TL;DR The following essay aims to discuss trends and similarities in the few and far between examples of adventures for story games that do exist, mainly PbtA, as well as the role of prep in story games.

Introduction

This second essay is meant to be a follow-up to my previous one [1], as a jumping-off point of discussion about specific good techniques to design adventures for the poorly-explored cultures of play.

There are many points of contention between Story/Indie and OSR cultures (as discussed by Retired Adventurer [2]), but they have as many commonalities once we go under the hood. The key thing that ties them together is "emergent storytelling", as discussed by Ben L. [3] and often advocated as "play to find out" in story game circles. In the context of story gamers, the inherent problem of GM-led plot-based storytelling is that players are seen as if they were present only as props, and this imposed narrative is seen as counterproductive to the ideal game they aspire to.

What they are after is improvisational, collaborative, storytelling experiences, where players and GMs can explore fiction together, creating interesting stories in a certain genre by throwing characters into provocative situations so as to see what happens.

The Myth of Prep-less

Knowing that a shared improvisational experience is considered to be one of the key tenets of play for story gamers, it's not a surprise that games did shift away from plot-based prep that was assumed to be intrinsic with the experience of TTRPGs (and very little took its place because plot-based prep is what most trad GMs were used to), and consequently adventure modules are a little-explored avenue of game design.

Notice that the "no-prep" misnomer has led to a swath of misconceptions about the story genre (like here [4]), wherein reality most of the times GMs or facilitators are asked to prep something by the rules of their games but, more often than not, using pre-planned material is still somewhat frowned upon. Even Jason Cordova [5], the author of Brindlewood Bay, uses a prep technique known as 7-3-1.

Now, if many story games ask for GMs to prep something, what are they asking for? As eloquently explained by Paul Beakley [6], prep for story games is a multifaceted beast:

• Prepped versus un-prepped improv. The effect of constraints on creativity has been discussed at length [7], but the "Blank Page Effect" is the main reason why it's easier to make up a character for a playbook-based story game than it is for a generic open-ended game like Fate.
  • In this sense, some amount of prep acts as a constraint to reduce the blank page effect and as a prompt to help the GM (and even more inexperienced story GMs!) to lead and facilitate the improvisational experience of the whole group.
• Not obstacles, but situations. Situations are unresolved points of tension or, in other terms, they are problems; once one resolves, it generates new situations that continuously generate new play. Now, it's fine for Story GMs to set up and pre-plan problems, as soon as they don't plan for outcomes, solutions, or story threads.
  • Clear examples of "situation prep" come from game-specific GM-facing mechanics, such as Apocalypse World's Threats, Dungeon World's Fronts, R-maps from multiple games...
• Setting elements (like places and NPCs) are fine. Just don’t go any further than that. Leave plenty of blanks and be an earnest active participant in the game and be eager towards playing to find out what happens next.
  • Clear examples of pre-made setting elements come from embedded settings in some recent games, such as the whole Doskvol's setting from Blades in the Dark or Islands from Agon, both from John Harper.

Dungeon Starters and Loaded Questions

The discussion about "what adventures are" in this sub recently landed thanks to u/Barroombard into something that looks more or less like:

An Adventure is a collection of connected fictional elements that prompt action and are resolved by the intervention of the players.

And this will be my yardstick to evaluate adventures and this fits what dungeon starters are to a tee.

There are very few PbtA-like games that do have explicit adventures and I don't think it's a coincidence that Dungeon World, which is inspired by D&D (with a long history of adventure modules) it's one of those. Marshall Miller [8] did coin the term Dungeon Starter and did compare them with a form of prep made out of a loosely connected cloud of blanks and hooks to make sure the players don’t catch the GM with anything interesting to say. Sometimes they come with game-specific elements, such as monsters, fronts, or custom moves to tie the narrative to the mechanics of the game.

An expert on the subject of dungeon/adventure starters is Jeremy Strandberg [9] (or u/J_Strandberg), author of Homebrew World and co-author of Stonetop.

In Homebrew World, the setup for the one-shot is more structured than it is in regular Dungeon World. This means that, before character creation, the players work together to discuss and establish their Premise, in order for them to make informed choices about character creation.

