As I prepare “How I Design” videos for different kinds of
adventure, I am naturally brought to consider what types of adventure there are
– because plainly different adventures have different formats and styles, and
require different design decisions and different ways of running them. I’m
going to offer a very tentative list of “adventure types” (and subtypes) here,
in hopes it’s of use to, well, me, as well the community as a whole. Add other
possibilities in the comments!
Fundamentally – given a basic assumption of D&D rules –
I think there are three major categories of adventure. These are formally based
on where they are located, though in fact their geography is only one part of
their categorization, with the other being the format of their design, and the
expectations on player decisions.
The Dungeon Adventure
The “Dungeon Adventure” is the adventure in a closed environment, with fixed and fully mappable geography, where the 10-minute Exploration Turn makes sense. The environment constrains player decision and focuses them on effective and intelligent exploration. This could be a 10-level megadungeon or a 19-room one-session wonder – size is not the determinant. Geography and format are.
The typical benefits of the Dungeon Adventure are the way in
which the physical constraints allow the DM to create a textured and dense
environment with relatively knowable routes of player action. For the player,
it presents the ultimate challenge in environmental player skill – to map
accurately, to predict patterns of traps, to solve puzzles, to pit physically
close factions against each other, and the rest.
The Dungeon Adventure may occur in caverns or ruined castle
dungeons, but it may also happen in any enclosed environment. A
spaceship setting will often be a Dungeon Adventure (see S4 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks or Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits). A museum can be a Dungeon Adventure
(see my How I Design A Dungeon video for my example of developing such a
module). Even a “wilderness” setting can be a Dungeon Adventure, if set on a
small enough groundscale and set into boxed “rooms” of content – think of the
forest sublevel in Caverns of Thracia,
or the “Upper Works” sections of something like T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil or Abbey
of St Clewd. You’re “outdoors”, yes, and there aren’t strict walls and
corridors, but the flow of the area is closely related to the Dungeon Adventure
– the ground covered is a few square miles at most, the space is amenable to
the use of dungeoneering skills, etc.
D&D’s rules, particularly in older editions, naturally
tend towards the Dungeon Adventure. Even our language of “levels” comes from
that background – but the assumptions of player choices and of the actual
mechanical skills provided in Original, Basic, and First all also assume an
enclosed and “networked” environment.
Design-wise, the Rube Goldberg element of D&D comes to
the forefront in these adventures – things are placed in very close proximity
that can explosively interact and provide the players with opportunity or
danger. This requires a serious approach to mapping. These adventures are the
hardest to design geographically, because for your players to successfully
apprehend the nature of the space, the space must be rational and made from
ordinary geometry. Rooms linked by stairs need to actually be next to each
other, not warped out by your poor scale on one level.
The close proximity of encounters also means that the best
Dungeon Adventures require a more serious reflection upon ecology. When tribes
of humanoids are many miles apart, their co-existence is more plausible; when
they are in neighbouring caves, as in Keep
on the Borderlands, some deeper logic must be sought, or else a frank
handwaving offered (which is usually unsatisfying).
The Wilderness
Adventure
The Wilderness Adventure operates as an exact opposite to the Dungeon Adventure – it relies on the sense of vast space, of geographic confusion, of “natural” environments now being disturbed by the adventurers. The groundscale of the Dungeon is in the low square miles; the Wilderness Adventure is nearly always in three figures at least.
The Wilderness Adventure is not simply “a wilderness map”.
It is a particular set of objectives set on a wilderness map; it is not simply
the world itself. Dolmenwood is a
campaign setting, with many vignettes and locales on its map – but it is not a
Wilderness Adventure, insomuch as it is the setting as a whole. UK1 Beyond
the Crystal Cave, the aboveland portion of S3 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth,
or D1 Descent into the Depths of the
Earth are all good examples of Wilderness Adventures.
The locale of a Wilderness Adventure can be anything
appropriate; S3 is overland in the
“ordinary” world of Greyhawk, UK1 is
functionally on a demiplane, D1 is in
the Underdark. To The City of Brass
is extraPlanar.
Format of exploration can also vary – hexcrawls,
pointcrawls, and “open map” experiences are all legitimate. The better
adventures of this type will care about distance and travel, because they will
provide measurable costs for the vast distances players traverse. It does not
matter how these are measured, as long as they are measured and measured
seriously. Slumbering Ursine Dunes is
(probably) a Wilderness Adventure, as is Misty
Isles of the Eld by the same author, both using pointcrawls; B10 Night’s Dark Terror is a hexcrawl,
as is S3.
