to a degree, and you can spend a lot of time deciphering the reasons/ rational behind the design ("Why are they using all of these seemingly random encounters? Why isn't that location guarded from X?" and so on) It also takes time to learn of monsters/ feats/ spells/ tactics/ other game elements you rarely use, and need to brush up on/ relearn/ study. This take quite a bit of time, and make for a clunkier game when the PCs do something unexpected.
Adjustments for your party: APs are supposed to fit the "classic adventuring party", perhaps with slight adjustment to the theme of the campaign (desert, pirates, horror, mythic heroes and so on). As such, they will NEVER quite fit the party to a good degree, unless the party are all "random adventures, follow quest givers, interested mostly in combat". As I came to realize (and wrote about it in another thread), APs can rarely be used as fully written adventures, but rather as inspiration for adventure design. You seem to need to adjust for sooooo many things: power level, style of play, PCs personalities and background, house rules, party make up, treasure and gear, sometime even the setting and the world!
And this can take a lot more time than making it on your own really. Why? Because here you have to look through the design already there, decipher and sift through what you want to use, what you want to tweak, make balances, changes and so on... So you need to add/ adjust a lot of your won stuff, while dealing with what someone else intended, instead of just your own stuff.
3) Very little room to diverge from the path: This may be mostly true for Paizo's APs (Or "Plot-based adventures" as Yora calls them), which assume a fairly strict order of events (For most cases, some are a bit more lax, and have some sandbox feel, like kingmaker), and they don't much cope with unexpected actions by the PCs. I'm not blaming them- they CAN'T quite deal with the unexpected... Or can they? I'll later touch on Yora's idea of Task-based adventures, which suggest a way to deal with this problem. But in the Paizo APs, when (not IF) the party does something unexpected, you usually have very little help in the module itself. And more than that- you now have to respond to the actions, with a story and setting premises that are not of your own mind, so you understand them less, and respond more clankily. The bigger problem is that the APs RELY on the sequence, so once the PCs are off track, you either find a way to get them back (With some railroading), or you just kiss the AP goodbye, and do your own thing... But then why did you need it anyway?
This usually means that you need to do a lot of work in between sessions, (Adjusting consequences of PC actions) or before them (Trying to think of possible actions, which the module did not really include)
Not that great writing or design: To be fair, this is somewhat of a generalization. I haven't played all Paizo's APs, or even read all of them. I'm DMing the Ap I mentioned at the start, and played through a few modules by PbPs. I have read quite a few more though, and read about problems gamers have had with many of them. The APs seem to have lots of design problems. Some of the major repeating offenders I've seen:
- Very little connection between modules in the same AP: At the end of a module you usually have something that very, very loosely links to the next chapter. There is very little cohesion and sufficient recurring motifs, build ups for major NPCs and antagonists and so on. I understand the need for each module to be able to stand on it's own, but their main goal is to be played as a campaign, and it can't be that hard to include some added material to show progress of main features and themes throughout. A big reason for this problem is that the different modules are written by different people, and there seem to be no coordination of... you know... the campaign as a whole, as one story, not just adventures who follow each other. I've seen it done very badly in the AP I'm DMing, and read a few others, in which this glaring problem repeats.
Again, this means a LOT of work for the GM, but not writing his won story, but rather disentangling a messy story, and trying to find ways to make it work together.
- A LOT of "filler material": Paizo's adventures are choke full with combat which is there just to fill XP, is not really challenging, and has absolutely no impact on the story except for whether the PCs kill or are killed (since it's not challenging usually, the answer is simple), and give out treasure. My group has little game time, and so prefers fewer more challenging, more important encounters, but my guess is that many would prefer it as well than the "XP-grind". the amount of story development throughout a module, which usually stretch over 3 levels or so, can be done in 0.5-1.5 worth of levels at most.
Which again, leaves the GM with drastically adjusting the material- scrubbing a lot of ti and readjusting the rest.
- Twists and turns? Though there are a few examples to the contrary, Many of the Paizo quests are immensely straightforward- you are given a task, told the general threats involved, and... follow it through. Many guests really lack twists, surprises, mysteries, reveals. This often leads to less suspense, less of a story, less interesting choices, which is a lot of what the game is about, no?
-------------------------------------------
In the AP I'm using, I came to do a LOT of work to make it fit the group. from other campaign logs, playing PbPs, and forum questions, it seems that many GMs spend a lot of time readjusting modules. Are they really time saving? I don't much think so. But, they are useful as inspiration, and as a very general, basic structure I think.
