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!
