Side Treks used to be a fairly common item in Dungeon Magazine in the past. However since Dungeon switched to a monthly format I can't remember seeing one. What are the chances of them making a return?
I know that you have got a 3 adventures per issue format now but what if every now and again you replaced one of the adventures with 2 or 3 Side Treks instead? Or is the issue to do with the fact that you don't receive any Side Trek submissions anymore?
Personally I find that they can make good interludes between adventures (and can often lead to full adventures themselves) and can be useful when PC's need a little bit more experience so that they can level up before the next adventure.
So what are the chances of Side Treks returning?
Olaf the Stout
I certianly liked some of the side treks. Its hard to figure out where the space would come from however. I don't think breaking up one of the adventures for 2 side treks would go over that well. The other problem with side treks is that they would tend to be stat heavy. I mean they were stat heavy in 2nd edition and 3rd edition has these huge statblocks (err, stat rectangles...stat pages).
I'm just not sure that there is room. If there is ever an expansion to the size of Dungeon then these would make a nice addition to the magazine but I think the staff is pretty close to optimium in terms of pleasing the most people most of the time with the current format. Anything getting chopped from the current version would probably raise hell from some subset of the readership.
The only hope otherwise that I could see for something like Side Treks is if Monte Cook were to decide to move on. The rest of the sections are done by a potentially wide assortment of people and would continue even if a specific individual stopped making submissions.
Not that I think Monte Cook should move on or anything. I think his material for Dungeon is often brilliant.
Not that I think Monte Cook should move on or anything. I think his material for Dungeon is often brilliant.
Isn't Monte actually moving on for real, on his website he states that he is looking forward to enter the wonderful world of writing and not doing something game related. Although, writing his column for Dungeon is part of both worlds (writing, gaming).
Side Treks could ofcourse act as a middle ground for contributors, they can write a decent CW but can they write a decent adventure? On the other hand, given the writing standards of Dungeon it might not be needed.
I'm not a big enough fan of side treks to support cutting one of the three adventures per month to put them in. I think one side trek in addition to the base three adventures, every OTHER month, at the expense of say, Dungeon Craft or the Campaign workbook, would be fine.
I was quite fond of Side Treks. Their bite-size, easy-to-fit-in nature appeals to me, and giving the authors some flexability to turn in scenarios of different lengths is a good thing. That being said, I also don't see where the four or five extra pages for a good side trek would come from. The formula of three adventures and a handful of campaign workbooks Dungeon is running on right now works well.
Not that I think Monte Cook should move on or anything. I think his material for Dungeon is often brilliant.Isn't Monte actually moving on for real, on his website he states that he is looking forward to enter the wonderful world of writing and not doing something game related. Although, writing his column for Dungeon is part of both worlds (writing, gaming).
Well I certianly don't have the inside scoop. But I could easily see him keeping the gig for a while. If you write a novel you still need to put food on the table until the novel is completed unless your a well established writer.
Furthermore even if Monte Cook decided he wanted to move on from this column there is still the problem that there is not enough space. Montes articles are 2-3 pages while a Side Trek would need to be 4-6 I suspect.
Creative Director
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They aren't called Side Treks anymore, but the shorter adventuers that once fell into this category do still appear in Dungeon now and then: in fact, we're pretty much always in desperate need for short adventures, since that lets us run longer adventures in the other two adventure slots for that issue.
They aren't called Side Treks anymore, but the shorter adventuers that once fell into this category do still appear in Dungeon now and then: in fact, we're pretty much always in desperate need for short adventures, since that lets us run longer adventures in the other two adventure slots for that issue.
I understand what you are saying James. A short Adventure sounds a lot better than a Side Trek, even if they are basically the same thing!
I find it funny how perception is more important than reality. People think that if one of their "Adventures" gets replaced by a "Side Trek" they are getting ripped off, even if the page count is the same.
Olaf the Stout
They aren't called Side Treks anymore, but the shorter adventuers that once fell into this category do still appear in Dungeon now and then: in fact, we're pretty much always in desperate need for short adventures, since that lets us run longer adventures in the other two adventure slots for that issue.
I understand the need and value of a short adventure but nothing I have seen in the magazine makes me think that even the shortest adventures are that similar to Side Treks as I understood them to be back in the day. Generally a Side Trek was little more then an intersting and imaginitive encounter. I would think they are more akin to Critical Threats then short adventures.
I'm sure that even the shortest adventure is required to have a clear begining, middle, and end, while Side Treks barely had a begining, usually only a few paragraphs, and didn't have much of an end either. Everything was focused on the single interesting encounter in the middle.
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I remember one that featured some giants who were raising "chickens" in their hidden vale. Turned out the "chickens" were cockatrices (i) and a few dwarven miners were petrefied by them. That was a side trek, the short adventures seem to have way more meat to them than the side-treks did.
I miss the side treks.
FH
They aren't called Side Treks anymore, but the shorter adventuers that once fell into this category do still appear in Dungeon now and then: in fact, we're pretty much always in desperate need for short adventures, since that lets us run longer adventures in the other two adventure slots for that issue.
Define short, do you mean adventures with a wordcount of 5000 as per submission guidelines or smaller like 2500 words or 3750 words (4 or 6 pages long)?
They aren't called Side Treks anymore, but the shorter adventuers that once fell into this category do still appear in Dungeon now and then: in fact, we're pretty much always in desperate need for short adventures, since that lets us run longer adventures in the other two adventure slots for that issue.
Muer? I'd gotten the sense from the writers guidelines that 10,000 words was the current ideal, and shorter articles were more likely to be rejected. Not so?
Urban Decay in #138 was basically a Side Trek. You could easily fit that into an evening, probably that and one other mini, too.
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Creative Director
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Muer? I'd gotten the sense from the writers guidelines that 10,000 words was the current ideal, and shorter articles were more likely to be rejected. Not so?
Absolutely not! The average Dungeon adventure is 10,000 words, but we regularly print shorter adventures. 5,000 words is generally the shortest adventure we'll publish these days, and truth be told, at this point a 5,000 word adventure has a MUCH better chance at seeing print than a longer one.