Yora wrote quite an interesting thread, with intriguing ideas (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303155-Task-based-adventures-and-published-adventure-modules&highlight=module) a while ago, which stuck in my head, and which I remembered recently. A core idea in the thread is for a different kind of modules- "Task based modules". In short- There is a setting, two or more groups, with somewhat conflicting agendas, each with their own basic plans, resources, and such. The module details (loosely), the events that will happen if the PCs weren't there. However, there is no sequence of events for what the PCs "Should" do, or how the adventure shall progress. The GM reacts to the PCs action, relying on the personalities, resources, plans, limitations, and possibly some "Cases and responses" simple discussion for the antagonist.
She goes further, suggesting to leave out stat blocks and such. the moduel could give suggestions, but leave the main adjustments for the GM. Focusing on REASONING, PURPOSE, and ROLE of the elements, rather than their stats or detailed info, which will most likely be changed by the GM. In short- provide decent inspiration, and basic structure to build upon and expand.
I quite like her ideas, and once this AP is through (We like playing the heavily modified version of it that we run), we'll most likely take that kind of approach. It won't solve all of the problems of time saving, but will at least fulfill it's purpose better, and the GM won't need to decipher the design of an adventure that isn't their own.
------------------------------------
Ok, long post so far. Some questions/ ideas for discussion:
1) Your own experiences with modules- how much tweaking did they need to be satisfactory? What worked? What didn't? Why?
2) How are modules of other games other than D&D 3.5/ PF handled? What sort of design do they take? What works? What doesn't? Why?
3) Anyone tried anything similar to the "Task based modules" Mentioned above? How did it work? Speaking of modules, not stuff you designed yourself (Which tends to run like it many times)
I hope this makes sense, just my observations.
Kol.
My group usually ran adventures and adventures we wrote on our own. But we're grown up (mid thirties), and have quite a lot of RL responsibilities, and so I felt I won't have enough time to properly prepare, and suggested we'll run one of Paizo's adventure paths instead. The reasoning was- "Hey! That will save me lots of time! They got locations, NPCs, battle stats, treasure and all of that written down, right? I just need to read up a bit before, and I'm ready, right?" one of my players, who GMed for another group, and tried something similar before, warned me: "It won't save you time. In fact, it may take you even more time!" It seemed nonsensical to me, and we were hyped by the concept of the AP (Wrath of The Righteous, if you're interested, I keep a log, with a link in my sig, but not necessary here). And we've began to play.
Everything written down, should be a breeze to prepare, right? Well... no... really not. :smallannoyed: My player was right- on average it takes me even more to prepare. Why is that so? Well, after some time playing, I've come to the following observations:
1- It's not your idea, it's someone else: This sounds obvious, but it has significant implications. The main one is that when you prepare an adventure yourself, the ideas are very fresh in your mind, they came from it! You understands the reasons, the flavor, the pacing, the situation and more, in which everything is set. You feel your adventure, and so you can more easily change it, respond to unexpected actions, and understand and feel it better. With modules, the material is often foreign to a degree, and you can spend a lot of time deciphering the reasons/ rational behind the design ("Why are they using all of these seemingly random encounters? Why isn't that location guarded from X?" and so on) It also takes time to learn of monsters/ feats/ spells/ tactics/ other game elements you rarely use, and need to brush up on/ relearn/ study. This take quite a bit of time, and make for a clunkier game when the PCs do something unexpected.
Adjustments for your party: APs are supposed to fit the "classic adventuring party", perhaps with slight adjustment to the theme of the campaign (desert, pirates, horror, mythic heroes and so on). As such, they will NEVER quite fit the party to a good degree, unless the party are all "random adventures, follow quest givers, interested mostly in combat". As I came to realize (and wrote about it in another thread), APs can rarely be used as fully written adventures, but rather as inspiration for adventure design. You seem to need to adjust for sooooo many things: power level, style of play, PCs personalities and background, house rules, party make up, treasure and gear, sometime even the setting and the world!
And this can take a lot more time than making it on your own really. Why? Because here you have to look through the design already there, decipher and sift through what you want to use, what you want to tweak, make balances, changes and so on... So you need to add/ adjust a lot of your won stuff, while dealing with what someone else intended, instead of just your own stuff.
