I've been thinking of adventure design vs. campaign design lately, because of a project I'm contemplating, and while we don't talk about it much I think it's an important fundamental for game design as a whole. We don't exactly do a lot of OSSRs of adventures and campaigns, but a sizable fraction of game products - particularly game products of yesteryear - were in fact adventures that you were expected to buy and work into a campaign or run as one-shots, whatever. Adventures were important in establishing the mood of the game, to show how the rules were supposed to work in action, to provide examples for gamemasters in providing their own games...and still are, I think. But let me ramble on a bit more.
The Set-Piece is one of the fundamentals of adventure design, because it's probably the easiest. It's basically a single, mapped location - often a dungeon in D&D context - waiting for the PCs to arrive (for whatever reason), fight or finesse their way through, loot the level and declare themselves the victors. Set-pieces in this context are largely self-contained; PC and NPC motivations and interactions tend to be simple rather than complex, and the crux of the adventure is less any story motivation than a desire by the players for completion. You can compare this to the Sand Box, where the PC still might not have a lot of motivation, but the environment is more open, and the PC/NPC interactions tend to be more complex - so instead of "do you want to go left or right down the corridor?" you get "Old Man Dickens has clammed up, won't say another word. Where do you want to go now?"
The Mission is a bit more focused, and in practice you often see these kind of adventures set up or presented as a string of set-pieces or "scenes" - the basic idea being that your PCs have been given a goal to achieve, and some motivation to achieve that goal, and then they pursue the completion of that goal. It's more focused than "We're going to explore the dungeon." because there's a quantifiable objective in there somewhere, like "We're going to explore the dungeon to find the Ruby of Healing to lift the plague upon the land." or "We're going to explore the dungeon to find the Ruby of Healing because we're being paid a shitload of gold to do so." There's a definite mercenary vibe that can be applied to the mission, which is really emphasized by Shadowrun. You can contrast that with the Quest, which tends to be much more nebulous and open-ended - where a Mission tends to have a fairly definable end-goal and some logical path to getting there, the Quest has a strong random/destiny component. You are a young sworder who goes off a-questing, and whomever and whatever you meet ends up part of your personal chronicle or narrative, Don Quixote-style. You don't see many straight-up quests in published adventures, because it either defaults to Mister Cavern rolling on the random encounter table and spinning a story about rescuing the Lapin Princess from the Dark Warren, or it's a series of really kind of bizarre scenes which only come together gradually - the best example of the latter I can think of is Harlequin's Back.
Fundamentals of Adventure Design
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Ancient History
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This video covers this but defines the main structures as Dungeon Crawl, Linear/Railroad, Mini-Sandbox, and True Sandbox. Some good info throughout.
Tumbling Down wrote:An admirable sentiment but someone beat you to it.deaddmwalking wrote:I'm really tempted to stat up a 'Shadzar' for my game, now.
This is an interesting point, thanks AH. I would say that prepublished adventures are a way of showing people what the game was intended to be played as, and demonstrating its USPs. Here's four off the top of my head.
Chicago by Night for Vampire the Masquerade was an excellent example of that game and how it works. It lays out NPCs, plots and factions and gives loads of hooks to tie your characters into. It makes it very plain that in Vampire you are not the big guy in town, but are instead either siding with, plotting against or chafing under the rule of the big guy(s). It's a game about meeting NPCs and trying to work out their schemes while keeping your own hidden, and that book is a good introduction.
Ancient Magic for Ars Magica is a collection of awesome pie that your character wants. There's a catch, however: you can't have it because nobody knows it any more. You'll have to invent it. Each chapter is a prewritten adventure involving running around being Indiana Jones in order to gather clues and leads, before disappearing into your lab to use those clues to achieve breakthroughs towards the ancient knowledge. Eventually if you achieve it, you get some awesome magical powers in lieu of treasure. This sets up what Ars Magica is very clearly, and provides setups in which all the different parts of the game (lab work, adventuring, and playing a grog who stabs people and takes their stuff) are valuable.
