Adventure Design, Then and Now

I remember when adventure design was creating a dungeon map and stocking it. You didn't really need a reason to go down there, playing AD&D was like a game of Diablo where you smashed the monsters and grabbed the loot.

There was a point soon after where adventures became stories. Railroading became a common complaint as player freedom was removed for the grandeur of the adventure writer's brilliance. It's a great story, but a lousy dungeon. We needed reasons to go places, we needed to develop stories for tabletop gaming, and smashing monsters and taking loot was seen as a lesser form of play.

It's just hack and slash!

Point taken, but some people play the game for exactly that. We don't need to call why they enjoy things as a lesser form of play, or design games to discourage it.

So we get closer to today, and we went through a phase of "storytelling games" like Vampire the Gathering and others which engineered the experience for playing stories than playing dungeons. In a sense, these were purer expressions of the story-telling ideal, and they worked very well for that purpose.

And then in the 2000's, the "games to be all games" appeared with D&D 3 and others. You can actually trace this sort of "system game" back to GURPS and Champions, the original "big box" games, but d20 and its spawns tried to be everything to everybody, just like World of Warcraft and other all-inclusive fantasy experiences are today.

Adventures could be stories! Adventures could be dungeons! Adventures could be flowcharts, randomly created things, relationship maps, or any other construction.

It worked, and it still works with Pathfinder and other games, but we do see some "experience engineering" coming back into fashion with D&D 5. With the new D&D, we start with an assumption of "it's about the story" again, and map play and hack-and-slash feel like they are being pushed away.

For storytelling gamers, this is great, finally a version of D&D that appeals to our inner storyteller! For D&D 4 players, the battle-chess hack-and-slash game is gone, and feels like they are left by the wayside. Of course, D&D 4 can still be played, and Pathfinder has a strong map-based system, so there are things still left to play.

Two things. It's hard to be everything to everybody. It's true even in the 'real world' of work and life. Another thing, if feels like we are caught between this endless cycle of hack-and-slash versus storytelling again and again. Is it seen that hack-and-slash players prefer computer gaming to tabletop? Is it seen that tabletop players are more interested in stories?

The times dictate the games we play. But you do have a choice in your preferences, and the types of games that appeal to you. It is always hard to cut through the "dessert topping as a floor wax" style of marketing today that tries to paint something as everything to everybody, so you have to be informed and most importantly, comfortable in your own decisions and feelings about what you like to play.