A suggestion: "pieces of scenario"

[Cyril]

Hi everyone,
as I was drinking a glass of this awesome (Talisker) whisky my dad offered me (I have a cool dad) for Christmas, an old idea came back to my mind.

I keep thinking people want a game with "batteries included", i.e. some scenarii to play with the beautiful dungeon pack they just painted. However a good scenario needs a lot of work and a lot of time has to be spent for testing it. I completely understand this is not Pendraken's job and I completely understand lots of people will prefer to build their game "on the fly" instead of spending hours writing and testing their scenario. Yet, I think something can be done to give access to cool scenario without spending too much time thinking and building them.

So here is my suggestion: how about providing a way to gather "pieces of scenario" that could be picked "off-the-shelf" and aggregated by the draken masters to build a full scenario ?
This would be a win-win situation as the pieces would be submitted by anyone and you (the Pendraken guys) would just have to provide something that looks like a "database" the DM could browse at their convenience (at first, this could be limited to a simple forum thread for the proof of concept ).

Each piece of scenario should be kept minimal and "embed" a simple idea. It could be composed of:

A title:
************* The dark corridor ******************
-A- => the dungeon elements involved:
a corridor with 1 entrance point and 1 "exit" door

-B- => the miniatures involved:
4 skeletons (that are going to get reused)

-C- => a global description of what is going to happen:
the heroes are going to be trapped in a corridor magically kept in the dark. The exit door is closed and skeletons are going to appear in the corridor unless the door is destroyed.

-D- => the "specials":
- the door has to be attacked in melee and has 6HP and 6 armor.
- every hit on the door makes skeletons to appear so that there are 4 of them in any free square of the corridor
- the corridor is really dark, giving all skeletons the "stealth ability"
**********************************************

Another one:
************* The undead trap *******************
-A- a big room, one trap door (DN14), a rock slide
-B- 6 skeletons
-C- the trap door is in the center of the room. the rock slide is located 4 squares away from the trap door.
Skeletons are going to "rise" from the trap unless the rocks are pushed onto it.

-D- As soon as the heroes enter the room, D6 skeletons appear next to the trap door.
As soon as all skeletons are destroyed, D6 skeletons appear next to the trap door *unless* the rock slide is pushed on it.
To push the slide, one hero must be adjacent to it and score 5 hits during the melee phase
The hero must be out of any monster's killzone and the "target" square must be free from any miniature
**********************************************

This way, original ideas could be capitalized and reused to quickly build a scenario without too much work. I'm pretty sure there are very brilliant people here and an "open source philosophy" could help building a virtuous circle that could enhance the gaming experience !

Any opinion about this ?

[sixsideddice]

I`ll sit back on this one and see what others say... simply because I have an unusual approach to creating my own scenarios which I don`t think I could easily share with others.

First of all, you see, I use a (fantasy modified) random card system from a set of generic solo rules I wrote a few years back, called IN-RADIC.

http://tabletoptitans.com/rules/0003.php

This sets the `tone’ for my scenario. I then put together a storyline revolving around the cards and their meaning. I always write these into short stories, which leads UP TO the game itself. At this stage I play the games move by move, adding to the story as I go, to create (what usually works out in my games as) a 20 to 50 page batrep.

I haven`t actually played a straight game (without a written story or batrep - or both combined) for years now. As a result, over the years I`ve probably got about 500+ batreps written up and stored on my external hard drive.... several thousand pages worth. I know I`m mad, but this is where I get my greatest gaming pleasures from doing, and it’s great to re-read the games all saved for posterity, at my leisure.

Six