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The first really successful “post-crawl” scenario structure in the RPG industry is the mystery scenario. While it’s easy to find antecedents, it’s really with the publication of Call of Cthulhu in 1981 that the mystery scenario’s popularity exploded.

Thirty years later it can be a little difficult to appreciate how radical Call of Cthulhu was and just how fresh a breath of air it provided. It’s been said that the game “busted gaming out of the dungeon” (which is more literally true if we understand “dungeon” to mean crawl-based scenario structures in general), but its revolution has now become ubiquitous. If you look at published scenarios today, mystery-based scenarios are at least as popular as crawl-based scenarios (and even the crawl-based scenarios often include a large dose of mystery-based play). And outside of D&D the victory is even more complete: Virtually every published scenario is mystery-based.

The degree to which this marketplace dominance reflects actual practice at the gaming table can perhaps be quibbled with. But, either way, it’s actually rather curious once you start reflecting on it: Outside of gaming, mysteries are popular, but they aren’t all-consuming. (And even within gaming you don’t see mysteries consuming the board game or video game markets.)

There are probably several reasons for the popularity of mystery scenarios in RPGs. (For example, an unsolved mystery presents a challenge. Overcoming that challenge – by solving the mystery – provides the kind of clear-cut victory condition that can be achieved with only a few things outside of direct competition or combat.) But I suspect a large part of it is that mystery scenarios present straight-forward game structures that are (a) easy to explain to GMs and (b) intuitively grasped by players.

If we start to look at mystery scenarios using the same structural analysis we used for dungeoncrawls, it’s relatively easy to see this from the player’s point of view:

Default Goal? Solve the mystery.

Default Action? Look for clues.

At this point, however, we have to acknowledge that there’s something different about the mystery scenario structure. While it gives some guidance in answering the player’s question, “What do I do next?” it doesn’t provide a complete answer. Instead, once the players have found their clues, they’ll need to draw a conclusion from those clues. If they don’t draw the necessary conclusion, the mystery scenario will stop providing a default action for them to take.

In other words, mystery scenario structures are more fragile than dungeoncrawls. And this fragility becomes more evident as we shift to the GM’s side of the equation:

Easy to Prep? Unlike a dungeoncrawl, it’s very easy for a neophyte GM to screw up the design of a mystery scenario: If they don’t include a necessary clue, for example, or expect the players to make an intuitive leap they’re not capable of making, the scenario structure will break.

Easy to Run? At a macro-level, mystery scenarios are usually still chunked into smaller, more manageable packets (e.g., each location where clues can be found). But, unlike a basic ‘crawl, these chunks are not as firmly “firewalled”. This generally requires the GM to have a greater understanding of the scenario’s totality and makes a mystery scenario a little more difficult for neophytes to run.

At a micro-level, however, mystery scenarios are generally pretty easy to run if you’re using a skill-based system. (Which, perhaps not coincidentally, were becoming ubiquitous right around the same time mystery scenarios were sky-rocketing to dominance.) This is because skill-based systems can generally be broken down into (a) resolving the success or failure of a physical action or (b) the acquisition of information. Clues, of course, are a type of information, so skill-based systems provide a self-evident method of resolution.

By way of contrast, running a mystery-based scenario in a system like OD&D – which lacks a mechanical basis for determining clue acquisition – can be a lot more challenging. Of course, this difficulty can be overcome if you simply introduce such a mechanic. A simple one would be something like, “If the players say they’re looking around, they automatically find any clues in the area.”

The GUMSHOE system uses a similar mechanic. It says, “If the players say they’re using the right skill, they automatically find any matching clues in the area.” As a game structure, of course, this leaves something to be desired (encouraging, as it does, players to treat their skills like a laundry list in every scene).

But I digress.

FRAGILE SCENARIOS

The point here is that mystery scenarios are a relatively fragile scenario structure: More likely to leave the players stymied; more likely to leave new GMs confused; more difficult for new GMs to design.