The Four Bastards for Feng Shui lays out an adventure which is fast and ferociously cheesy. While it's just a MacGuffin chase (or more accurately a stop-the-bad-guys-getting-the-MacGuffin romp) it lays out the foundations of the game very well. There are bad guys which you shoot. There is a lot of time travel and a lot of low comedy. Things are not intended to make sense or to be considered deeply. (At one point the author advises you to inflict wound points on any character whose player is unable to swallow the plot holes whole. Yes, really. It's Feng Shui, they get to get away with this.) This is what Feng Shui does, and this is as good a baptism of fire as any.
Into the Outdoors with Gun & Camera for Paranoia was excellent in that it proceeded to brutally strip away any illusions you may have had based on other (non-fun) games you may have played. Paranoia is not a power fantasy. Paranoia is not about party-level tactics. Paranoia is not even about understanding your own character sheet. What it is is hilariously fun and immensely memorable, once you understand it on its own terms. This adventure - especially the early part of it - demonstrates these differences in an entertaining fashion.
Chicago by Night for Vampire the Masquerade was an excellent example of that game and how it works. It lays out NPCs, plots and factions and gives loads of hooks to tie your characters into. It makes it very plain that in Vampire you are not the big guy in town, but are instead either siding with, plotting against or chafing under the rule of the big guy(s). It's a game about meeting NPCs and trying to work out their schemes while keeping your own hidden, and that book is a good introduction.
Ancient Magic for Ars Magica is a collection of awesome pie that your character wants. There's a catch, however: you can't have it because nobody knows it any more. You'll have to invent it. Each chapter is a prewritten adventure involving running around being Indiana Jones in order to gather clues and leads, before disappearing into your lab to use those clues to achieve breakthroughs towards the ancient knowledge. Eventually if you achieve it, you get some awesome magical powers in lieu of treasure. This sets up what Ars Magica is very clearly, and provides setups in which all the different parts of the game (lab work, adventuring, and playing a grog who stabs people and takes their stuff) are valuable.
The Four Bastards for Feng Shui lays out an adventure which is fast and ferociously cheesy. While it's just a MacGuffin chase (or more accurately a stop-the-bad-guys-getting-the-MacGuffin romp) it lays out the foundations of the game very well. There are bad guys which you shoot. There is a lot of time travel and a lot of low comedy. Things are not intended to make sense or to be considered deeply. (At one point the author advises you to inflict wound points on any character whose player is unable to swallow the plot holes whole. Yes, really. It's Feng Shui, they get to get away with this.) This is what Feng Shui does, and this is as good a baptism of fire as any.
Into the Outdoors with Gun & Camera for Paranoia was excellent in that it proceeded to brutally strip away any illusions you may have had based on other (non-fun) games you may have played. Paranoia is not a power fantasy. Paranoia is not about party-level tactics. Paranoia is not even about understanding your own character sheet. What it is is hilariously fun and immensely memorable, once you understand it on its own terms. This adventure - especially the early part of it - demonstrates these differences in an entertaining fashion.
Just a note I drop into these threads. The original campaign design for D&D was very different to the original adventure design.
The campaign was how home games were supposed to run, with a challenge-layered mega-dungeon (featuring player-controlled difficulty), growing into a fortified city with NPCs and mini-quests, with wild surrounds that you could claim for yourself at higher levels (dangerous enough to hem you in early on), which connected into big realm-style games of taxation for army maintenance and hex-clearing and fort building. Eventually a whole living world, developed over years of play.
Characters faced eventual retirement into semi-NPC status where they might drop in as a quest-giver sometimes, or travel around the planes on some existential world manipulation thing if you played a long weekend game or something. You were supposed to die and roll up new characters quite a lot, or roll up another 1st level PC because there was not enough high level ones here today to play.
While the adventures were 4-hour tournament games that got published. Designed to test how well random pick-up crowds played pre-gen characters against a tight ball of rapid choices between often fatally sketchy options, where magic gear was start with none but have a nice set a few hours in, if you're still alive. Score your run (most treasure found wins, typically) and that's that until next year, back to the home games you go. It's just, people begged to buy them and EGG wasn't stupid enough to say no.
