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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.

Galdor Miriel
2008-08-29, 02:11 PM
Very nice ideas chaos bat, but I am not so sure. For me, the good ready made modules are the ones that are plotted well, filled with unexpected twists and crazy monsters. I find it hard to picture how you could write a module so you could put the PCs in different roles and still have it plotted.

To be more specific, in many good bought modules (or indeed home grown ones) the pcs are faced with a challenge, and their actions then determine what the other baddies, monsters do etc. If you have them being able to plug in as any of the groups of actors then any situation would then be turned around and if you previously had a PC action leading to two possible actions and scenarios for the villains, it would now be the same problem, but for each group that could be a PC group you would need the plot options. The complexity would grow dramatically, if not geometrically.

If there is a way that this might work though I would be interested in seeing it, if only because it would be cool to run the PCs through an adventure module as the heroes, then again as the bystanders, then finally as the villains, to see how differently things might turn out. It could be like one of those movies where they show you the ending, then they say "I don't like that, lets try again", then they have an alternative finish (Wayne's world I think).

Its a nice idea though.

hamlet
2008-08-29, 02:38 PM
I disagree with the idea of a module being based around a scenario, and even more strongly with the previous poster's assertion that strong modules are strongly plotted. In fact, I strenuously disagree with "plotted" modules.

If I wanted something with a pre-determined plot into which I could fit in, I would read a novel. That's what they're there for.

A good adventure module, though, IMO, is based more strongly around a location or a minor event and far less around a plot.

This does not mean that it cannot have plot elements in it. Of course a strong background and history for the adventure location serves to enhance the module. But for the most part, these elements are there purely as an explanation of how the location got to its current status and come to a complete halt with the involvement of the PC's (and even before that I'd argue). As soon as the PC's become involved (which I define as heading towards the location of the adventure, not their arrival) the entire "plot" is defined by their actions and their motivations, not those written out in the author's plot.

Dweller's of the Forbidden City I1 is the best example of this, and there's somebody who explains it better than I over here: http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/08/locale-and-plot.html

batsofchaos
2008-08-29, 03:07 PM
Hamlet: Perhaps my use of the word scenario applies connotations that were unintentional, because I believe that the two of us are mostly in agreement. As I stated in my first post "The individual players are unnecessary for determining the scenario, they are simply necessary for progressing it." The adventure doesn't define a plot, it provides the tools for the players to create their own plot. So as thus, the "scenario" that the adventure is based around is not so much a plot that the characters are tethered to, but more settings and minor events that draw the players in.

In my model of a modular adventure, the event is subject to what type of party the PCs are, but has directions for either. If the PCs are heroes, they find out about a robbery that has the mark of a super-villain and are asked to investigate. What they do from there is up to the players, with enough supportive text in the adventure to give the GM an easy time of sorting out the players actions. If the party is comprised of villains, than they are contacted by an employer who offers to pay them to steal the items (or optionally one of the PCs requests help in the theft for an item of their own design). What they do from there is again left up to the party. And of course, both parties have the option of turning the adventure hook down, but if they do that there is of course no adventure, which is generally considered bad-form by even the most sand-box based campaigns. There certainly are built-in repercussions if they choose to do so; heroes will have to face the super-weapon once it is finished and villains will have to face a potentially miffed employer.

Galdor: Despite my previous statements to Hamlet, I don't think the idea is completely unworkable for a more plotted adventure (which although I'm not a fan of, I can appreciate that others are and there is a market for them). There would be more work on the part of the adventure writer, but basically all that's necessary is giving an outline of events that each group will pursue provided they are NPCs. These would of course be modified based on character action, but I don't believe that any published adventure is safe from modification based on character action.

hamlet
2008-08-29, 03:27 PM
If that is the case (and I admit, I may have missed some of your post while dodging my boss's evil glare) then I believe we are mostly in agreement, but such is the nature of the internet that if we all agreed with each other, I'm sure the entire thing would whither and vanish in a puff of boredom.:smallbiggrin:

That said, I will say this short bit: I think that one of the keys to making a module, well, modular is to eschew the specific when putting it together and relying instead on common images in the audience's mind.* This shares a lot of common ground with tropes from that fabulous website that need not be linked, but they are not entirely synonomous.

Things like the evil sorcerer bent on world domination, the damsel in distress, and the degenerate orc raiding party are so ubiquitous mostly because they are so informative to our collective psyche. I'm getting Jungian here, but stay with me.

