A Publishing Idea...

[T. Foster]

My biggest problem with published adventures is the tendency to make individual groups follow a 'plot' from on-high (i.e. Adventure #3 assumes you've played #1 & 2 in a 'by-the-book' fashion). CT had some of this (the Ancients saga, the Sky Raiders Trilogy, the Travellers' Digest), and TNE was really sick with it (multi-page in-character Briefings that the referee was supposed to read aloud verbatim, etc).

The idea of adventure-publishing shouldn't be to make every Traveller campaign look alike, or to force all referees to buy every single adventure & supplement so as not to 'miss an episode,' but rather to give an idea of the 'look and feel' of the game universe, to illustrate the types of situations, settings, and characters that make for good play so as to inspire the refs' own incipient creativity, and, last but not least, to provide something that can be sprung on players with minimal preparation for those times when inspiration and/or prep-time come up short.

*D&D in the 80s was great in this regard: as bad as most of the adventures were as-written, there were so damn many of them that with a few minutes' notice it was almost always possible to find something that the group hadn't played yet that could be used as a baseline for improvisation if nothing more.

 

[T. Foster]

Another comment re adventures: a good tournament scenario is not the same thing as a good published adventure module.

Tournaments need a more-or-less linear path that can be run with predictably similar results with widely varying groups of players and that can ideally be 'completed' in a short time-frame. This is fine for tournaments, that's the way they work, but it's almost exactly the opposite of what I want in a published module -- I don't want a specified beginning, middle, and end with clearly defined encounters and obstacles and spelled out consequences for taking action XY&Z; I want a setting, a situation, a handful of interesting characters, a few ideas on how they all relate (and why a group of PCs might find themselves in the middle of it), and the freedom to develop the specifics of the story as I (and my group of players) see fit.

In my experience, unless the players have tacitly agreed beforehand to 'go along with the story' (which, I might add, is typically the case in tournaments), adventures that make good reading rarely work out well in play -- players are way too likely to veer irreparably off-script, and blatant shoe-horning goes against my GM-ing nature. Save the dramatic scenes and scripted dialogue for the fiction-line; in a module, give me something I can actually USE.

All-time favorite module: Griffin Mountain, for Runequest (by Jaquays, Kraft, Stafford)
Runner-up (though only with significant modification): The Temple of Elemental Evil, for AD&D1 (by Gygax)

Both of these had enough meat to keep my player-group busy for years (literally!) and the plots were loosely-enough defined that I never had to worry about sticking to some pre-determined storyline.

[edited to add the last 2 paragraphs]

[This message has been edited by T. Foster (edited 20 June 2001).]

 

[Christopher Jennings]

Agreed, a good tournament "adventure" is usually not a very good campaign adventure. Goals and rewards are structured quite differently and the players mind-set is usually set on "desposable". While they can be alot of fun for a change of pace, my experiance is that they rarely are a good fit in a campaign setting.

 

[Gallowglass]

QUOTE

The idea of adventure-publishing shouldn't be to make every Traveller campaign look alike, or to force all referees to buy every single adventure & supplement so as not to 'miss an episode,' but rather to give an idea of the 'look and feel' of the game universe, to illustrate the types of situations, settings, and characters that make for good play so as to inspire the refs' own incipient creativity, and, last but not least, to provide something that can be sprung on players with minimal preparation for those times when inspiration and/or prep-time come up short.

*D&D in the 80s was great in this regard: as bad as most of the adventures were as-written, there were so damn many of them that with a few minutes' notice it was almost always possible to find something that the group hadn't played yet that could be used as a baseline for improvisation if nothing more.

ENDQUOTE

Which is why I loved the CT Double Adventures. And TSR in the 80's was exactly my point, although I would also put Griffin Mountain as one of (if not THE) best FRP Adventure Supplements. In many ways, the dear old Kinunir is a good model: a common thread, a modicum of backdrop and a set of seeds tha lead in all sorts of different directions. In todays market I think Adventure One would be regarded as excessively thin on information, but could a Subsector sized area (or volume

) of space provide the sort of "chunky setting" we are talking about?

As a model of applying something like the Griffin Mountain model, might I suggest Carlos Alos-Ferrer's Beyond The extents Campaign (can't remember the URL)? Add three or four double adventure sized shorts, a bit more info on the rest of the sector, the various cultures and a slew of Patron encounters, and you've got it I'd say (structurally at least). Plenty of freeedom for the Ref to tailor and adapt to his own campaign, plenty of solid core information that is interesting without overwhelming the players and ref's.

 

[T. Foster]

I agree that 'The Kinunir' is a good, if by modern standards rather sparse, model for an adventure (though in retrospect I'd gladly exchange some more info on the worlds of Regina subsector or one or two developed NPC personalities for a couple pages of Marine stats). Another prime model (if memory serves, my copy's off in storage for several years) is Bill Keith's 'Lords of Thunder' from MegaTraveller Journal #4: a bunch of background, a few interesting plot threads, and let 'er rip. I'll have to search out the Beyond the Extents site, which I must confess I've never seen.

 

[TCHarrison]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by n2s:
Top-Secret Traveller, FUDGE Traveller,
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ah, Top Secret. I played that once. Are these two on the 'net anywhere?

------------------
-J. Jensen

 

[Rerednaw]

Griffin Mountain? Does anyone out there remember Runequest? One of my favorite systems and module.

I'm not sure if publishing that many supplements would be workable initially. Is the money in the core books or the supplements?

Based on my experience, I bought the main core books (Books 1-5) and then Library Data. Other than that the only ones I bought were the adventures. When it came the AD&D, I went the same way: core books only, and then modules. I rarely, if ever bought the 'guides' (arms and equip, vikings, etc...)

IMHO best sellers for Traveller would be just the core books and adventures. The supplement market is pretty iffy. Perhaps the JTAS would be a better forum for historical, race, critter and additional equipment data.

I also have a suggestion for publishing format (CD format suggestion)
http://www.farfuture.net/ixs/Forum11/HTML/000038.html

Cheers.

Mike

 

[Myscha the sled dog]

Did I forget to mention landscape?

 

[kafka47]

Large books like Megatraveller.

Main rules ought to be in Hardcover, I wonder if we could how many gamers are attracted to GT because of the main rulebook cover or the supplements. I think the supplements win hands down.

Where I am from, FFE reprints have never hit the auction market because they will not sell. However, the Travelller book with its dust jacket always will.

What was GDW sell rate for the Traveller book like? I think many bought into it, and cashed out with MT because of the sloppy job putting them together.

 

[laning]

Someone said you need another Keith Brothers.

I know Jesse DeGraaf (sp?) is already busier than a teenaged boy on Viagra let loose in a harem, but he is exactly what is needed for illustrating Traveller. Perhaps he can be persuaded to recruit and train artists who take a similar approach of meticulous preparation and have a similar enthusiasm for the science fiction, and the game itself? Contract art out Studio Jesse. (I forget his company's actual name....Vision Forge?)

I am in agreement with the notion that anybody can come up with adventure plot ideas. Just rip them off from movies, books, etc. That's what all the really popular GMs/referees have done in my 25 years of experience. In fact, most of the published adventures for Traveller, (A)D&D, et al, have had plots that were awfully derivative themselves. Besides suffering from being so overly scripted that any group of players with half an imagination between managed to depart irretreivably from the script pretty early in the adventure.

I buy books other than the core rules at least 90% because I need more background details and science fiction "color".

--Laning