Great post. I love this "The purpose of a dungeon module is not to incentivize exploration or risk, it is to motivate and inspire play in whatever form that might take." I'm working on adventure sites right now for a game that is ODD-inspired, but decidedly not as deadly. I'm starting to see the adventure as a series of possibilities that surround and support the things that the players (and their characters) might do, not as the reason whey they do them. In a recent playtest, I had the party blatantly walk away from a treasure they had rightfully won to focus on a soft goal they had of finding a place for a band of refugees to set up a new home in. A solid example of the players choosing the context of the adventure when the module offered them something totally different.
And in my experience the most memorable takeaways from play are always going to be those moments - the ones not in the book, that come about as like a "hey what if we tried this?"
Yes. I think that's why it can be important for a module to have light, or even just implied, connection between monsters, encounters, and rooms. Players are great at finding that stuff and building on it in their own way. Keep on the Borderlands is a great example. The module gives you a bunch of locations to crawl with only slightly-implied connections between the several communities in the dungeon, and yet, how many adventuring parties found a way to explore or exploit the relationship between the Kobolds and the Goblins, or the Goblins and the Hobgoblins?
This is great. You can't underestimate the allure of shenanigans.
I've played Call of Cthulhu regularly for a number of years now and I'd be very surprised if any of us have spared a moment to think up rational excuses for why our characters repeatedly chose to get themselves in such dire situations.
I think social context is probably important in interpreting claims like this. Brad, Yochai, and Kelsey are discussing module design, it’s a module review show, so it makes sense to focus on what the module brings. If this were a GMing show then placing agency would be different, not because the outside reality is different but because they’re thinking of a different craft. When I’m framing character creation I emphasize that the character should have a reason to go on dangerous adventures, and so on.
(This was my own GMing failure quite recently: without intending to I soft-railroaded them to Brad’s own Sinister Secret of Peacock Point, because over email they selected a plot hook for it, but in between the hook and the “here you are at the dungeon door, here’s the situation” they didn’t necessarily have buy-in the explore the place other than “this is DnD and this is what our GM prepared,” which along with other things felt not great, even though the module itself was good.)
I just don't agree that player or character buy-in is one of the things that ANY module brings, and I think that designing your module around the concept of incentivization as a designer responsibility is kind of counter-intuitive. And if both designer and player/judge (like in your example) are expecting the module to do something it isn't equipped to do (nor necessarily should be), those not-great feelings can be mitigated/avoided with a better understood expectation of what a module can and can't do.
Great post. I love this "The purpose of a dungeon module is not to incentivize exploration or risk, it is to motivate and inspire play in whatever form that might take." I'm working on adventure sites right now for a game that is ODD-inspired, but decidedly not as deadly. I'm starting to see the adventure as a series of possibilities that surround and support the things that the players (and their characters) might do, not as the reason whey they do them. In a recent playtest, I had the party blatantly walk away from a treasure they had rightfully won to focus on a soft goal they had of finding a place for a band of refugees to set up a new home in. A solid example of the players choosing the context of the adventure when the module offered them something totally different.
And in my experience the most memorable takeaways from play are always going to be those moments - the ones not in the book, that come about as like a "hey what if we tried this?"
Yes. I think that's why it can be important for a module to have light, or even just implied, connection between monsters, encounters, and rooms. Players are great at finding that stuff and building on it in their own way. Keep on the Borderlands is a great example. The module gives you a bunch of locations to crawl with only slightly-implied connections between the several communities in the dungeon, and yet, how many adventuring parties found a way to explore or exploit the relationship between the Kobolds and the Goblins, or the Goblins and the Hobgoblins?
This is a great, great post.
Great post! Thanks
This is great. You can't underestimate the allure of shenanigans.
I've played Call of Cthulhu regularly for a number of years now and I'd be very surprised if any of us have spared a moment to think up rational excuses for why our characters repeatedly chose to get themselves in such dire situations.
I really enjoyed this read!
I think social context is probably important in interpreting claims like this. Brad, Yochai, and Kelsey are discussing module design, it’s a module review show, so it makes sense to focus on what the module brings. If this were a GMing show then placing agency would be different, not because the outside reality is different but because they’re thinking of a different craft. When I’m framing character creation I emphasize that the character should have a reason to go on dangerous adventures, and so on.
(This was my own GMing failure quite recently: without intending to I soft-railroaded them to Brad’s own Sinister Secret of Peacock Point, because over email they selected a plot hook for it, but in between the hook and the “here you are at the dungeon door, here’s the situation” they didn’t necessarily have buy-in the explore the place other than “this is DnD and this is what our GM prepared,” which along with other things felt not great, even though the module itself was good.)
I just don't agree that player or character buy-in is one of the things that ANY module brings, and I think that designing your module around the concept of incentivization as a designer responsibility is kind of counter-intuitive. And if both designer and player/judge (like in your example) are expecting the module to do something it isn't equipped to do (nor necessarily should be), those not-great feelings can be mitigated/avoided with a better understood expectation of what a module can and can't do.