So what a bunch of people played instead was campaigns made up of adventures in series. Which is what d20 was finally built to support, with 4e zooming in on one style of that (all mid-level big fights, all the time) to the exclusion of everything else.
I think it's where a lot of D&D's conceptual problems arise. Wizards vs Fighters make a lot more sense if you have a huge MTP exploration and investigation game with rare gem/jewellery rewards that you've got to find before they get away, and the fights are just getting in the way of that. Random encounters that punish you for slowing down, where everything can reset the next day, so pressing on is everything and leaving empty handed is a disaster. Makes the resource limits mean something.
XP primarily from monsters really hurts D&D. It's supposed to be about fights being bad for you on the way to solving your mini-quest by dungeon diving and returning to get a big reward.
The campaign was how home games were supposed to run, with a challenge-layered mega-dungeon (featuring player-controlled difficulty), growing into a fortified city with NPCs and mini-quests, with wild surrounds that you could claim for yourself at higher levels (dangerous enough to hem you in early on), which connected into big realm-style games of taxation for army maintenance and hex-clearing and fort building. Eventually a whole living world, developed over years of play.
Characters faced eventual retirement into semi-NPC status where they might drop in as a quest-giver sometimes, or travel around the planes on some existential world manipulation thing if you played a long weekend game or something. You were supposed to die and roll up new characters quite a lot, or roll up another 1st level PC because there was not enough high level ones here today to play.
While the adventures were 4-hour tournament games that got published. Designed to test how well random pick-up crowds played pre-gen characters against a tight ball of rapid choices between often fatally sketchy options, where magic gear was start with none but have a nice set a few hours in, if you're still alive. Score your run (most treasure found wins, typically) and that's that until next year, back to the home games you go. It's just, people begged to buy them and EGG wasn't stupid enough to say no.
So what a bunch of people played instead was campaigns made up of adventures in series. Which is what d20 was finally built to support, with 4e zooming in on one style of that (all mid-level big fights, all the time) to the exclusion of everything else.
I think it's where a lot of D&D's conceptual problems arise. Wizards vs Fighters make a lot more sense if you have a huge MTP exploration and investigation game with rare gem/jewellery rewards that you've got to find before they get away, and the fights are just getting in the way of that. Random encounters that punish you for slowing down, where everything can reset the next day, so pressing on is everything and leaving empty handed is a disaster. Makes the resource limits mean something.
XP primarily from monsters really hurts D&D. It's supposed to be about fights being bad for you on the way to solving your mini-quest by dungeon diving and returning to get a big reward.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
Dont know if it helps, but for me the best adventures are those that manage to 1) inspire me with cool ideas and 2) provide interesting and useful out of the box hooks, plots and npcs. But thats me. I never managed to run an adventure exactly as written.
In that vein, Ive found "mini-settings" -like modules the most useful. Things like the aforementioned Chicago by Night for Vampire, Shadowrun's Denver: City of Shadows, Runequest's Borderlands, and Planescape Faces of Sigil.
In that vein, Ive found "mini-settings" -like modules the most useful. Things like the aforementioned Chicago by Night for Vampire, Shadowrun's Denver: City of Shadows, Runequest's Borderlands, and Planescape Faces of Sigil.
Last edited by silva on Sun Aug 10, 2014 11:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
New Seattle, for Shadowrun 3rd Edition, is the single most useful sourcebook I've ever owned, by a long margin. It, too, is a mini-setting.
I enjoyed playing through Super Tuesday and Harlequin's Back, but I've never used a book to run an adventure. All the knowledge I had of Shadowrun (and D&D for that matter) was passed to me through the GM I learned from.
I enjoyed playing through Super Tuesday and Harlequin's Back, but I've never used a book to run an adventure. All the knowledge I had of Shadowrun (and D&D for that matter) was passed to me through the GM I learned from.
Yeah, even if my nostalgia cheers up for the first edition one (with that amazing ork restaurant full colour pic), New Seattle is a clear improvement on organization and usefulness over it.
