# RPG A DAY 2024: Amazing adventure tags: #thoughts #thoughts/RPGaDay/2024 ![[RPGaDAY2024-024x723.jpg]] I have to be honest with you guys. I'm getting more than a little tired of these *RPG A DAY* prompts which are essentially the laziest possible choices. Endless variations of *"Tell me about something cool you did in a game"* are just too much in terms of trying to wring a stone for blood. In this case, it's even reaching for something in the RPG space that I am *actively opposed to*: pre-created scenarios and adventures which are spoon-fed to you by somebody else. I know there's a long history in the genre and in the hobby of running someone else's story, but that's always struck me as one of the worst possible mechanisms and methodologies that have become common. The people who have written scenarios, dungeons, or adventures are generally not the people at your table that you are playing with. They don't know the characters that you will be bringing to the table. They don't know what you guys did last week and they don't know what you're going to be doing in six months in order to accommodate that sort of thing. You have to either choose to do it as a one-shot (which is actually a reasonable choice for most of them so that you have a chunk of individual experiences, all of which are separate and have value in and of themselves), or you have to chop, dice, slice, and reconfigure either your current game or the scenario to fit into the slots you have. I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. So I'm going to talk about something that I *do* like when it comes to "amazing adventure." That's what's good for setting up a one-shot or a short arc if you have a particularly long attention span, which I approve of. You're going to notice some common themes in the ones that I reference, so prepare yourself. --- ![[Fiasco (cover).png|400]] First up: **[[Fiasco]]**, not the second version with the card base system, but the first version with the D6 base system. You can still find an absolute metric ton of those setups for free or extremely low cost. If you can get your hands on them, I suggest you do. [The wikipedia entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(role-playing_game)) has a very good summary of how they all are set forth: > [!info] Fiasco (wikipedia) > Each playset consists of a basic description of the setting and: > > - six groups of six relationships between two characters in the setting > - six groups of six needs to be shared by two of the characters > - six groups of six notable objects > - six groups of six notable locations > > Each group and each element within that group is numbered from one to six. Honestly, the description of play in the Wikipedia article itself is almost clear enough to run the entire game. In the first round, relationships are established from the lists of six options by rolling multiple times In the second round, the tilt happens and new elements are brought into play. Finally, in the third round, most things are resolved, and the tilt sees its effect played out on the relationships between characters. This is complicated by the fact that those relationships can be (and generally are) pretty fucked up in the first place. In effect, what happens when you play **Fiasco** is that you dynamically generate so much of the game, given the initial setup, that the "adventure" emerges from that mesh of probabilities filtered through the characters *you* have chosen and how they are likely to react. If you like Coen Brothers movies, you know *exactly* what I mean. The setups are tilted such that it is *extremely likely* you will have an unhealthy relationship with pretty much everything in your sphere. And thus, as everything plays out, you will be unbelievably lucky, unbelievably unlucky, or get your just comeuppance in one way or another. All of these outcomes are gratifying, making every adventure you have a *great* adventure. **[Alpha Complex](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/mwqg0pfts9k758l7xyq8v/ANDLCCwlo5erYUEFz0OSaP4?e=1&preview=dcj01_alpha_complex.pdf&rlkey=jg33j2x7tsj0he5dgpe5b1uar&dl=0)** is a fine example of a solid setup but [the whole free collection](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/mwqg0pfts9k758l7xyq8v/ANDLCCwlo5erYUEFz0OSaP4?rlkey=jg33j2x7tsj0he5dgpe5b1uar&e=2&dl=0) is awesome. --- ![[Delve (cover).jpg]] Another excellent example of how I think an adventure should be introduced and structured is found in **[[Ironsworn|Ironsworn: Delve]]** in the *site seeds*. Sites effectively exist to provide a framework within which you can seek a particular goal, looking for a piece of gear, finding a way through, etc. Obviously, I have talked about them before, and even [[RPG A DAY 2024 - Evocative environments|walked through an example in this year's RPG A Day]]. I think of them as one of the best examples of integrating mechanics already introduced in the text in a way that makes a subsequent important element tight and means that you can say a lot in only a few things. Let's take a look at a fine example of what might be considered a classic dungeon: ![[Ironsworn Delve - Site Seeds - Redhome Sanctum.png]] Consider what we have here. We know the *rank* of the site, which tells us how long it's going to take us to get to the bottom of it. In this case, very literally. An Extreme site is nothing to sneeze at and will probably take multiple attempts (and failures) to finally complete. We know the *theme* of the site, which gives us part of the environment that we're going to run into. ![[Ironsworn Delve - Theme - Corrupted Underkeep.png]] And we know the *domain* that tells us the sort of physical manifestation of the site. ![[Ironsworn Delve - Domain - Underkeep.png]] As an example of the kinds of places you might find within such an edifice: ![[Redhome Sanctum Area Examples.png]] *(Though I'll admit, I gave the areas names. They seemed naked without one. Thanks, [[Pocketforge]]!)