If there is one area of GMing in which I feel I need to hone my skills, it is in the creation of adventures, and especially adventures intended for campaign play. In general, I do pretty well with rules knowledge, I'm pretty good at setting a scene, at pacing a combat, and can generally run an enjoyable session. And adventures for one-shot games are likewise okay, for the most part, as these are much more linear than those intended for campaign play.
So, I've been musing on how to build a better adventure. I think I'll post a few times on the subject...
(I should note: I won't be dispensing any holy writ here. To a large extent, these are my thoughts on how I can create better adventures. They're ideas that may not even work, at all, even for me.)
My starting point for all of this was to look at a lot of published adventures, notably those from Paizo Publishing as part of their Pathfinder Adventure Path line. By and large, these are considered excellent adventures, so they should be a decent place to start. I've also thought quite extensively about the WotC published adventures, which mostly range from 'shocking' to 'poor' quality - there are a tiny number of good adventures that serve as shining exceptions. So, that's where I'm going to start:
Background
Most modern published adventures start with a long section on adventure background, in which they explain how things came to be the way they are - they explain how the dungeon was built, they explain the motivations of the villain, etc.
It's all stirring stuff, of course, and quite an interesting read. It's also largely irrelevant in play - the players never really become aware of this, and the background seldom influences much of what actually happens, so it never again comes up.
Now, that may suggest that that material can just be dropped - if it's irrelevant then it's just wasted words, and if it's just wasted words then they can be cut. However, I would suggest the opposite - that the background should exist, but that the adventure should be built to make it a lot more relevant.
It's also worth noting that there are three kinds of background: there's the background that the adventure writer needs to know in order to create the adventure, there's the background that the GM needs to know in order to make sense of the adventure, and there's the background that should be given to the players to set the scene. Very often, adventures provide a combination of the first and second, while ignoring the third altogether.
I would suggest that when building an adventure, the designer should first start with a "requirements spec" for the adventure background, quickly sketching out the key salient points. When building the adventure, this should always be borne in mind - everything that is relevant in the background should have some expression in the adventure, while there should be nothing significant in the adventure that is not in the background.
So, if the background makes mention of an ancient lost love of the villain, there must be some mechanism for the PCs to find this out and apply the knowledge; conversely, if the background doesn't mention an ancient lost love, then there shouldn't be one in the adventure!
The other two types of background should then probably be written quite late on in the process, once the adventure is settled, and any changes required are fed back to the "designer's background". The GM's background can then be presented much as it is now, although probably in an abridged form (just the key facts are needed, really).
However, in addition to this, there should be a section for PC knowledge (the player's background mentioned above). This should contain of several lists of facts - one for Common Knowledge about the adventure, one for each of the 'lore' skills (the Knowledges, plus Gather Information, and anything else that is relevant), and one for each 'special skill' that applies (Bardic Knowledge, Artificer's Knowledge, etc).
I'm torn as to whether you should just give these out to the appropriate characters at the start of the adventure, if you should expect players to ask, or if they should ask and then roll. My inclination is to err towards just giving the information out, as otherwise they're likely not to know to ask.
(For added fun, some of the low-DC entries can contain false information. Even better, some of the entries could contain contradictory information, leaving the players to figure it out for themselves. But maybe that's just cruel...)
There are several advantages of giving out these "knowledge blocks":
- As with the "five things you know..." lists, they provide a lot of information in a small space.
- They help set the scene for the adventure.
- They reward those players who had their character invest in 'lore' skills, rather than the more obvious Athletics and Find Traps skills.
- They can then serve as clues for the various mysteries that are going to exist later in the adventure.
Plot Hooks and Goals
Most published adventures give the PCs a clear reason to be there, and a clear objective in the adventure. Some go a little further, giving alternative hooks that the GM can use, but these tend to amount to the same thing, since the adventure tends to be rather static in its construction.
I'm inclined to think that a more satisfying adventure is likely to result if the PCs instead have several goals in the adventure. Especially if those goals are then to some extent opposed, and especially if different PCs have different goals in the dungeon and those are opposed. That way, the PCs have to determine which of their priorities is most important; and that in turn means that they have to roleplay.
Tracking Progress
The last of my three points (and the last point for now), concerns the PCs' progress through the adventure. Very often, published adventures are basically static - the players clear out a bit of the dungeon and then retreat; once they've recovered they pick up where they've left off. And so on, until the adventure is done. Huzzah!
But that's almost non-sensical in its implementation, and in any case a much more satisfying experience is surely possible.
Instead, the adventure should provide a mechanism for tracking the PCs' progress towards their various goals, and provide feedback on the same. This allows for them to adjust their strategy, to reap the rewards of partial success, and is also generally more realistic.
Of course, the consequences of their actions need not all be positive, and indeed those consequences should generally be logical, but need not be obvious...
Imagine an adventure where the villagers ask the PCs to deal with a troublesome orcish tribe. So, the PCs, as is their wont, immediately set off to the orcish lair to kick butt. Of course, after the officially-approroved four level-appropriate encounters they retreat to rest and regroup...
Whereupon the orc king calls in his outriders, and launches a massive reprisal assault on the village. And so, suddenly instead of a bog-standard dungeon crawl, we have the PCs beating back an assault by overwhelming forces, plus the inevitable reprisals...
