I think a lot about communication. My MA is in a communications field, my day job is all about figuring out the best ways to communicate and organize information, I’m thinking about getting a Doctorate of Communications Design, and so on. I also think a lot about games. I mean, a lot.
Published adventures (or adventure modules, or whatever you want to call them) are an area that has always, always bugged me. That’s one big reason that I never really got into running them, and even today, I’m much more likely to hack them apart and steal what I want then run them out of the book (though I do have a few favorites.) A big part of the problem for me is that I want adventures that communicate everything you need to know to run the adventure with minimal prep time and minimal disruptions while running it.
One issue, at least with more modern games, is with components. Just as an example, the 4e modules by WotC include the adventure itself and a double-sided poster map, but don’t include a map for every encounter area, and they certainly don’t include miniatures for everything you encounter. Thus, there’s prep work.
The bigger issue for me is how the information is presented, though. Let’s look at the standard model for adventures. As an example, just a simple dungeon. You get an overview map with the interesting areas marked with a key. You can then flip to the areas listed when the PCs get there. Simple enough, right?
Except that since it’s a printed work, it’s linear, but the PCs progression through it is not linear. That leads to flipping around (which is annoying in and of itself) and makes it difficult to have the whole thing come alive. I can miss interesting opportunities for rooms to come together, and miss the consequences of PC actions elsewhere. This in turn limits the design of the dungeon as well.
Imagine a dungeon that shifts as you go through it, depending on the actions of the PCs. One set of switches leads to certain rooms being open, but closed at other times. This could be a nightmare to communicate to a GM who wants to run it, depending on how complex it is, since there’s the limitation that the reader has to understand it.
What’s a potential solution? Hyperlinked adventures, on a computer.
Just at its base level, it would help me immensely to have a screen that includes: the overall dungeon map, the map of the current room, description of the current room, and all relevant stats. I can then click on the overall dungeon map in each room to move to the next one. Plus, you’d have references to other rooms or objects be hyperlinked so I could easily pull up a new tab with whatever that thing is instead of having to flip back and forth between two areas.
That would improve the usability to me of a published adventure right there. But heck, once you’ve gone there, why not go farther? Hyperlink stats and glossary terms. Allow me to click to change “states” in the dungeon, like with the switches example above. (“Click here if the PCs pressed the blue button.”) When I hover over adjacent areas, show me what the room contains. Allow me to easily move things over from adjacent rooms. Going even further, encounters could be tracked within the adventure itself (or exported into some form.)
I have seen some steps in this direction already. Dungeon-A-Day is Monte Cook’s big idea for a reason in that it’s a grand mega-dungeon that exists in hyperlink form, drawing upon the most online-indexed RPG out there: the 3.5/d20 SRD. I also bought an adventure in PDF that had hyperlinks to attached sound effects to play at certain times.
I still don’t think the potential has been fully reached, and won’t be until someone designs an adventure from the ground up with this in mind. And likely, they wouldn’t make up their investment in sales, which is a reason it hasn’t happened yet (to my knowledge.) The other criticism is, at that point, why not just play a computer game?
What I want is all the good parts of DMing, being able to adapt on the fly to players and situations, without annoying fiddly bits that impede the presentation of idea of an adventure to my brain, and I want it to give me the tools to run it. The technology is out there: someone just needs to make it.
This’d be really interesting, but I kind of doubt anyone would do it, because it seems like a lot of effort for only a small public that’d yearn for it. You and I would love it and find the current status quo off-putting, but look at all the people perfectly content (and constantly buying more and more of) the current D&D adventures by WOTC. As long as they can keep getting away with that, they will.
.-= Wyatt´s last blog ..Homebrew Skill Rituals Part 1 =-.
Addendum: I also wanted to say that the hyperlinking is a solution to multi-system modules. At the beginning, you just select what game system you’re running, and it populates appropriately. This reminded me of it: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/270073-goodman-games-solicits-input.html
Wyatt: Yeah, the other problem with big changes like this is that many won’t see the need for a change. Regardless, it’s something _I_ want and would pay for.
Good post Dave. Perhaps the whole “adventure in a box” idea just needs to be thrown out completely. Or maybe some middle ground. It seems like you enjoy the professional finishing and development that D&D adventures provide, but aren’t very interested in (often rail-roady) story. Maybe another solution is for a game company to start producing something like “Adventure Blocks” or “… Chunks” etc… that can be assembled together into whatever kind of non-linear adventure the DM wants. Imagine … I need two mini bosses, a BBEG, and a hook. I have four sessions to play it out in… so I need A Hook block, Four Encounter blocks, and perhaps one or two “Challenge Blocks”.. all designed to interlock together. It would be an information nightmare on the backend… but it wouldn’t be too too different from how Blizzard develops those autodungeons for Diablo… everytime you play it’s different… I’m rambling. I think maybe I dropped my point somewhere…
.-= jonathan´s last blog ..NMP Affiliate Program =-.
