Many reviews and critiques of published adventures over the past few years, have complained about the adventures being too linear. In response to this, we at SagaBorn.com decided to make our latest adventure module, “The Crossing”, a “node-based” adventure. This gives the heroes quite a bit of freedom to explore in any of a number of directions, especially early in the adventure. Each place they go has clues, rumors, and information that can be gathered, which may point them to one of several other places to investigate. Some clues overlap and some don't, and not all of the locations have to be investigated to succeed. Because of this “node-based” approach, which allows the players more freedom to follow their own path, as opposed to a linear adventure, we have chosen to break tradition and lay out the adventure in “Acts” and “Scenes” rather than in “Parts” as most of the Paizo adventure path modules have. Looking at the first module in the Shattered Star adventure path, it has only 3 “parts”, and the subsections within those parts are just divided by headings for the most part. In Part 1, there is a section where the players can investigate any of four different leads which are titled “Lead 1”, “Lead 2”, etc. With that one exception, the remainder is fairly linear, with little room to approach things in a different order.
In contrast, in “The Crossing”, part 3 of our “Return of the Fey” adventure path, which just met our funding goal yesterday on www.kickstarter.com, I have 8 Acts, and each act has 4 to 9 Scenes. Each Act begins with Scene 1, which presents the players with certain events, clues, or rumors, which will hopefully pique their interest in exploring one of several options. Each option corresponds to a different Scene. As the players visit each Scene, they will uncover clues or information that could lead them to explore a different Scene. No matter what order the players approach the scenes in, they will eventually learn enough to lead them to the next major node or “Act”, but their unique approach will make the story their own.
Instead of learning a rumor that might lead them to the unnumbered subsection of Part 1 of the module titled “Approaching with the Merchant Guild”, we state in the text with the rumor, “This may lead the PCs to seek an audience with the merchant guild (see Act I, Scene 8 - Approaching the Merchant Guild). As a GM I always hate flipping back and force though the book looking for an obscure section heading. With everything numbered, it seems really easy to just flip to it and keep the adventure going.
So with our next module funded, but while we are still in the pre-print phase, I wanted to ask GMs on the forum what their thoughts are on node based adventures and what you thought are on us using the “Acts” and “Scenes” terminology. Do you have any big heartburn with it? Would it keep you from purchasing a module or, as we believe to be the case, because we think it enhances the readability, encourage you to purchase it? Have you ever seen anything like this before and if so, did you like it?
Many role-playing groups today like to play the same adventure more than once, and with The Crossing, they have the opportunity to replay the adventure and explore down different paths that they didn’t even go down the first time, or explore them in a different order. In addition, several random event and random encounter tables within the adventure ensure that even if a group played down the same path, they will encounter different NPSs, monsters, and events.
I am interested in hearing thought from GMs on this approach. Thanks!
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Node are good. PCs seldom go in the direction(s) you expect.
Thanks tonyz. Yes that has been my experience. Have you played published adventures that were node based? Are there any by Paizo?
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I do appreciate a good sandbox or node or whatever. Does your product have paragraphs in the writing?
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Have you played published adventures that were node based?
Yes. (I call them "event-driven adventures".) One of my all-time favorite modules of any kind was The Speaker in Dreams.
And outside of D&D / Pathfinder, my favorite tabletop RPG is MEGS, originally published as The DC Heroes Role Playing Game, in which event-driven adventures are the norm. (Indeed, I don't recall any MEGS adventure that WASN'T event-driven.) My favorite module for that game is Project Prometheus. And Blood Feud is nothing to sneeze at either.
I want to take my public design in a more "skeletal" avenue, telling the GM your players should end up here. Here are some things that may happen in different paths, and allowing the GM to mold the adventure to their likes. That way there is not so much data to remember (which is always a problems for me), and GMs know their own player's best.
I don't know if it would be well received, but I think GM's like me would like it.
-Mike
Hi Planpanther. If I understand your question, the answer is yes. It is a campaign length adventure with somewhere between 100 and 150 pages of text, descriptions, new monsters and spells, detailed maps, three cities to explore, etc. It will look very similar to a Paizo adventure path module in layout, including great artwork. It is NOT just a tree of nodes and event description. I have even included pre-written dialog for many of the NPCs when they are telling the PCs stories, rumors, etc. There are a few hints of what it will look like on the kickstarter campaign pages. Go to www.kickstarter.com and search for FRPG and select The Crossing to see more, or visit our store at SagaBorn.com to see previous adventures.
Andre and Aaron, thanks for providing references to existing products.
Mike, that is an interesting idea I would like to explore. I think it is more like what I do when first laying out an adventure for my home campaigns. But when I try to expand that into a module for a different GM to play, I have to fill in a great deal of information that is just in my head about the campaign setting, NPC backgrounds and motivations, etc. And then there is the responsibility of having to either take a minimalist approach of just using pathfinder monsters and listing their bare minimal stats, forcing the GM to page through multiple volumes of Bestiaries or keep a computer handy throughout play to reference the pfsrd online OR typing up all the monster stats for them to have right there in the module. I also struggle with the danger of assuming only very skilled GMs will be running the adventure. A bare skeleton would be fine for most highly experienced GMs, but novice GMs could find it very daunting to run. Opinions anyone?