Using common images as a framework upon which the DM can hang trappings specific to his campaign is something that makes them infinately movable. The evil necromancer, whether he works for the blood brotherhood in Eberron, the Horned Society in Greyhawk, or the Zhents in the forgotten realms is a universal image that speaks to us as people. What deity he worships or evil power he serves is immaterial to the core of what he is and who he is.

In fact, if you make it loose enough, you can fit DM's own NPC's in with minimal efforts. That evil necromancer with no name in the module could really become Rodolphus the Strange from Henry's campaign, a villain that the PC's have been chasing for several months now and it is only now that they discover a larger portion of his plot . . .

*The only issue I see here, though, is that in the modern world, the audience's cultural mind is so mixed that it can be hard to find common images with traction any more. Add on top of that the fact that so many common images are now seen as stereotypes and trite, it becomes a little hard to find a more universal icon.

batsofchaos
2008-08-29, 03:36 PM
If that is the case (and I admit, I may have missed some of your post while dodging my boss's evil glare) then I believe we are mostly in agreement, but such is the nature of the internet that if we all agreed with each other, I'm sure the entire thing would whither and vanish in a puff of boredom.:smallbiggrin:

That said, I will say this short bit: I think that one of the keys to making a module, well, modular is to eschew the specific when putting it together and relying instead on common images in the audience's mind.* This shares a lot of common ground with tropes from that fabulous website that need not be linked, but they are not entirely synonomous.

Things like the evil sorcerer bent on world domination, the damsel in distress, and the degenerate orc raiding party are so ubiquitous mostly because they are so informative to our collective psyche. I'm getting Jungian here, but stay with me.

Using common images as a framework upon which the DM can hang trappings specific to his campaign is something that makes them infinately movable. The evil necromancer, whether he works for the blood brotherhood in Eberron, the Horned Society in Greyhawk, or the Zhents in the forgotten realms is a universal image that speaks to us as people. What deity he worships or evil power he serves is immaterial to the core of what he is and who he is.

In fact, if you make it loose enough, you can fit DM's own NPC's in with minimal efforts. That evil necromancer with no name in the module could really become Rodolphus the Strange from Henry's campaign, a villain that the PC's have been chasing for several months now and it is only now that they discover a larger portion of his plot . . .

*The only issue I see here, though, is that in the modern world, the audience's cultural mind is so mixed that it can be hard to find common images with traction any more. Add on top of that the fact that so many common images are now seen as stereotypes and trite, it becomes a little hard to find a more universal icon.

Ah, and see, that's exactly my point, adventures designed specifically to be replaced with Campaign-specific NPCs/Characters. My example uses Mutants and Masterminds, but it can easily be enough translated to DnD. This modular adventure features as an antagonist a Fighter-type. Have a recurring antagonist fighter? Well, switch 'em out! The key, as I said and you seem to be in total agreement with, is to make the key players in the adventure archetypal characters that although can be run with those provided are designed to be switched out with characters the GM already has.

In the above example, there is a puppet-master-esque mad scientist that has devised a weapon. Having a mastermind evil villain is definitely an archetype that can be replaced by setting-specific villains. So if we were to say that someone's campaign currently had Dr. Doom in it, and the stock character was the Joker, you could use either one with the adventure being workable and designed with this replacement specifically in mind from the start. The sample character would be detailed and playable, but if the PCs defeated Dr. Doom five adventures ago and are beginning to forget his menace, put him in! The adventure will play like one planned by the GM, but has almost zero prep-time.

Matthew
2008-08-29, 05:39 PM
Some of these ideas are very close to "traditional adventure" design (in the sense of the pre Dragonlance modules (1985ish). Instead of designing a "plotted adventure" you design and "adventure site" and leave it up to the game master and players to come up with the plot. It is hard to find a good balance of detail versus inspiration in designing such adventures, but they can also be quite excellent.

There are two types of module in this paradigm, the "pick up and play" module, where you literally need do nothing more than read through the adventure to have a full experience, and the "basic structure" module, whihc requires you to invest time and ideas into it to get the best out of it.

batsofchaos
2008-08-29, 05:53 PM
Some of these ideas are very close to "traditional adventure" design (in the sense of the pre Dragonlance modules (1985ish). Instead of designing a "plotted adventure" you design and "adventure site" and leave it up to the game master and players to come up with the plot. It is hard to find a good balance of detail versus inspiration in designing such adventures, but they can also be quite excellent.

There are two types of module in this paradigm, the "pick up and play" module, where you literally need do nothing more than read through the adventure to have a full experience, and the "basic structure" module, whihc requires you to invest time and ideas into it to get the best out of it.

