Post by castiglione on Nov 29, 2009 0:55:36 GMT -6
I realized something recently.
The structure of play in many old-school campaigns runs something like this:
1) You wander around, trying to find treasure, etc.
2) Wandering monsters occasionally find you.
The wandering monsters helped to keep adventures from bogging down. They propelled the game forward. Lost in a maze? Sooner or later, you'd run into wandering monsters and the smart PC's would take at least one monster captive and get him to tell them how to get out of the maze (or if the monsters run - FOLLOW THEM OUT OF THE MAZE).
No wonder people played this way for ages and why it was so easy to run compared to say, running something more story or mission oriented.
When gaming moved away from the whole wandering around in a dungeon paradigm, some people were sort of stuck as to what to do. You can't wander around in dungeon in, say, a noir detective game or an espionage game. But rail-roading is really unsatisfactory from the point-of view of playing a game.
So how do you keep the game going if things bog down?
Wandering monsters. Or at least "random events" (since that's what wandering monsters were...random events which served to propel the game forward).
Players finding it hard to find those clues you left for them to find in that noir detective adventure? Well, sooner or later, a random event is going to happen.
1) That guy they interrogated (but totally failed to intimidate into spilling the beans) turns up dead (and possibly with a clue in his pockets).
2) One of the lower level criminals involved in whatever caper the characters are investigating gets nervous and decides to take a shot at them.
3) A drunken hobo wanders into the office of the detective agency that the characters belong to, claiming to have seen the whole thing...but his memory is kinda hazy...say, can you buy me a drink, mac?
4) And so on.
In a "dungeon-less" adventure, the "wandering monster" paradigm can be used to prevent the game from bogging down, either by inserting new clues into the mix (in case the characters got flumoxed by the clues that were already out there), or by inserting a sense of urgency into the proceedings or just adding a twist to what is currently going on.
You have wandering monsters to prevent adventurers from just saying, "Oh yeah, we rest here and regain our hit points and re-read our spell books" which can get kind of boring. But those wandering monsters are just a metaphor for whatever you throw into the mix to keep the game going and keep it from getting boring.
The same thing goes for the "random rumors" table that often came with those earlier D&D adventures. You could work those into any sort of adventure. Basically, they "seed" the game with what the characters know (or think they know).
The structure of play in many old-school campaigns runs something like this:
1) You wander around, trying to find treasure, etc.
2) Wandering monsters occasionally find you.
The wandering monsters helped to keep adventures from bogging down. They propelled the game forward. Lost in a maze? Sooner or later, you'd run into wandering monsters and the smart PC's would take at least one monster captive and get him to tell them how to get out of the maze (or if the monsters run - FOLLOW THEM OUT OF THE MAZE).
No wonder people played this way for ages and why it was so easy to run compared to say, running something more story or mission oriented.
When gaming moved away from the whole wandering around in a dungeon paradigm, some people were sort of stuck as to what to do. You can't wander around in dungeon in, say, a noir detective game or an espionage game. But rail-roading is really unsatisfactory from the point-of view of playing a game.
So how do you keep the game going if things bog down?
Wandering monsters. Or at least "random events" (since that's what wandering monsters were...random events which served to propel the game forward).
Players finding it hard to find those clues you left for them to find in that noir detective adventure? Well, sooner or later, a random event is going to happen.
1) That guy they interrogated (but totally failed to intimidate into spilling the beans) turns up dead (and possibly with a clue in his pockets).
2) One of the lower level criminals involved in whatever caper the characters are investigating gets nervous and decides to take a shot at them.
3) A drunken hobo wanders into the office of the detective agency that the characters belong to, claiming to have seen the whole thing...but his memory is kinda hazy...say, can you buy me a drink, mac?
4) And so on.
In a "dungeon-less" adventure, the "wandering monster" paradigm can be used to prevent the game from bogging down, either by inserting new clues into the mix (in case the characters got flumoxed by the clues that were already out there), or by inserting a sense of urgency into the proceedings or just adding a twist to what is currently going on.
You have wandering monsters to prevent adventurers from just saying, "Oh yeah, we rest here and regain our hit points and re-read our spell books" which can get kind of boring. But those wandering monsters are just a metaphor for whatever you throw into the mix to keep the game going and keep it from getting boring.
The same thing goes for the "random rumors" table that often came with those earlier D&D adventures. You could work those into any sort of adventure. Basically, they "seed" the game with what the characters know (or think they know).