3) Very little room to diverge from the path: This may be mostly true for Paizo's APs (Or "Plot-based adventures" as Yora calls them), which assume a fairly strict order of events (For most cases, some are a bit more lax, and have some sandbox feel, like kingmaker), and they don't much cope with unexpected actions by the PCs. I'm not blaming them- they CAN'T quite deal with the unexpected... Or can they? I'll later touch on Yora's idea of Task-based adventures, which suggest a way to deal with this problem. But in the Paizo APs, when (not IF) the party does something unexpected, you usually have very little help in the module itself. And more than that- you now have to respond to the actions, with a story and setting premises that are not of your own mind, so you understand them less, and respond more clankily. The bigger problem is that the APs RELY on the sequence, so once the PCs are off track, you either find a way to get them back (With some railroading), or you just kiss the AP goodbye, and do your own thing... But then why did you need it anyway?
This usually means that you need to do a lot of work in between sessions, (Adjusting consequences of PC actions) or before them (Trying to think of possible actions, which the module did not really include)
Not that great writing or design: To be fair, this is somewhat of a generalization. I haven't played all Paizo's APs, or even read all of them. I'm DMing the Ap I mentioned at the start, and played through a few modules by PbPs. I have read quite a few more though, and read about problems gamers have had with many of them. The APs seem to have lots of design problems. Some of the major repeating offenders I've seen:
- Very little connection between modules in the same AP: At the end of a module you usually have something that very, very loosely links to the next chapter. There is very little cohesion and sufficient recurring motifs, build ups for major NPCs and antagonists and so on. I understand the need for each module to be able to stand on it's own, but their main goal is to be played as a campaign, and it can't be that hard to include some added material to show progress of main features and themes throughout. A big reason for this problem is that the different modules are written by different people, and there seem to be no coordination of... you know... the campaign as a whole, as one story, not just adventures who follow each other. I've seen it done very badly in the AP I'm DMing, and read a few others, in which this glaring problem repeats.
Again, this means a LOT of work for the GM, but not writing his won story, but rather disentangling a messy story, and trying to find ways to make it work together.
- A LOT of "filler material": Paizo's adventures are choke full with combat which is there just to fill XP, is not really challenging, and has absolutely no impact on the story except for whether the PCs kill or are killed (since it's not challenging usually, the answer is simple), and give out treasure. My group has little game time, and so prefers fewer more challenging, more important encounters, but my guess is that many would prefer it as well than the "XP-grind". the amount of story development throughout a module, which usually stretch over 3 levels or so, can be done in 0.5-1.5 worth of levels at most.
Which again, leaves the GM with drastically adjusting the material- scrubbing a lot of ti and readjusting the rest.
- Twists and turns? Though there are a few examples to the contrary, Many of the Paizo quests are immensely straightforward- you are given a task, told the general threats involved, and... follow it through. Many guests really lack twists, surprises, mysteries, reveals. This often leads to less suspense, less of a story, less interesting choices, which is a lot of what the game is about, no?
-------------------------------------------
In the AP I'm using, I came to do a LOT of work to make it fit the group. from other campaign logs, playing PbPs, and forum questions, it seems that many GMs spend a lot of time readjusting modules. Are they really time saving? I don't much think so. But, they are useful as inspiration, and as a very general, basic structure I think.
Yora wrote quite an interesting thread, with intriguing ideas (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303155-Task-based-adventures-and-published-adventure-modules&highlight=module) a while ago, which stuck in my head, and which I remembered recently. A core idea in the thread is for a different kind of modules- "Task based modules". In short- There is a setting, two or more groups, with somewhat conflicting agendas, each with their own basic plans, resources, and such. The module details (loosely), the events that will happen if the PCs weren't there. However, there is no sequence of events for what the PCs "Should" do, or how the adventure shall progress. The GM reacts to the PCs action, relying on the personalities, resources, plans, limitations, and possibly some "Cases and responses" simple discussion for the antagonist.
She goes further, suggesting to leave out stat blocks and such. the moduel could give suggestions, but leave the main adjustments for the GM. Focusing on REASONING, PURPOSE, and ROLE of the elements, rather than their stats or detailed info, which will most likely be changed by the GM. In short- provide decent inspiration, and basic structure to build upon and expand.
I quite like her ideas, and once this AP is through (We like playing the heavily modified version of it that we run), we'll most likely take that kind of approach. It won't solve all of the problems of time saving, but will at least fulfill it's purpose better, and the GM won't need to decipher the design of an adventure that isn't their own.
------------------------------------
Ok, long post so far. Some questions/ ideas for discussion:
1) Your own experiences with modules- how much tweaking did they need to be satisfactory? What worked? What didn't? Why?
2) How are modules of other games other than D&D 3.5/ PF handled? What sort of design do they take? What works? What doesn't? Why?
3) Anyone tried anything similar to the "Task based modules" Mentioned above? How did it work? Speaking of modules, not stuff you designed yourself (Which tends to run like it many times)
I hope this makes sense, just my observations.
Kol.