Then, once players have created their characters it's with Hook questions that characters are tied to the one-shot. The art of asking leading questions during character creation [10][11], especially if they are loaded to assert things meant to be true in the adventure, is what bridges pre-made content and shared storytelling experiences. Key principles about hook questions are:

1. Address the characters, not the players
2. Assert at least as much as you ask
3. Assert things that need to be true
4. Ask for meaningful contribution
5. Be specific, but not too specific
6. Get personal

Magpie Games' Adventures and Playsets

More recently, Magpie Games dabbled with adventures in a couple of intriguing ways worth mentioning to discuss the state-of-the-art applications out there.

First, the Avatar Legends RPG was funded on kickstarter and among the rewards they planned for a cycle of entry-level adventure booklets, possibly because the game was aimed at a big player base not necessarily familiar to PbtA story games. In the quickstart of the game, it's included a fully functional adventure with an in media res hook (the PCs are stuck in jail at the Fire Capital for a botched heist, when a turncoat Fire Sage shows up offering them the scroll they were trying to steal), and then an adventure location with a loose map, a handful of factions & NPCs, and a timeline of likely escalations as the characters try to escape the city. Then it’s up to the players and the GM to find out what happens.

Second, in Unbound: A Mask Supplement there are official "playsets" for the game that majorly change the assumptions of the setting by making it be more focused. So in Iron Red Soldiers, for example, the PCs are the resistance to an alien occupation that has already captured the adult heroes. A juicy set-up, rife for exploration in play. But there’s no built-in “adventure” or “dungeon” or anything like that.

To put it into perspective, "starters" act like traditional adventures, while "playsets" act like traditional settings/campaigns. I don't doubt that the two could be integrated into each other to make a "full campaign" for existing popular story games.

Dos and Don'ts

This is such an untapped avenue of design that I think there is still a lot that could be said about the dos and don'ts of story's adventure design.

We discussed setting up situations, planning for NPCs, factions, and locations with pre-made blanks in it, discussing the premise before character creation, using leading questions before play, and using timeline escalations and game-specific custom-moves during play (which I think could be used to mechanize fictional/reproducible elements). This isn’t so different from "adventure location" style OSR modules, like the often-discussed A Pound of Flesh for Mothership, which also has a location, NPCs, and a series of escalating events that the players can interact with, as they so choose, even if I think the story games ones should pay closer attention to premises and question hooks, as well as leaning into the adventure's blanks.

On the other hand, as discussed at length [12], designing modules for story games can prove quite difficult or impossible, especially if considering difficulties, obstacles, node-based scenario design, event-based flowcharts... but I'd love to hear from you as well!

Bibliography

• [1] Jaquaying the Plot
• [2] Six Cultures of Play
• [3] Pleasures of OSR: Emergent Story and Open World

Both story and OSR gamers find this dreadful. They both reject it using the same form of words. When I first read Vincent and Meguey Baker in Apocalypse World saying, "We play to see what happens," I recognized immediately a formulation that everyone in the OSR would enthusiastically affirm.

• [4] Trying to understand what PbtA games mean by "no-prep"

What PbtA games really care about is that when you do your Prep, you are Preparing Problems, but never the Solutions, Plots, or Outcomes. That is the crux of the common GM Agenda of “Play to Find Out.” [...] So by all means: prep towns, locations, NPCs, problems, and more. Just don’t go any further than that. Leave plenty of blanks and be an earnest active participant in the game and be eager towards playing to find out what happens next.

• [5] The 7-3-1 Technique

7-3-1 is… an exercise. I’m hesitant to call it “session prep,” because the point isn’t necessarily to end up with a bunch of notes I can use during the game. Rather, the point of 7-3-1 is to help interrogate my setting so I understand it at an intuitive level.

• [6] Prep 2.0

But what if I told you that, rather than prepping to avoid having to improvise, you can prep specifically for improvisation?

• [7] The Blank Page: Effects of Constraint on Creativity
• [8] Dungeon Starters
• [9] Dungeon Starters advice
• [10] Guide to Leading Questions
• [11] My recipe for starting adventures

Establish a premise for the adventure with your group before they make characters.  That means you should bring something with you, or a choice of somethings. You should show up with a premise in mind, or a way to come up with one, plus whatever additional prep you feel will be helpful (more on that later). 

• [12] Modules PBTA

There is a tangle of issues that I am personally grappling lately, re: PbtA. For example, there is a notion that writing modules for Powered by the Apocalypse games can be difficult. Is this true, and if so, why?