General Discussion
- Thread starter Beoric
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Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
From what I gather from when I used to follow MilTwitter, I think they really build wargames that way for scenario simulation. With custom rules depending on the variable and equipment.
I noticed a notation on the hexes which showed when it was easier to move from one hex to another. Like the lines on the hex edges denoting which beaches were possible to land on. I like that, I'm going to adopt it as a slower-than-a-road-but-faster-than-most-cross-country notation.
I noticed a notation on the hexes which showed when it was easier to move from one hex to another. Like the lines on the hex edges denoting which beaches were possible to land on. I like that, I'm going to adopt it as a slower-than-a-road-but-faster-than-most-cross-country notation.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
A random thought I had, for making modules that can easily be dropped into a campaign. Make your area map no larger than 24 miles across - that is, no larger than the size of a single "large" hex, using the smallest scale in common use. And don't imply that there is unusual terrain extending beyond the boundaries of the map.
I say this because of how difficult I find it to integrate area maps into my campaign, where the area map takes several hexes, and I have to find a location with (for example) mountains on two sides, and large forests on the other two sides, without redrawing my campaign map.
Bryce talks a lot about usability at the table, but I have more trouble with usability in the campaign. For this quality, I think the old TSR modules are generally superior to OSR efforts. I can drop Hommlet into most of the nations in my campaign world - pretty much anywhere I want to start a campaign. I really struggle to find a home for most OSR efforts, although @Malrex's modules are often an exception).
I say this because of how difficult I find it to integrate area maps into my campaign, where the area map takes several hexes, and I have to find a location with (for example) mountains on two sides, and large forests on the other two sides, without redrawing my campaign map.
Bryce talks a lot about usability at the table, but I have more trouble with usability in the campaign. For this quality, I think the old TSR modules are generally superior to OSR efforts. I can drop Hommlet into most of the nations in my campaign world - pretty much anywhere I want to start a campaign. I really struggle to find a home for most OSR efforts, although @Malrex's modules are often an exception).
Malrex
So ... slow work day? Every day?
Thanks Beoric!
I just stumbled upon a video about 'how long should an adventure be?' The dude, Matthew Colville? was saying that adventures should be short, and not the big ones....and that he was surprised that most people on his twitch were just used to adventures being the big, hard bound books that Wizards was pumping out. He said it leads to a campaign fizzling because the adventures are so long, players forget what or why they are doing something and he believed the TSR modules were superiour because they were short and players could accomplish something. Anyways, sorta reminded me when Beoric is basically saying 'how big of an area should an adventure be.'
I like the smaller areas...like a valley or canyon or something that has a natural barrier. As a kid, I was used to lumping short adventures into a bigger campaign, but I guess that isn't done with the newer players because they are just used to the big adventures. Found it interesting to watch.
Anyways, I agree with Beoric about the TSR modules. There are some adventures out there that people think are great....and I admit they are creative, but I always scratch my head and wonder where the heck would I place it in my campaign? Even Palace of Unquiet Repose is a bit of a struggle as all the gods are dead, etc. but I think it doesn't delve into that too much and can be tweaked pretty easily.
The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
lol, try jamming the massive wilderness areas in S4 and WG4 into your own world! Previous to my heartbreaker, I built a massive hexcrawl, sandbox island roughly the size of Britain with the purpose of jamming all my favourite printed adventures into it and letting the characters drive their own campaign. What I ended up doing in a lot of cases was shrinking the scale of the Wilderness portions (old adventures loooove to use giant 12+ mi hexes). In almost all cases the trek would be just as much fun at 1/6 the scale, and will fit neatly into the appropriate generic biome with a minimum of alteration.
In cases where the whole point is that the players must trek across 200 grueling miles of tundra to save the horse clans or whatever, you can usually break the map into pieces and distribute the Points (A, B, etc.) at appropriate distances in your own world map.
Like Malrex said, that leaves the real problem with all of these, which is adaptation. Old Greyhawk adventures were set in a generic, earthlike, magical medieval world, so they transfer easily to most campaigns. Later adventures start introducing world-specific crunch that can be very difficult to transplant without significantly altering your campaign world.
I guess I'm feeling defensive (due to the ridiculous size of my own work), but as a consumer, I LOVE getting a big book with a ton of usable content, lush artwork, and professional layout/design. I've definitely seen people shitting on 100+ page adventures in the comments section of Bryce's reviews, but (possibly unfairly?) written them off as miserable old bastards. Now I'm actually curious though, what's selling more successfully at the moment; short and sweet or long and delicious?
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
The relevant portion of both S4's and WG4's area maps are all mountains. I don't have difficulty finding a big area of mountains where I can drop them. The scale is a bit big, but there is no time crunch for the wilderness portion, so the scale can be changed; also, 0e/1e/Basic overland travel speeds are always unrealistically fast, so it often doesn't make a big difference when I use my own travelling rules. I usually change the scale on the B1 overland map as well, to make it bigger.
