Quote from: rainbowbluespixie;730208The idea is to produce a series of RPG adventures/scenarios which would be ready-made whilst being non-rules specific.

I don't know about the acctance of systemless modules on the US market but generic, multi-stat modules were a third party product category that was quite successful during the 80s and early 90s. I wrote a bit about them here:
http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=329513&postcount=11
http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=329513&postcount=24
http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=329513&postcount=109

But the stats seemed to be key for their success, as every other generic module (line) without stats ("Abraxas", "Runen", "Erben der Unsterblichkeit") failed on the market after one or two books.

Regarding "literary merit":
In my opinion you have to decide if your modules should primarily function as tools for a GM to be used in actual play or as something that is read (as a story).
As a GM I have no use whatsoever for elaborate, moody, witty prose. I prefer info in an accessible, clear presentation. Don't give me a story, give me a timeline of events. Bullet point lists. Don't give me swathes of text that don't have immediate use in the game.

Quote from: rainbowbluespixie;730238Yes matey, it is. Before I divert my limited free time from other writing projects (I work full time as an archaeologist in the UK and I'm also a performing musician) I just wanted to test the waters to see if there would be any interest at all, and also to see if I needed to modify my intentions to make them worthwhile.

As I said above, i'm definitely seeing a more positive response from an older demographic for this type of product. All the reasons people have supplied for doubting the viability of the project are totally sound, I guess it's just about reaching those people who simply have different needs. Anyone know any FB groups or forums where the more old-school approach is popular?

Ta,

Mark

Mark,

Sorry, man, you lost me at "literary merit."  To my aged (58 year old) ears it sounds like total wankery.  I've had plenty of bad experiences in my life with those who wanted to use RPGs as "serious art."  I want a fucking fun game.

When somebody busted my ass about "what do the monsters in this dungeon eat," I put a McDonald's down on the sixth level.

I might drop a couple of bucks on a small module that I could loot for useable ideas, but as a strict sandbox referee a "narrative" is something I want about as much as a hole drilled crosswise through my pecker.  Which is to say, not at all.

"It's just a stupid game." -- Gary Gygax
"It's just a dumb game." -- Dave Arneson
"What they said." -- Me

Personally, modules are more useful for the nuts and bolts rather then the plots/situations.  Characters, towns, buildings, gangs, personalities.  Give me those, and I'll build things around them.

Essentially, what you're describing is a text-heavy version of a Plot-Point campaign, which has to be really damn good for me to care, since I have to draw, design, etc all the particulars.

Don't give me a framework, give me building blocks.

That having been said, I am interested in how you can deliver a narrative of literary merit that is setting agnostic.  Yeah, Shakespeare's play can be placed in a variety of places and times and still work, but he couldn't have written them originally without putting them somewhere.

Quote from: Phillip;730307I like that format! A decent (if modest) example that comes to mind is "Hard Times in Hoxley," by the Midkemia Press people, way back in Sorcerer's Apprentice #17.


A potential pitfall is getting too much into that, some "any system" Judges Guild products coming to mind.

I advise sticking to plain English as much as possible. You can assume that any rules set will have its own guidelines for real-world phenomena (e.g., a tiger trap, or a tiger), and you can compare other things to them.

You might want to have a rough scale of combat/adventure competence for humans and like beings: something like Green, Trained, Regular, Veteran, Elite. Keep it about that simple, and you may find that often it seems rather superfluous given what one can infer from a figure's status.

There are variations in how various fantasy games treat various monsters. If you're going to assume a version, a D&D version is most likely to be familiar to gamers. (For example, kobolds are not helpful household spirits but nasty beastly little people.)

Again, plain English may be your friend. You might indicate such things as seem needful in the course of your larger description of the situation. The Gygaxian AD&D works (books, modules, The World of Greyhawk) include some passages that convey quite a bit with both brevity and style.


Depending on what you mean by that, it could be problematic for the sort of GM most likely to buy a "system free" scenario. Paizo seemed to consider stats so essential to its Adventure Path line as to warrant publishing Pathfinder when D&D 3.5 was discontinued. Maybe Clash Bowley (Flying Mice LLC) is doing something in between the situation-based and event-plotted extremes, but I really don't know.


A decent dungeon, even a small one, should IMO always provide a large enough universe of possible emergent histories not to warrant the "two dimensional" slam.


I can't make sense of this; what is "this approach," specifically?


I would recommend against making "literary" pretensions a priority. People who want literature will buy a novel; what's wanted in a game scenario product is useful information. Delivering more of that per pound is likely to be a better priority.

A sensible reply and good advice.