Last edited by silva on Mon Aug 11, 2014 1:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
I often feel like adventure design is borked in most adventures because it is designed to fit a pre-chosen plot (railroad or quest) or designed without a plot (dungeon crawl or sandbox).
Ideally, a good adventure should be a mini-setting that fits many kinds of adventure. You should have a list of NPCs, structures, local color and atmosphere, and the like and it should all add up to a toolbox to run the kind of adventure you want to play.
For example, I often used the maps from some adventures for other adventures in my campaign because a pre-statted set of monsters or an interesting dungeon are far more useful to me than another fetch quest adventure.
The content gets used up because it is so very focused, so it works in a different way than campaign content.
Ideally, a good adventure should be a mini-setting that fits many kinds of adventure. You should have a list of NPCs, structures, local color and atmosphere, and the like and it should all add up to a toolbox to run the kind of adventure you want to play.
For example, I often used the maps from some adventures for other adventures in my campaign because a pre-statted set of monsters or an interesting dungeon are far more useful to me than another fetch quest adventure.
The content gets used up because it is so very focused, so it works in a different way than campaign content.
This post is pure gold, sir, I take out my hat to you.K wrote:I often feel like adventure design is borked in most adventures because it is designed to fit a pre-chosen plot (railroad or quest) or designed without a plot (dungeon crawl or sandbox).
Ideally, a good adventure should be a mini-setting that fits many kinds of adventure. You should have a list of NPCs, structures, local color and atmosphere, and the like and it should all add up to a toolbox to run the kind of adventure you want to play.
For example, I often used the maps from some adventures for other adventures in my campaign because a pre-statted set of monsters or an interesting dungeon are far more useful to me than another fetch quest adventure.
The content gets used up because it is so very focused, so it works in a different way than campaign content.
Yeah, gimme mini-settings filled with hooks, ideas, npcs and cool maps and props anytime of the day.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
I much prefer an adventure with a pre-chosen plot because the average GM is much worse than the average adventure writer at coming up with his own plots (in my experience).K wrote:I often feel like adventure design is borked in most adventures because it is designed to fit a pre-chosen plot (railroad or quest) or designed without a plot (dungeon crawl or sandbox).
Ideally, a good adventure should be a mini-setting that fits many kinds of adventure.
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Concise Locket
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I agree. Adventure modules tend to be bland but at least I know how much enjoyment I'm going to get out of a session.hogarth wrote:I much prefer an adventure with a pre-chosen plot because the average GM is much worse than the average adventure writer at coming up with his own plots (in my experience).
Being an improv sandboxer at heart, I never cared much for the GM plot. In fact, I hate to play in the GM pre-baked plot. My favorite style of play is: "here is the map, what do you want to do ?".hogarth wrote:I much prefer an adventure with a pre-chosen plot because the average GM is much worse than the average adventure writer at coming up with his own plots (in my experience).K wrote:I often feel like adventure design is borked in most adventures because it is designed to fit a pre-chosen plot (railroad or quest) or designed without a plot (dungeon crawl or sandbox).
Ideally, a good adventure should be a mini-setting that fits many kinds of adventure.
Thus my preference for the "mini-settings" style advebture modules.
The traditional playstyle is, above all else, the style of playing all games the same way, supported by the ambiguity and lack of procedure in the traditional game text. - Eero Tuovinen
There is no reason to choose between sandbox or railroad. A good mini-setting is going to be perfect for 5-10 railroads or sandbox play. An adventure plot is really just a some scripted fights and events, hopefully with some decision trees so that players feel that the game is being directed by them.silva wrote:Being an improv sandboxer at heart, I never cared much for the GM plot. In fact, I hate to play in the GM pre-baked plot. My favorite style of play is: "here is the map, what do you want to do ?".hogarth wrote:I much prefer an adventure with a pre-chosen plot because the average GM is much worse than the average adventure writer at coming up with his own plots (in my experience).K wrote:I often feel like adventure design is borked in most adventures because it is designed to fit a pre-chosen plot (railroad or quest) or designed without a plot (dungeon crawl or sandbox).
