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Let's do some brainstorming inspired by this post by LazarX.
When I GM and plan an adventure, it tends to fall into one of several categories. I have listed four below.
So...
What other options are there for planning adventures, that I am overlooking in my rushed brainstorming?
How do these (and your other) alternatives relate to the "living world" concept mentioned in that thread by thejeff, a term I have never heard before.
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(a) Room-by-room event scripting
The PCs wander through the dungeon. When they enter a new room (or other place with a planned encounter) the event happens. If they do not enter that location the event does not happen.
(Of course I might fudge things as the GM, and delay or rearrange events if that helps the story. But for this post I am talking about the adventure as planned without any GM fudging. I also realize that improvising adventures can be fun, but that is also not what this post is talking about.)
Example: many Old School style dungeons, such as this one
(b) Level-by-level event scripting
This dungeon follows the traditional trend of descending a level opens up a new or more difficult stage of the adventure. But each level is "active" as a whole. Monsters might move from room to room, hunting the PCs or fighting each other. Items carried or guarded by these mobile monsters might thus also change hands or guardians.
Example: hm, I lack any ready examples aside from the Rouge-like computer games -- I have not run this type of adventure in a while!
(Of course most adventures themselves fit this category on a large scale. I imagine a story about a village bothered by a werewolf, but do not worry about it until the PCs are traveling and might be stopping at a village.)
(c) Clock tick chronological event scripting
This adventure has NPCs with plans and these plans proceed until the PCs intervene. Often the PCs know the basics of the plot early on and feel a time crunch deadline.
Example: lots of my urban adventures: stop the cultists before midnight, prevent the mob boss feud from flaring and wrecking the town, etc. I am now in the middle of running an adventure using the Waterfront Tavern flip-mat where the PC knows an assassination attempt will take place there that night and wants to prevent that: the tavern has NPCs that will arrive, talk, act, leave, etc. at preset clock times except for how the PC affects that default timeline.
(d) Clue path chronological event scripting
This adventure is a mystery. The PCs advance the plot by discovering clues. The clues suggest new places to visit and new NPCs to meet. I often plan the adventure as a "clue web" where one event leads to another (non-linearly) but the next stage begins not at a predetermined time on the clock but as the PCs accumulate clues.
Example: most of my mystery adventures, which I sadly have not had time to type up -- the most recent was in a haunted theatre using the Theatre flip-map
To clarify, I'm not sure if b) Level-by-level includes what I'm talking about here, but:
e) Reactive, personality-scripting
Example: An adventure which has a number of creatures with personal goals, wants, etc, which may or may not interact. As long as the NPCs are set up, they will interact based off of predetermined characteristics. In other words, their plans are created in response to the world around them.
Those plans may shift of change based off of the interactions they have with both NPCs and PCs. One of the more interesting side-effects is that if you have an established place and group, you can have multiple playthroughs with this method (much as script "b", above) because who's plans are currently in what state varies from game to game (though, dependent on the statting, there will likely be clear favorites).
This can also be described as adventures with more than one set of rival adventuring groups and functions even outside a dungeon's confines.
This can also be combined with either c) or d) in order to create an even more reactive gaming experience (in other words, script a large number of either chronological events or clue-webs and plans shift dependent upon PC choices/which ones they follow). In other words: sandbox.
Also worth noting, that "d" clue-based does not need to be urban or mystery: sneaky false-sandbox or partial-sandbox campaigns tend to be this style, where there are many apparent-choices, but events don't trigger until certain events or groups of events are unlocked.
To clarify, I'm not sure if b) Level-by-level includes what I'm talking about here, but
Well, I'm ignorant about who has discussed this before, although I expect someone has and we are re-inventing the wheel.
But until someone provides a helpful link to such a prior discussion, we're defining our own vocabulary, Tacticslion. So we can sub-divide as we desire.
I think your distinction is significant and worth discussing.
To me, (b) involved a set of rooms and/or NPCs (a "level" traditionally) that all became active at the same time and are otherwise in isolation.
Whereas (e), your "Reactive, personality-scripting", allows the new set of locations and/or NPCs to spill over into any or all locations. For example, the PC rescues the missing princess, which prompts the Evil Maniac who hired that now-slain dragon to hire a Mime Assassin instead: this new villain might appear anywhere and at any time.
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While driving in the car my wife invented another category:
(f) Tech/Skill/Item Tree Event Scripting
The PC gains some knowledge or skill or item that allows taking the story in a new direction. Often a campaign plans contains a "web" of these like the clues of a mystery, but they are not clues.
Example: After learning to freeze enemies (by casting the Ice Cube spell, or learning to craft Freeze Traps, or finding the Wand of Frostbite) the PCs can now safely travel to the lair of Burning Braino and his flaming constructs.
