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This is a follow-up thread to the Revising "Run as Written" thread
An enduring belief of a vocal portion of the community is that Organized Play adventures must be run exactly as written, with absolutely no GM improvisation, deviation, or correction of obvious errors. This is, quite simply, incorrect, and I would like to see the community actively work to excise this thinking.
So that quote got me wondering just how far have people pushed not "Run as Written"? while still following the rules. So this is more about changing up the appearance or feel of a scenario while still running it within the organized play rules. I think changing up repeatable can really help make them more interesting. Before getting into PF2e and SF1e I played D&D and several other TTRPGS for over 40 years and 90% of those were all homebrew games, so homebrewing is something I miss when playing organized play, but Alex's statement above I think gives me enough room to find a nice in-between.
So I'm looking for examples of how others have changed up their scenarios. I'll start off with an example of a game I played in as a player that I think would not be recognizable to others who had played the same scenario.
Would it turn any heads if I said Starfinder Society Scenario #6-03: Project Dawn is my favorite music-themed scenario? A Record store, a concert t-shirt, and song lyrics ended up being used in over half of the encounters or skill checks.
So curious to see how others have changed up scenarios or added a new appearance or feel to them, either preplanned or spontaneous as a reaction to what the PCs did.
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I'm trying to understand the limits of what adjustments can be made to a scenario. For example let's say I want to run Acts of Association, I have picked to make a custom Ambassador who is an aquatic species and wants to visit the Puddles for some part of the tour.
Since the THEATORIUM encounter is non-combat I don't see a problem with moving it underwater. A map isn't even really needed but making a custom map for it would be just to add to the atmosphere. So I'm thinking this would be allowed?
The PET HUNTING encounter, the squoxes could be reskinned to some underwater species with all the skill checks staying the same, The potential combat in this encounter could happen after the PCs leave the water. An altered map would be needed to appear underwater and have a place out of the water if combat happens, but both parts of the encounter would be mechanically the same, so should be ok? Optionally the whole encounter could take place in shallow water the PCs can just wade through using the original map layout.
The IN TRANSIT encounter is a combat encounter, using the underwater combat rules would alter the encounter too much, so would not allowed?
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When I first ran Acts of Association I though random humanoid dignitary meant using any playable species in Starfinder. Rereading the rules for making a random humanoid dignitary it looks like the GM is free to make up a new species and location.
"When selecting a random humanoid dignitary, create the dignitary’s
name, species, personality, and home world. The dignitary should
be humanoid, with some differences such as size, physical
appearance, number of appendages, etc. Use the humanoid races
in the Starfinder Alien Archives volumes for inspiration.
The dignitary’s home world should be a planet in the Vast that is
not currently described in the setting. Make up a name and a brief
description of its civilization."
So that differently lets the GM have some fun homebrewing. Are there any other scenarios that let the GM do similar things?
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I'm certainly testing the water to find the limits, which example or part of an example do you think there is a problem with?
Scenario #6-03: Project Dawn was run as written as far as I can tell. It turned into a music theme adventure after one of the players asked to buy a local concert t-s%@@ and local music to fit in with the locals, the GM said sure you find a local record store, the GM made up a name for a local band and linked them to a real band that we used lyrics from. Both players and the GM still reference the band and songs from that mission.
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2 of my 3 ideas for reskinning some encounters in Acts of Association fit in with the guidelines.
GMs must:
- Ensure players experience all major plot points and NPC interactions (excluding optional or bypassed encounters)
- Maintain the presence and functioning of skill checks, subsystems and similar - challenges, while allowing for creative player solutions
- Run combat encounters without deliberately increasing difficulty, except as dictated by the scenario
One of the combat encounter ideas would increase difficulty due to the underwater combat rules so doesn't work, but everything else should fit in.
GMs may:
- Adjust obvious typos or errors in a scenario
- Use alternate maps (or areas of provided maps) for encounters
- Reskin enemies to avoid phobias or for personal preference without altering mechanical traits
I would need to alter the map's appearance but not the layout to make it appear underwater.
At the THEATORIUM employees and customers would be reskinned to aquatic species or in Starfinder anyone with armor with environmental protection so almost everyone.
