First Try - Comments on Adventure Building

I've said a couple times, that 5th Edition seems to be built around the idea of exploring. That kind of play requires a good deal of preparation - but the effort is rewarded by a more interesting and varied style of play. You could get away with winging it in 4E - pick a map, and a set of encounters and challenges, and roll the dice. The actual combat was a pretty good war game - but it started to feel barren after a while. Looking at this version, reading through the Starter Set (skimming it anyway), this version looks like it offers a richer experience, if you do it right.

I've been thinking about the mini-adventure e played when the basic rules came out - thinking about how it could have gone, or how you would develop it, if you were making a full fledged adventure out of it. What we did itself was pretty basic - more combat than not, but with some other bits mixed in. A couple "skill challenge" type things (crossing a ruined bridge), some interaction with NPCs and monsters - the combat worked fine; the other stuff... It was promising, though it showed what was missing. As soon as we start playing non-combat activity, you start to notice all the ways you could be doing it right. I suppose the trick is to do the prep work first.

So let’s go through what happened - and look at what was really happening, and how you could prepare for it.

We started in a bar - just a bar. The old timers asked for news - asked if we’d heard anything about Stan and Ollie, a couple adventurers who might have wandered down into Clamdigger Cove, a town that had been laid waste by pirates some time back, and was now something of a trouble spot. We didn’t knopw anything, but of course we headed off that way.

This stuff was all off the cuff, and did its work that way - but it would have been better with more prep. (And remembering how to play; stuff comes back to me after the fact sometimes, which doesn’t help.) Starting with the PCs - who are we? Where are we? Who do we think we are, and where do we think we are? We didn’t have to think about that at all with 4E - we didn’t do it all that explicitly back in 82 when we started, but it appeared quickly - the names of towns; the names of bars in towns; some kind of lines on a map to show us where we were. The characters we ended up playing a lot quickly took on personality. You need some of that - you need to at least establish who the characters are, where they are, and have an idea of what they know, as background information. Now - it’s easy enough to assume that PCs are strangers in the area where they start adventuring - but they still should know basic things. You have to think of the intros - like in the Starter Set - you're hired to bring a wagon of stuff to a town to meet someone. You don't have to know much more - a kind of orientation to your base, an idea about where you would be going... In our case - the PCs should know that they are not too far from the Ocean; that they are in a hilly country, hills running down to the ocean, sometimes in steep inlets from the sea. They might know at least general information about pirates and such - though how much might depend on where they are from. The players can decide some of that - But it’s something to think about.

Anyway - the party set off toward Clamdigger Cove. On the way, they ran into a bunch of goblins at an old tower; then a couple gnolls at a ruined bridge. Then, after some more walking, they came to the town. All of this, I think, went about the way it should - the party’s purpose was simple (get to the town), and these were just some random encounters and challenges along the way. A bit more geography and scenery would help, but that always helps...

In town - the first time, we spotted something in the water, and went down - found a body. There were a number of buildings standing by the waterfront - we explored, killed a couple stray kobolds, then stayed the night. In the morning, we started prowling around - ran into a couple orcs. Then explored a bit, and ran into a gang of kobolds - had a big fight - and called it a night. We then went back to the tavern, or the town (or both) - disposed of the body we found (Ollie, I guess), and got a reason to go back to Clamdigger Cove. So back to the tavern - picked up a new party member and bought some potions - and headed out. Another encounter on the road, and back to town. This part could have benefitted from more clarity on the situation, though again, it worked out all right - the situation isn't all that complicated - ruined town, wandering troublemakers, etc.

Back in town, this is where preparation would have made the most difference. What we did - we looked around, found a dead orc on the side of a hill, then spotted some people in the buildings where we had been the day before, so went down and dealt with them. They talked - cagy conversation about stuff and money, that was interesting enough, though a bit too tentative - followed by the arrival of a couple orcs with a prisoner. A fight - we killed the orcs (though had to cure up Rosco from 0 twice to do it) - then noticed the sailors running away. In their haste they dropped a chest into the water - they rowed away, leaving you with the chest, full of some kind of treasure. Hooray! You are rich!

Okay. In principal, this is all right (and worked for the extremely basic purpose we intended.) But it also has the seeds of a much better encounter. What needed to happen to make it really work? Well - 1) I think where it could have been interesting would be to have things to find in the town. I needed to prepare the town - draw at least a general map - decide what the condition of the place was. That’s important here - the idea is, the town had been raided some time back, much of it burned, with a couple areas still standing - the waterfront; probably the church, maybe a couple other stone buildings. The party should have been able to move through the town - check out buildings - and find things: monsters, refugees, interesting detritus, and so on. As well as dealing with hazards and traps - floors on the verge of collapse; unsprung traps; that sort of thing. What they found - could constitute this adventure, or could point them to another adventure - pointing them to a full kobold or goblin lair, say, that they would go and clear out. Or provide information about the pirates, or smugglers, or someone else, who have been using the place for nefarious purposes.

2) on the waterfront - what actually happened? The conversation worked okay in principal, though again - planning out the nature of the encounter more would have helped. So what happened? And what was actually going on? Or should have been going on? You went into a building - you met 3 sailors. The sailors were - I think (though I couldn't make up my mind at the time) - deserters from a smuggling boat. They stole some booty - they came here, hoping to meet a Halfling (whom they had never met) who had promised to buy stuff if they had it. As it happens, Clamdigger Cove is used these days as a drop off/meet up point for various shady characters. So - they saw the party, saw a Halfling, and wondered if this was the fence - they tried to find out (while the party tried to figure out their angle) - they were mostly convinced you weren’t the fence when the orcs arrived. So the party fought the orcs, and the sailors waited to see what happened - they probably hoped everyone would die, but figured when you took out the orcs that they were next, so headed out to sea - a bit too hastily, as it turned out. As for the Orcs - they had Stan in hand; he had begged for his life by promising to take them to someone who had lots of money - he led them here, hoping his friends could rescue him, or, if the orcs won, they’d let him go, because he helped them get rich. Something like that. This part - other than having a clearer idea of the backstory of the Orcs and Stan, and maybe some ideas about how to tie this story to further stories - is straightforward enough.

The point of all this is to think about how the game should play. I think this version is set up to encourage more of this kind of interaction, exploration, etc. - the combat rules are simplified, combat itself runs fast - fights are resolved quickly and easily. They don’t seem to have the self-contained heft of 4E. And the higher lethality of the game makes it wiser to do more thinking - skulking about - trying to skirt fights, solve problems, find things. So building these kinds of adventures - like what this could be: a mostly abandoned and ruined town, used by various factions as a kind of meeting place, maybe, with wandering monsters and the like still hanging around, as well as hints for other adventures - makes the most out of the game.

Remembering how to do all that - and then doing it - is the next step.