Hi,
I agree that published adventure in the current format are not for every gaming group. I tried to run an RPGA twice with my group and they just wanted to do the opposite of what was the author presumed they would do.
The only way I think it’s possible that WOTC will change the way they publish adventure, is if they develop a complete Adventure management program in their DDI branch. A tool just like Masterplan, that allow you to create your adventure on a work flow like system and allow you to link thinks together.
Masterplan on it’s own would be a great media to publish your adventure, just have to create a library with everything needed to run the adventure (monster stats block, tiles for tactical maps, etc.), but the fact that it’s not well known out there will certainly diminish the public to witch you can sell your adventure.
Anyway, it would be great to have that kind of application directly from WOTC, and adventure for it as alternate media.
Groumy
P.S. Masterplan url : http://www.habitualindolence.net/masterplan/
Interesting post – I’m not sure I want to run games with a laptop but I do think the current format of published adventures needs looking at. The original WotC “delve” format was a good idea but I don’t think they’ve got it right. There’s too much flipping back and forth.
.-= Richard´s last blog ..Critical Hits » Changing the Way We Think About Published Adventures =-.
a poster above beat me to it, but yes, MasterPlan pretty much does everything that you’ve suggested, and makes it easy to construct. However, there’s still work involved and I could imagine people being willing to pay for a masterplan file if it was a really well laid out dungeon, especially as creating tile libraries is a PITA and this would be done for you. So, something like MasterPlan as a tool for experiencing commercial adventures? Hell yeah!
~P~
Sweet idea. You know what this really reminds me of? The websites which suck the most of my time: YouTube, Wikipedia, and TvTropes.
Something that these sites all have in common is interlinking. You go to one page, it very handily gives you links to other, related pages. You click those links, check out the media there, and there’s other related topics and pages. You click on those…well, you get the idea.
Wikipedia and TvTropes are brilliant examples of this, because not only do you have related content links, but you have content links in-line with the text! Just as you’re suggesting for the adventure modules, here you can be reading about one thing, and be presented with a link directly to that thing. It’s a beautiful tool to go on exploring with.
I think this is a fantastic idea for DMs, and if I were ever to publish an adventure, I think I’d look into putting the extra effort into it, filling the thing with hyperlinks like this. Not only does it make things easy, but it makes things fun to read through, even as a DM…almost like those Choose Your Own Adventure books.
And don’t forget…TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life.
.-= Andy´s last blog ..Breakin’ Down the Christmas Tree, Part 3 =-.
A big issue when trying this is a lot of people will be very vocally opposed on the grounds its different. And while they may not have any good reasons that stands up to reason, and while they probably wouldn’t have looked at a pdf or paper copy if you made it (depsite protests) they will be the loudest.
.-= Zzarchov´s last blog ..So you all meet in a tavern and instantly trust each other…again =-.
Dave, I don’t know if you’ve checked out Masterplan yet, but it’s an adventure builder that lets you create linked plot points, with treasure, encounters, skill challenges – I’m just scratching the surface of using it, but it looks like a helluva tool. And it’s free. There may well be a market for selling Masterplan adventures, since the software is free and simple.
.-= wickedmurph´s last blog ..4e Sandboxing =-.
Good post, as ever.
A long time ago (2006-ish, which isn’t that long ago, I’ll admit) I toyed with a rough proof-of-concept idea of creating Wiki’d Dungeons, mainly designed for solo play. I agree with Wyatt – it’s a lot of effort for not a lot of return, but it does show that it’s possible to hyperlink between rooms, encounters, statblocks, etc in a wiki-ish way. Add in a tonne of collaboration (and polish!) and it’s probably viable as a fun community effort.
Whether you’d want to or not though – that’s the real question.
.-= greywulf´s last blog ..End on a high! =-.
I’ve often had the same sorts of problems you mention when I run published adventures. I think I’ve run published adventures exclusively for 4e. I twist them and mutate them into my own evil creations but it saves me time to have the core seed already laid out just waiting for me to fill it out.
The linear nature of the adventure often pushes me to be a linear DM. I railroad a lot in my games which is sort of a problem. I also do this because I don’t have a lot of stuff aside from the planned encounter areas prepared. I don’t draw out maps during the game – I usually set up our battles ahead of time.
I’m considering using Dungeon Tiles for things like random encounters or possible side-treks to give players a bit more variety. Other than that I give them decisions to make between games (ok, do you guys plan on going to the firey inferno or the icy labyrinth next game?)
