Modules and Adventures

 

This is what I wanted to do (its not going to happen). I wanted to take the World of Airdhe (and give it a new title, after all these years I still can’t spell Airdhe without looking) and put a hex grid over it and populate it – hex by hex. I thought that would be fun. Then everyone who bought that particular expansion, would have 10 quadrillion encounters of interest to toy with (which also happens tobe the estimated number of ants on earth +/- 4). I also wanted to put it online so print would not become an issue. I also wanted mapping programs with it so you could trace your path and allow for note taking and changes to be made.

I wanted to make it an actual living campaign world.

Well, that’s not going to happen. But what can happen is a new approach to modules. Now, I like writing adventures. These are not easy to write, though it may seem so. First, I am given to long exposition, histories, and context. Ninety percent of what I write in that regard is pointless so most of it gets shuffled off in pre-edit (I just deleted 3000 words from a 5000 word intro). Modules need to be made generic enough to fit any campaign as most people use their own campaign world.

Mapping is an issue. Going from in the head to on the paper for publication…. Arg, that is an issue. One of the reasons grid paper is used is because it makes the process easier. But even with grid paper it is often confusing. The more complex the map the more difficult. It does not help that everyone is separated by 10000000000 miles and communicate through emails, messages, texts, discord, twitter, facebook, skype, line…. E t c… No single one of which is useful for every type of communication.

So maps need to be simpler and are getting simpler with time. I recall the U? map (I can’t even remember the title). What a nightmare. I think we permanently pulled that project. But it was a good dungeon. So smaller dungeons and simpler dungeons seems to be the direction just so we can reduce the mapping headache. It does not help that my maps tend to be…. Well… complicated would be putting it nicely. Ask Stephen and you will get a different adjective.

 

All right, so here is the plan. We try to standardize module and book lengths. You can see we fail at that. But we will endeavor to do so again. Module will be sandboxes. By that I mean a module will cover and area (not sure the size) and that will be hexed out and labelled. There should be ‘x’ number of mini-adventures taking up 1-2 pages. The intent being these could be played in a session or two and dropped into any campaign setting. There would be one or two larger adventure locals (dungeon or what-have-you) that would take several sessions to finish. All would be tied together thematically with numerous plot threads attaching the parts. The plot threads would have multiple connections but there would be no overarching goal until the players decide there is an overarching goal. They players would become active participants in the unfolding of events and in creating their own goals – not some random goal devised by me.

I like this idea.