Prepping an Adventure vs. Writing an Adventure

Recently, I have gotten a couple of compliments for stuff I’ve done in the hobby. Firstly, one of my friends sent me an email thanking me for getting him back to the gaming table and for doing all the prep work necessary for running a game. Secondly, Ifryt, who writes Miasto ze Spizu, a Polish-language RPG blog, recently ran my adventure The Hermit Caves and wrote up a nice little review. I had to run it through Google Translate, but he liked the module for all the reasons I wrote it, which thrills me to no end.

While I am tooting my own horn here a little bit, I find the juxtaposition of these two comments actually really interesting because of the rather large difference between how I write an adventure to publish and how I prep to run an adventure. While my writing and layout style is quite different from the traditional module, I am nonetheless heavily influenced by the way modules have traditionally been presented. Part of me wonders if Referees, when prepping their own adventures, feel obligated to (at least in part) duplicate what has been published throughout the years.

Since I run a sandbox-style game and my schedule is filled with family, job, church, etc. I long ago realized that I cannot prep my adventures like a regular module. I don’t have time and my players may never actually go where I do all that hard work. Therefore, I have developed a shorthand of adventure prep and have a copious collection of random tables.

Here is an example of how I would come into a gaming session with Dyson Logos’ map The Liar’s Cave:

Note: I typed this out so you could read it (my handwriting is awful).

To explain: I take the back story presented by Dyson, added six monsters (stats on the side) and then rolled for each room using Moldvay’s table from his edition of Basic D&D:

• E= Empty
• ET = Empty with Treasure
• T = Trap
• TT = Trap with Treasure
• S = Special
• M = Monster
• MT = Monster with Treasure

One thing that I believe gets overlooked in Moldvay’s Basic is that he provides an average value to Treasure Types A-M. This gives me the freedom to arbitrarily assign treasure based on average value rather than rolling on the treasure table. It also allows me to use resources like The Mother of All Treasure Tables (MoaTT), originally published by Necromancer Games, which provides various treasure troves valued at 10 gp all the way to 50,000gp.

Thus, I have noted at each room with treasure a roll on the tables in MoaTT.

Now all I have to do is ask various questions on the day:

• Why are the monsters in this room?
• Why is the treasure in this room?
• What do they think of the party?
• Why a trap here? What trap is appropriate?
• What weird thing am I in the mood to have be a Special?
• Etc...

This is really all the information I need to run a successful dungeon delve that brings with it surprises for both my players and myself. In a way, I am exploring the dungeon with my players since much of the information that might have appeared in a grey box in a module of old, I am making up on the spot by answering questions either my players ask or I ask of myself.

In other words, the amount of work I put into prepping an adventure into The Liar’s Cave pales in comparison to the work I put into The Hermit Caves, yet both can (and have) produce(d) great gaming sessions.

So, to all those yet-to-be Referees (and maybe to those who already are): you don’t need to go to the lengths of a written module to produce great adventures of your own. You don’t need to feel intimidated by all that flavor text and all that background information and all the crunch. If you are willing to be creative, accept the surprises and seemingly nonsensical results that random tables can provide and be comfortable with the reality that if it makes sense to you in the moment, it will most likely make sense to your players, you can jump into the world of Refereeing with as little as a piece of paper with a rough map, a few monster stats and some random tables and still be just as effective as if you’d written everything from scratch.

Lost Colonies Session 56

As life has been less demanding of late, I have had more time to get together with my regular group and play. Unexpectedly, they wanted to run a session of Lost Colonies this week and I got to improv an entire session off the top of my head and had an absolute blast.

The last time we had a session (back in June), the party had gotten distracted from its pursuit of the slaad and his frogmen cavalry and lost two characters as a result. They did, however, survive a couple of combats within the bowels of the Black Tower they had no business getting into in the first place.

It is here that I have to admit something about the Black Tower. I have never mapped nor keyed this dungeon. Given the proclivities of my group, the Black Tower was never much of a priority until my players suddenly made it so (“Oh, crap — they are actually going to go in!?”).

