System Free Scenarios and Settings: Curse or Cure?

[nedjer]

Everyone wants scenarios and settings with a perfect fit to their game of choice. Anything else means adjusting stat blocks, taking account of spells, items and classes that appear in one game and not another . . .

At the same time this immediately cuts the audience for even the best scenarios, e.g. even going from a 4e scenario to a Pathfinder scenario involves some translation (or duplication).

To reduce the waste it maybe makes sense to set aside some doubts and ask, 'what's the best way to go multi-system or system free with scenarios and settings?'

 

[ExploderWizard]

There is no product to make everyone happly all of the time.

GM's who buy product largely for the ready to play crunch really need thier preferred system stats included to make the purchase worthwhile. GM's who buy product for the flavor details won't want to buy a book full of stats for a system they don't play.

I really like the Citybook series from Flying Buffalo. The crunch notes provided enough information to stat out an npc in several different systems. I have use parts of these books for various editions of D&D as well as GURPS.

If you are looking for models of good system free products then check those out.

 

[Janx]

If you had an adventure that didn't have any game stats (system free), a DM could not use it without filling in all the blanks for the encounters.

An adventure usually sells itself as "being usable right away". Even though we know as experienced DMs, that they always require study, and shoe-horning to fit our campaign, a product that says "you must do a bunch of work before you can even begin to use this" would not sell as well.

Its possible to do system-free settings or mini-settings, because those can be fairly free of crunch, as they talk about NPCs, places, and cultures.

 

[jdrakeh]

The best adventure scenario I've ever read/run was a non-system-specific freebie. OTOH, it's nice to have adventures playable "out of the box" (i.e., adventures that I don't have to create my own stats for as a GM).

 

[ExploderWizard]

The best adventure scenario I've ever read/run was a non-system-specific freebie.

Well, are you going to share with the rest of the class?

 

[jdrakeh]

Well, are you going to share with the rest of the class?

It's called Winter's Cold Heart and is written by Jason Patterson. It involves a group of adventurers trapped at a snowed in roadhouse during a blizzard with a wendigo stalking the patrons. The adventure itself has a nice non-traditional (read "not boring") spin on the wendigo as a monster, optional sub-plots, and very three-dimensional NPCs. There are two iterations of it out there on the web. The newer one has better layout and such, though I like the older one better in terms of authorial voice.

 

[S'mon]

I like semi-free resources which bear in mind the primary systems they'll be intended for, and give minimal stats like "Cleric 8" or "Soldier 12". A good example is Points of Light I & II from Rob Conley/Goodman Games.

I tend to do a lot of converting myself, eg my current 3.5 D&D campaign uses modules written for BX/BECMI D&D and C&C; while my 4e D&D campaign is centred on an adventure written for 3.5 D&D. So minimal stats is not a problem, but I like having something to riff off. I find that truely generic stuff tends towards blandness.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

What's a systemless adventure other than an adventure every GM has to stat himself? You'll essentially take away the convenience of a prepared adventure from the GM's who'd otherwise have it.

Back in the eighties several small scale publishers from Germany tried their hand at using some sort of meta-system, giving star ratings to some aspects of monsters and NPCs. A town guard was something like:

Melee: ***, Ranged: *, Defense: **, Hits: **, Social: *, Influence: **

You could go on and either pick a creature from your system's roster or cook up your own.

This experiment was a short-lived one.

 

[jdrakeh]

Back in the eighties several small scale publishers from Germany tried their hand at using some sort of meta-system, giving star ratings to some aspects of monsters and NPCs. A town guard was something like:

Melee: ***, Ranged: *, Defense: **, Hits: **, Social: *, Influence: **

You could go on and either pick a creature from your system's roster or cook up your own.

This experiment was a short-lived one.

Somebody tried something like this stateside back in the 90s. The concept was pitched in a gaming magazine, but damned if I can remember which one. Anyhow, what was presented was essentially a kind of 'meta-system' that was supposed to facilitate the easy conversion of an adventure for any one given system to any other given system. I think, in many ways, it foreshadowed things to come (although I only read about the system in question once, after which I never saw anything about it again).

 

[jasonbostwick]

I'd love systemless adventures - it is pretty much how I use my adventures anyway.

I don't think I've run an adventure 'by the books' stats-wise in my entire DMing career. At the end of my 3E run when I did Ptolus my system was so house-ruled that I re-did lots of the big encounters.
When we played through some of the 4E modules last year (H1, P1, Last Breaths of Ashenportfrom Dungeon 156) I was running a small 2 man group so I had to tone down all the fights.
Right now I'm running a 4E game using the old 3.5 Eberron "adventure path" (Shadows of the Last war and so on) and having a blast.


I'm currently planning a sandbox, West Marches style campaign and will need a lot of small adventure sites and lairs to scatter around the area. A bunch of small, systemless dungeons would do most of my prep for me and let me add monsters to tailor the threat level to the area.