I actually stopped buying/running premade adventures because I couldn't keep up with all the information. Things like Dollar dungeons on Drivethrurpg would have been more useful to me when I was running much more often.
But then maybe I just like to control everything.
I have presented the idea of adventure skeletons at shows and it has received a lot of good feedback.
I see Nodes as being fairly non sequential- players can travel from one node to the next as they choose (within the node structure). I see Acts/Scenes as having a linear feel- one scene follows the next. Not a big problem, maybe just a problem to me specifically, but the two terminologies used here bug me a little.
My favorite games have two levels to them- a location-based map in which the players can move around sandbox style, that has location-based events, and then event "nodes" if you will that are a bit more free form- often triggered by the players interacting with something at a location (but delayed), but sometimes triggered by time or NPC relationships. The result is a strong default action of "explore the map" for the players, but with an added layer of interaction that goes beyond locations.
PK the Dragon, good point. How would you suggest naming the nodes or events? If I name them Node 1, Node 2, Node 3 ... or even Node A, Node B, Node C ... doesnt doesn't that make them look sequential as well? Not being flippant, really asking.
Frog God Games recently did this with their "Bloody Jack" module, which is basically a murder mystery adventure. There are multiple routes of investigation and ways of reaching the final destination, and it seems to have worked out fairly well.
I don't think a "Node" format is necessarily appropriate for every plot or adventure - while players should have the opportunity to make meaningful choices, sometimes a story needs certain things to happen. XD That said, it's clearly a workable concept.
PK, I just realized my "Acts" are actually the map sandboxes you des ribed above.
Act 1 is the entire city of Ferryport with about 50 named and described locations in our Guide to Ferryport publication. And the new updated map has over 700 numbered locations for the GM to expand.
Act 2 occurs on a merchant ship going down river, so by its nature pretty linear, but with the freedom to stop anywhere along the way.
Act 3 is the entire multi-island port area of the Sunken City of Taulon
Another act is a huge swamp full of islands and encounters and a table for random swamp monsters
And the final act is a huge keep with multiple ships, castle walls towers and a multi-level keep tower with subterranean tunnels.
So the PCs are free to wander each of these large areas and find clues that should lead them to the next act or sandbox.
What I call Scenes are really encounters or events that may or may not occur in each Act.
Thanks Rednal, I agree. This adventure is an investigation of the disappearance of several merchant ships and does lend itself to the node approach better than some adventures might.
The only potential problem with node-based adventures is character level. You see this in some APs, even the first one, Rise of the Runelords, where some "chapters" can easily be done out of sequence, but DMs are warned that the PCs may not be "powerful enough yet" to measure up to the challenge that a given location represents. If the nodes are lengthy enough, you can expect players to level up (perhaps even several times) between the first and last nodes of a group.
In such a case, leeway has to be given in a printed adventure for making certain challenges harder or easier, depending on the general character level they have walking into it. Especially if it's at the low end of the level spectrum. A party's capacity for success will be quite different between 1st and 3rd level, or even between 4th and 6th, in terms of available resources, spells, equipment and so on.
Sandbox DMs are used to adjusting for such things on the fly. Published adventures with printed stat blocks, not so much. Sure, DMs will often make their own on-the-fly adjustments, but a few words to the wise in a published node-based adventure would go a long ways.
Very good point Wheldrake. As I was explaining to PK earlier, all my Acts are large sandboxes where all the nodes or scenes are at the same basic CR, only when going to a NEW Act do the players need to maybe have gone up a level. And if that is the case, I do warn the GMs to give them the opportunity to level up or run some more random encounters or additional events if they are not there yet. I do appreciate your comment though, to remind me to be watchful of that scenario.
Of course in the real world, one never knows when they are coming up against a foe, who is more skilled. And in my home campaigns, I train players early on not to assume everything they run up against is beatable. They have to learn when to back down or sneak away. But in my written and published adventures, I know most GMs don't want to waste time pitting their players against a foe that is way out of their league, because they will expect to beat them and die.
At home, I like to let a 1st or 2nd level part come across an ancient red dragon or the like. They know they are like Bilbo facing Smaug and are very careful to not wake it up, and usually are too scared to even risk taking anything from its hoard! ;-)
I like to throw in similar things throughout the campaign to keep them on their toes.
Thanks Davrion, I had considered doing that, but I have run adventures from modules that had no numbering or alphabetizing on their sections, and it was a nightmare to me to flip back and forth to try and find where the "Ambush at the River" even was (just an example off the top of my head).
We could reference by page number of course, but that is problematic when you are writing the adventure in MS Word or online on Google Docs etc. and are not the person who will be doing the final layout in say Adobe InDesign or whatever. Because that will totally change all page numbers. So it is better to refer to Part 2, Section 4, Event C, etc. because it saves headaches on making sure there are no errors in the page numbering.