DarkCrisis
Reeks of Jedi
The Lost City?
TSR Having multiple dungeons available to the players
- Thread starter DarkCrisis
- Start date
The Lost City?
Warpiglet-7
Cry havoc! And let slip the pigs of war!
I got the Goodman games version but different events and factions are what it is about. Being spread over several dungeons sounds like a bigger version I could have fun with!
Or rather having several interacting dungeon choices rather…
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Ringtail
World Traveller (She/Her)
You might want to look at Dragonbane for inspiration.
The box set includes 11 short adventures, that can be played in any order (except for one, which is to be played last.) It has a pretty classic setup: collect the 4 pieces of the maguffin to get the whatsit. Of course, nobody knows where the pieces are so you'll have to visit many different adventure sites in hopes of finding them. (The actual locations are determined by the GM.)
There's a nice rumor table to seed the different adventure sites. I started with the Riddermound and when the players get back to town, I'm going to drop three rumors and let them pick. There's a mixture of dungeons and also just points of interest, none of them are very large though so it doesn't feel overwhelming to prep. Its very much like Forbidden Lands in that respect.
Dragonbane is also a super fun system, that feels old-school and modern at the same time, but its just the adventure structure I'm suggesting. I was actually thinking of plugging the Caves of Chaos into it, but there's already so much content I'm not sure I want to overwhelm my players.
The box set includes 11 short adventures, that can be played in any order (except for one, which is to be played last.) It has a pretty classic setup: collect the 4 pieces of the maguffin to get the whatsit. Of course, nobody knows where the pieces are so you'll have to visit many different adventure sites in hopes of finding them. (The actual locations are determined by the GM.)
There's a nice rumor table to seed the different adventure sites. I started with the Riddermound and when the players get back to town, I'm going to drop three rumors and let them pick. There's a mixture of dungeons and also just points of interest, none of them are very large though so it doesn't feel overwhelming to prep. Its very much like Forbidden Lands in that respect.
Dragonbane is also a super fun system, that feels old-school and modern at the same time, but its just the adventure structure I'm suggesting. I was actually thinking of plugging the Caves of Chaos into it, but there's already so much content I'm not sure I want to overwhelm my players.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Yeah, a mix of canned modules and your own creations works best...unless you're in a situation where your players are already familiar with most of the canned modules you want to use; at which point you have a problem.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Which sounds great until, having told you one week they'll go to Dungeon B next session, they think it over during the week and decide to go to Dungeon C instead once that next session starts.
Seen this before, has I.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
As a player - if I had a wise character - I'd be very leery in-character of jumping from dungeon to dungeon like that.
"Great - we've wiped out the top level of this dungeon; now let's press our advantage. What? You want to go to another dungeon instead? OK, but by the time we get back here we're going to have to re-take this level all over again, and wasn't it enough of a nuisance this time? Never mind that while we're at the other dungeon we're going to have all the things we just pissed off here on our tail."
Never leave an enemy behind you.
Gus L
Explorer
I think one of the most useful skills one can have as a sandbox referee is the ability to pick and reskin other people's adventure modules. I mention this because it even if it seems second nature to some folks, especially those with a lot of experience with early play styles, I see lots of questions about it in "OSR" forums especially from people coming from newer systems.Yeah, a mix of canned modules and your own creations works best...unless you're in a situation where your players are already familiar with most of the canned modules you want to use; at which point you have a problem.
First, to know what's good and more what's right for your setting. Not everything will be, not only are there a lot of bad or mediocre adventures out there, even some of the "classics", but there a ones that just won't fit. Having enough familiarity with your system and setting are helpful.
Second, knowing how to adjust prewritten stuff to make it fit. I find it's fairly easy, changing scenery and description - fiddling with monster stats. You can sometimes do it in play, but it's best to just write some notes over the thing. The difficulty becomes harder the more "story-based" a location is. That is to say if there's an entire narrative of hooks and connections or even more a series of events that occur in the adventure it's often harder to transform it into one's own setting then if it's simply a location to interact with. Even with the first though, the themes and antagonists in RPGs tend to be pretty simple and archetypical - which makes adjusting them possible much of the time.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Agreed.
That said, one of the points of using a canned module instead of a homebrew adventure is that, ideally, the canned module is much less work for the DM. Having to reskin it to the point where it's unrecognizable to players who've seen it before would probably be almost as much work as writing a module from scratch.
Mannahnin
Scion of Murgen (He/Him)
At which point you work on the group's interpersonal communication, tell them they're stuck with what they actually communicated to the DM, or improvise something.
I don't understand how any of this is a problem? It reflects how people are in real life, doing random things.
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