What we will discover is that this is often true: Many of the RPG scenario structures we use are remarkably fragile. Like delicate sugar crystals, they are often smashed to smithereens during the course of actual play, forcing GMs to stitch them back together on-the-fly. The robust simplicity offered by the geography of a crawl-based scenario structure – “pick a direction and go” – is difficult to replicate.

Obviously, once you’re aware of the fragility in your game structures, you can start thinking about ways to make them more robust. The Three Clue Rule is a simple example of this: It provides a straight-forward methodology which specifically buttresses the fragile breaking point of a basic mystery scenario.

For now, however, our attention must turn back to the robust demesnes of the ‘crawl structure. For that, we’ll need to journey overland to the wild realms of the hexcrawl…

Go to Part 6: Hexcrawls

Viktor Fetsch

No words this time. Hopefully the cover will speak for itself.

Go to Part 1

Tied into the success of the dungeoncrawl is the success of traditional combat systems in roleplaying games. Although individual mechanics may vary, virtually all roleplaying games use a basic game structure for combat derived from D&D: Combat is divided into rounds in which everyone gets to take an action (or actions). Usually combat is further defined by an initiative system of some sort, so that you can easily answer the question, “Who goes next?”

If this sounds like the rigid structure of a boardgame or card game, that’s because it is: Derived from tabletop wargames, the average RPG combat system supplies clear-cut answers to the questions of, “What do I do?” and “How do I do it?”

Or, to break it down in a fashion similar to the dungeoncrawl:

Default Goal: Kill (or incapacitate) your opponents.

Default Action: Hit them.

Easy to Prep: Grab a bunch of monsters from the Monster Manual.

Easy to Run: The combat system breaks the action down into a specific sequence and usually provides a fairly comprehensive method of how each action should be resolved.

This is one of the reasons why so many roleplaying games focus so much mechanical attention on combat: No matter how much the players may be floundering, all you have to do is throw a couple of thugs at them and suddenly everyone at the table knows what to do. It’s a comfortable and easy position to default to.

It should also be fairly easy to see the almost perfect mesh between the macro-level structure of the dungeoncrawl and the micro-level structure of combat: When you pick an exit in the dungeoncrawl and find a room filled with monsters, you seamlessly switch into combat. When the combat has been resolved (and the room emptied of interest), you effortlessly return to the dungeoncrawl scenario structure and pick another exit.

Rinse, wash, repeat.

REWARDS

Combat also shows us how D&D links its systems of reward directly to its default game structures: The dungeoncrawl takes you to monsters, combat lets you defeat the monsters, and defeated monsters reward you with XP and treasure.

This is something which I believe other XP reward systems have generally overlooked: Many games have broken XP away from being a combat reward, but they haven’t reattached the XP award to another concrete game structure.

Whether or not that’s a desirable thing is a completely different discussion; a discussion involving Skinner boxes, the psychology of reward-driven pleasure, mechanical-reinforcement techniques, and a whole mess of other stuff.

But I think it’s an unexplored design space that would be interesting to turn some focus on. Particularly when you consider that (A)D&D has featured non-combat rewards for more than 20 years, and yet people still complain about all the XP in D&D coming from killing monsters.

Go to Part 5: Mysteries

As I mentioned awhile back, the Russian spammers figured out my math captcha. The intensity has died down again in the past couple months, but I’m still scanning through a couple dozen spam messages per day that slip past the captcha and hit the Akismet spam filter.