In The PET HUNTING encounter, the squoxes are reskinned as aqua-squoxes
GMs must not:
- Change player-facing armor, feats, items, skills, spells, statistics, traits, or weapons, or any other mechanics of player character options
- Disallow legal character options
- Add new encounters or NPCs with mechanical weight or influence
All the plot points are met, the only NPC changes are reskinning, maps have similar layouts just different environmental flavors, and The presence and functioning of skill checks, subsystems, and similar - challenges, while allowing for creative player solutions, are all maintained.
Only the IN TRANSIT encounter wouldn't work underwater do to the changes in combat rules. It might work in shallow water, the puddles don't necessarily have to be fully submerged to feel like you are in the puddles arm of Adsalom Station.
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My 3rd post about random humanoid dignitary is a direct quote from Acts of Association, other than needing to use the provided stat block for the random humanoid dignitary, I read that as making up your own species and planet.
"When selecting a random humanoid dignitary, create the dignitary’s
name, species, personality, and home world. The dignitary should
be humanoid, with some differences such as size, physical
appearance, number of appendages, etc. Use the humanoid races
in the Starfinder Alien Archives volumes for inspiration.
The dignitary’s home world should be a planet in the Vast that is
not currently described in the setting. Make up a name and a brief
description of its civilization."
Contributor
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Hmm raises hand.
I'll admit that I have pushed the Run as Written rules. I've added shops when players said they were looking for them, let them have a conversation with a villager, and then brought the game back on track. As for the game that you're discussing, so long as you're not forcing underwater combat rules on folks, the rest of your changes sound on track to me for that particular scenario, which was designed to let you customize it to the Ambassador.
It reminds me of flavor changes I've made in the past. Perhaps the most egregious was for the Free RPG Day that occurred right before the launch of SF1.
We had no Starfinder Adventure to run for Free RPG Day. All we had was a Starfinder Bestiary. So I made the decision to push the map substitution rule and run...
Instead of crashed pirate ship in the swamp, I had a crashed shirren ship. Where there were goblin heads on spikes, I had goblin heads on spikes with laser eyes! Instead of a crazed horse, I had a crazed robotic horse that kept calling out 'Exterminate!' as it charged.
But hey... I posted about my idea in advance, and several Paizo employees gave me advice for more SF tropes to throw on for fun.
Mechanically, the adventure was 100% We Be Goblins stat blocks and plot points - but emotionally, it was the Starfinder intro that I was looking to provide to my players.
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The most egregious example I can think of off hand was in PFS1 days with the module Murder's Mark.
I greatly expanded on the Carnival aspect, inventing whole new attractions from whole cloth. I ran it 3 or 4 times and every time at least the entire first session was just spent interacting with the carnival and NOT advancing the plot.
But I knew the players fairly well and was able (at least I thought I was able :-)) to read them reasonably well. They all seemed to be having lots of fun.
And I'd warned the players ahead of time that it was likely to take 4 sessions instead of 3 and to let me know if I was overdoing things and they were getting bored.
Like many GMs I've also basically cheated from time to time. I'll hasten to add that I almost always did it to help the characters and to avoid TPKs due to some over tuned monster, especially when GMing for newbies.
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Contributor
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Heh, come to think of it, my Murders Mark (of Crows) was a bit egregious, too. But I 100% stand by the quality of that game!
Hmm
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Heh, come to think of it, my Murders Mark (of Crows) was a bit egregious, too. But I 100% stand by the quality of that game!
Hmm
It was a great game, no doubt about that
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We are playing Age of Worms as a PF1e conversion. Our GM substituted an entire dungeon in one of the AoW chapters because, many years back in their homebrewed campaign, they actually lifted that dungeon and used a modified version of it as a standalone.
I have no idea if we would have remembered it because that's going back about 17 years or more, but I understand the concern.
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We had no Starfinder Adventure to run for Free RPG Day. All we had was a Starfinder Bestiary. So I made the decision to push the map substitution rule and run...
This makes me want to make new pregens to be able to run
This would be a great chance to use LFAN Symbiosis with 4 Raxllites. However, converting a tiny SF1e species with only 2 hp into PF2e might be hard to balance.
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I think the furthest I ever pushed it was one scenario that had a lot of thematic set up, but then just had random people show up out of nowhere to be a combat. Think 13th warrior vikings in arabia level random. I kept their stats the same but had them be weirdly time displaced people from the scenario, because running into the still living version of dead guy's body in the hallway still wasn't as weird as the random people that showed up to fight. Especially since there was a time warping doohickey in the scenario.