I tend towards Gizmo's position that making shit up is easy trawling through books to get stats etc is the tedious bit (so I simply don't bother and make all that shit up too) but I think theire might be a small market for something like this.
If it works let me know as I have about 50 professional Murder Mystery weekend outlines I have run over the last 15 years or so that would need miminal tweaking to turn into generic RPG adventures.

Quote from: rainbowbluespixie;730208Greetings,

I've been mulling over a little venture to potentially generate a small additional income and I'd really appreciate it if you fine folks could give me your tuppence worth of thoughts (or your ten cents depending on geographical location!) and feedback.

The idea is to produce a series of RPG adventures/scenarios which would be ready-made whilst being non-rules specific. Content such as traps/encounters etc which require some form of stats for any given system will be accompanied by the author's guidelines as to challenge/difficulty level and left up to the end user GM to customise as needed.

I'll summarise the key elements that I have planned for the packs:

The focus will very much be on creating a strong and compelling NARRATIVE. Although there will be dungeons and other traditional settings included, the plan is to avoid two dimensional crawls. This approach can be especially time consuming for those GM's writing their own material. Each adventure will have a consistent and fluid writing style, aiming toward real literary merit whilst still remaining appropriate for the genre.

All packs will be made available as PDF's and will contain all the illustrated maps, floorplans, player handouts, etc required.

Some adventures will operate as one-off stand alone packs, whilst others will form part of a larger connected story campaign.

Initially the setting will be a generic fantasy one, easily inserted into any existing game world. If the interest is there, a number of different gam environments will be developed (e.g. Hard Sci-fi, Space opera, Wild West, Modern horror, historical etc).

Packs will be available via download and priced extremely cheaply, I'm looking at around $2.50 USD, £1.50 GBP – slightly more for longer works.

A free beginning adventure will be made available for folks to try out the writing style and format to see if they are use to them before parting with any cash.

OK, well that's the outline anyway. Please do let me know of you think there would be a market and a decent level of interest in such a product. I'm not expecting to retire a wealthy man through this project, I simply enjoy writing and although I don't really have the time/gaming group to get games in myself these days, it would be lovely to earn a little extra whilst indulging my creative urges!

Many thanks,

Mark
damnrightigottheblues at googlemail.com

Anyone can come up with ideas for adventures, fleshing them out and making them useful is the hard part - and what is worth paying money for.

Quote from: soltakss;730234Is this the same post as http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?716669-Feedback-needed!-Cheap-ready-to-rock-Narrative-adventure-packs!-) on RPG.NET?

Looks like, and little wonder: in his shoes, I'd look for as many opinions as I could solicit.

Quote from: Catelf;730242See, to many people on this site, narrative tends to equal either Storygaming and/or Railroading and/or that the game is no more than a Play, as in theatre-play, where the Players are just there to play their parts ... or, essentially, worse than railroading, with no actual Gaming involved.  Or rather, they think you might be one of those who think that way ... which is really worse if you actually do.

Eeesh.  It's rather ironic that there's a thread on anti-edition warring, given that this "OMG STORYGAMERS ARE THE DEVILLLLL!!!" nonsense is no less tiresome as screaming matches over why the Edition I Play is great and the Edition You Play sucks.  I could say, with complete conviction, that there's no "roleplaying" involved in hack-n-slash dungeoncrawling, come to that, if we're going to get into "That which you play and I don't like Isn't Really Gaming At All" BS.

That being said, is there a market for these low cost scenarios?  Sure.  I'm not someone who finds it tiresome to whip up a few stats, especially since I don't feel the need for complete NPC sheets for every mook bodyguard.  $2.50 is also quite cheap, and worth it if I'm getting value: I've paid the $5 to Chaotic Shiny a couple times for their City and Realm Generators, and think I've gotten good value for the price.

But while I don't fall into the trap some here seem to be doing of assuming that failure to provide NPC combat stats = not fleshing adventures out, what are we talking about here?  A two-page scenario, never mind; I not only can whip that much info myself in fifteen minutes, I can find half a hundred freebie sources on the Web.  Ten pages?  Now we're getting somewhere, if the scenario is interesting.  Twenty pages?  I'm sold.

What else do I want before I pay for it?  I want interesting NPCs with a few paragraphs each (minimum) of description.  I want businesses that are fleshed out more than "Joe Blow and his nameless wife and nameless children run this chandlery, and sell chandling stuff.  Their prices are good and the quality is low."  (On the other hand, I prefer twenty businesses with four paragraphs apiece instead of five businesses with a page apiece.  I really do not need to know the complete layout of the chandler's living quarters, down to the loose floorboard under which the scullion keeps his handful of coppers and his porn collection.)  I want no art at all beyond necessary maps -- I won't pay for filler.  I want some thought given to alternate possibilities -- I run a sandbox, and my players aren't any more interested in riding the rails than I am in laying track.

