Difference between revisions of "Adventures"

Latest revision as of 11:17, 23 December 2014

Pre-created events and challenges that can be used to provide content for game sessions.

Some games describe game worlds and possible actions within them but do not specify exact settings and events that players are to encounter, instead having these be things that can be varied between game sessions and game instances. While these can be improvised in some games and procedurally generated in other, Adventures are pre-created collections of settings, events, and characters that can be used without requiring substantial assembly.

Wikipedia has a page for Adventures^[1] which uses a slightly different meaning (e.g. that a campaign can be a lengthy adventure).

Examples

Tabletop Roleplaying Games often offer pre-made gameplay structures through Adventures. Early examples include "The Keep on the Borderlands", "Rahasia", and "Ravenloft" for Dungeons & Dragons and "The Rise of R'lyeh" for Call of Cthulhu. Later examples include "Orcbusters", "Me and My Shadow, Mark IV", and "Send in the Clones" for Paranoia as well as "100 Bushels of Rye" and "The Staff of Fanon" for Hârnmaster. "Botbusters" and "The Harder They Clone" are examples of mini-adventures for Paranoia while "An ARD Day's Night" and "Whitewash" are even shorter and in practice impossible to complete for the same game.

Using the pattern

Adventures are typical used as a format in Tabletop Roleplaying Games. Two patterns are commonly used as parts of Adventures: Quests and Scenes. The former provides goals and promises of Rewards for achieving those goals while the latter are used to contextualize actions and events that are part of an Adventure.

Summary Updates are quite often used as parts of Adventures, especially when Scenes change.

Narration Aspects

As have been said above, Adventures is a Narration Pattern. Like their use in Campaigns, Finale Levels can be used in Adventures to structurally create more tense situations where conflicts are brought to a head.

Consequences

Adventures are Predetermined Story Structures. When several of them are designed to be played in sequence they can create Campaigns, as for example is the case with the Dungeons & Dragons series of Adventures beginning with "G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief"^[2] and progresses through five more (G2^[2], G3^[2], D1^[3], D2^[3], D3^[3]) before ending with "Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits"^[4].

The presence of Game Masters allow Adventures to be adjusted to better fit players' wishes as well as help save the overarching narratives when players have done actions which make the original structure impossible (or when the players simply are stuck and neither gameplay nor narration progresses).

Adventures can give rise to Non-Consistent Narration in games which allow different players to experience specific Adventures independently of each other but later let them play together. The most likely scenario for this is when players are allowed to bring Characters from one group of a Tabletop Roleplaying Game to another.

Relations

Can Instantiate

Campaigns, Predetermined Story Structures

Can Modulate

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Can Be Instantiated By

Quests, Scenes

Can Be Modulated By

Finale Levels, Game Masters, Non-Consistent Narration, Summary Updates

Possible Closure Effects

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Potentially Conflicting With

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History

New pattern created in this wiki.

References

1. ↑ Wikipedia entry for Adventures.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2} Wikipedia entry for "Against the Giants" module that combines G1-G3.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2} Wikipedia entry for "Descent into the Depths of the Earth" module that combines D1-D2 and has information about D3.
4. ↑ Wikipedia entry for the "Queen of the Demonweb Pits" module.

Acknowledgements

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