The challenge to players in the Wilderness Adventure ought
usually to consist of a relatively limited amount of time versus a “mystery” of
space. There is much ground to cover, dryads to placate, swamp hags to slay or
gain tutelage from, wandering knights to recruit. There are micro-Dungeons to
clear (of course, the Nested Adventure is legitimate, so long as it doesn’t
collapse needful time constraints). There are ingredients to gather. The hurry
around the map, the depletion of resources by the many challenges, the complex
variety of terrains – these all contribute to creating a compelling situation.
The players are not worrying as much about precise mapping
or procedure (traps must necessarily be less prevalent over such a large area –
the statistical chance of characters simply missing them altogether must be
large). The DM rolls for Getting Lost and Random Encounters, and will provide
set encounters and obstacles in given hexes or paths. The thrust of the
adventure is to plan their time well and triangulate their targets.
The DM has to make sure the wilderness seems lively but also
wild, and also to ensure that the passage of time and space feels meaningful. “Dungeon
dressing” here is, ironically, important – the sense that the characters are
travelling across vast vistas, dealing with many challenges, with the weeks
slipping away from them, is important.
The City Adventure
Finally, there is the City Adventure, which is perhaps harder to describe than the former two. This is partly because it is a hybrid – a vast space in which many Dungeon Adventures may be located; an enclosed space, too, with set limits and standards. A further complication is that simply being set in a city does not make an adventure a City Adventure! Sea of Blood is largely in a Sahuagin city, but it is only at points resembles the sort of Adventure I have in mind. Its dynamic is usually to frenetic and bloody for our purposes.
But I think there are distinguishable features for a City
*Adventure* (rather than a City Setting – CSIO
and Fever-Dreaming Marlinko are
really both City Settings, though Marlinko blends into an Adventure at
points).. It is an adventure that relies on a Fairly Peaceful Peopled Place.
There are many places and many people to speak to; much sneaking about; much negotiation;
Mini-Dungeons fitted to the setting, with depraved secret cults rather than
humanoid-occupied caverns; the business of negotiating with the Thieves’ Guild
over cuts and fees; the corrupt City Watch to manipulate.
The party needs to find the cult’s headquarters, and
identify its leaders – but it cannot smash every door down, or simply set up
factional warfare as it might in the Dungeon. Civilisation’s standards are different
to the (ordinary) Wilderness or Dungeon. Roleplaying is emphasize, as are
Thiefly skills and utility spells from the Magic-User.
It must be frankly admitted this is an underutilised genre
of Adventure. I most quickly leap to Warhammer
Fantasy Roleplaying adventures like “Shadows over Bogenhafen”. But there
are some good D&D exemplars. Gabor Lux’s various cities (Gont, Baklin, and the City of Vultures
material) have a distinctive flavour combining aboveground intrigue with vast
undercities for Dungeon Adventures. Some
of the 2e Lankhmar material is spot
on. Any good adventure that leans into fantasy noir tends to have a decent City
Adventure component. Discounting Vornheim as a toolkit rather than an
Adventure or Setting, this is an area the OSR could really move into, it seems
to me: specific and focussed scenarios set against a larger urban background.
The challenge for the players here comes in adhering to the
loose rules of the place, of bypassing the relatively overwhelming force of the
state’s forces, of negotiating their way between quite settled factions with
skin in the game. There is an objective, and there is not the constant up-front
danger of the Dungeon or sheer space to cover as in the Wilderness, but the
objective is occluded. Where is it? Who may grant access? What alternative
routes may be found? Which factions might help, and which will seek vengeance
after?
The DM has to thoroughly people the City; it cannot simply
be a concrete Wilderness, with vast unpeopled spaces, or spaces which might as
well be unpeopled for all the good the crowd does. There must always be a
jostle, the risk of pickpockets, overflowing tavern brawls. The hardest thing
for the City is to make it feel alive – the actual dynamics of accessing a
hidden space or discovering the secret High Priest really resemble a Dungeon
puzzle or Wilderness gather-quest, depending on how the flow-chart works. The
real difficulty is emphasizing the human dynamic of these discoveries, of the
need to reckon with a whole city of allies and adversaries – and you never know
which is which.