If the PCs instead sneak into the orcish lair and assassinate the orcish king, then all hell break loose - the orcs split into many factions each doing their own thing. And so, we have a much smaller assault on the village, many of the orcs are killed fighting other orcs, and some orcs simply leave. Of course, the eventual winner is most likely an even more bloodthirsty brute than the old king, and he has to show his power by smashing the village...
Alternately, if the PCs choose to spend some time hunting down and ambushing the orcish raiding parties, they can keep their presence hidden for a time, whittle away the orcish forces, and thus make ready for their final assault. Sure, it doesn't have the same visceral appeal as the other two approaches... but isn't it the player's choice whether to go for the glory or to take the slow and steady route?
(Even better is if you have multiple factions at play - perhaps the PCs ally with the orc king's son to arrange a coup... of course, they then have to watch for a sudden but inevitable betrayal. Or, if they ally with the lizardmen against the orcs, what happens when the lizardmen start to get too bold? Or, even better, what happens if some well-meaning but foolish young villagers decide to help by wiping out a party of 'monsters' - the village's lizardmen allies?)
I've thought about replying to this post a couple of times, but not quite sure how coherent my thoughts are. Anyway, here they are. I'll let you ignore them/sift through them for the gold as you wish.
ReplyDeleteI think there's an interesting distinction that can be made between writing adventures that stand alone and those that are part of a campaign storyline. And I think they have associated difficulties.
In particular, I almost never had to provide background or motivation for my characters to do a particular adventure - they just fitted nicely into the broad narrative that they were following, and generally had something to do with the next major piece of the puzzle to achieve their overall aim. I suppose they always had a choice which way to go or what to do, but it always seemed to drop them nicely into a situation where they could have an adventure of some description. It's something that you don't get from a standalone adventure - it doesn't really fit into a broad and grand narrative, if you have one. I know I'm babbling a bit, but I think it really helped me DM. They had some overarching sense of purpose to what they were doing, and it allowed me to give them a number of choices of how to achieve their aim, but broadly I always knew that they would be heading in a particular direction, and trying to achieve particular things.
It did mean that there were a few times that I had no idea if my characters would choose route A or B (or C, that I didn't even consider). In those instances I had to just ask them to give me 5 minutes while I sketched out some ideas of where the plot would go from C. Broke the suspension of disbelief, but it worked (or seemed to).
The problem for writing a DMs guide though, is that this sort of thing is so campaign specific, game specific and group specific that it's nearly impossible to write a book on "how to DM". It's a bit easier for single adventures, but very hard for a campaign. Maybe they should try to gather ideas from a wide range of gaming groups (of various styles and levels) and present a book of hints and tips on DMing.
For the background stuff, I quite like your idea of the knowledge block. If often find, though, that my players were quite happy to fill in a lot of the narrative blanks for me, saving me a lot of work. They just let their imaginations fill the holes that I left. It means we probably didn't end up with a consistent view of the world, but each player got some of what they wanted (by virtue of it being internal). I guess it's quite hard to describe how that sort of thing works - as you say, it's more of an art than a science.
Interesting that you seem torn on whether to provide misleading information to players. While they should expect their characters to sometimes get things wrong, I found that my players expected me to be Godlike in my utterances, that every word I said was true. So if I told them that their character thought something, it could be believed. It made it quite hard when I did mislead them a couple of times with false information (even when presented by NPCs in the game, they expected that if I said it, it was true).
I like the focus on non-combat skills, but remain skeptical as to how well it would work in a game.
Your points on hooks and goals, and tracking progress are really nice ideas. But don't you think it would make GM effort huge (for design and in-game)?
Ah, yes, you're right about that. One of the great rules that I try to live by is "the DM should never, ever lie to the players." It's okay for non-player characters to lie to the players; it is okay for the PCs to read something in a book that turns out to be false; it's okay for the DM to fail to correct them when they draw their own conclusions. But the DM, speaking for himself, needs to be truthful - he's the only conduit of information that the players have to the game world, so they need to be able to rely on him to accurately report what they perceive (even if "what they perceive" is an illusion, the DM should still report it accurately).
ReplyDeleteSo, that bit about giving information that is outright false is a mistake.
(I was probably thinking of the old "rumour tables" from published adventures, which often included flase rumours. The key difference, though, was that in old-school modules the PCs didn't have a Gather Information skill - if they asked around they automatically learned of a couple of rumours, and effectively had to do the "Gather Information" bit themselves. Once you get the skills in place, though, the validity of that disappears.
There does remain some use for the "false positive" result - if the PC rolls badly and fails a check by 5 or more that tends to indicate a mishap. However, even so, I'm inclined to steer clear - providing red herrings tends to just lead to frustration and wasted time at the table. (And the players are usually quite adept at generating their own red herrings!))
That too. Even when I was providing the info through the mouth of an NPC, though, they thought that because I was saying it it was gospel. My players were far too trusting.
ReplyDeleteYou have, of course, just mentioned another of the problems with the skill rolls in 3E. The idea that the GM would be making a sizeable number of the rolls for the players in secret so that they don't know how well they did on the "Gather information" or "Sense motive" (or quite a few other) checks. Nice in theory - useless in practice.
Ah well, if they make the mistake of trusting an NPC because the words come out of the DM's mouth, that's their mistake.
ReplyDeleteI (almost) never roll for the PCs in my game - I have the players roll and then trust them to roleplay accordingly. (And, in fact, even if a character is dominated or otherwise mind-controlled, I don't take the character away from the player, instead expecting them to role-play accordingly.) It has worked for me so far.