A question I’m asked with surprising regularity is, “Why do you waste money on adventure modules?” It’s a question generally voiced with varying degrees of disdain, and the not-so-hidden subtext lying behind it is that published adventure modules are worthless. There are different reasons proffered for why they should be ignored, but they generally boil down to a couple of core variations:

(1) Published adventures are for people too stupid or uncreative to make up their own adventures.

(2) Published adventures are crap.

The former makes about as much sense to me as saying, “Published novels are for people too stupid or uncreative to write their own stories.” And the latter seems to be derived entirely from an ignorance of Sturgeon’s Law.

On the other hand, I look at my multiple bookcases of gaming material and I know with an absolute certainty that I own more adventure modules than I could ever hope to play in my entire lifetime. (And that’s assuming that I never use any of my own material.)

So why do I keep buying more?

There are a lot of answers to that. But a major one lies in the fact that I usually manage to find a lot of value even in the modules that I don’t use.

Take, for example, Serpent Amphora 1: Serpent in the Fold. While being far from the worst module I’ve ever read (having been forced to wade through some true dreck during my days as a freelance reviewer), Serpent in the Fold is a completely dysfunctional product. It’s virtually unsalvageable, since any legitimate attempt to run the module would necessitate completely replacing or drastically overhauling at least 90% of the content.

A QUICK REVIEW

The only thing worse than a railroaded adventure is a railroaded adventure with poorly constructed tracks.

For example, it’s virtually a truism that whenever a module says “the PCs are very likely to [do X]” that it’s code for “the GM is about to get screwed“. (Personally, I can’t predict what my PCs are “very likely to do” 9 times out of 10, and I’m sitting at the same table with them every other week. How likely is it that some guy in Georgia is going to puzzle it out?) But Serpent in the Fold keeps repeating this phrase over and over again. And to make matters worse, the co-authors seem to be in a competition with each other to find the most absurd use of the phrase.

(My personal winner would be the assumption that the PCs are likely to see a group of known enemies casting a spell and — instead of immediately attacking — they will wait for them to finish casting the spell so that they can spy on the results.)

Serpent in the Fold gets bonus points for including an explicit discussion telling the GM to avoid “the use of deus ex machina” because it “limits the PCs”… immediately before presenting a railroaded adventure in which the gods literally appear half a dozen times to interfere with the PCs and create pre-determined outcomes.

The module then raises the stakes by encouraging the DM to engage in punitive railroading: Ergo, when the PCs are instructed by the GM’s sock puppet to immediately go to location A it encourages the GM to have the PCs make a Diplomacy check to convince a ship captain to attempt dangerous night sailing in order to get to their destination 12 days faster than if the captain plays it safe. The outcome of the die roll, however, is irrelevant because the PCs will arrive only mere moments after the villains do whether they traveled quickly or not. On the other hand, if the PCs ignore the GM’s sock puppet and instead go to location B first for “even a few days” then “they will have failed” the entire module.

So, on the macro-level, the module is structurally unsound. But its failures extend to the specific utility of individual sequences, as well: The authors are apparently intent on padding their word count, so virtually all of the material is bloated and unfocused in a way that would make the module incredibly painful to use during actual play.

The authors are also apparently incapable of reading the rulebooks. For example, they have one of the villains use scrying to open a two-way conversation with one of their minions. (The spell doesn’t work like that.)  More troublesome is when the PCs get the MacGuffin of the adventure (a tome of lore) and the module confidently announced that it has been sealed with an arcane lock spell cast by a 20th level caster and, therefore, the PCs won’t be able to open it. The only problem is that arcane lock isn’t improved by caster level and the spell can be trivially countered by a simple casting of knock.

The all-too-easy-to-open “Unopenable” Tome is also an example of the authors engaging in another pet peeve of mine: Writing the module as if it were a mystery story to be enjoyed by the GM. Even the GM isn’t allowed to know what the tome contains, so when the PCs do manage to open it despite the inept “precautions” of the authors he’ll be totally screwed. And the tome isn’t the only example of this: The text is filled with “cliffhangers” that only serve to make the GM’s job more difficult. The authors actually seem to revel in serial-style “tune in next week to find out the shocking truth!” nonsense.

Maps that don’t match the text are another bit of garden-variety incompetence to be found in Serpent in the Fold, but the authors raise it to the next level by choosing to include a dungeon crawl in which only half the dungeon is mapped. The other half consists of semi-random encounters strewn around an unmapped area of wreckage which are too “haphazard” to map and key. Despite this, the encounters all feature very specific topographical detail that the authors are then forced to spend multiple paragraphs describing in minute detail. (Maps, like pictures, really are worth a thousand words.)

