Other

[bryce0lynch]

James Jorce gets to break the rules
Not a simulationsit game
The game is about interactivity between player and dm
i dont care what you like/personal preferences
making meaningful decisions -12 days davidan
thiking about it
Without regard to mechanics. Then write it down. Don’t start with mechanics

hyperbolic
many way to get to san jose
im bryce lynch
adventure as reading material
designer familiarty with their wn creation
other quotes
driveethu
This is the internet. This is DriveThru. This is lower barrier to publishing. This is the ability of everyone to share their enthusiasm and creativity with everyone else. For better. And worse.

There are a wide variety of play styles, but, is there some essence that makes D&D what it is? Some platonic form that can be pointed to? This is D&D. This is not D&D.

Is everything meaningless?


adventures as a dm aid
PPW & history
[
Dwarf ruins
Temples
Sewers
test/challenge

But … waterfalls!
Bookcases!!
+ugard pirahna
Betrayed monster/npc
-bald mountain
+desecration/damnation
Invited to something/wedding, party
Carnival/circus
]


overvued shit


know the game -trolls den, too little treasure

 

[bryce0lynch]

James Joyce
(james joyce example)
My advice in this book is perscriptive and following it should allow you to create a good product. Some people will take exception with the advice, and note that there are circumstances in which one of my guideliens should not be followed. That is correct; the advice herein is for the most typical instances. If you choose to NOT follow some ofthe advice in here then be intentional about it. Know why you are not following the guideline and take care to continue to achieve the same impact that the guidelines provide for. If you simply MUST use a long section of italics in your text then what are you also going to do to mitigate the legabilility issues that choice brings up? IE: James Joyce doesn't have to follow the follows. let's not kid ourselves though, none of us are James Joyce.

 

[bryce0lynch]

Simulationist

Most RPG's are not simulationist. The exact details of an environment is not important. There is a GM that can fill things in, if needed. As a creator the goal is not to provide a product that covers all possible situations but rather provide support for GM running the game. This means that the supporting information, the adventure text, is there to support Actual Play. This has so many applications for adventure writing. An NPC may have been the 6th son a barber, but if that does not support the actual play of the game, at the table, then it's trivia that doesn't matter. Likewise, the water source in a dungeon, or the hygiene situation. Water sources and dark smelly holes are not of use if they don't actual drive play at the table. (Fortunately, rivers and the inevitable treasure & monster in the dark smelly hole are natural follow ons.) It's not necessarily the case tha tincluding these elements is bad, but its the degree to which the adventure focuses on these elements, these situations which have little to no potential energy at the table.

 

[bryce0lynch]

Interactivity
Roleplaying games are about interactivity. Typically, the GM describes a situation and the players have their characters react to it. The GM then reacts to their actions, and thus the cucle continues. This interactivity it critical to a successful game and adventures should support that interactivity. When that interactivity is taken away then the game suffers. There are hints of this in the Railroad adventure, or the DM-pet NPC, both of which remove interactivity from the table. Thus, using a plot-based adventure, or including a DM pet NPC means paying special attention to those elemnts to ensure they remove as little player interactivity as possible. Plot, without a railroad, is ok. These guidliens play out in so many ways, from techniques to read-aloud (don't reveal too much!) to NPC interactions. Interactivity is THE core element of an RPG.


Hmmm, drinking a 5th of whiskey a week now. And it shows.

Really, it's THE core elemnt of RPG's? Really?

 

[bryce0lynch]

I crashed my car in to a bridge

I don't care what you like. I understand, there is a strong degree of personal preference in many areas of like. You're always allowed to like what yo u like, be it a well done steak or a rubbery sea scallop. But, it also has to be recognized that in order to have a discussion about a topic we must transcend "liking" something. We have to be able to describe why, and its benefits, so others can comment and reflect. I think that, after reviewieng so many adventures, I see a lot of the same mistakes over and over again. I see missed oppotunities and patterns of mistakes. That's what these guidelines are dall about. The most common mistakes and common ways to imporve your adventures. I think it's that sweet spot that most people can agree on, community norms.

Baby, I was born this way
Do you think you're a good adventure writer? Were you somehow born with the innate ability to write a good adventure? No, of course not. Further, there is painfully little (approaching zero) actually useful advice on how to write an adventure. Oh, there are things published. Have a warm up encounter. Give the party something to do. Other, trivial advice of dubious quality. Thta's not what this book is about. This book is about larger issues. It is, for the most part, not about writing an adventure FOR THE PLAYERS but rather how to write an adventure FOR THE GM. At best, people copy the formats and techniques they have seen used in other products, techniques and products that are, generally, terrible. But there are few positive examlpes in this space. Hence this book.