Usually it’s pretty easy to spot the false-positives and restore comments that should be seen by the world at large, largely because the spam comments are always complete non sequiturs that have nothing to do with anything I’ve ever talked about here on the Alexandrian. But a couple days ago I ran into this:

On the topic of AC being movement based, etbolusaly NOT!! While Dex does affect AC, AC is not dependent on Dex. AC is based on the ability of the armor to prevent damage to the wearer; which is why plate is better than chain is better than leather is better than clothing In the real world in medieval europe, clothing was a layer of wool on a layer of linen, leather was boiled (hardened) leather on a padded jacket (basically a moving blanket), chain was riveted iron rings on a padded jacket and plate was 1/32 to 1/16 inch think steel plate with small ring chain at the joints all on a padded jacket.Sheilds ranged from all but disposable Viking duelling sheilds (see the duel in 13th Warrior) to seriously stout wooden rounds and tear drops (kites much better for fighting from horseback, but very useful on foot too) to proper steel traditional shapes in late periods.Your dexterity might make you move a bit more fluid in your armor, but it did little for the actual defensive ability of the armor. If you get hit with a mace, the blunt force impact can still break bones in lessor armors (chain, leather, cloth). If you are stabbed, you are almost definately getting hurt in lessor armors (chain, leather, cloth). If you get knocked down in plate, you aren’t just jumping back onto your feet and returning the attack, you might even need help to stand again.Watch some YouTube videos of SCA combat to get a decent idea of what D&D combat would be like.

A little on the ranty side, but my first impression was that this was a legitimate comment. But then I noticed that it had been posted on the page for “Opening Your Game Table“… which has absolutely nothing to do with armor class. A little digging around then confirmed that the user name was linking back to a known spam domain.

So, apparently, the spam bots are playing RPGs now. Which, frankly, I’d be fine with: They just need to stop posting random comments on my website and start running some games on Google+. Ya know, contribute something to the community.

Go to Part 1

The most successful scenario structure in the history of roleplaying games is the traditional dungeoncrawl. In fact, I believe that much of D&D’s success rests on the strength of the traditional dungeoncrawl as a scenario structure. (Notably, it is a structure which has proven extremely effective even when translated into other mediums and executed with completely different mechanics.)

What makes it work?

First, for the player, it provides:

(1) A default goal. Specifically, “find all the treasure”, “kill all the monsters”, or some other variant of “clear the dungeon”. In other words, the structure inherently provides a reason for the player to engage the scenario.

(2) A default action. If a player is standing in a room and there’s nothing interesting to do in the room, then they should pick an exit and go to the next room.

Collectively, these mean that the player always has an answer to the question, “What do I do next?”

Second, for the GM, the dungeoncrawl is:

(1) Easy to prep. In fact, it’s virtually impossible for even a neophyte DM to screw up the design of a dungeoncrawl. What’s he going to do? Forget to draw an exit from the room?

(2) Easy to run. This extends beyond the macro-structure of the dungeoncrawl and begins to depend on the D&D ruleset itself, but, in general, any action proposed by the players within the dungeon will usually have a self-evident method of resolution. The dungeoncrawl also “firewalls” the adventure into discrete chunks (the individual rooms) which can generally be run as small, manageable packets.

Collectively, these mean that even first time DMs can reliably design and run a dungeoncrawl without leaving either (a) their players stymied or (b) themselves confused.

This is huge. Thanks to the dungeoncrawl, D&D can reliably create new DMs in a way that most other RPGs can’t and don’t.

But the dungeoncrawl also has a couple of other key features:

(1) It provides structure, but not a straitjacket. When the players ask themselves, “What do I do now?” the dungeoncrawl provides them with a default answer (“go through an exit”), but doesn’t prohibit them from creating all sorts of other answers for themselves: Fight the goblins. Investigate the arcane runes. Set up a fungal garden. Check for traps. Translate the hieroglyphics. Reverse engineer the construction of dwarven golems. Negotiate with the necromancer. And on and on and on. (It doesn’t even prevent you from leaving the structure entirely: The D&D rules include a multitude of options for bypassing the structure of the dungeon itself.)

(2) Flexibility within the form. The DM can put just about anything into the structure. Each dungeon room – each chunk of content delivered by the scenario structure – is a completely blank canvas.

Having this simple-to-understand, simple-to-design, and simple-to-use scenario structure makes D&D universally accessible in a way that, for example, Transhuman Space isn’t.

Next, let’s shift from the macro-level to the micro-level.

Go to Part 4: Combat