As if to balance out this odd negligence, the authors proceed to round out the final “chapter” of the adventure by providing an exhaustive key to a mansion/castle with 50+ rooms… which the GM is than advised to ignore. (And I mean this quite literally: “In order to [“get right to the action”] have them notice the bloodstains in the entry foyer, and thus, likely, find the bodies. Make the trail that leads to the infirmary a bit more obvious […] it should be easy to keep the PCs moving up the stairs and to the final confrontation with Amra.”) In this case, the advice is quite right: The pace of the adventure is better served if the PCs don’t go slogging through a bunch of inconsequential rooms. But why is a third of the module dedicated to providing a detailed key that will never be used?

Round out the package with a handful of key continuity errors and elaborate back-stories and side-dramas featuring NPCs that the PCs will never get to learn about (another pet peeve of mine) to complete the picture of abject failure.

THE STRIP MINE

I tracked down the Serpent Amphora trilogy of modules in the hope that I would be able to plug them into a potential gap in my Ptolus campaign. Unfortunately, it turned out that the material was conceptually unsuited for my needs and functionally unusable in its execution. So that was a complete waste of my money, right?

Not quite.

To invent a nomenclature, I generally think of adventure modules in terms of their utility:

Tier One modules are scenarios that I can use completely “out of the box”. There aren’t many of these, but a few examples would include: Caverns of Thracia, Three Days to Kill, In the Belly of the Beast, Death in Freeport, Rappan Athuk, and The Masks of Nyarlathotep. Tier One modules might receive some minor customization to fit them into my personal campaign world or plugged into a larger structure, but their actual content is essentially untouched.

Tier Two modules are scenarios that I use 80-90% of. The core content and over-arcing structure of these scenarios remains completely recognizable, but they also require significant revision in order to make them workable according to my standards. High quality examples include The Night of Dissolution, Banewarrrens, Tomb of Horrors, The Paxton Gambit, Beyond the Mountains of Madness, and Darkness Revealed. (For a more extreme version of a Tier Two module, see my remix notes for Keep on the Shadowfell.)

Serpent in the Fold is a Tier Three module: These are the modules which are either too boring or too flawed for me to use, but in which specific elements can be stripped out and reused.

(Tier Four modules are the ones with interesting concepts rendered inoperable through poor execution. Virtually nothing of worth is to be found here, since you’re largely doing the equivalent of taking the back cover text from a book and writing a new novel around the same concept. Tier Five modules are those rare and complete failures in which absolutely nothing of value can be found; the less said of them, the better.)

For example, consider that mansion with high quality maps and a detailed key for 50+ rooms.

That mansion is practically plug-‘n-play. Less than 5% of it is adventure specific. That’s an incredibly invaluable resource to have for an urban campaign (like the one I’m currently running).

But the usefulness of Serpent in the Fold doesn’t end there. I’ll be quite systematic in ripping out the useful bits of a Tier Three module (since I have little interest in revisiting the material again). Starting from the beginning of the module, I find:

Inside Cover: A usable map of a simple cave system.

Page 10: Three adventuring companies are detailed. (These are particularly useful to me because Ptolus feature a Delvers’ Guild full of wandering heroes responding to the dungeon-esque gold rush of the city. Ergo, there’s plenty of opportunities for the PCs to bump into competitors or hear about their exploits. Such groups are useful for stocking the common room of an inn or pub in any campaign.)

Page 25: An interesting mini-system for climbing a mountain. It features a base climbing time and a system for randomly generating the terrain to be climbed (prompting potential Climb checks which can add or subtract from the base climbing time). I’d probably look to modify the system to allow additional Survival or Knowledge (nature) checks to plot the course of ascent (to modify or contribute to the largely random system presented here).

Page 27: A very nice illustration that I can quickly Photoshop and re-purpose as a handout depicting a subterranean ruin.

(As a tangential note: I wish more modules would purpose their illustrations so that they could be used as visual aids at the gaming table. You can make your product visually appealing and useful at the same time, and you’re already spending the money to commission the illustration in any case.)

Page 33: Another useful illustration that can be quickly turned into a handout.

Page 54-55: A new monster and the new spell required to create them.

The module also features countless stat blocks, random encounter tables, and similar generic resources that can be quickly ripped out and rapidly re-purposed.

So even in a module that I found largely useless and poorly constructed, I’ve still found resources that will save me hours of independent work.

