batsofchaos
2008-08-29, 12:15 PM
WARNING: WALL OF TEXT.
I've been thinking a lot about adventure-writing lately. I've seen a lot of the officially-released adventure paths available for DnD following Adventure Paths recently. That's made me think about my personal use of published adventures. I've not really ever run one, nor have I truly had the desire to. I've read many and have found them to be interesting and appear easy to run, but I've not considered actually inserting them into a campaign. The most I've considered is running one as a pick-up game, either out of desperation due to lack of prep time, or as an introduction to a new game system. This set me to contemplating why I have this opinion, and why it seems to be fairly consistent with a lot of fellow GMs.
I feel that the reason why published adventures fall by the wayside for most GMs is because they are not easily inserted into their campaigns. The adventures may offer inspiration for what sorts of games to run, but for the most part they are not a comfortable fit into the current timeline of the game, don't cover considerations inherent to the campaign itself, or offer much in the way of versatility for unique campaigns.
Upon reaching this conclusion, I started trying to think of a way to write adventures that can be more-easily inserted into pre-existing games:
Goal
Create a dynamic adventure that is modular to the needs of the specific party; one that can be played as either the heroes or the villains with support material for either avenue. Stock characters available for every role within the adventure, with the intention of being replaced by current campaign characters. These replacements are unnecessary if the campaign does not currently have a character that can fill the role (or does not wish to use a pre-existing character), so the sample characters will be playable and fleshed out enough to be run.
The idea is an adventure designed solely around a scenario. The individual players are unnecessary for determining the scenario, they are simply necessary for progressing it. The intended result is a fleshed out published adventure that a GM can pick up and run as easily as any other available module, but designed to be seemlessly fit to the current campaign and appear as tailored to the needs of the party as one developed by the GM for their specific campaign.
Sample characters that are intended to be NPCs will be provided with enough detail to be fully run, but will follow certain archetypes. These archetyped NPCs can be replaced by either currently-designed NPCs and/or PCs that fit the archetype, if the GM wishes for them to be so.
Example of a scenario:
The example scenario is one that I may flesh out, but currently exists to serve as a "working model" of a modular adventure. This is written with the game system Mutants and Masterminds 2nd Ed. in mind, but the concept is certainly not system-restricted. The only connection to M&M is the genre:
An archetypal mad-scientist has concocted a design for a powerful weapon. In order to construct the weapon, the scientist must obtain an assorted variety of chemicals, electronic equipment, and raw materials. These materials are not easily obtained through legal means, so a motley crew of villains are hired to steal them from assorted locations within a city. A group of heroes is called in to help investigate the crimes.
The dynamics of the situation:
The players have the option of either playing the villains or the heroes. For the former, play will be more centered on researching security systems and infiltration in order to obtain the required goods, while avoiding/defeating the heroes. The latter will be centered on tracking the villains and attempting to uncover where their next target will be in an effort to halt their plans.
The archetypal characters:
1) The motley crews of either the heroes or villains. These characters are designed in their nature to be replaced by campaign-specific characters. In a heroic game, the archetypal heroes should be completely replaced by the PCs and the villains can be replaced by recurring antagonists that have already been introduced. The opposite should be true in a villainous campaign. While the corresponding group should be replaced by the PCs, replacing their opposers is not strictly necessary, if the GM wants to run the provided archetypes he should feel free to do so. A mix of old and new would also be entirely workable.
2) The mastermind mad-scientist that is assembling the device. In a heroic campaign, the existence of such a character may well be established. If the party has faced off against a mad-scientist before, there is no reason why they can't face off against him again in his latest plot. In a villainous campaign, this character works as the party's employer. If a character of this sort is pre-existing, it's easy enough to insert them into the role. If their employer is not the scientific type, the device could have been developed by an underling and the mastermind is fueling its construction.
Optionally, in a villainous campaign this character may be a PC. In that instance, the device may be something naturally developed in the course of a campaign through research that the player has done, or it may be a constructed plot device: the GM explains at the start of the adventure that the player's character has been researching assorted things in his downtime and has just developed a plan for the weapon. In this way, the employer becomes a far more hands-on character than the sample, but would not significantly alter the scenario.
As with the heroes/villains themselves, the replacement of the mad scientist is completely in the hands of the GM but not necessary in order to run the adventure. The sample provided would be entirely playable.
3) Bystanders. These are the NPCs that the party will be more-than-likely interacting with, but not directly part of the action. The head of the security at one of the targeted locations, the chief of police, members of the press, beat-cops, etc. These NPCs will probably not have any detailed stats, but may be necessary for providing information, obstructing progress, etc. Personality details will be provided for more important ones, but if a pre-existing NPC is already in the campaign they can easily be inserted over the stock characters. If the party has already met the chief of police, then it makes more sense for that character to be used than the provided one.
