Conventional wisdom holds that there is no point in printing "adventure modules" since RPGers make up their own adventures and want "playgrounds" rather than "do this, then go there and do that" adventures.

On the other hand, a couple of store owners at GAMA suggested we take the PD1 adventures (the spy heading for the Klingon border, Gradex, wandering child, uprising) and strike them end to end and "lightly warm them over" with GURPS rules and, voila, a complete product ready for press.

People tell me I don't know anything about this, so I'll let you guys tell me whether there is a market for adventures in general or for these PD1-recycled thing in particular.

Two points.

1. I don't want the project team stomping their feet down on this one like they've been known to do. You might be wrong, so let's let others tell us.

2. We of course plan to have a sample adventure in each book.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 02:08 am: Edit

There is a need for both.

while I like the 'give me a world to explore' approach this takes a really good GM to handle.

some 'go here-do this' modules end up being so limited that unless the players do exactly what is expected things break down.

I am currently (sort of, for one reason or another we haven't played in about two months :-) playing in two different D&D games. one is useing a adventure module while the other is useing a worldbook. They both have advantages and disadvantages, the module game has more detail and is FAR less work for the GM to maintain (in part this allows him time to develop things around the edges to flesh it out and respond to us doing strange things), the other one (worldbook) covers such a large potential area that it's of very little use in provideing background for beginning characters (who lack the funds to do much traveling) and the lack of detail has hurt things.

one thing that adventure modules do provide is examples of what types of opponents are expected to make a good match for players. Another is an introduction for people who don't want to shell out the cost of the full product (a teaser to attract them)

I think that reworking the PD1 modules would be worth the effort expended (very little SVC time), but I can't judge if they would be worth the capitol sunk into printing costs and warehouse space

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 02:53 am: Edit

I have purchased adventures in the past, but it is rare for one to catch my fancy. A single use adventure tends to sell only to those players that need that type of adventure right now. The more successful SF adventures have tended to have multiple potential plot lines combined with extensive background information on a world or sector.

The PD1 adventures were amongst the worst ever produced. Even if you can get them to market cheaply, a run of weak support products could sabotage G:PD as a product line. If the unpublished PD1 adventure was superb, you might want to consider finishing that one off as a G:PD experiment.

By Robert Gilson (Bobcat) on Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 08:45 am: Edit

I like adventures they are always a good starting point even if the characters jump out of frame they still provide the orginal reason for the characters to get together.

If you want to do a book with several adventures from PD1. Of those adventures I liked the Uprising and Graduation Exercise adventures best. Updating these and writing a couple of new ones with less of a Prime team slant might not be a bad idea, it would help get some quick support for the new line. If it was maybe the size of the Prime Adventures book from PD1 everyone would think they were getting their moneys worth.

By Kerry Drake (Kedrake) on Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 09:19 am: Edit

Adventures...good.

By Jonathan McDermott (Caraig) on Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 11:10 am: Edit

I was in an In Nomine game recently where the GM started using one of the published adventures. Being the kind-hearted PCs that we were, we immediately started doing things that neither the GM nor the people who wrote the adventure ever planned on. The characters were hard to believe, their motivations were, frankly, totally oddball, and it gave the GM a serious impetus to not run the game. However, after that he threw out the published adventure. He took an adventure seed from a different book, expanded upon it, and the game from that point on was much better, much more believable, and much more intriguing.

'Published' adventure modules are a boon and a bane. On the one hand, they're ready-made. On the other, there's no replay value and if the GM is not careful then the players WILL blindside him and do something the writers came up with. An RPG is not like SFB, where every conceivable action undertaken by players can be accounted for. In an RPG, players *will* do oddball things. If the player can't do something, the GM better have a good reason 'why not.'

I like the idea of adventure seeds, rather than full-blown adventures. (Instead of dungeon crawls, starship crawls? No, thank you!) but maybe not a whole book full of them. Then again, that might work out well, categorized by themes. Another option is to produce deckplans packages and include adventure seeds with them. Yet another option, instead of producing full-blown major books of adventure seeds, produce some of those 32-page books that SJG has been doing lately. Call them, say, 'Intelligence Missions,' 'Merchant Missions,' 'Commando Missions,' 'Diplomatic Missions,' 'Pirate Missions,' and the like. Packed with ideas for expanding the game in those particular directions. Troupes can then pick up the 32-pagers that interest them and run games with that (and mad gamers like me would pick up the whole lot of 'em, if for nothing else than background material! =) I realize, though, that you can't make the 32-pagers *too* specialized.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 04:09 pm: Edit

Personally, I dislike the "run once" books because most of the players have bought it (or at least looked through it in the store) and know where to go. Spoils the fun for both GM and player.