But, what is ... "fun?"
But, yo might say, my group had fun playing [shitty advetnture X.] But we're not talking about "fun." Many things impact fun at thet able. The players and what mood they are in. The dm and their mood. The environment you're gaming in. The goal of this book, again, is not "a fun adventure" but, rather, to put in the hands o fthe DM all the tools they need in order to concentrate on the players and ENABLE fun at the table. Thus, you may have had fun with an adventure IN SPITE of the adventure. This book endeavors to allow the DM to concentrate on the players, supporting the DM during play, allowing them to maximize the opportunities to have fun.

 

[The Heretic]

What is FUN! Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more.

 

[bryce0lynch]

Point to Heretic for getting the reference.

Design without mechanics
There is a tendency to design adventure encounters around mechanics. These encounters generally feel like they were designed around the mechanics involved, feeling less organic. The flip side of this is an adventure encounter in which the designer dreams up a situation and THEN adds mechanics to it. I know this sounds like I'm splitting hairs and, to be fair, it is a nuanced point. It really has to do with an attitude switch inside the designers head. When designing an encounter sit down and think about it, and do it in such as way that doesn't involve mechanics. For that underground river in a cave, really just imagine it. Thinking about the environment, how's its flowing, the terrain, without bringing mechanics in to the situation at all. Then write it up, again, without mechanics at all. Then, once that is all done, think about the mechanics of the situation and add as needed. It's transparently obvious when a designer thinks "I need a skill test, I'll put in a DC15 jump test."

 

[squeen]

I did that for the Tapestry Maze in the PDF I posted at the end of the Illusions thread. Thought of a soft-wall maze first and then tired to come up with some mechanics that reflected what I thought might happen.

Then I play tested it...and learned it went down quite differently.

 

[bryce0lynch]

Make meaningful decisions

Interactivity
Roleplaying games are about interactivity. Typically, the GM describes a situation and the players have their characters react to it. The GM then reacts to their actions, and thus the cucle continues. This interactivity it critical to a successful game and adventures should support that interactivity. When that interactivity is taken away then the game suffers. There are hints of this in the Railroad adventure, or the DM-pet NPC, both of which remove interactivity from the table. Thus, using a plot-based adventure, or including a DM pet NPC means paying special attention to those elemnts to ensure they remove as little player interactivity as possible. Plot, without a railroad, is ok. These guidliens play out in so many ways, from techniques to read-aloud (don't reveal too much!) to NPC interactions. Interactivity is THE core element of an RPG.

Related to this is the ability to which the adventure allows the players to make MEANINGFUL decisions. If the party doesn't know they are making a decision, or what the consequences are, then it is less meaningful. Imagine two doors. If the party goes through one then there are major consequences for the game world. If they go through the other then there are not, but someone they know dies horribly. If the party doesn't know what will happen if they choose door A or door B, then the decision on which doors to pick is essentially meaningless. It may have consequences, but the party wasn't actually involved in the decision. Contrast this with the party KNWOING what will happen if they choose door A or B. Now the party is actually making a meningful decision. They can choose to have someone near and dear dir horribly (Good ol' torchbearer Jacob) or they can unleash a plague of demons on the arth. By knowing the consequences of their decisions, or at least having a good idea of it, then the decision on which door to take is actually a decision, rather than essentially a random event. (And I'm not suggesting that door thing is a good setup, but it is a great example to make the point about meaningful decisions/interactivity.)


Hmmm, drinking a 5th of whiskey a week now. And it shows.

Really, it's THE core elemnt of RPG's? Really?

 

[bryce0lynch]

updated

 

[bryce0lynch]

Adventure as reading material

There's a rather infamous quote from a Paizo person (find the quote) that states that they know most of their adventures will only be read by the purchaser and never run. What a sad state of affairs! But consider, if you're in the business of making money, as Paizo is, and 90% of your adventure sales are to people who will never run them ... I wonder if perhaps that might impact the content of the adventures you publish? Might the content drift, along with the editing, to support further increased sales of "adventures to be read", since that's where you are making your money? Effort, put out, is concentrated on making them even better to read! To the detriment of play at the table.

If an adventure is created to be a good read and being useful to the DM at the table is only of secondary importance, then can it still be called an "adventure?" Let's say that's true ... but they can't CALL their products "a thing to be read that looks like an adventure", because then no one would buy it, they want adventures. But, still, they have to focus their content and editing on Being Read, since that's where they make their money. And thus we end up in the situation we are in today. The major publishers pay little attention to being useful to the DM, instead making their products good reads, in order to maximize profits. (In support of this statement I offer every adventure ever published by Paizo and the new WOTC. If they cared they would do better.)