Ideally, a good adventure should be a mini-setting that fits many kinds of adventure.
Thus my preference for the "mini-settings" style advebture modules.
You really can write up parts of the mini-setting with flowcharts to tell the DM where things should be in response to PC action. For example, "if the Fire Demon has been defeated, his minions from the Burning Temple gather here to perform a month-long mourning ritual of chanting and fasting. They attack anyone who enters the area in a rage."
It won't cover all of the possible things that PCs might do, but it will give enough direction to keep an average DM on point.
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Ancient History
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With regards to plot, the important thing in any adventure is motivation. It's not just "what do the PCs/NPCs do," but why they do it. Some players are self-motivated, others like to have a more definable and quantifiable goal. NPCS are largely the same; some are passive, reacting to what the PCs do, while others are going to be proactive, and either help or hinder the PCs. Most of the issues with "railroad" type games is the assumption that the PCs have a motivation which they might not, and that certain events must happen in certain ways regardless of NPC motivations.
PC motivation is a campaign issue, not an adventure issue.
So if the PCs are a fledgling thieves guild and they are going on quests to steal cool shit, they are going to perceive the fetch quest into the Burning Temple for the Sultan's Blade differently than the ragged band of counter-revolutionaries trying to get the Sultan's Blade in order to bribe a band of barbarians to join the fight against the Lich King.
Their perception doesn't matter. It's still a fetch quest for the Sultan's Blade, and the Fire Demon and the cultists are going to react the same to a band of adventurers fighting or sneaking or talking their way into the Burning Temple regardless of why those adventurers are doing it.
The same fetch quest where the Sultan's Blade has been replaced by a PC's father is also going to be flavored very differently by the PCs, but the actual encounters aren't going to change much other than the treasure being in the prison in the Burning Temple map and not the treasure room.
So if the PCs are a fledgling thieves guild and they are going on quests to steal cool shit, they are going to perceive the fetch quest into the Burning Temple for the Sultan's Blade differently than the ragged band of counter-revolutionaries trying to get the Sultan's Blade in order to bribe a band of barbarians to join the fight against the Lich King.
Their perception doesn't matter. It's still a fetch quest for the Sultan's Blade, and the Fire Demon and the cultists are going to react the same to a band of adventurers fighting or sneaking or talking their way into the Burning Temple regardless of why those adventurers are doing it.
The same fetch quest where the Sultan's Blade has been replaced by a PC's father is also going to be flavored very differently by the PCs, but the actual encounters aren't going to change much other than the treasure being in the prison in the Burning Temple map and not the treasure room.
I'm not getting your point. If you think that adventures with a plot work just fine, then why are you complaining "I often feel like adventure design is borked in most adventures because it is designed to fit a pre-chosen plot"?K wrote:There is no reason to choose between sandbox or railroad. A good mini-setting is going to be perfect for 5-10 railroads or sandbox play. An adventure plot is really just a some scripted fights and events, hopefully with some decision trees so that players feel that the game is being directed by them.
Most adventures are designed for exactly one plot, usually not a very good one. That's bad because very little of the adventure can be used for anything else because the encounters and PCs are one-dimensional and don't work out of context. The Fire Demon doesn't even have a "talk" option in the standard fetch quest format and that's not good.hogarth wrote:I'm not getting your point. If you think that adventures with a plot work just fine, then why are you complaining "I often feel like adventure design is borked in most adventures because it is designed to fit a pre-chosen plot"?K wrote:There is no reason to choose between sandbox or railroad. A good mini-setting is going to be perfect for 5-10 railroads or sandbox play. An adventure plot is really just a some scripted fights and events, hopefully with some decision trees so that players feel that the game is being directed by them.
