A Free Proactive Adventure
Hey everyone! @Jonah Fishel and I have been working on a new style for TTRPG adventures, and the first test of this method is now available in the classroom tab! These are meant to facilitate proactive play and emergent narrative. At the same time, we're working on making resources that both make this style of play easy to introduce to players, or are easy to bring to your friendly local gaming store and set up a new group. When we released the Game Master's Handbook of Proactive Roleplaying, we weren't quite satisfied with the adventure provided in the back of the book. We'd been scratching our heads on how to combine a prewritten adventure with the player-driven narratives of proactive play; they seemed to be at complete odds with one another. After lots of discussion and failed drafts, we're very happy with the result, and we think the core of what makes an adventure useful is preserved in this type of module, alongside the freedom to tell stories with friends around the table. We're almost done with a Proactive Adventure Manifesto that explains the details of this format and why we think it's an improvement on the industry standard, but for now, we can offer a quick explanation. These adventures are built around encounters as the fundamental unit of play, and those adventures or organized and altered by player goals. We've tried to reduce lengthy prose and make it as easy as possible for GMs to run these at the table with minimal prep, while keeping enough information to minimize prep and put newer GMs at ease. We also threw in some small changes we find useful: color coded highlighting, mechanically interesting monsters, stat blocks placed in the encounter where they are used, etc. Down the line, we'll be adding premade character sheets and pools of goals to choose from for groups in an extra hurry, and a compendium of stats (right now they're all only found in the encounters where they appear), but for now we want to get the basic adventure design down. We'll also be creating more game aids like printable paper miniatures, a map of the area (as opposed to battlemaps), a video walkthrough on how to use the packet, and possibly some art. For now, please check out the packet, and let us know what you think! We'll be making it available outside of the lab eventually, but in the meantime, you're welcome to run it, show it to whoever you like, and otherwise use it as you will. I'll post a feedback form on here in a few days, but feel free to discuss it in this post and chat with your fellow gamemasters.