The bigger problem for me is the first problem you mention. I’ve spent a mint getting just the right minis for our games and after buying probably a thousand of them, I still don’t have all of them. Adventure writers (I’m looking at you Bruce Cordell) have battles with MULTIPLE rare creatures in a single encounter – sometimes as minions! I’m not going to spend $8 a piece for cyclops minions.
The DDI adventures compound the problem. Now I have to spend a mint on ink to print the adventures out. PDF is a lousy format for electronic adventures. The style you mention, hyperlinked wiki-style adventures, would be far more useful. I don’t play with a laptop at my table, but I might start if I saw adventures published this way.
I wonder what the legal issues are with publishing 4e adventures this way Monty Cook style.
.-= Mike Shea´s last blog ..Monster Optimization: Ghouls and Deathlock Wights =-.
I understand what you’re saying about published adventures needing some prep work, but isn’t that always assumed with any game. In my campaign, my DM will write a long detailed world with lots of different adventures and things we can do. But he still has to read through it quickly before we game, and sometimes has to adapt little parts during breaks to get everything to work correctly.
Whenever I run a game, I like to spend at least an hour a week (and that’s the bare minimum, “I’ve got lots to do this week” amount of time) familiarizing myself with what’s happening and especially what could happen. Because I know my players are spending some amount of time thinking about what could come next and how can I expect them to have fun if I’m not prepared. With published adventures, I may have to change certain parts to make it all work, but usually I can get by with a couple good read throughs and notes in the margin. If I have tons of time at any point, I like to either make quick notes on where to find the monsters or even create index cards with their important stats and abilities, especially if we’re coming close to finding those monsters.
TiddlyWiki will do this. It’s a quick Javascript-enabled wiki in one file, that you can use offline. I know a DM who uses it to keep his campaign notes, and there’s no reason you couldn’t keep an entire campaign in one.
TiddlyWiki lets you keep multiple pages open on the same screen, so you can open and close locations and statblocks without tabbing back and forth.
This is very cool – I was going to come on here and put in a good word or two for Masterplan, but I see people already have!
So, um. Not much I can add, I guess, other than to say I’m always upgrading it and adding new features. The facebook group is pretty active. Any and all comments gratefully received 🙂
Yeah, I’d definitely love a hyperlinked adventure especially since I already run via my laptop. I’ve tried Masterplan but have yet to really grok how to use it…but hopefully it’s only a matter of time.
Yes.
While I don’t use canned adventures myself, I do use the campaign wiki to create my asdventures in, and I have a inter-adventure home page with the links for each sub area. It goes well and quickly in terms of gameplay. In all of my groups, we have 100% laptop compliance. I just keep a minibook open with a few pages to rules and adventure data.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..Calum Donaldson edited Steel Isle online =-.
Along the lines of your suggestion to switch systems with the click of a button, such adventures might also have a one-touch level adjustment. Select a level from a drop-down field at any time and, voila, the encounters auto-adjust to be appropriate to that level.
It also could have hyperlinked art, which would resize to full screen at the touch of a button (the DM could turn the laptop around for players to see a particular image, then turn it back and continue gaming. Or for more tech-savvy DMs, switch video output to a remote monitor or TV, then switch back).
Random generators could be built in. Adventures taking place in a settled area, for example, could have a random townsfolk name button, or whatever. Taking this idea a step further, maybe have a feature that randomizes the whole darn adventure to some degree, making it (relatively) playable more than once.
ironregime: Those are great ideas. It would make me want to buy a separate monitor for displaying to players.
“I still don’t think the potential has been fully reached, and won’t be until someone designs an adventure from the ground up with this in mind.”
I disagree. I think we won’t reach that potential until someone designs an entire game system from the ground up, with hotlinking and embedding in mind.
I want to have the monster’s stats right in the same view as the description of the room he’s in. Well, if someone owns the Copyright on that monster, I can’t do it.
I think the gaming world is primed for a completely free, open source gaming system that takes advantage of the power of digital distribution and hotlinks.
There are a lot of really creative tools for working with the 3rd or 4th edition rules, but the problem is that it’s left as an exercise for the player to enter in all of their Powers (because it’s a Copyright violation for them to just download them), or for the DM to enter in all of the Monsters (likewise), or you’re left with the SRD / OGL / ? version of the Power / Monster / Whatever, and that’s always just different enough to be annoying.
When I started DMing the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in 3rd Edition, I bought two copies of the book. I ripped apart the binding of the second one, and literally scanned ever single page, front and back. Then I made a wiki out of the contents. I had HTML pages with maps in them, and used HTML CMAPS to link to other wiki pages with the room descriptions, then had wiki links to pages for each of the NPC / special monster stats. Then for each of them, I had wiki links to the appropriate Spells, Feats, etc, which I had also turned into wiki pages.
Navigate on the map, move into the room – read the description – look at the NPC – decide on the spell – look at the text of the spell.
click, click, click, click.