Will you make enough $ to make this worth your while?  Beats me; I've never tried selling my original material on the Web.

Want to post an example, though, so we have a notion what you plan?

Actually one thing I thought about was that an adventure could be systmeless but genre specific. So you would write a gothic fantasy adventure that could be run in a variety of systems.
So far so obvious.

If you were able to provide good maps and props as part of the adventure that adds real value and might be the differentiator.

this occured to me because going back to my Murder mystery stuff I produce a lot of props, Newpapers, diaries, letters, paintings, dossiers of maps etc etc .

So if your generic adventure came with quality maps and printable resources to use at the table I think that would push them over the useless/useful barrier.
Now prepping a letter from the princess to her paramore written in iambic pentameter, an echo of which are the words uttered by the ghost that haunts the northern tower, or finding the diary of the cultist who opened up the tomb beneath the old temple ..... these things are easy but they comsume time and they need a certain skill.

I think the adventure on PDF along with half a dozen printable props and a decent map woudl make the difference.

Quote from: jeff37923;730361Anyone can come up with ideas for adventures, fleshing them out and making them useful is the hard part - and what is worth paying money for.

I'll have to agree with jeff.

Allthough it depends a bit on the game involved of course. Mechanics are a rather bigger part of WotC D&D than TSR D&D as an obvious example. But, still.

There are publishers doing this on RPGnow. You should investigate to see if those ventures have any real success. I personally don't know if the generic module has a fanbase.

One thing to consider when attempting systemless adventure writing is the capabilities of the PCs participating in the adventure. PCs in some systems may have common abilities that render challenges in the adventure trivial.

This is one reason that generic is hard to pull off when it comes to whole scenarios.

Locations, organizations, and a few adventure seeds are easier to make generic.

I think that not including stats would tend to expose the uselessness of any linear narrative-type scenario. For the sake of the OP I'll explain that I mean any scenario that runs through a series of scenes and plot-points, even if it branches a bit like a simple Choose Your Own Adventure.

To really provide gameable value you need to provide structures of some sort, in considerable density throughout the work. I'd suggest that if the information can be presented in the form of keyed maps, diagrams, and tables, it may be worthwhile even if it isn't statted out.

Of course there's no harm in including stats for one or two "Rosetta Stone" systems such as Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, OpenQuest, etc. (I.e. a system whose basics are widely known and available cheaply or free on the web.) This exercise will also help YOU evaluate how much work you are really saving a prospective buyer.

Another thing to do is look at existing products which are similar to what you propose and find out the critical and marketplace reactions. Here's a search to some examples: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse.php?keywords=100+seeds&x=-806&y=-181&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=

Quote from: rainbowbluespixie;730236As for the rainbow-vomiting gnome, well... you just plain don't like my post.. or my username perhaps lol?

I have absolutely nothing against your username, or you.

Your pitch screams 'MAXIMUM PRETENTIOUS WANKERY!' to me, as a player and a referee.

You may have a market for your product out there, so good luck with that. I am not a part of that market, however, not even a little bit.

Personally, I'm good on both stats and the big plot points. I always have lots of big plot points down (usually, far more than are ever revealed to the players in the course of the campaign).

Where I would like more assistance is in the filler that keeps things interesting along the way.

To put it another way - I like being the writer/director (to the level the DM is), but I'm not nearly as comfortable as the set designer or cinematographer. Or to put it in TV terms - I'd make a far better producer setting the season plot arcs and far less the writer in the writer's room coming up with what happens in episode X to keep things fresh.

I have come up with the most convoluted plots involving multiple conspiracies and conflicts between several rival factions, but I really struggle to make travelling from point A to point B be all that interesting / unique, or really differentiate dungeon X from dungeon Y (or planet X from planet Y, or city X from city Y).

Oh shit: he used the word NARRATIVE here! :nono:
 
I like the idea of system agnostic material but I usually like a frame of reference. As others have suggested, perhaps stat out the NPCs and Monsters with 1 or 2  popular game systems. GMs can usually gauge what sort of stats would be appropriate.

EDIT: If I ever did this, I'd try to use 2 or 3 drastically different systems, say, percentile, d20 and/or dice pool. Meh just an idea.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;730420You may have a market for your product out there, so good luck with that. I am not a part of that market, however, not even a little bit.

... so, threadcrapping?