When you’re dealing with a module like Serpent in the Fold that you have no intention of ever using, these strip-mining techniques can be used to suck out every last drop of useful information without any particular care for the husk of detritus you leave behind. But similar measures can also be employed to harvest useful material from any module, even those you’ve used before or plan to use in the future.

As I mentioned last month, my adventure The Halls of the Mad Mage won an Honorable Mention in the One Page Dungeon Contest. It has now been collected in the One Page Dungeon Codex 2009, a collection of the winning entries from the contest. You can also check out the One Page Dungeon Compendium, which collects all of the entries to the contest.

I haven’t had a chance to do more than skim over some of the material, but it looks like there’s some really amazing stuff in there. I’m looking forward to seeing what I can cull from it into my Ptolus and Borderlands campaigns.

You might also be interested in taking a look at the One Page Dungeon article at campaignwiki.org. Primarily assembled by Alex Schroeder, it includes links to the blog posts of the individual creators in the contest (often offering some really interesting insight into their design process).

Awhile back, ChattyDM (Philippe-Antonie Menard) announced the One Page Dungeon Contest. For those not familiar with the One Page Dungeon Concept, the idea was originally conceived by David Bowman (Sham’s Grog & Blog) and then developed by Chgowiz (Old Guy RPG Blog) and Amityville Mike (Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope). Basically, the One Page Dungeon is a template for designing a complete dungeon in one page.

To a certain extent, the point of the template is to emphasize that you don’t need a lot of laborious prep to run a successful adventure: With nothing more than a dungeon map and a couple of pertinent notes, a GM can use his creativity at the game table to take care of everything else. I think a lot of us fall into the trap of thinking that our adventure notes need to be rigorous documents, but the reality is that, when we embrace our own ability to improvise creatively, that level of detail is more than over-kill.

If you’re willing to embrace that lighter design ethos, the One Page Dungeon is not only great for its ease of prep. It’s also great for ease of running. With a One Page Dungeon you don’t have any notes to flip through: You have your rulebook, a single sheet of paper, and your dice. The entire dungeon is literally laid out in front of you. This isn’t just simple, it’s usable.

Of course, there are a lot of things the One Page Dungeon can’t do. And thus, for me, its value is primarily in its use as an exercise: The artificial strictures of the form force you to become more creative while reminding you that simplicity has its value.

So, long story short, there was a contest. And for this contest I was inspired to whip out a One Page Dungeon of my own: The Halls of the Mad Mage.

The design of the Halls was inspired by M.C. Escher:

The Halls of the Mad Mage twist back on themselves in impossible spatial contortions. Here you’ll find everfalling rivers, endless stairs, and mobius chambers.

So I was quite happy when I won Best Geometry in the One Page Dungeon Contest:

Those of you interested in taking a tour of the Halls of the Mad Mage should feel free to download the PDF:

THE HALLS OF THE MAD MAGE

Map made with Dundjinni software, http://www.dundjinni.com

The etymology of the English word “lord” is interesting: In Middle English it was laverd or loverd, which derived from the Old English hlaford (“master of the house”). But before that it was hlafweard, which meant literally “one who guards loaves of bread” (hlaf meaning “bread or loaf” and weard meaning “guardian, protector, or ward”).

On the other hand, a lady was hlafæta (“one who serves the house”) — or, more literally, “one who gives the loaf”.

In other words, an English lord was one who protected the food and an English lady was one who was responsible for distributing the food (presumably in a fair and efficient fashion).

I think this tells you a great deal about the English tradition of nobility.

You can also find similar etymological roots for other familiar titles: A duke is literally “one who leads”. An earl, on the other hand, was literally a “warrior” or “brave man”. (But it’s even more interesting to note that “earl” was an Anglo-Saxon term. It was equated with the French title of count when the Normans arrived. The term “count” derives from the Latin comitem, which means “companion”. Tells you something about the clashing traditions of nobility in England post-1066, eh?) In Old English a sheriff was the “chief of the shire” (scirgerefa, from scir– meaning “shire” and –gerefa meaning “chief, official, reeve”).

One of the things I enjoy doing while creating a fantasy setting is to create original titles of nobility and position. Not a lot of them (because nobody is really interested in turning a gaming session into a fictional language lesson), but just a few scattered here and there. Think of it as spicing or emphasis… or just a touch of the unnatural.