The concrete:
So far everything has been nebulous, but there is a major chunk of the adventure that will be concrete. This is the crunch of the scenario: diagrams of the warehouses where components are stored, detailed security systems including traps and hazards, clues linking the first crimes with later crimes including suggestions of what will later be stolen, etc. These details are not mutable like the characters and are designed to be passive background info that details the scenario itself rather than the players in the scenario. Whether the party is attempting to steal a device, further fortify the device in order to deter theft, or having a showdown with their enemies, the room and security system remains unchanged until the PCs interact with it.
Effects on how adventures are currently written:
One must admit that if a GM were to run the above adventure with all of the stock characters, there would be no difference between that game and a similar game that was not constructed modularly. Additionally, a GM could take a non-modular adventure and replace the detailed NPCs with currently existing NPCs and run it in as customized a manner as a modular game. The fundamental difference would be the detail of the suggestions available for the GM on fitting it into their campaign and the modularity built into the game by having it be a consideration from the start. Current adventures often contain a side-bar that says "you can do this and this and it would probably fit right into your game," and leave suggestions at that. An adventure designed with modularity in mind would have suggestions with nearly every element on how the adventure can be grafted to a pre-existing campaign and with modularity taken as a consideration from the start, the process of designing the adventure itself takes on a new dynamic. This could lead to more accessible customization with less effort on the part of the GM built directly into the adventure at every turn.
Pushing it further:
The above example is written under the assumption that the party will either be heroes or villains, but what if they are the third group, the bystanders? Can the scenario be developed enough to include viable play options for any type of character that can be included in the genre? How about adventures that are written to transcend genres or even systems? The crunch part would become far more nebulous in that situation, but can the raw scenario itself be written without a rule-system in mind?
As it's currently planned, a M&M game run with the above adventure would be right at home in a campaign set in Freedom City. By tweaking the security systems and items needed in the above example to a futuristic campaign and making the mastermind an iconic, recurring villain from the campaign and suddenly you have the plot to Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, which has a flavor unique from Freedom City. A step beyond that, let's say you replace the heroes and villains with Americans and Soviets, make the mastermind a nazi scientist, and make the device more occult in origin, and you have a WW2 spy campaign that would fit well into D20 Modern.
Can this level of customization be reasonably presented in a published adventure? Where is the line between published adventure and published suggestion for an adventure you could write?
Closing Thoughts:
I'm of the opinion that if I picked up an adventure presented in this manner I would be far more likely to run it than other published adventures. Am I alone in this, or do others agree? Is writing adventures like this viable? Any thoughts or considerations that I missed/didn't communicate clearly?
Thanks for reading.
I've been thinking a lot about adventure-writing lately. I've seen a lot of the officially-released adventure paths available for DnD following Adventure Paths recently. That's made me think about my personal use of published adventures. I've not really ever run one, nor have I truly had the desire to. I've read many and have found them to be interesting and appear easy to run, but I've not considered actually inserting them into a campaign. The most I've considered is running one as a pick-up game, either out of desperation due to lack of prep time, or as an introduction to a new game system. This set me to contemplating why I have this opinion, and why it seems to be fairly consistent with a lot of fellow GMs.
I feel that the reason why published adventures fall by the wayside for most GMs is because they are not easily inserted into their campaigns. The adventures may offer inspiration for what sorts of games to run, but for the most part they are not a comfortable fit into the current timeline of the game, don't cover considerations inherent to the campaign itself, or offer much in the way of versatility for unique campaigns.
Upon reaching this conclusion, I started trying to think of a way to write adventures that can be more-easily inserted into pre-existing games:
Goal
Create a dynamic adventure that is modular to the needs of the specific party; one that can be played as either the heroes or the villains with support material for either avenue. Stock characters available for every role within the adventure, with the intention of being replaced by current campaign characters. These replacements are unnecessary if the campaign does not currently have a character that can fill the role (or does not wish to use a pre-existing character), so the sample characters will be playable and fleshed out enough to be run.
The idea is an adventure designed solely around a scenario. The individual players are unnecessary for determining the scenario, they are simply necessary for progressing it. The intended result is a fleshed out published adventure that a GM can pick up and run as easily as any other available module, but designed to be seemlessly fit to the current campaign and appear as tailored to the needs of the party as one developed by the GM for their specific campaign.
Sample characters that are intended to be NPCs will be provided with enough detail to be fully run, but will follow certain archetypes. These archetyped NPCs can be replaced by either currently-designed NPCs and/or PCs that fit the archetype, if the GM wishes for them to be so.
Example of a scenario:
The example scenario is one that I may flesh out, but currently exists to serve as a "working model" of a modular adventure. This is written with the game system Mutants and Masterminds 2nd Ed. in mind, but the concept is certainly not system-restricted. The only connection to M&M is the genre:
An archetypal mad-scientist has concocted a design for a powerful weapon. In order to construct the weapon, the scientist must obtain an assorted variety of chemicals, electronic equipment, and raw materials. These materials are not easily obtained through legal means, so a motley crew of villains are hired to steal them from assorted locations within a city. A group of heroes is called in to help investigate the crimes.
