Adventure ideas as TV guide write-ups

Saturday, October 31st, 2009 | Nick, RPG, TV, games

Superstar RPG designer Robin Laws has made a pretty awesome suggestion on his blog on the concept of ‘player generated premises’. Basically the idea is that players give a short ‘tv guide’ style suggestion for next weeks adventure. Each session a different player takes a turn to suggest one:

  • El-Haumarzeid unwittingly becomes the centre of a new religious movement.
  • Lacklow learns that not every problem can be solved with a swift thrust of a blade to the eye when a thiefmaster’s convocation is held in a mysterious temple where violence is impossible.
  • A normal mission suddenly gains deadly stakes when Lacklow learns that one of his missing family members may be involved.  Are they a hostage? Slaves?  Or something more sinister?
  • Saltiamara discovers a little more about the potential destiny of the orc child she adopted.
  • The local mafia tries to convince Shoryu, in his role as a pit fighter trainer, to help set up a bunch of games.

All the above are from Robin’s post – I particularly like the first of the Lucklow ideas.

The main problems I see with this are a) the issues around weaving these into a single campaign and more importantly b) the players who will do the most with this aren’t the the players who need the most help.

Players who can come up with snappy ideas about the direction of the game and their characters don’t need tricks to get them into the campaign. It’s those players who do need the help (in my experience the friend of a player who has never played before) who will never come up with quick ideas like these. Still it’s a cool way to help take the load off the GM as well…

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4 Comments to Adventure ideas as TV guide write-ups

Greyhawk Grognard
October 31, 2009

A few classic modules:

“The party takes on the Fire Giant King Snurre Ironbelly, but finds a shady cabal behind the throne.”

“Conspiracies abound in a sleepy village that was near the center of an evil cult decades before.”

“An influx of odd creatures spark an investigation of a local mountain range. Hilarity ensues.”

Nick
November 4, 2009

I’m not too across the old modules but I’m guessing:
a) Against the Giants (which ever the Fire Giant one is)
b) Temple of Elemental Evil
c) Expedition to the Barrier Peaks?

alasdair sinclair
November 8, 2009

I tried this almost exactly with a sliders-type RPG a few years ago. I had a lot of difficulty getting players to write the blurbs, and even when I did, they had either no idea how the blurb would translate into a game or way too specific an idea how the blurb would translate.

Nick
November 8, 2009

I think you’d need the right party dynamic. And I’d be worried that some players would be great and others not so great.

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