I’m the type of person who needs to understand a process before tackling it head on.
That’s why this post is more about context and theory than actually writing Kobold Love’s first part.
Bear with me, it will be worth it.
First Impressions are capital
When a DM opens up a D&D adventure booklet, the Introduction, Adventure Background and Summary are the first things that will be read.
While layout, art and gorgeous maps will entice a DM to read the adventure, that first section will, IMHO, make or break the adventure more than any other section.
If you fail to hook the reader within the first paragraph, your adventure will be put away and may never be picked up again.
This section is also the one that sets the tone for the whole adventure, it puts the adventure within the context of a story and gives the DM a rapid overview of what’s going to happen in it.
This makes writing this section a very crucial task that must be tackled with care and blow the reader’s mind away by laying down what the adventure truly is about in the shortest number of words (yeah that’s going to be a challenge for me).
The evolution of the adventure’s introduction
I’m a DM that buys and peruses a lot of published adventures. Ever since the era of the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game, I’ve purchased numerous modules, and copies of Dungeon magazines.
Throughout the years I’ve seen a shift in the way the first part of an adventure was written. In Gary Gygax’s D&D era, published adventures had a few paragraphs of background in the likes of ‘The local Duke requires you to investigate this cave or he’ll jail you all” followed by a short context (A wizard is entombed here and no adventurer ever one came out alive) and sometimes a list of rumours.
Sometime during the evolution of the Dungeon magazine format, the 1st section was divided into the 4 parts that are now common practice in the industry which more or less follow these conventions :
The adventure’s Elevator Pitch, followed with the nuts and bolts of the adventure like what level it was designed for and for how many characters. If the Adventure was published in Dungeon Magazine, it also mentioned if the adventure was setting neutral or specific (Greyhawk, Forgotten Realm, Ebneron, etc). This is usually one or two paragraphs.
The Adventure Background: The backstory of the adventure. It covers the emplacement of the action, the main protagonists, the villain, his plan and the events that lead to the quest/events that will drive the adventure. This takes a few paragraphs and usually fits in a few hundred words, depending on how ‘fluffy’ the adventure is.
The Adventure Summary: One or two paragraph description of what the players will go through during the adventure.
Adventure Hooks: Some adventures provide Hooks, a series of short quests (usually 3 or more) and or motivations to get the PCs involved in the adventure. In D&D 4e, such hooks are often major and minor quests with appropriate XP rewards.
Fluffy vs Old School introductions
From my point of view there currently is 2 schools of thoughts on adventure background design. One, espoused by Paizo Publishing and Dungeon Magazine was to have detailed, rich back stories that involve several organizations and emplacements. Adventure path adventures like Paizo’s Pathfinder and Wizards of the Coast Scales of War are good examples of this.
The other, represented by Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics and Master Dungeon series is much lighter on context and backstory. They provide a quest and/or a villain, a few hooks and that’s often it.
Each type responds to different play styles and needs.
Where are you going with this lecture Phil?
It’s quite simple, I have to chose what ‘school’ of adventure Kobold Love’s intro will espouse.
KL-1(like good old time modules) will be written to stand on it’s own as a one shot, one evening adventure (if the DM does not expand it). Furthermore, as all 3rd party D&D 4e adventures, it will be need to be easy to adapt to all settings (including the Point of Lights non-setting) as well as all home brewed world.
Furthermore, it’s a limited scope adventure as I need to keep it rather short so I don’t spend 6 months on it.
So I’m going to write it closer to the old school way. It will feature limited fluff with lot’s of narrative hooks and grey zones to let imaginative DMs some leeway. At the same time, I’ll write enough to let a DM use it as a pick up game and still immerse player in the (half) kobolds’ experience.
Up next, Phil actually writes the adventure’s intro.
Credit: Wolfgang Baur’s Kobold Quarterly you should subscribe! (Image art by Darren Calvert)
Good call on the limited fluff, especially since this won’t be attached to a particular world. If this were published for a certain campaign world, then I’d probably feel different, but in this case limited fluff gives the DM more latitude to fluff it up to fit whatever world they run.
Not that you needed my approval. You’re the rock star after all. I’m just the schmuck following you off a cliff 😉
Tomcat1066s last blog post..What Your Character Knows That You Don’t
@Tomcat: Any ‘Schmuck’ that choses a cliff and jumps off it automatically gains a huge bonus for respect rolls in my book. I appreciate your approval!
=)
Cool! I’m definitely looking forward to more on this one. Frankly, I’ve never really seen a module come together (I usually don’t play them, much less run them), so this has been interesting so far.
For the record, I’m partial to the old school fluff anyways. Inter-world portability just isn’t there in most modules 😉
Tomcat1066s last blog post..What Your Character Knows That You Don’t
Remember, you’re in marketing now. It’s not “limited fluff” its “maximised adaptability!”
We’ve done a lot of work on pitching at Wolfgang’s latest Open Design, and a lot of it dovetails neatly with adventure introduction. An introduction is really a promise to the DM that they’ve picked up the right adventure: It says this is D&D (or whatever system), and I’m going to do X cool thing with it, with Y atmosphere and Z tone – all within few enough words that you can grasp it while flicking through the book in a shop.
Thinking about it your question, I find that I love fluff but I’m completely in the corner of old school design – for a published adventure. The relevance of any background information should be directly related to its exposure at the gaming table – be that via dialogue, NPC tactics, events, or whatever. Everything else really is ‘fluff’ in the non-gaming sense (a thing of relatively little consequence, however nice it is for the DM to know). Its also part of the 4th edition design ethos, which constantly asks a designer “but what does this actually mean around the game table?”
While I love background information and lavish far too much time on it when preparing my own stuff, a published adventure is different. All DMs tweak (or hack great lumps out of) published material and so if it’s not easily memorable and relevant to the plot, it can go. In fact that’s exactly the sort of fluff that DMs like to add to a scenario themselves. I think that most of us don’t need or really want that (or am I wrong?) and we appreciate it when designers leave it for us to do – or let us just get on with the chandelier swinging and Princess saving, if that’s what we’d prefer.
The best adventures (for me), are those which do exactly what you’re proposing: Plenty of relevant information without crowding out the ‘wiggle room’ for DM’s to mess with it. I’m totally behind the old school approach.
I suggest “fluff” style. If people don’t want the elaborate background, they can hack it to the amount they want. However, those who like to have a richer, fuller backstory will have it. It’s more work but ultimately favours both kinds of player groups.
@Dan: Duly noted on the ‘marketing imperative’. I will definitively focus on a Highly adaptable adventure format!
@Rafe: As Dan says, I’ll see how I can include setting (or trope) elements in the ‘game table’ elements of the adventure.
This will be interesting to see how it works out for you. I have always followed your tropes post as I find they are some of the best blog posts I read.
Patronage projects look like they could be the next wave, (following the mini pdf ventures) I have launched one myself.
Personally though I find the old school formula lacking, as modular does not have to be generic. By using the tropes of fantasy you could easily make a very detailed adventure modular without running the risk that it becaomes so generiic as to leave a bland taste in my mouth.
I will be following this and await the time to be able to sign up.