Topic: How ICE Should Make Modules

[RandalThor]

Earthdawn has really well done modules

Yup, I really like their Ardanyans Revenge, where they start out in a kaer.

[arcadayn]

Sorry, I kind of posted this topic and disappeared.  It seems that my point got lost in the shuffle of the usual pros and cons of adventure writing.  What I was pushing is a different form of adventure writing.  To quote Zak's blog:

Vornheim is a platform product--it's a thing, but it is also a set of (hopefully) transparent tools for making things--and when I keep saying I hope I don't have to write another RPG book because I hope other people look at it and make things like it, that's what I mean. Things plus platforms that can be used to make more things. Thought about in that way from the beginning. 

"Half and half" books. How many times have you read on some blog about a nifty subsystem buried in an ancient module for a game you never saw? Why not explicitly design the thing that way: here is the thing I thought up, and here are the tools I used to think it up or extend it.  Since we know that hardly anyone uses these things right out of the box anyway, why not start out assuming a toolkit of extensions is step one in helping GMs use your module?


How many of you have seen/used the Vornheim book?  If you haven't, I highly recommend you pop over to Drive Thru and pick up the pdf for $1.35, while it's still on sale.

[DavidKlecker]

Using HARP's goal based experience system as an example: adventures should not be written as "what's going to happen" but more "what could happen", whose doing it, and why. This allows the adventure to be more proactive/reactive than a story with fill-in-the-blanks. Of course it should have a starting premise that addresses the above two questions.

If things are going to happen a certain way--no matter what--that's not a game: that's a book or a movie.

This is how i write all of my campaigns. I don't base it on events, but on the plot and characters. I have the beginning, checkpoints and an aim but for the most part it's simply based on what the players do and how they interact with the characters I have created. I have found that characters that are real, with real histories, personalities and actually act based on those principles are exciting to a player. They can also be a nightmare to the hack and slash player who does nothing but beat up NPCs. The last campaign I had was a 2nd part to an earlier campaign. Most of the campaign was about things the players didn't know. The whole campaign centered on a plot to murder Elrond (Middle Earth) and to use my player as a mole to kill him. I had the whole plan written down and all the character's in place. In fact the plan had a rather large issue that could have ended the campaign in a hurry. It dealt with an NPC they already knew and if they figured that out the plot was up, but I couldn't help this because it was necessary to the plan. Leaving it out wouldn't have made sense. It didn't matter what happened during the campaign unless the plot was foiled in some fashion. However things got VERY interesting when they killed "in cold blood" a dark priest that was good friends with an overlord of a neighboring city. This caused a tension that could have undermined the whole plot. Well, the campaign ended a long time ago. Turns out the players didn't uncover anything and Elrond got stabbed right in the heart. the look on the players faces when this happened was so much fun.

I love campaigning like this because anything can happen. Any character can die. Nothing is safe in the campaign and one mistake can be costly.

[GrumpyOldFart]

If things are going to happen a certain way--no matter what--that's not a game: that's a book or a movie.

Well, I can see the sense in making a distinction between "setting events" that are going to happen regardless and "scenario events" that whether they happen depends on what the players do. And even some few that are borderline between the two.

As examples, by the local method of measuring dates, the volcano Mt. Morris will erupt on August 16th, 1458. The game begins 150 miles southeast of there in a small town on January 1st, 1458, and the most likely scenario will take the party to a spot 50 miles northeast of Mt. Morris.

The eruption of Mt. Morris is a "setting event". Yes, it's barely possible that powerful enough magic will prevent the eruption, but only if the players find out it's going to and have such magic available. I think that can be safely counted as "not gonna happen".

The attack by fire giants in the ruins of the town 50 miles NE of Mt. Morris is a "scenario event". If they don't go to the town, it doesn't happen. If they see the scenario unfolding better than the GM expected and enlist the help of some mortal enemy of fire giants (who go and attack them themselves), well technically it still happens, but the players may all be many miles away when it does.

The magical plague that strikes the major trade city is borderline. Unless something happens to prevent it, the evil cleric will drop the plague item into an exotic dancer's tip jar on the night of March 29th, 1458. She's an elf girl, she's unlikely to be affected, but as she walks through the crowded market on her way to get the item identified and appraised, everyone around her will be.

If the players have any dealings with the evil cleric before March 29th, the plague may not happen. If they have any dealings with the exotic dancer, it may not happen on March 29th.

So if they meet the cleric on the road on the 28th and kill him, and then succumb to the plague when rifling through his belongings, "The Great Plague" becomes a couple of dozen people dead a day away from the walls, rather than a couple hundred thousand within the walls. If the elf girl went off with the party and only humans are working the night of the 29th, the evil cleric has no "Typhoid Mary" to walk through a crowded market with no symptoms, yet causing disease in others nearby, so the evil cleric has to choose a new target to get the results he wants. The plague will likely still happen, but not on the night of the 29th.