Defining Adventure

This is the first post in the line of my writeups from Reddit transitioning to Mound.

This post is based on these two posts: [1] and [2]

Since the two were connected, with the second being an update to the first I think it doesn’t make sense to preserve them both, in the original form. Use the links above if you care to see the original! Some things were also rephrased for clarity, and typos fixed up. Specifically, I removed the 2 types of Hooks from the definitions – some parts involving them didn’t even make sense on the reread.

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Intent

The intent of this post is to try defining what is a TTRPG Adventure, so this definition can be used when assessing the Adventure Design and it’s techniques later on.

This post is a starting point, not a prescription. I can easily see this definition changing over time as I interrogate it further. Still, we have to start somewhere.

First I will provide the definitions I came up with, and then I shall elaborate on my reasoning.

Definition

A TTRPG Adventure is a set of TTRPG situations that are connected through Hooks.

A TTRPG situation is a set of connected fictional elements that can be reasonably isolated from the rest of the fictional reality.

Hooks are fictional reasons for the players to engage with the TTRPG situations.

A TTRPG situation can contain multiple TTRPG situations within itself.

Explanation

I wanted a definition that accounts for a variety of pre-made ready-to-go TTRPG content. This, I think, should include all the range between Linear and Sandboxy adventures.

Linear adventures are defined by, well, their linearity: from situation A follows B, then C. The more they deviate from this form, the more Sandboxy they become.

Sandbox adventures notably defy linear structures. An absolute Sandbox is effectively a setting with situations A, B and C located somewhere within it. Writing this down I noticed that while, yes, there is no linear structure, there still is a structure – their shared setting. If a Sandbox lacked that connective tissue, the hypothetical book containing them would just be a collection of scenarios.

Which is how we arrive at my current definition: Adventure = some situations + connective tissue between them.

This definition also gives us this: a single classical dungeon is an Adventure, where individual rooms are situations (enemies, puzzles, traps) connected to each other through dungeon corridors. It also should be able to accustom all the Adventures I’ve seen thus far.

Of course, this is still kicking the can down the road. What are these “TTRPG Situations”? Originally I planned to call it a “conflict” instead, but my hand hesitated here, I felt unsure. It seemed potentially too narrow, in the sense that while I couldn’t find an immediate issue with this term, I felt like I might be too eager to jump on it. Another version called is “a scene”, but I found myself dissatisfied with it, too, as this felt too vague, yet was specifically and is associated with non-game-like media operating within very different confines. Then I arrived at scenario, but after some discussion settled in on a more generic “situation”.

Current definition introduces the concept of ‘reasonably isolated’, which is a very non-specific turn of words! This one is by design.

See, initially, I noticed a thing – say, there is a very classy adventure, and at some point of it there is a dungeon. Now, dungeon might very well have connections with the rest of the adventure, but it’s a very isolated part, a part that, when engaged by the Players, is mostly self-contained. So we have a situation of the Adventure scale (goblins are raiding the village to further the agenda of an Evil Wizard!) and we have a smaller situation (goblin cave dungeon). My initial thought was “well, let’s go further and find the smallest grain to find some lower level definitions!”. So, I took a classy dungeon and tried to to deconstruct it.

I chose the very first Goblin Lair from The Lost Mines of Phandelver as my subject. Initially I thought I’ll dig into it, I’ll separate it room by room and describe each room as a situation with it’s own Hooks. The problem is this didn’t work out. Now, on the surface level, it’s not like it was impossible – in room X there are wolves, they are barking if they see PCs, so there is a Hook demanding to stop them, etc… But something inside of me looked at the notes I started making and said “No, this isn’t right. What you are writing right now is a lie. That’s not how any of this works!“

The thing I had to confront is that Adventures are not like Doom levels. In Doom, all the ways a Player can interact with the level is predetermined, but that is un-so in TTRPGs. One could say that one of the most important features of TTRPGs is that you can do (or at least try to do) any thing as long as it makes sense to do. And this screws with my attempts to dissect the Adventure design. See, in that dungeon, Players also can try to talk things out with a goblin, give that goblin previously pacified wolves and help her lead an anti-bugbear revolt. These situations are affecting each other! But this event cannot exist at the scale where we treat rooms as separate situations! And we can’t even limit these to smaller sets of rooms, as we can’t know everything that players might come up with: even a small empty room might end up a tactically sound last stand for the Players, a wardrobe can be used to block the entrance, etc.

So, I look at my notes and I say “I can’t just write down all the potentially meaningful links between the rooms, not in good faith, at least. Also, these are not disparate rooms – this is one whole dungeon, the goblins from room 1 are subservient to Bugbear from room 8, and none are actually locked in to stay in these rooms“. And, to me, it follows – there isn’t the smallest grain from which ‘situations’ are made of, there is just a smallest ‘reasonably isolated’ situation. Which lays in the eye of the beholder, of course, and I am afraid there isn’t a way to clarify that further! Not that I know of now, at least. But I can’t say I am particularly dissatisfied with this answer either – it seems practical enough, and sometimes things like these will have to do.

Hooks are a very important part of the equation – they are the connective tissues between different situations and the players. If we are to try and simplify an adventure, we’d have a single situation… and also some connective tissue that binds it to the players. This can range widely from a very specific call to action (“Orcs attack!”) to a very vague connection through the setting (“Cool Thing exists somewhere in This Region“), but it can’t be nothing. They are also very important as they can be used proactively by the adventure’s design.

Now, as for a situation containing multiple situations – I think this one is largely self evident. We already see this in the previous example where dungeon exists within a bigger adventure. A clearer case would be a Sandbox Adventure, where the larger ‘situation’ is effectively a setting that just happens to contain an array of various situations.

Conclusive Words

I am way more satisfied with the definitions this time. Of course, no doubt we’ll have to examine these terms again! O comment-writer who passes by, what do you think of them? Know any adventures that won’t fit with these definitions? Or, perhaps, you’d like to add something else to this list?