Nice! I like it! Tell your wife "good job" from me. (My wife also often helps me with things like this. :D)
Also, I'm glad you think my distinction is worth making!
You could also, for short-hand, call it "Key Tree Event Scripting" (where the "key" is literal - an item - or metaphorical - a skill or technique).
One interesting sub-facet of (f) is that it works really well with (a) through (d); though I can't see it functioning as solidly with (e), it may still be able to!
Looking at how they combine...
(a)/(f) description: you can't unlock a room without getting a key. A key may unlock multiple rooms, or maybe only one. It may be a one-use or a multi-use. This would create a fascinating gameflow.
(a)/(f) example: classic Metroid-or-Zelda-style dungeon stuff. It's really easy to miss or skip parts (in the case of Metroid) and avoid having to deal with some things, but also miss out on all the cool or interesting features/power ups/encounters that you might otherwise have.
(b)/(f) description: you can't unlock a floor without getting a particular key. More than likely, each key would unlock a single floor (or area), but it might apply to multiples. Again, like the room-to-room, it could be a one-shot or a multi-shot. This allows for lots of interesting dynamics and choices.
(b)/(f) example: the first floor is entirely petrified. Only by bringing the great lost artifact MacGuffin onto the floor can you progress without being petrified. But doing so instantly unpetrifies all the other creatures on the floor, who are in the same mindset as they were centuries or millennia ago. (The next floor down is frozen!)
(c)/(f) description: this is a really sticky-wicket kind of situation and, unless there's a substantial timer, is strongly stacked against the player. Effectively, you must scramble to find/produce/learn the items/skills you need to unlock and unravel the big PLOT before time runs out.
(b)/(f) example: this would be along the lines of a Rocky training montage! ... not really, but the idea is similar: you need to build up enough power to be able to square off with the big bad within a limited amount of time. Alternatively, this could be attempting to find all seven parts of the Rod of Seven Parts to shove it up the chaos-hole that's going to rip into reality in exactly seventeen days.
(d)/(f) description: this would be a very interesting element in that you'd have to unlock certain abilities, or find specific key items to unlock the next clue and progress into the next point. You can't progress the story or learn the clue without the Key (be it item, power, or technique).
(d)/(f) example: This is very similar to how many Action-RPGs handle the story progression. Zelda, especially, is basically this combined with an a/f: you've got to get the thing or skill in order to open the door, which triggers the cutscene that tells you the next hint or tidbit in the story. Repeat until end boss is slain.
I'm not coming up with a decent e/f combination right now, though it might just be that I'm not being creative enough with it at this time.
Nothing much to contribute, but it seems like the question could be rephrased as what action is generally needed to advance the plot: move to the next room, move to the next floor, nothing (the plot advances with or without player action), find the next clue, learn the next skill, etc.
A logical next question would be:
What is your favorite published adventure/module that exemplifies one type (or combination of types)?
I'll start by saying that I was amazingly impressed by The Hook Mountain Massacre. The reclaiming of Fort Rannick is the main reason (among many others) that I just bought the hardcover version of Rise of the Runelords. I cannot think of a better example of (a) Room-by-Room Event Scripting.
redcelt32, you stole mine! Now I've gotta come up with something else...
Type (a) was actually really well done in the 3.5 adventure book Mysteries of the Moonsea (at least, I think that was what it was called). Instead of an dungeon, though (although they did have these), it has a city that the players explored, that only existed in an active state while the players were there. Of course, the book didn't put it that way, but the city was completely static until the players arrived and everything was "just so" before they got there. It could be taken as an example of level-by-level (b), too, though, so it's probably more a fusion of the two of them, with strong leanings toward a.
Type (b) was actually exemplified well in the 3.0 adventure Sons of Gruumsh. It was well put together, and effectively had the PCs "activate" an area (potentially larger than just one level of the dungeon, but not necessarily, sometimes as small as a room) that occurred in sequences. It dropped a little bit of clue-based and time-tick in there, but that wasn't too important (though it contained suggestions for how to increase the importance of the timed game, if you wanted. This is all based on memory at this time... I don't actually recall for sure, but that's how I remember it.
Type (c) was very well done in the first adventure path of Serpent's Skull (the adventure titled "Souls for Smuggler's Shiv"). I don't want to give away spoilers, but it involved semi-friendly NPCs is you failed certain checks. It was very fascinating and a good dynamic.
Type (d) ... hm. I can't particularly think of a good clue-based adventure, as many of these tend to be rail-roady. Actually, I just did: there was a short adventure at the back of the FRCS book called "The Color of Ambition" that was a clue-based adventure. It was really short, but it actually worked fairly well.
Type (e) is a very difficult thing to prepublish because so very much of it has to be personalized, detailed, and known. You've got to have multiple paths running at the same time to publish it all. So... I've... got nuthin' for that one. I like it a lot, though!