What I prefer is the "adventure setting" or "worldbooks". In these, you have a few pages of adventure seeds in the back, 2-3 paragraphs on different tyes of trouble the characters can get into.

But that is MY two cents worth, I'd like to hear yours! What I'd like to do is take a quick survey of the people here on your buying preferences on some different kinds of books, plus your opinion on a couple of ideas we've been working on.

PLEASE RATE THEM AS FOLLOWS:
5: Would buy instantly!
4: Would look at it in the store, would probably buy it.
3: Would look at it in the store, buy it if I have spare money that day.
2: Would look at it, probably put it back on the shelf.
1: Would leave it on the shelf untouched.

Here are the items I'd like you to rate:

Rewritten PD1, Uprising etc updated to GURPS

Adventure setting books in general

Play-once books in general

LTGG: an adventure setting book set in the Early Years, civilian area with little military, mostly megacorps and independants. System with no habitable world, mining in a very rich asteroid belt, the bases that support them, and the occasional pirate. All sorts of things for a small group with their own ship to do!

JURASSIC WORLD: world just outside of Fed space, not governed by any major power, not under the Prime Directive. LOTS of Dinosaurs. Big-game hunters who want trophies, scientists who want to study them, activists who want to protect the cute little man-eating beasties. Descriptions of dinosaurs (probably repackaged from GURPS DINOSAURS as that book is out of print).

By Jonathan McDermott (Caraig) on Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 08:27 pm: Edit

Okay, my opinions, my two centicredits:

Rewritten PD1, Uprising etc updated to GURPS: 3
Adventure setting books in general: 4
Play-once books in general: 2
LTGG: 4
JURASSIC WORLD: 2. No, make that 1. I'm afraid dinosaurs aren't something i'm into. =) Now, if you could find a way to make use of GURPS Blood Types or GURPS Cabal with GPD.... ;) *digs through New Marches notes for all the stuff about Taj Shiva....*

By Dale McKee (Brigman) on Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 08:59 pm: Edit

Well, as a long-time GM and Trek fan, let me suggest this:

I've often found uses for what I would call "flexible adventures". That is, an adventure that is not so much a "go here do that" as a concept, a storyline that you CAN follow or you can take the seed and follow it a different way. I've bought up a lot of the old FASA Trek modules on ebay, and some have had some excellent seeds, some have a formulaic storyline that can be used. Others didn't have ANYTHING I wanted to use.

But what I got the most use out of were the adventures with strong ideas that can stand some transplanting. For example "A Doomsday Like Any Other", the FASA adventure in which the players must contend with a second Planet Killing Doomsday Machine. I didn't follow the adventure verbatim, but I used the Machine, the setup, and several of the situations/NPCs from the module in my own fashion.

Anyway to rate the things Gary asked for:

Rewritten PD1, Uprising etc updated to GURPS: 2. I already own the PD1 stuff and it's not THAT much of a stretch to convert/adapt it. I might buy one if I particularly liked the new version, but otherwise, nah.

Adventure setting books in general: 4 or 5, depending on how much the setting appealed to me.

Play-once books in general: 3, depending on if it has something I think I can adapt to my campaign or something of value beyond just a single run.

LTGG: 4

JURASSIC WORLD: 3

By Dwight Lillibridge (Nostromo) on Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 09:23 pm: Edit

adventures need to account for a simple item, no plan ever survives contact with players. the lead'em by the nose ring adventures are useless, as players will always want to do something that is not accounted for. adventures do best when it is a background and environment info pack. as long as important NPC's are filled in and their general habits, the background and maybe a scedule of general events, then a list of events that should transpir during play or the NPC's will attempt to do during play. then there is a whole world of possibilities and the shock of player encounters won't short out the GM.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Thursday, April 04, 2002 - 11:53 pm: Edit

Depends on the scenario. There is a giant leap between the Call of Cthulhu that take months to complete and some the very weak TSR adventures whcih comprise two hours of sightseeing culminating in an epic battle between NPCs. Without seeing the exact scenarios, evaluation is difficult.