And then the budding designer, you, comes along. You have a great idea and want to publish an adventure. But, the only examples you have, or at least the most common examples, are those from the major publishers ... which are written and edited to be good reads rather than useful at the table. But they are all you know, and thus you think this is the correct way to write an adventure. When, in fact, those adventures were, rather cravengly (find a better word for profit) written to maximize profit rather htan be useful to the DM. Further, they were written by people just like you who have had no training in how to write an adventure, being not born with the innate ability to do so. We all want to believe that the other person is an expert and they know what they are doing. Most times, they don't.

 

[squeen]

This book is going to be so good. These things need to be set in stone somewhere.
I am glad you are tackling it.

 

[Beoric]

But consider, if you're in the business of making money, as Paizo is, and 90% of your adventure sales are to people who will never run them ... I wonder if perhaps that might impact the content of the adventures you publish?

Perhaps, and perhaps it is even valid if that is what your target market is after. But it does not excuse making adventures like this for what are allegedly teaching modules.

If an adventure is created to be a good read and being useful to the DM at the table is only of secondary importance, then can it still be called an "adventure?" Let's say that's true ... but they can't CALL their products "a thing to be read that looks like an adventure", because then no one would buy it, they want adventures.

Except people do buy splat books. Most splat books are garbage, but when they are done well they do a much better job at inspiration than do so-called adventures that are written to be read. I find most such adventures are unusable even for inspiration because it is very difficult to separate the structural elements of the adventure - encounters, NPCs, etc. - from the overwritten lore of the product that it is not worth the effort.

Here's an example. I was responding to a thread in another forum that was asking how to convert the Shackled City adventure path for use in Eberron. That got me reviewing the entire AP in considerably more detail then I ever had before, and what I found was that most of the content relating to the overarching plot was unusable because it was so tied to the product's internal lore that it was not worth the effort of exporting. Moreover, 90% of the material was actually extraneous to the overarching plot and could be excised. What was left, when you carved away what could not be used and what did not need to be used was the bare outline of an organization, its goals and the outcome if it was successful in achieving its goals - and it was a lot of work to get to that point of "inspiration".

On the other hand, in my experience good modules which are written to be used as adventures do inspire. Hommlet gets redressed and used over and over again. The dungeon maps in ToEE are constantly repurposed. And how many dungeons have you seen (or even reviewed) that were inspired by B2? Even less than stellar modules that are written to be used as adventures can see more use; recently I redressed A1 as a location in my campaign.

In general, if you want something to inspire, its needs to be good at the thing it purports to do. Noone is inspired by mediocrity.

 

[The Heretic]

On the other hand, in my experience good modules which are written to be used as adventures do inspire. Hommlet gets redressed and used over and over again. The dungeon maps in ToEE are constantly repurposed. And how many dungeons have you seen (or even reviewed) that were inspired by B2? Even less than stellar modules that are written to be used as adventures can see more use; recently I redressed A1 as a location in my campaign.

That's what I like about OSR style modules. They're easy to modify and place wherever you want. Usually you can't do that with most modules created for the modern systems. I can think of a few AP modules that were exceptions though.

Certain modules just beg to be reused over and over. G1. X2. Some of the better adventures in Dungeon magazine (yes, there are a few, like the Spottle Parlor one).

 

[bryce0lynch]

I'm Bryce Lunch.

I'm Bryce Lynch. (To be fair, Mom & Dad Lynch named me Bryce before that Tv show came out. I feel a strong solidarity with the fictional Michael Bolton.) I run the blog site tenfootpole.org. On that site I write reviews of adventures, mostly new releases for older version of D&D, but other systems, like D&D 5E, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu and others. I've been writing three reviews a week for over ten years now. If you throw in some special content, like magazines with multiple adventures in them, I've reviewed over 2,000 adventures. And the vast, vast majority of them are dreadful and are dreadful in the very similar ways. It doesn't matter, D&D, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, Dungeonworld, Traveller ... writing bad adventures is a system-neutral issue. And the solutions are almost always system-neutral as well.

I'm telling you my background not because I'm asking you trust me, or take my statements as gospel. But, perhaps, given my background, you might consider my adventure writing guidelines a little more than you would your gaming friends, someone who likes you, or some other rando on the Internet. My thinking on these issues have been refined through the forge of 2,000 reviews, burning away the dross of opinion (Yeah, yeah, everything is opinion. And we don't get to have conversation about things unless we can transcend opinion and "well i like it!" statements.) to get the core of what makes an adventure a good one.

My blog is full of typos. I write there in a stream of consciousness style. I FEEL very deeply in my writing there, which can come out in earth shattering disappoint. But that's only because I KNOW that good adventures are possible, if people would just learn how. Thus, this book. Designers are not bad people (well, at least not the ones who are not trying to transparently make a buck ...) but they do produce bad works. Let's get all of you not-bad people making good works!