(BTW @Malrex, I often have to change the scale on your area maps and detail maps for them to make sense. I assume you play TotM style?)
I agree with your adaptation comment. I would really like to figure out a way to use Palace of Unquiet Repose, but a lot of its elements are very specific and difficult to translate to my game world without a lot of work. Same goes for a lot of the NAP stuff; it's great, but I will never even try to use use most of it.
I expect you like hardbacks because, IIRC, you like reading modules. I only read them for the purposes of preparing to use them, and get frustrated with walls of text.
I find both hardback and softback books difficult to use for my purposes. The TSR modules, with physically separated (or separatable) maps and separate illustration booklets, were easier to work with. ATM I prefer PDFs, which I print in sections, generally one section with the text and key, and another reference section with maps, new monsters, new magic items, etc. Each section is "bound" with a staple in the corner, unless it is too big for that, in which case I have a Cerlox binder. I can write all over them, and if I want to use them in a different way in a different context I can just reprint them and make different notes. I dislike writing in bound books.
grodog
*eyeroll*
Agreed, whole-heartedly. Modules, to be useful, need to be modular and portable, since (as of the old 1999 or 2000 player survey) many (most?) campaigns were run in homebrewed settings. (I’m not sure how that data has evolved over the last 25 years, but WorC certainly kept polling the customer base).
I tend to think of settings in these scales:
- local (Hommlet or Nulb or Hardby, etc.); ; in GH, this is a 5/6 mile hex
- regional (environs around the City of Greyhawk, including Castle, Chateau, fens, roads, bridges, etc.); in my GH, or in the Wilderlands, this is a 5 mile hex
- meta/uber/bigger regional (the Sheldomar Valley); in GH, this is a 30 mile hex
- continental (the Flanaess, although technically it’s a sub-continent, so you could insert another layer in the hierarchy if desired); in GH, this is a 30 mile hex (or even if I’m dealing with the Oerik map)
Regional is about as large as a published sourcebook can really go and remain modular, and that can still be tough, depending on the terrain dependencies: you can add some of Gabor’s Erillion+ lands to your game, but it’s difficult to add them all to another setting (published or homebrew). So islands (or sub-continents, I suppose) are sort of a cheat here, if you can safely add them over the edges of what’s known without disrupting the rest of the established setting.
That’s the approach we took with Valus back in 2003-4: http://diffworlds.com/valus.htm There is more to that world, but you can, in theory, drop Valus into Greyhawk, FR, the Majestic Wilderlands, etc. It’s small/local enough in scale and scope to be relatively plug-and-play, while being large enough (in theory) to offer distinct setting elements and challenges vs. the rest of the standard setting/world.
Allan.
Malrex
So ... slow work day? Every day?
I have a weakness for making wilderness maps. I use to many symbols....less is more, but my brain can't do it well, so I tend to make smaller areas, but then the scale may not make as much sense? Although...It may also not be me as Jon and I work together a lot and if its one we work on together, sometimes he draws the maps (and I digitize them).
Ya, I don't like adventures that take a lot of work to fit in my campaign. Maze of Blue Medusa, Deep Carbon Observatory...all these adventures people rave about, I don't like them because I can't really use them. I think they are creative and not trying to come off as bashing them, but they just dont really work for my playstyle (I could only read about 4 pages of Blue Medusa before just putting it down).
I used to like reading modules, but don't buy much anymore because I don't want to steal ideas and/or I seem to always look for flaws or how they could be improved--which is NOT why I want to read them, but I can't seem to help it anymore. And I'm usually backlogged trying to playtest my own stuff. But every once in awhile, Ill buy something from an author I like or if I think it will give me some sort of inspiration.
I like PDFs as well as I've become more of a minimalist at home and don't like books hogging up space anymore.
If I could partner with a printing press and/or figure out how to make detachable modules like TSR, I'd do it because I like those too, but I think that gets in the realm of high risk and having to order a certain amount and store them and we aren't really there yet.
The1True
My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
You definitely got me there, but don't get me wrong; I don't enjoy walls of text either. I'm in it for the content, not the novelization. Maps, tables, mini-quests, mini-games, alternate systems, new classes, new monsters, new magic, new crunch, appendices. I like a creator who has enthusiastically vomited up a rainbow of innovative ideas and art, and somehow knitted them all together into a coherent work. I may never run "The Dark of Hot Springs Island" or "Veins of the Earth", but they were an absolute delight and inspiration to read. That said, I couldn't get through "Maze of the Blue Medusa" either, but maybe that's because I can't find it in hard copy for less than a million bucks and I hate reading PDF's?
Malrex
So ... slow work day? Every day?
