The Use of Adventure Sites

​  Right then, as previously hyped, we’re going to begin a contest for writing up adventure sites. Some explanation for what an adventure site is, anyway, wouldn’t do amiss. I’ll follow up with review standards in a post later this week, at least for my own judging.
  Almost every campaign that lasts longer than half a dozen sessions (and many that are shorter) can benefit from seeding adventure sites around the map: small areas discoverable by navigation, rumor-mongering, or luck that have a discrete geography to explore, containing a roughly session-sized amount of gameplay content that offers both extrinsic rewards (gold, items, allies, etc) as well as intrinsic rewards (a story, hooks that lead elsewhere, “man, that was a fun session of D&D last night”). In the olden days of Dungeon Magazine, this was the assumed use case for practically all the adventures published…supporting a picaresque of the PCs wandering from adventure to adventure, their only continuity being whatever is come up with by the table group themselves. That sounds dismissive, but in fact these are wonderful campaigns, often the very best.
  The best and most free campaigns are the ones that start in a simple village with a dungeon next door placed on a big ol’ hexmap, maybe even Outdoor Survival’s map if you’re feeling nostalgic. Contours of the terrain and the whimsy of the DM will determine political borders, where cities and towns show up, and which of the millions of random encounter tables get used when the players feel like going out for a bumble. Whip out your best Larry Elmore paintings and go forth, young man. While this style of campaign will find a plot inevitably, though, there’s a real need for texture to the world, strange and interesting places that, when stumbled upon, lend themselves to an episode of adventure slightly disconnected from the clash of kingdoms or the machinations of a dark lord. Ergo, the need for adventure sites, ideal to be placed down on the hexmap or in the cities and towns.
  An adventure site is, first of all, a site. While traditionally a hole in the ground filled with some manner of hobbit-eating monstrous humanoids, it can also be a tower, a ruin, a sewer nexus, a shipwreck, a tree village, an inn…the form can vary, but the form does have to matter, the site needs to have elements of exploration and searching, choices of navigation. The second, but equally vital, aspect of an adventure site is that it’s an adventure. Anchored within the geography of the site there’s got to be something adventurous going on, be it plundering a tomb, rooting out kobolds, rescuing prisoners, stealing valuables, acquiring knowledge…if a fun and engaging challenge for 2-6 armed societal outcasts isn’t imaginable in the area, what’s the point?  
  What is a good example of the kind of adventure site I’m talking about? I’ll tarnish my credentials with both the OSR and the Pathfinder communities and say that one of the best examples is Cragmaw Hideout, from the 5E introductory adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver. Ignore the lame railroad of an introduction, and the MMORPG-quest style adventure that follows…Cragmaw Hideout is a lovely little goblin cave complex entered via stream, with water features (including a great naturalistic trap), incredibly looping geometry leading to real exploratory options, interesting foe variation in the form of worgs and a bugbear boss, a prisoner to rescue, and even a mild rivalry aspect between the bugbear in charge and his Starscream. Is it the pinnacle of dungeon design? Hardly. But Cragmaw Hideout manages to hit a lot of marks despite its teeny tiny size, all the more impressive when considering where it comes from. I would gladly place Cragmaw Hideout in any of my campaigns were it not the single most played and podcasted piece of TTRPG content in all of history.
  There’s a dark three-word phrase that probably should be addressed…”Five-Room Dungeon”. Some of you may well be familiar with the strict formula, it’s a dungeon/tower/artistic dreamscape that puts out the following sequence:

1. Entrance and Guardian
2. Puzzle/Roleplaying Challenge
3. Trick or Setback
4. Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict
5. Reward, Revelation, or Twist

This, frankly, is railroading rubbish. While the formula does understand what makes sense as a satisfying TTRPG narrative, and it might generate an experience, what this does not do is enable gameplay. Having a set of scenes planned out in sequence is antithetical to the actual act of playing a game, which is all about resolving situations through choices. There’s nothing wrong with the scope or scale of the 5-roomer, but the smaller the dungeon is, the more effort needs to be spent on ensuring interesting choices are available to the players. There’s also nothing wrong with that ratio of fighting/traps/talking, either…but making it into a strict formula sucks.
  Although I’ve been mostly talking about adventure sites to be seeded in wild lands of high fantasy, there’s also a real value in smuggler’s dens, sewers, jails, and hideouts to be seeded in cities belonging to some kind of invincible overlord. I hope to see variety in the submissions, both wild and urban sites and in between.
  Just remember, adventure sites need to be sites full of adventure.

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