A better set-up would have some flexibility. Lots of different plots should be possible with the characters, maps, background, etc, that you are writing up. Not only should several potential plots be possible, but those plots should be written up so that the Demon of the Burning Temple "adventure" has options for fetch quests, dungeon crawls, sieges (offense and defense), and other fantasy plots like "the Fire Demon has an artifact and it needs to be smashed before bad shit happens" or "negotiate with the Fire Demon for the knowledge you need for some other thing."
Designed that way with all of the moving bits for all those plots, it's more like a mini-setting but with all the adventuring bits like maps and stat blocks pre-designed. Then if you really want to adapt the Burning Temple for some sandboxy plot like "compete with the Burning Temple for the hearts and mind of the nearby village" because your PC cleric decided to build a temple nearby, you have all the tools you need to do that.
Last edited by K on Wed Aug 13, 2014 3:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
In my experience, an adventure involves a few maps, some stat blocks and a canned plot. Can you come up with a concrete example of a published adventure where the maps and stat blocks are of little use after you strip away the canned plot?K wrote:Most adventures are designed for exactly one plot, usually not a very good one. That's bad because very little of the adventure can be used for anything else because the encounters and PCs are one-dimensional and don't work out of context. The Fire Demon doesn't even have a "talk" option in the standard fetch quest format and that's not good.
A better set-up would have some flexibility. Lots of different plots should be possible with the characters, maps, background, etc, that you are writing up. Not only should several potential plots be possible, but those plots should be written up so that the Demon of the Burning Temple "adventure" has options for fetch quests, dungeon crawls, sieges (offense and defense), and other fantasy plots like "the Fire Demon has an artifact and it needs to be smashed before bad shit happens" or "negotiate with the Fire Demon for the knowledge you need for some other thing."
It's a bit awkward discussing the proposition "Real-life adventures are bad, and as proof here's a hypothetical adventure that's bad".
Any adventure can be set as a conflict that characters must solve. Determination whether or not do anything depends on players' free will. Thus all adventure design need to take into account motivation of players to carry out adventure. Thus it is important to get players interested in going to adventure.
There are three basic methods for motivating players:
1) NPC may offer them employment (carrot).
2) NPC may coerce characters (stick).
3) Adventure might be something that players are interested in learning (curiosity).
I usually find that promise of loot and gold mixed with mysterious circumstances works best.
There are three basic methods for motivating players:
1) NPC may offer them employment (carrot).
2) NPC may coerce characters (stick).
3) Adventure might be something that players are interested in learning (curiosity).
I usually find that promise of loot and gold mixed with mysterious circumstances works best.
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Ancient History
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Disagree. Every adventure needs a hook, and that hook should be enough to draw the PCs in, or at least an excuse for why they are at the same place and interacting. That applies for whether the adventure is standalone or part of a campaign.K wrote:PC motivation is a campaign issue, not an adventure issue.
I totally agree that different campaigns will see the same adventure in light of the motivations for those campaigns, and hooks and motivations might need to be tweaked, but you're still going to need an initial impetus. If there's a fetch quest, there must be a reason for the adventurers to go fetch something, even if it's as simple as "ooh, shiny!" And if the hook is weak, the whole adventure falls apart. It's like getting ready for a Shadowrun and the Mr. Johnson ridiculously lowballs the PCs to the point where it doesn't even cover their ammo for the run; the players may just decide to up and refuse the adventure. I've seen it happen.
For example, there is no reason to play Bastion of Broken Souls. The author just provides no good hooks at all. He just has random DM-NPC attack the characters and assumes that they will seek revenge. Alternate options are sort of presented but not ever really given any consideration. It's a terrible adventure on many levels, but the first and most basic one is "why the fuck are the players getting involved?"
Sure. Bastion of Broken Souls. It has a bunch of adventure-specific monsters and adventure-specific modified NPCs and the maps are stupid out of context of that adventure.hogarth wrote:In my experience, an adventure involves a few maps, some stat blocks and a canned plot. Can you come up with a concrete example of a published adventure where the maps and stat blocks are of little use after you strip away the canned plot?K wrote:Most adventures are designed for exactly one plot, usually not a very good one. That's bad because very little of the adventure can be used for anything else because the encounters and PCs are one-dimensional and don't work out of context. The Fire Demon doesn't even have a "talk" option in the standard fetch quest format and that's not good.