PD1 adventures rewritten: 0

Settings 3

Play once: 2 (unless it is very clever)

LTGG: have to see more detail on it but this would range between 2 and 4

Jurassic World: 1

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Friday, April 05, 2002 - 12:01 am: Edit

Dwight: exactly correct! Which is why I prefer adventure setting books personally, and think they'll be more useful to GMs and players alike.

"Your character bought a level of Area Knowledge (LTGG)? OK, you can read the book during the game."

By Marc Gillham (Marcgillham) on Friday, April 05, 2002 - 04:43 am: Edit

My tuppence:

Rewritten PD1 3
Adventure setting books 3
Play-once books 4
LTGG 4
JURASSIC WORLD 2


Further random musings are that there aren't many play once books I've found no worth in at all, even as a source of ideas so I would be pretty sure to pick them up regardless.

I've got mixed feelings about adventure setting books as this strongly depends on the kind of campaign you're running - pretty handy in a 'Traveller' sort of campaign, probably less so in a cliche of the week TOS style campaign where most people know the background and this week's planet is painted in broad strokes anyway.

What I think would definitely be useful to almost anybody are collections of plots with possible resolutions and complications. Very much along the lines of the old '76 Patrons' for Traveller or Steve Jackson's 'Adventure Pizza' column in Pyramid.

By Dwight Lillibridge (Nostromo) on Friday, April 05, 2002 - 08:48 am: Edit

SFB is an adventure environment, and details of a particular area is what an adventure setting is. the area of which your players will be in or operating in for their merchant activities, spying, etc.

an example of an area is say near the tholian border. what goes on there and how do the tholians handle traffic across their borders are examples of what an adventure setting would tell.

your players if they are merchants need to know where the cargo runs are and shipping lanes. they even need to know where the best cargo ports are, and where ship repairs are the best bang for their buck.

spys for the federation can use merchant traffic information to imitate merchants to conduct their espionage activities.

By Davyd Atwood (Blackelf) on Friday, April 05, 2002 - 02:53 pm: Edit

Rewritten PD1: N/A. I never saw them before, so my opinions would follow the same lines as the "in general" category they belong to.

Adventure setting books in general : 4

Play-once books in general : 3

LTGG: 4.5 Sounds a lot like WEG's Minos Cluster setting for Star Wars, and I liked that.

JURASSIC WORLD: 3. Maybe 4, depending on what was in it.

I find play-one books somewhat valuable, in that I tend to out-run my production schedule when running a campaign. Usually I'm good for a couple of months, then I hit a session where all my prepared stuff is finished and I've had no time to prepare anything else. At that point, a play-once can be really useful. But I'll be honest, I buy 90% of those used, not new.

Adventure setting books are really good for me, too; they cut my prep-time work by a lot, usually. (Some badly written ones have increased it, but that's the exception rather than the rule.)

I had another point but it escaped and lunch-hour's over.

By Robert Gilson (Bobcat) on Friday, April 05, 2002 - 10:11 pm: Edit

PD1 adventures rewritten: 4

Settings 4

Play once: 3

LTGG: 3

Jurassic World: 1 Already have GURPS Dinosaurs

By Robert Herneson (Herneson) on Sunday, April 07, 2002 - 03:44 am: Edit

Steve,
As it currently stands, I'd suggest that there is too open a field for character situations to put out an 'adventure' product that would have a reasonable surity of good sales.
If you do decide to do them, I'd suggest putting them on the '03 or '04 calander and putting 'Adventure Pizza' style adventuers in MP. (Check the Pyramid archives for Adventure Pizzas if you aren't familiar.)

Robert

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Sunday, April 07, 2002 - 02:05 pm: Edit

Robert,

I have definite plans to put Adventure Pizzas in MP already, maybe not under that name, but basicly the same thing.

As for adventure products, the important thing is to select a format people will be interested in buying, and then making the content interesting. Which is why I ran that mini-survey. Personally, I'm happy that LTGG got such high marks, the only downside is that I have to write it, which takes up MY time!