 

[Palindromedary]

I'm not sure, but this may be the Paizo quote you were looking for:

Modules, it turns out, apparently DO sell

As someone who doesn't really play any version of DnD, and doesn't run adventures, preferring more sandbox and character focused games using Savage Worlds or Burning Wheel or FATE, I still sometimes buy Pathfinder adventures. Why do you ask? Because they make for interesting reads. I have zero...

www.enworld.org

It's only a suspicion that reading and not playing is the majority, not a certainty, but otherwise sounds right. The focus on "fun to read" is certainly along those lines.

 

[bryce0lynch]

Overused Tropes

Using a standard tropes has both benefits and drawbacks. Tropes help players and the DM anchor their thoughts. They come iwth context that can leveraged by the designer, providing more imagery than the written word would first imply. Waterfalls should have caves behind them with treasure, and bookcases are natural for hiding secret doors. From withes, to things appearing in threes, and so on. Badly done though a trope can come off as generic present "standardized solutions", which it is then tempting to counter. These are things to watch out for.

There are a lot of Dwarf Ruins and abandoned temples. "Orcs in a hole" is such a trope that it has it's jargon: orcs-in-a-hole. Sewers are so overused it makes me wonder why any city every has a sewer system; they they have are monsters crawling around in them and the local taxes never seem to be be dedicated to controlling that. Dream adventures, in which none of the choices players make for their characters have any real consequences or the dungeon "designed as a test to see if X is good enough for Y." When every monster and/or NPC betrays the party and every carnival and circus has an evil ringmaster then the party takes to just burning the place down, or trying to at the start. When the mists appear everyone yells in unison "Ravenloft!" and pulls out their holy water. Likewise every Call of Cthulhu old house is just begging to be burnt down without going in. (Players love mankinds oldest ally: fire. And no, making the building brick is not a solution.) Weddings & parties fall in to the Circus/Ringmaster category as well. For a long time no party members have had relatives or close acquaintances, because they were sure to get kidnapped. There's a significant "reactioning to the DM" element to Murder Hobo'ing

The key here is to deisgn and put effort in to make the environment fresh again. It doesn't have to be a twist, where the princess is actually evil and the dragon good (that, alone is a trope also.) But rather, integrating the mists in a fashion that doesn't immediately telegraph, or giving the party a reason to explore the old house where in "just burn it down" isn't a solution.





+ugard pirahna
-bald mountain
+desecration/damnation

 

[squeen]

I understand you are writing to an audience of adventurer writers, who are in turn, writing to an audience of experienced players (or an experienced reviewer). However, when I began writing my players were young, and I honestly wanted them to experience ever trope. It was new to them. Ture, it's not hard, as you say, to twist it up a bit. And tropes seem extremely bland in isolation...but I feel that if the world gives each trope its own unique (non-repeditive) place, then it can be made to work. Then it just becomes THE place to experience "that type of adventure", e.g. crawling through sewers, fighting an evil cult, fighting a dragon, sailing with pirates, skulking through a wizard's tpwer, etc. There that little moment, a gleam in the players eyes, when they catch on. You can almost hear the mental switches "click" when they realize, "Oh I get it! Now we are going on THAT type of adventure.". If not overused internally, it's fresh for them.

Again, I apologize Bryce, I habitually abuse your forum. What I am referring to many have nothing to do with writing an adventure for publication.

 

[bryce0lynch]

Designer Familiarity

There's a difference between writing an adventure for your own usage and in writing for someone else. It has to do with familiarity. My own notes, for my home game, are minimal to an extreme. Room #11 might looks like "Chasm. Rope bridge." If that were an encounter in an adventure I were reviewing I would, rightfully so, ding it pretty heftily for providing the bare minimum to the DM with absolutely no assistance at all. What does Chasm mean? How big? A rope bridge? New? Old? But for me, in my home game, I know what I meant when I wrote it down. A dark chasm, a frayed rope bridge that still looks sturdy. A slight cold breeze blowing up from the depths. At the edge of your vision, blinking red eyes on the other side ... This the entry, for my home game, is just a memory cue. Something to remind me what I meant so I can dredge it back up from the depths of my mind.

When writing for others, though, you have none of that at your disposal. The job of the designer is difficult. You have to get the image out of your own head and down on paper in such a way that the core of your idea can be transferred to the reader, the DM, as they are using the adventure at the table. This is no small feat. You don't know what you don't know, as they say. Did you succeed in your writing? Are there implicit assumptions being made by you that you're not even aware of? Or, maybe even better, there are explicit assumptions being made and your writing is drawing on cultural memorial of LotR movies and the bridge/balrog fight. The designer is always overly familiar with their work and the user always at the opposite end of that spectrum. You have to watch for issues that causes. SO many adventures come out bland because the writing used by the designer doesn't match up to the vision of the siituation in their head.

 

[bryce0lynch]

wittgenstein People have the wrong picture in their heads