So The1True, Beoric and Squeen basically all said in a roundabout way that these adventures may not be used but was a good read. Are they a different bracket of 'adventure'? Why has everyone gushed about these adventures and yet no one plays them? Is there a play-by-play for any of these adventures written somewhere?
I think I skimmed through Veins of the Earth (the art style bothered me) and I think there was some cool ideas in there. I don't remember it being an adventure, but more of a source book, like Wilderness Survival type book for underground.
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
You are correct about Veins--not an adventure. Patrick's stuff (like his blog) gushes with creativity, and since back then--he and Zak (an LA artist/hipster)--were leading D&D into a more "mature" direction. It flattered to deceive the reader that D&D could be something is never was, and unfortunately(?) never could be. (Because RPG dice-based sex is not a thing?) The failure was the lack of actionable mechanics and details. Without Patrick's creative mind filling in content out of thin-air, the action-able details would never materialize. The whole Artpunk product-line was more like reading a book and thinking "Hey! Maybe I can steal some of that for my game." That ultimately was a far-cry away from buying a usable adventure.
In many ways, Byrce (although he gushed on Maze at the time) was the blow-back against useless story content. Bryce was taken in by Patrick's imaginative prose, which was next-level above the very rote and pedantic language of most D&D products (i.e. his elusive evocative pillar), but was also too pragmatic about adventure utility to fall for the purple-prose camp of the lesser Artpunk imitators. It was all Art Film aesthetic, and the OSR got taken in by the hollow, moody, "deep", veneer.
OSE and the dreaded bullet-pointers rode the reactionary/utility wave back way too far.
NAP is an attempt to strip away the window dressing of modern Artpunk (i.e. the layout and imagery), while preserving some of the artistry of language, while adhering to the integrity of playable content (without the creative showmanship gimmicks of "new" this-and-that).
Bryce & Prince are both lovers of literature, and it shows.
Ultimately good D&D comes down to finding a great DM who:
(a) has played the game long enough to understand what's fun for players and what falls flat
(b) is massively creative themselves (relative to their players) and can generate inifite interesting content
Adventure writing is mostly an economic exercise. They exist at the appentizer-only end of the RPG spectrum.
In many ways, Byrce (although he gushed on Maze at the time) was the blow-back against useless story content. Bryce was taken in by Patrick's imaginative prose, which was next-level above the very rote and pedantic language of most D&D products (i.e. his elusive evocative pillar), but was also too pragmatic about adventure utility to fall for the purple-prose camp of the lesser Artpunk imitators. It was all Art Film aesthetic, and the OSR got taken in by the hollow, moody, "deep", veneer.
OSE and the dreaded bullet-pointers rode the reactionary/utility wave back way too far.
NAP is an attempt to strip away the window dressing of modern Artpunk (i.e. the layout and imagery), while preserving some of the artistry of language, while adhering to the integrity of playable content (without the creative showmanship gimmicks of "new" this-and-that).
Bryce & Prince are both lovers of literature, and it shows.
Ultimately good D&D comes down to finding a great DM who:
(a) has played the game long enough to understand what's fun for players and what falls flat
(b) is massively creative themselves (relative to their players) and can generate inifite interesting content
Adventure writing is mostly an economic exercise. They exist at the appentizer-only end of the RPG spectrum.
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
I haven't read Veins of the Earth or Hot Springs Island. I have read the preview of MotBM, a couple of times actually, found it unusable, and didn't particularly enjoy reading it, either. I don't read things just to read them, I read them with a view to using them.
I have trouble with a lot of 2e favourites because the wall of text makes it harder to get to what the thing is actually about, and I don't have the patience. If it doesn't show me that it's going to be useful relatively quickly, I will look elsewhere. If it is recommended by a couple of decent reviewers I might give it more time, but it still needs to be useful to be worth it.
This is probably because I read I have read a few adventure paths in detail, poring over the walls of purple prose, trying to find the essential elements that linked the modules together, so I knew what I needed to keep (or replace) and what was essential, only to learn each time there there was nothing essential in any of them. Every module, pretty much every element of every module, was utterly superfluous, entirely replaceable, and essentially empty. This is, to be clear, Shackled City, Age or Worms, and Scales of War, a combined seventy levels of "adventure." Now I'm jealous of my time, and modules need to prove themselves to me quickly.
Things like MotBM are in a different class from this, though. They are meant to be works of art on their own, without play. Like, MotBM's map is pretty, but utterly useless in terms of navigation. I have no time for that. Truth be told, I usually find concept adventures more novel than actually good.
I also don't find them enjoyable to read. People who write modules aren't necessarily good fiction writers (cf. Gord, and the Krynn novels). If it isn't even really good as fiction, and it isn't good as a gaming supplement, then it does nothing for me. And if I want inspiration from fiction, I can read or watch actually food fiction from actually good artists. Hell, I get more ideas from randomly reading a page in the 1e DMG than I do from reading unusable modules.