BTW, I'm thinking that "campaign setting" is more descriptive than 'adventure setting" so I'm going to use that nomenclature to distinguish run-onces from the other products.

By Robert Herneson (Herneson) on Sunday, April 07, 2002 - 02:56 pm: Edit

Gary,
Good call on semantics. Silly as it is, (puffing up his writer's chest) words mean things.

Because it was noted repeatedly in PD areas that 'look & feel' are really important, I'd be stingy with the non-Trek 'look & feel' adventures for the start, then I think your LTCGs would be great. Same with Jurasic Worlds.

Aside; I know Marc and others mentioned APs & such too, I was just in a hurry at a quarter till four in the morning, sorry for not noteing your comments also, guys!

Robert

By CJ Beiting (Paxton) on Sunday, April 07, 2002 - 09:13 pm: Edit

Well, for my money's worth:

-revised PD stuff: 3, maybe 2
-adventures: 4
-play onces: 3, maybe 2
-LTGG campaign: 3
-Jurassic world: 1

Note that there are few "adventures" per se for GURPS books. SJG found that they didn't sell too well. GURPS tends to be a GM's system, and as such most of the people who buy GURPS things already have some firm ideas on what they want to do with it. They also tend to like to "tinker" with mechanics, settings, and so on.
-I don't know if this "adventures don't sell for GURPS" trend will carry over to GPD, but be aware that it might.

Note that one thing that _has_ sold surprisingly well for SJG have been those little comic book-sized modules. My suggestion for ADB is that you explore a smaller-size, lower-cost format for releasing adventures, if you want to do them.

Of types of adventures suggested, I like campaign books detailing areas rather than pre-packeged adventures. I would have rated the LTGG suggestion higher, but I would prefer something like FASA's old Triangle modules, detailing an area of space that regular Federation military can patrol.

Be _very_ careful of what you do with a "Jurassic World" sourcebook, if that's something you eventually do. I have generally found that "heroic man against nature" stories work really well on the big screen, but are terrible as RPG adventures. Especially if random encounter tables are involved.

Actually, I'll probably pick up just about everything issued for GPD anyway, so perhaps the numbers I gave above aren't the _most_ accurate.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, April 08, 2002 - 12:28 am: Edit

...but I would prefer something like FASA's old Triangle modules, detailing an area of space that regular Federation military can patrol.

That is something I already plan to build into LTGG. You'll note that the F&E map is broken down into areas of 5-6 hexes? Part of any Campaign Setting book will detail the hexes in that sub-sector (assuming that "sub-sector" is the correct nomenclature). I think the heavy patrol for that subsector will be 3x F-YDD, the light patrol a few Police cruisers and maybe a WCA.

Y105.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, April 08, 2002 - 01:14 am: Edit

Little comic book modules: I am not familiar with this product format. Details?

By Nick Blank (Nickb) on Monday, April 08, 2002 - 01:27 am: Edit

Those "subsectors" on the F&E map are actually called provinces. At least in general anyway, the Lyrans call them counties for example, and for them specific groups of counties are the duchies.

By Robert Herneson (Herneson) on Monday, April 08, 2002 - 02:52 am: Edit

Steve, I think (and please correct me on this if I'm wrong, CJ) he may have meant D20, not SJG (though SJG handles them).
There have been a set of mini modules called Instant Adventures published by Fantasy Flight Games that are about the size of an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper folded lengthwise. They are maybe 5 sheets (10 pages total) and the cardstock covers and are, as he said, mini-modules.
They retail at about $4 each and have been very popular. If you are interested in finding out more, check http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/products.html .

Robert

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, April 08, 2002 - 04:26 am: Edit

SVC: SJG has been publishing something similar for Traveller; I picked one up titled GLISTEN as it seemed similar to what I plan for LTGG -- it isn't -- it isn't even CLOSE.

The current version of these are 6-5/8 x 10-1/4 inches (I have NO idea why they picked those dimensions). Cover has a glossy exterior and semi-gloss interior, weight similar to CL, printed in color inside and out. 32 greyscale pages inside, 2 staples. $8.95.

It's very pretty, but has little meat on the bones. For a $9 product, I think we can do better. I'm still thinking 64 pages, 8.5x11 for Campaign Setting Modules like LTGG.