* We've got a list of denizens which are listed in a way that allows us to fill out a probability matrix that we can roll against just to figure out what sort of thing we may have run into. ![[Ironsworn Delve - Denizens Matrix.png]] There's a description, which tells us that we have what is effectively a very classic dungeon setup with a friendly village up top, and a massive structure underneath. There's even a hook given where you as a wandering adventurer might stumble into the ritual that the villagers are enacting that establishes there is something to know, some mystery to fathom here. What it doesn't tell you is *why* you might want to go in there. That's entirely up to you. That's entirely up to the vows your character has and the ones that they make or any other motivations they may possess. This is a very rich setup for allowing you to create your own adventure, to find your own experience within some guidelines set by someone else. They aren't writing it for you, they're just providing a place for you to write your own. The mechanics help you, but they don't make you. This is a beautiful sweet spot as I see it. --- I really felt like I needed to find a good example of a pre-written adventure scenario that I find interesting and flexible enough to really enjoy and be able to see both running and playing. That took a while. My collection of actual scenarios and adventures is surprisingly scant given the size of the library. It's just not a thing I accumulate. I knew after applying some brain sweat to the problem that I was most likely to find a setup that I like literally in the introductory scenarios that GM'd games often lean on. They're not intended to finish your story. They're intended to start your story. As such, they tend to have much more flexible backends, allowing your players and yourself the most leeway for proceeding onward. Once I had it narrowed down that much, I could start digging through games here and there, which I thought had real potential. And eventually I ended up feeling pretty good about my choice. ![[Transit - Advanced Programming (cover).jpg]] **[[Transit - The Spaceship RPG|Transit: Advanced Programming]]**. This is the follow-up expansion book for the core text, which introduces Player Characters that are artificial intelligences embodied in giant space-faring machines. You get more types of AI and new types of ship which you can be embodied in.^[Including my *favorite* ship, the Mobile Station, because I always wanted to be the Sentient Mind of the Death Star.] There's new types of mission that you can go on, but critical to *our* discussion here is that it comes with a very, very good starting mission, which sets up the reasons why you as an AI fleet and your support personnel of people might want to go out into the black and look after your own business. I won't give away anything about the adventure itself at a critical level. But I will point out that there are six escalating missions. Not all of them are combat-focused. You can think of it as a really good tutorial section for your favorite video game and not be too far off. Mission one teaches you how to plan transit jumps, chart routes and do exploration. Missions two and three get you out there, connecting with already extant colonies and maybe some people who won't like you too much. Then four, five, and six escalate the situation with supply and orders from home, ending with you and your fellow intelligences in a rough situation, but with an open future. This is very likely my favorite pre-generated adventure because it does exactly what it's supposed to and gets out of the way. Plus, it's for a game and a setting which are fascinating in and of themselves. And if it's not a game you've picked up, I would encourage you to do so. --- That's about all I can say about amazing adventures, and probably more than I should have. The key to amazing adventures is to go out and have them. Go do things that are meaningful to you as a player. Figuring out what those things are is part of what the system is supposed to help you do. Have fun, enjoy yourself, and invite people to be part of that enjoyment as often as possible. Because [[DragonCon]] is coming up, I have to shift into a brand new mode where I double up on *[[RPG A Day 2024]]* entries. That means writing *two* a day for the next week so that I can be done before I have to be packed and out the door. If you're going to be at the convention, feel free to look me up. I'll be easy to find. Just look for the insane squid in *Disability Services* near registration, or ask around. If you see people with a thousand-yard stare muttering to themselves, obviously psychically disrupted, perhaps raising effigies of deep-sea animals as they stagger around the convention floor, they can tell you where I'm at.