I armed myself with three things:

1. A purpose for the tower itself — therein is the ability to transform oneself into a lich.
2. A really cool map.
3. An inspiring collection of monsters (The Tomb of Horrors Complete [THC]).

One of the things that I adore about the THC is that there are a whole slew of “themed” monsters — blood, sand, cold, clockwork, fire, etc. I was thus able to immediately determine that each “level” of the dungeon had a theme — each related to the concept of death and necromancy. I settled on sand, blood, cold and water.

Since the map itself suggested that there were four keys scattered about in order to open up the sphere at the center of the dungeon, I figured that these keys were necessary to get to the same location — where one could choose to become a lich. The instructions would be on the sand level inside the pyramid. Thus, the slaad was looking to take advantage of the location and secure himself some serious undead power before moving on to conquering bigger and better things.

What was left was riffing off the themes in order to make memorable-looking rooms that the players could interact with. I used a combination of fiat and die roll to determine where monsters and treasure were (sometimes the geography suggested an antechamber with a guardian in front of a treasure horde). When it was time to have a monster show up, I simply leafed through the pages to find whatever themed monster suited my fancy at the time and ran with it.

All-in-all it was a tremendous amount of fun for all. I got to be pleasantly surprised by the dungeon — I had no idea going in what was there until my players got there. My players got to experience a combination of a cool map, cool monsters and the creativity they inspired in me. I heard on more than one occasion “That’s so cool!” and “I’m stealing that for one of my dungeons!” (which I heartily endorse).

Some highlights:

• The blood level was coated in a layer of blood except for one particular area which appeared clean and dry. At the center of this area was a ginormous blood suckle bush (tree, really) to which I gave max hit points and double the number of attacks. My players don’t know this, but they really dodged a bullet here. My die rolls were really bad.
• In the cold level was a room half encased by ice. Inside the ice was a warrior guarding a treasure chest. I really enjoyed this for two reasons. First, it was really inspiring to my players. They got really creative about how to get to the treasure. Secondly, a die roll entirely transformed the room. The players cast Detect Magic, so I had to roll to see if the treasure horde had any. It did. The resultant two items changed the warrior from a passive guardian to an active one that (due to surprise) put some serious hurt on the party. The other item is a bane weapon.
• The first key that the party found was encased in a column of ice. What they didn’t realize was that the interior was hollow and full of flammable gas.
• One of the guys in our group has really earned himself a reputation for having his characters die on him (he is on character number eight in our AD&D campaign). Some of this can be chalked up to the fact that he is a newbie. Increasingly, however, the dice just seem to hate him. He lost two characters this session. Both times, he died because of residual damage (other players set off an area effect trap/spell) that on average should have been survivable. Both times, however, he failed a saving throw and my damage dice were just absolutely nasty. Fortunately, he has developed a really good sense of humor about the whole thing. He doesn’t even name his characters until they actually survive an entire session.
• The players found the slaad and the resulting combat was a lot of fun. The reaction I got from my players was truly precious when my first two actions were to use Power Word Stun and Gate in another slaad. But, as happens, the dice favored the bold and (while seriously hurt) the party managed to fell the two beasts without any casualties.

The party exited the dungeon with the bodies of the slaad to take back to Redwraith in order to help the city’s morale and demonstrate their good faith (having told the city that they would kill the slaad). The session ended with the realization that the party is currently being pulled in several directions at once (just the way I like it):

• The gate that now stands open over the Black Tower is incrementally getting bigger.
• There are still heinous things crawling around inside the Black Tower itself.
• The only means that the party has to control the gate is on the petrified figure of Ahkmed.
• Dn. Goram has urgent need of the party in the Elflands.

Azoth

Gleefully taking my own advice, one of the many ideas I have stolen from James’ Dwimmermount campaign is azoth, known to my players as liquid magic. As I have worked this week to prepare a Brain Lasher city, azoth and its origin in quintessence have played a very large role.

The first question that I asked of myself when detailing the city was: to what purpose was this city built? What was the reason Brain Lashers wanted to live here en masse? (Thus, despite the weirdness of the environment, my own tendency toward Gygaxian naturalism rears its head). The answer: azoth.