The dynamics of the situation:
The players have the option of either playing the villains or the heroes. For the former, play will be more centered on researching security systems and infiltration in order to obtain the required goods, while avoiding/defeating the heroes. The latter will be centered on tracking the villains and attempting to uncover where their next target will be in an effort to halt their plans.
The archetypal characters:
1) The motley crews of either the heroes or villains. These characters are designed in their nature to be replaced by campaign-specific characters. In a heroic game, the archetypal heroes should be completely replaced by the PCs and the villains can be replaced by recurring antagonists that have already been introduced. The opposite should be true in a villainous campaign. While the corresponding group should be replaced by the PCs, replacing their opposers is not strictly necessary, if the GM wants to run the provided archetypes he should feel free to do so. A mix of old and new would also be entirely workable.
2) The mastermind mad-scientist that is assembling the device. In a heroic campaign, the existence of such a character may well be established. If the party has faced off against a mad-scientist before, there is no reason why they can't face off against him again in his latest plot. In a villainous campaign, this character works as the party's employer. If a character of this sort is pre-existing, it's easy enough to insert them into the role. If their employer is not the scientific type, the device could have been developed by an underling and the mastermind is fueling its construction.
Optionally, in a villainous campaign this character may be a PC. In that instance, the device may be something naturally developed in the course of a campaign through research that the player has done, or it may be a constructed plot device: the GM explains at the start of the adventure that the player's character has been researching assorted things in his downtime and has just developed a plan for the weapon. In this way, the employer becomes a far more hands-on character than the sample, but would not significantly alter the scenario.
As with the heroes/villains themselves, the replacement of the mad scientist is completely in the hands of the GM but not necessary in order to run the adventure. The sample provided would be entirely playable.
3) Bystanders. These are the NPCs that the party will be more-than-likely interacting with, but not directly part of the action. The head of the security at one of the targeted locations, the chief of police, members of the press, beat-cops, etc. These NPCs will probably not have any detailed stats, but may be necessary for providing information, obstructing progress, etc. Personality details will be provided for more important ones, but if a pre-existing NPC is already in the campaign they can easily be inserted over the stock characters. If the party has already met the chief of police, then it makes more sense for that character to be used than the provided one.
The concrete:
So far everything has been nebulous, but there is a major chunk of the adventure that will be concrete. This is the crunch of the scenario: diagrams of the warehouses where components are stored, detailed security systems including traps and hazards, clues linking the first crimes with later crimes including suggestions of what will later be stolen, etc. These details are not mutable like the characters and are designed to be passive background info that details the scenario itself rather than the players in the scenario. Whether the party is attempting to steal a device, further fortify the device in order to deter theft, or having a showdown with their enemies, the room and security system remains unchanged until the PCs interact with it.
Effects on how adventures are currently written:
One must admit that if a GM were to run the above adventure with all of the stock characters, there would be no difference between that game and a similar game that was not constructed modularly. Additionally, a GM could take a non-modular adventure and replace the detailed NPCs with currently existing NPCs and run it in as customized a manner as a modular game. The fundamental difference would be the detail of the suggestions available for the GM on fitting it into their campaign and the modularity built into the game by having it be a consideration from the start. Current adventures often contain a side-bar that says "you can do this and this and it would probably fit right into your game," and leave suggestions at that. An adventure designed with modularity in mind would have suggestions with nearly every element on how the adventure can be grafted to a pre-existing campaign and with modularity taken as a consideration from the start, the process of designing the adventure itself takes on a new dynamic. This could lead to more accessible customization with less effort on the part of the GM built directly into the adventure at every turn.
Pushing it further:
The above example is written under the assumption that the party will either be heroes or villains, but what if they are the third group, the bystanders? Can the scenario be developed enough to include viable play options for any type of character that can be included in the genre? How about adventures that are written to transcend genres or even systems? The crunch part would become far more nebulous in that situation, but can the raw scenario itself be written without a rule-system in mind?
As it's currently planned, a M&M game run with the above adventure would be right at home in a campaign set in Freedom City. By tweaking the security systems and items needed in the above example to a futuristic campaign and making the mastermind an iconic, recurring villain from the campaign and suddenly you have the plot to Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, which has a flavor unique from Freedom City. A step beyond that, let's say you replace the heroes and villains with Americans and Soviets, make the mastermind a nazi scientist, and make the device more occult in origin, and you have a WW2 spy campaign that would fit well into D20 Modern.
Can this level of customization be reasonably presented in a published adventure? Where is the line between published adventure and published suggestion for an adventure you could write?
Closing Thoughts:
I'm of the opinion that if I picked up an adventure presented in this manner I would be far more likely to run it than other published adventures. Am I alone in this, or do others agree? Is writing adventures like this viable? Any thoughts or considerations that I missed/didn't communicate clearly?
Thanks for reading.