And now what? I can’t share this incredibly useful information with anyone, for fear of copyright violations.
And having the “adventure parts” only gets me so far. If I can’t link to the “normal monsters” or the “normal spells” in the game system itself, I’m really hamstringing myself.
I’m contemplating a whole new way to do things.
1001 Bobs wrote an awesome response to this idea, along with a few more things such a system could do:
http://1001bobs.weegamers.com/2010/01/adventure-design-2-0/
Hello,
I’ve just been thinking of what you said, and how this really could be put together in a community way, where commercial publishers could “hook right in”.
Just imagine, as someone wrote, that you need a hook, and 4 encounters.
You just go to the “mysterious website” where you enter level, and maybe some other params, like locations (city, village, mountain, wood), and you get a list of free or commercial (cheap) encounters, with our without battle maps, that you can download for free or for a small fee and play. And the same for plots, you can either purchase or download a plot. Make it like RPGNow, where users can give feedback/rankings.
I think if we, the community made this, and started to build it, filling it with fun encounters, we could really make this rock.
Hooking this up inside DDI, all problems with copyrights and usage of WotC IP would be a non-issue.
Anyone else that think this should be something that DDI should really provide/handle for us?
Mappers could make maps that could be used by evil encounter designers for several different encounters, or encounters could be based around tiles.
Just my thoughts,
// Totte aka 4eyes roleplaying
.-= Totte Alm´s last blog ..Updated monster tracker =-.
Have you checked out White-Wolf’s Storyteller Adventuring System? Not D&D, of course, but they seem to have worked quite hard to be interactive native – addressing most of the issues you mention here.
This is an area which interests me deeply. Having worked in user interface design and start-ups looking at new ways of presenting complex data, the problem with RPGs and adventures is itch I have a strong desire to scratch.
With our published adventures I’ve tried to approach the problem from a user-interface point of view. Making sure the right data is present well and is easy to find when you need it.
However, I think this is an insoluble problem.
I agree with @Matt Cruikshank comments that the game system needs to be built from the ground up with communication in mind. Current stat blocks and game mechanics mean the quantity of information needed in an adventure is overwhelming. Especially because it is impossible to tell which bits are the most important bits. E.g. a monster’s CON is irrelevant right up until it becomes crucial thanks to a player’s action.
Technology can help with this via hyperlinks etc but it only mitigates the problem and introduces new problem. E.g. Do you design the technology of iPhones or netbooks or Kindles or whatever is coming around the corner.
The advantage to focusing on a pen & paper solution to this problem is that the technology does not change. The disadvantage is that it doesn’t handle complex data sets very easy.
Compare the 1st Ed AD&D Fighter character with a 4th Ed. equivalent. The 1ed only requires about 10 pieces of information – Stats, alignment, AC, weapon, name. 4e requires the same ten plus 6 powers, three saving throws and up to 15 (?) skills. This makes 4e a much richer game than 1e but it has a vastly more complex problem to solve when it comes to presenting and managing that data.
I’m not sure how square the circle of a game with rich content but has low data complexity. However I’m 99% sure technology is not the fix, it has to involve a big change in the underlying assumptions about RPGs.
.-= Chris Tregenza´s last blog ..D&D 3.5 versus 4e =-.
Auran games, the company behind the Dark Reign RTS for PC made some adventures for 3.5. Each adventure had a cd-rom with didgital handouts and theme music, etc. Unfortunately they are not making games anymore. Check out http://www.auran.com/d20 for their releases. They were going in your direction, pitty they didnt get enough support to push further.
The web has a lot of functionality that could make this really fly. First of all, every monster in an encounter could have it’s stat block available in a tool tip. This leads to the copyright issues but what if the community built a “library” of open source monsters? You could create entire modules that didn’t use any WotC proprietary information. It would also be easy using a database to create scalable/dm customizable encounters. If the dm logged into a control panel he could easily either modify an encounter or else choose from a drop down list with some relatively suitable range. A digitally published adventure might easily support a range of levels such as 1-5 or 4-9 though ranges greater than 4-6 levels this might get into flavor issues. You can’t have a level 15 adventure centered on fighting the denizens of another plane and easily transform it to a level 1 adventure. As a web application developer and a DM with game design coding experience I can see a lot of ways to make this work (economic viability as a business would be a sticking point, possibly solved by making the application available to multiple adventure designers and the app developer taking a small percentage of each sale or subscription). The community at large could even develop a setting designed for use with this application. Ultimately even though this would be based upon 3rd party adventures and 3rd party monsters it would still support DnD/WotC because you need the PHB’s, splatbooks and DMG’s to play the game.
The application isn’t overly complex out of the gate but there’s a lot of things people might want such as dynamic interactivity between encounter regions that would create issues for both the app developer and add layers of complexity to the “adventure design process”.