Greetings! I'm looking to create an adventure similar in design to the old Myst or Riven adventure games (or King's Quest, Space Quest, etc.). Basically, the party is stuck on an island and can't leave until they defeat the monster, find the object, or complete whatever the macguffin is. The adventure should last at least 6-7 sessions.
Plot and story elements aside, has anyone tried this before? Do you have any mechanical ideas for how to make this interesting and fun for the PC's? I just started brain-storming this past week, and right now the main plot will likely be along the lines of "Wealthy Patron Hires You to Kill Giant Monster".
Ideas? Go!
So, one thing I would consider is approaching building the adventure as if you were building a dungeon. If you think about a game like Myst or Riven, they effectively had "rooms" in the sense that there were different areas that you transitioned to and from. Some "rooms" fit in a single screen, others might take more screens to cover, but for the most part, you can design set pieces and then through the geography of the island dictate transitions. Your island is a "dungeon" with "rooms" and transitions between the "rooms" are your hallways.
If you're looking at 6-7 sessions, you might want multiple thematic areas with 3-5 rooms in each. "The Beach Landing", "The Forest Where the Dragon Hunts", the "Village of Natives That Can Be Negotiated With", and the "Caves That The Dragon Lives In" can all be a few rooms each. Depending on their level, the party can of course go off road and make their own transitions, and that's okay. But a party that didn't want to burn those resources would follow your adventure outline (the beach connects to the forest and village, the village connects to the mountain paths, the mountain paths area connects to the dragon caves).
tl;dr: Adventure building on an island is a lot like building a dungeon, the walls just aren't as obvious. Build a few thematic five room dungeons, stick them together, and you have a good outline. Fill for flavor with combat encounters, skill encounters, some locals that can be more fighting or a chance for negotiation, and then your big bad monster.
I hope that helps.
Yeah, I'm fully aware that it might turn into an all-puzzle-no-combat/adventure scenario. I'm hoping to focus more on exploration than puzzles, with the "puzzle" portions generally being quite easy if you do a fair amount of exploration across the island. The straight up "try this item on that... try this number on this dial..." variants of those point-and-click games won't work as well.
e.g., You need a key to enter a passageway, and the key is hidden inside a tree trunk. It's easy to find on the other side of the island since the tree has slightly withered away and is obviously different than the other ones near it. If the PC's explore and are observant enough, the "puzzle" is quite easy.
e.g., You need a key to enter a passageway, and the key is hidden inside a tree trunk. It's easy to find on the other side of the island since the tree has slightly withered away and is obviously different than the other ones near it. If the PC's explore and are observant enough, the "puzzle" is quite easy.
If you're going to go this route, I would really stress oddities in your narration and provide a few clues for each hidden item. The last thing you want is for something easy like "look inside the tree trunk that's not like the others" to turn into a frustrating search of the forest because no one at the table considered that bit of narration important.