While I think the concept of "adventure site, not plotted adventure" is an important one, I don't think it's strictly necessary for the design of a modular adventure. While making an adventure site modular is certainly less work than making a plotted one modular, I don't think there's anything intrinsic to the former over the latter. The defining traits of a modular adventure are stock characters that are designed with the intention of being replaced by campaign regulars (although still playable if desired), and a greater attention to instruction on how to insert the adventure into a pre-existing campaign.

A modular adventure certainly could be played as a pick-up game and would probably do very well at it; the attention to detail on how to run the game through multiple scenarios is intended to make the least amount of tweaking necessary in order to fit your players.

That said, the true purpose would be, regardless of playstyle focused on sites or plots, to make an adventure that is designed to be seemlessly inserted into a campaign and use as many campaign regulars as possible by providing ample support materials for doing so.

Prometheus
2008-08-29, 07:48 PM
I've never used a module before. However I have noticed that when I run events and challenging locations by my PCs are usually do set it up either one of two ways. Either having a map, a couple of NPCs, and an overall goal and let the players decide how they want to go about it or a very linear but plot-twisting quest. The former allows critical thinking and strategizing while the latter makes the plot more interesting and tied to an overall idea. I think a good adventure has both, but I have to agree with the OP in that the former is a lot more sharable. As a board of mostly DMs, it is this sort of collaborative activity which is a fun and convenient thing for us all.

Here's an example of something that started out as a really generic scenario but actually had really fun and interesting results:
I made up a cult of scalykind goblinoids who believed heavily in the idea of the circle of life, at least among reptiles. Everything they ate was lizard and they believed that the world was going to end by being swallowed by a great dragon-lizard-snake-god. Their faith is rewarded with increasing reptilian powers. They live out of caves and tunnels in the cliffsides of a deep gorge This particular cult has a magic item that the PCs want. When one of the PCs invisibly follow a lizardy goblin to one of their secret leader-meetings they learn that what they really really want to do is steal and dragon egg and they also learn the location of the magic item in the reptilian stronghold. The PCs now have three options a) take the magic item and hightail it, b) steal a dragon egg and trade it for the magic item, or do the unthinkable c) approach the dragon with fire-protection and warn him of the plot. My PCs chose c, which was difficult, but having done it the dragon storms the cliffsides burning it to ashes and clawing the lizardy goblins out like a beetle on an anthill. The PCs come by and scoop up the remains, after they survive the dragon's collateral damage.
[spoiler]

valadil
2008-08-29, 08:59 PM
I've never run an adventure module either, but I've had some similar ideas lately. What I had in mind isn't so much a modular module but a modular campaign. Basically the module campaign would include a location, NPCs, and a set of plots. The idea is that you'd get a different set of plots depending on the characters involved. If someone had the tragic hero role that would queue up some plot. A half orc in the anti orc town would start a different plot. Even different contacts would set up different plots. Plots may run at certain levels or they may be run at any level depending on the order in which they're run.

What I like about this kind of modular campaign is that you could run the same group of people through it and get different plot options.

This idea sort of relates to yours, as each plot in my set of campaign modules would be a lot like what you had in mind. They each integrate into an existing world rather than being stand alone adventures.

batsofchaos
2008-08-29, 10:51 PM
It's amazing how many GMs out there I have met that have never run a module. So I think the pertinent question here, now that I'm pretty sure my concept has been presented understandably, is would any fellow non-adventure-buying GMs be interested in running an adventure that was built specifically in this way? Or would it be just another case of "No thanks, I wanna run my own thing?"

Prometheus
2008-08-29, 11:02 PM
Come to think of it, I probably should have answered in my last post but the way that I have generally applied unique ideas I've stumbled across on the boards is like this: If I like it I'll keep it for use, but you can't write a campaign around it and only some will fit. It will probably be used eventually, though.

I think it would be cool if each one had their own thread, so that people could post threads that link to it (and that thread could be edited to link back) allowing people not only to read the original module, but to see how it had been applied.

Come to think about it, the Yeth Hounds Den linked in my signature would probably be good for it if I drew up a map for it and the town.

Knaight
2008-08-29, 11:03 PM
Second one. I would be willing to pass them on to a friend of mine's younger brother who isn't a practiced GM yet, he's been looking at setting creation and GMing. After walking into a game where I was introducing his brother to gaming, and ending up interested. Ended up a gamer by dumb luck.

valadil
2008-08-29, 11:41 PM
Bats, I would be more likely to buy this kind of module that integrates into an existing campaign than a standard standalone type module. I'm not sure if GMs who like standalone modules would buy something like this. I imagine they'd think it was incomplete.