Anyway, what do you think? Are there other genres I have missed?
The “Dungeon Adventure” is the adventure in a closed environment, with fixed and fully mappable geography, where the 10-minute Exploration Turn makes sense. The environment constrains player decision and focuses them on effective and intelligent exploration. This could be a 10-level megadungeon or a 19-room one-session wonder – size is not the determinant. Geography and format are.
The Wilderness Adventure operates as an exact opposite to the Dungeon Adventure – it relies on the sense of vast space, of geographic confusion, of “natural” environments now being disturbed by the adventurers. The groundscale of the Dungeon is in the low square miles; the Wilderness Adventure is nearly always in three figures at least.
Finally, there is the City Adventure, which is perhaps harder to describe than the former two. This is partly because it is a hybrid – a vast space in which many Dungeon Adventures may be located; an enclosed space, too, with set limits and standards. A further complication is that simply being set in a city does not make an adventure a City Adventure! Sea of Blood is largely in a Sahuagin city, but it is only at points resembles the sort of Adventure I have in mind. Its dynamic is usually to frenetic and bloody for our purposes.
I feel like there's a lot of subtypes that get missed here. What about non-Eucliden depthcrawls like Emmy Allen's Stygian Library? what about whatever the fuck Troika's introductory adventure's supposed to be, with the PCs stuck on an elevator for the whole duration?
ReplyDeletefurthermore, I think just categorizing adventures by where they're located is reductive. A dungeoncrawl where you're tactfully trying to rescue a hostage is necessarily going to feel worlds apart from one where you're just trying to collect gold. an urban adventure about trying to track down the mayor's missing daughter isn't going to be anything like one about trying to take down the corrupt dentistry guild. "X adventure takes place in Y environment" is a start, but an adventure about, say, trying to track down a serial killer might ultimately play out relatively similarly wherever it's set, while two different adventures set in the same dungeon could have almost nothing in common structurally.
Well at least I got you thinking ;)
DeleteI don't think "non-Euclidean" or irrational or "indirect travel" spaces aren't covered by this. "Zjelwyin Fall" requires a teleport puzzle to be solved to get between rooms as desired, but is plainly a sort of Dungeon. The Troika example is a good one for how my typology breaks down, though - because it inverts the heuristic. I've looked at the formative nature of location, but the elevator scenario involves a single location which is altered by other things. (I guess the best fit would be as an incredibly small and focussed Dungeon, but I wouldn't push that.)
Of course my categorizing is reductive! =) That's the point - otherwise the only accurate map is the one that exactly replicates the whole world. I think you propose a plausible alternative categorization, though - adventure genre. I've emphasized the way physical space informs how an adventure works, you're emphasizing objective.
I should say, though, that whilst I take your point I don't actually think the Serial Killer Adventure would run identically in the Wilderness or the Dungeon or the City. I think the types of physical constraint do change things significantly. Overland, triangulation, food resource, camping, tracking - those all matter a lot more than in the Dungeon. In the Dungeon he's hiding out somewhere and you're gathering clues in one closed environment, in the Wilderness you're much more on the tracking route ("Has he been here, Penguinmen?"), etc.
But YMMV! Thanks for spurring the conversation.
yeah, all I was saying is that three serial killer adventures in three disparate environments would have more in common than three disparate urban adventures (hunting a serial killer, fighting corrupt bureaucracy, trying to buy rare illegal drugs, for example) might.
DeleteI don't know if "genre" is the right word to categorize things by, I think we need to go deeper than that. I'd probably focus my attention on what the PCs are essentially opposed to. a grand conspiracy, maybe-- doesn't matter if it's an urban mafia or a secret dryad cabal in the wilderness. a vector of brutish violence-- orcs in a dungeon or ruffians in the slums, either way. or are they primarily hunting something, and if so, does it flee them-- like a serial killer-- or is it static, like a book in the Stygian Library? they could be just trying to get from point A to point B, that could be the gist of it lol... they could be transversing a mountain range, or navigating the dungeon tunnels UNDERNEATH the mountain range, either way. or maybe they don't have a "clear objective" and things just happen to them, to which they have to respond-- that's fine too, but that's distinct from everything else!
anyway, it's 1am here and a full taxonomy is beyond my capabilities for tonight, but I do really think that an objective-oriented classification might be way more fruitful and useful than a location-oriented one...