A better set-up would have some flexibility. Lots of different plots should be possible with the characters, maps, background, etc, that you are writing up. Not only should several potential plots be possible, but those plots should be written up so that the Demon of the Burning Temple "adventure" has options for fetch quests, dungeon crawls, sieges (offense and defense), and other fantasy plots like "the Fire Demon has an artifact and it needs to be smashed before bad shit happens" or "negotiate with the Fire Demon for the knowledge you need for some other thing."
It's a bit awkward discussing the proposition "Real-life adventures are bad, and as proof here's a hypothetical adventure that's bad".
Basically, it's the gold standard of bad adventures.
Last edited by K on Wed Aug 13, 2014 3:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The problem is that hooks are entirely dependent on the campaign set-up. A bunch of mercenary PCs are not going to ever go for the "orphans in danger" hook and a bunch of holy warriors are not ever going to be interested in the "kick some neutral fairies for lots of gold" hook.Ancient History wrote:Disagree. Every adventure needs a hook, and that hook should be enough to draw the PCs in, or at least an excuse for why they are at the same place and interacting. That applies for whether the adventure is standalone or part of a campaign.K wrote:PC motivation is a campaign issue, not an adventure issue.
It's a fallacy that you can make an adventure that just has "good hooks that will appeal to most people" because there is no default campaign or default set of players. That's why you need adventure material that can serve many possible plots and hooks.
In Feng Shui, Robin Laws suggests that the best way to do this is to tell the player, "You are at the entrance to the dungeon. Why are you here?" and expect them to provide their own plot hooks or character motivations. I like that approach; it expects creativity of the player and brings them over to the GM side of the screen, which is always good.K wrote:The problem is that hooks are entirely dependent on the campaign set-up. A bunch of mercenary PCs are not going to ever go for the "orphans in danger" hook and a bunch of holy warriors are not ever going to be interested in the "kick some neutral fairies for lots of gold" hook.Ancient History wrote:Disagree. Every adventure needs a hook, and that hook should be enough to draw the PCs in, or at least an excuse for why they are at the same place and interacting. That applies for whether the adventure is standalone or part of a campaign.K wrote:PC motivation is a campaign issue, not an adventure issue.
It's a fallacy that you can make an adventure that just has "good hooks that will appeal to most people" because there is no default campaign or default set of players. That's why you need adventure material that can serve many possible plots and hooks.
Last edited by Laertes on Wed Aug 13, 2014 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
So you railroad the PCs to the dungeon and then ask them why you did it?Laertes wrote:In Feng Shui, Robin Laws suggests that the best way to do this is to tell the player, "You are at the entrance to the dungeon. Why are you here?" and expect them to provide their own plot hooks or character motivations. I like that approach; it expects creativity of the player and brings them over to the GM side of the screen, which is always good.
You ask the players if they want to play this dungeon. If they say yes, then you ask them what plausible reasons there are that their characters might choose to go and explore it. At no point here is the control of the PCs being taken away from the player.zugschef wrote:So you railroad the PCs to the dungeon and then ask them why you did it?Laertes wrote:In Feng Shui, Robin Laws suggests that the best way to do this is to tell the player, "You are at the entrance to the dungeon. Why are you here?" and expect them to provide their own plot hooks or character motivations. I like that approach; it expects creativity of the player and brings them over to the GM side of the screen, which is always good.
If your players are interested in playing that dungeon, then they'll find reasons for their PCs to be interested (or if their character is utterly unsuited to it, they'll ask you if they can make a one-shot character for this session.) If your players aren't interested in playing that dungeon, then why are you bothering to run it at all?
Edit: This logic is only intended to apply to self-contained dungeons where it's easy for individual PCs to be involved or not be involved. Within campaigns it gets stickier. However, since this discussion is about self-contained adventures, I feel that the above holds true.
Last edited by Laertes on Thu Aug 14, 2014 11:14 am, edited 2 times in total.