Unlike in Dwimmermount, where azoth mysteriously rained down on various planets at some point in the past, the existence of azoth in my campaign is quite deliberate. The Brain Lashers “mine” it from various suitable dimensions. It is a very laborious and slow process, but, given the powerful qualities of the end product, (especially since it is almost entirely accomplished by slave labor) they see it as quite worth their while.

I am also putting a subtle Christian spin on the story. Since Brain Lashers have a visage not unlike Cthulhu it should come as no surprise that they (knowingly or unknowingly) serve the demonic outer gods. Thus, their efforts to mine azoth from the quintessence has the negative consequence of literally tearing holes in creation — thus speeding it on its way back to the nothing from whence it came (a little Christian dogma, there).

These holes are the myriad portals my players have found in various parts of my campaign world (though they have yet to voluntarily step through one). Thus, the portal that the party expects to find in the city is actually the very place the Brain Lashers are mining azoth.

Jumping on the Better GM Bandwagon

Okay, I'll hop on the bandwagon. A gauntlet has been thrown down over at Hill Cantons and, like several others in the blogosphere, I'll pick it up. I must begin, however, with a quibble about the questions:

1. Name three “best practices” you possess as a GM. What techniques do you think you excel at?
2. What makes those techniques work? Why do they “pop”?
3. How do you do it? What are the tricks you use? What replicable, nuts-and-bolts tips can you share?

Note that he says GM, which implies a much more universal framework than I'm willing to concede, at least in context of my answer. I primarily play various flavors of D&D, and only run games using older editions or the retro-clones that emulate them. Therefore, my answers are going to be very specific to a style of play influenced by the rules and "genre" of earlier editions of D&D. Whether or not they can be applied to any other rule set or genre is up to you.

Premise: D&D is at its best when it is a pastiche, because that is where it originated.

Therefore: My best campaigns and the best sessions I have within those campaigns are those that embrace, encourage and enable that pastiche.

Why: James over a Grognardia made two interesting observations about his experience at the OSRCon in Toronto. Firstly, how comfortable it was for him to run a pair of Dwimmermount sessions. Secondly, how comfortable Ed Greenwood seemed running his session in Forgotten Realms. This comfort in both cases comes from familiarity — Greenwood from spending decades steeped in his creation and James from running a continuous campaign for a couple of years.

For those of us who don't have the luxury of that kind of time or suffer from bouts of Gamer ADD, the best way to simulate this familiarity is by filling our game worlds with the familiar — pastiche from all kinds of stories, movies and genres. This familiarity breeds comfort, which breeds confidence, which is essential for creativity.

Given this premise, here are three ways in which I embrace, encourage and enable pastiche in my games:

1. Unapologetically steal ideas from everywhere. If an idea, story, image, movie, adventure module, trap, monster, whatever inspires you USE IT. You will naturally put your own spin on it and by the time it emerges from gameplay it will have transformed into something entirely new — but it will come from a familiar place that allows you the confidence to own the idea. The fact that you liked it in the first place will just fuel the creative fire.
2. Allow your players to bring their creativity to the table. This is, in part, an extension of my first point — don't be shy from using ideas that come from your players. If they come up with a theory for why something exists, happened, etc. don't be shy about incorporating it in part or in whole. This allows players to participate in your world and allows them to own it as much as you do. This, however, is only part of how to make players comfortable and familiar with your world. If they expect gravity to work, allow gravity to work. If it doesn't, give them a viable explanation as to why. What I mean by this is that if you have a giant system of gears that the players want to sabotage by literally throwing a wrench into the works, allow the wrench to muck things up. If it can't, give them viable cues as to why (there is a force field; the gears are made of stronger material than the wrench, etc.). Don't be afraid to decide these things via caveat rather than a die roll.
3. Finally, don't be afraid of genre-bending. One of the primary themes of the game is exploration. One of the best ways to simulate this is by breaking genre. It helps bring about a sense of wonder. One of the most memorable sessions I've ever played was on board a derelict space ship…in space. It also forces you to be creative in order to justify how such a break in genre is possible.