For example, a number of small nations and city-states in my campaign are ruled by syrs. For example, Dweredell is ruled by Syr Arion. This title is derived from the Draconic word for “lightning” and originally referred to the equivalent of  “duke” or “governor” in an ancient empire that once dominated wide swaths of the world. The empire used “lightning” as a title because the syrs ruled through the threat of destructive power. (Which tells you a great deal about the empire.) When the empire fell, the local syrs were in a position to consolidate power.

There are two tricks to introducing terms like this: Moderation and context.

First, don’t use a lot of them. And introduce them at a very slow pace. (I average about one every 20 sessions.) These things are spicing. And like all spices, less is usually more.

Second, introduce them through the simple and expedient means of using them in context. For example, the first time a group of players entered Dweredell they went looking for the leader of the city. After a Gather Information check I told them they could find Syr Arion at the Twin Keeps, and off they went with nary a question.

Another group started a campaign in the city-state of Amsyr and when I said “you receive an invitation from the syr to attend upon him at the palace”, one of the players asked, “What’s a syr?” And I said, “A local title, like a duke or a prince.” They said, “Oh.” and off we went.

Similarly, in my current campaign, nobody even batted an eye when I started referring to female knights using the title Sera. (Thus, Sir Kabel and Sera Nara.) (Why not use “dame”? For a variety of reasons.)

In both cases the term sort of settled into the common vernacular of the group. And when some of those players later learned that the term nainsyr meant “let there be lightning” (because it was the command word for a magical sword), maybe some connection was made (either consciously or otherwise).

Or maybe not. It doesn’t really matter: My mission was already accomplished. I had already leveraged them a little further away from Generic Fantasy World #961.

I was flipping through a friend’s copy of Dungeon Delve and took the opportunity to read through the introduction by Bill Slavicsek, the Director of R&D at WotC. He starts by describing the successful Dungeon Delves that WotC has run at various conventions over the past decade:

But from the opening of the show on Thursday, we knew we had found the crux of a winning formula. (…) The fans ate it up. We had enormous lines at the Delve that entire weekend. They lined up to get into the available party slots. They lined up to witness the action and see whether Monte Cook or Bruce Cordell or Ed Stark (or whoever else was part of the team at that time) could kill more characters as more and more of the Delve was revealed. They lined up to see the next dungeon details and character names get posted to the bulletin board. How far had they gotten? What had they killed? Who didn’t make it out of the last fight?

They had a winning format: A megadungeon serving as the shared campaign setting for a huge pool of players. They basically took core Old School play and condensed it down to a format that could be played rapid-fire over the couse of a convention weekend.

Nifty stuff.

With this book, the Dungeon Delve concept finally takes center stage as a core D&D product. It was a long time coming, but we needed that time to test concepts, try out new formats, and eventually get to the point where this product was not only viable, but in many ways necessary to the evolution of the D&D game.

This makes perfect sense. If you’re in the business of selling RPGs and you’ve got something that’s a proven success with RPG players, you should try to figure out how to bottle that success and sell it to the masses.

For the purpose of this product, a Dungeon Delve is a compact series of encounters appropriate for a specific level of play. This book contains 30 Dungeon Delves, one for each level of play. Each Delve features three encounters, forming a mini-adventure of sorts.

Wait… what?

So you had a format: Megadungeon. High mortality rate attracting lots of attention. Boatloads of players/characters sharing a single setting to create a sense of competition, rivalry, and shared accomplishment.

And your method of bringing this format to “center stage as a core D&D product” is to give us mini-dungeons featuring three encounters incapable of serving as a shared campaign setting in a system explicitly designed for low mortality rates?

WTF?

(And is it even possible for them to devalue the term “core” any more? Describing their splat books as “core” was bad enough, but now they’re actually claiming that their adventure modules are “core” products? Exactly what do you produce that isn’t a “core” product, WotC?)

Let me be clear here: There’s nothing wrong with either style of adventure. I think there’s room in any good campaign for both megadungeons and mini-adventures. I contributed mini-adventures to Atlas Games’ En Route II. My Mini-Adventure 1: Complex of Zombies is pretty much in the same ballpark. I haven’t actually taken a close look at the actual adventures in Dungeon Delve, but conceptually it’s an interesting and potentially useful product.

But what baffles me is a company saying, “Our goal is to do X. And in order to do X, we’re going to do not-X.”

I mean, there are many parts of the design of 4th Edition which followed that pattern: The designers say that they want to do X and then they release mechanics which either don’t do X or do the exact opposite of X.

I had simply assumed that was incompetence. But maybe that’s just the way that Slavicsek and his design team think. (Which would also explain why we got not-D&D when they tried to design D&D.)