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Problem #3: Creating the Iconic Adventure
149 Plays13 days ago
In this episode, Kristian and Tracy tackle one of the trickiest questions the designer of a new setting must answer: What do the PCs DO? Establishing what the "iconic adventure" is for your setting informs almost every choice you make in the world's development, and it can mean the difference between a game people are inspired to pick up and play and one that just sits on the shelf. Come join us to explore exactly why this is such a critical (and difficult) question.
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Transcript
Introduction to RPG Development
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Designing Problems, the RPG podcast in which we explore RPG development and all the intentional and unintentional problems we create along the way. I'm Christian Serrano. And I'm Tracy Sizemore. We're your hosts for this wondrous
Creating Iconic Adventures in RPGs
00:00:18
Speaker
catastrophe. And this week we're going to talk about problem number three, creating the iconic adventure.
Developing and Adapting RPG Settings
00:00:43
Speaker
So what are we talking about here, Tracy, when we say creating the iconic adventure? what What is this about? Well, let's say you're thinking about creating your own setting. Right.
00:00:55
Speaker
or adapting some sort of existing property like, you know, Savage Eberron, for example, or or trying to do an adventure for Rise and Zero Dawn, for example, or Harry Potter, or something Star Wars-esque, or Dune, or anything like that. But really, when you're trying to create, we're going where I think we're going to concentrate. We'll we'll mention the adapting thing. But I think we're going to concentrate on on creating your own setting, right? When you're trying to create something from nothing,
00:01:24
Speaker
And whatever your motivation is and and whatever you're trying to do, that it all boils down to what do the PCs do in that setting?
Exploring D&D Gameplay Fundamentals
00:01:36
Speaker
Like what is their primary thing that they do? In a Dungeons and Dragons dungeon crawl, the thing that they do is go down into the dungeon and they kill monsters and they come out with some gold.
00:01:46
Speaker
right Like that's the most basic thing you're going to do. Like you're going to have some stuff, maybe some puzzles, maybe some stuff along the way. Maybe you'll meet somebody you're not going to kill down there. But but but for the most part, you're going to be adventuring, going into a dungeon with your weapons ready to go with your 10 foot poles and your door spikes and all that other stuff. And you're going to be exploring the dungeon, killing monsters and getting gold.
00:02:14
Speaker
right right That's what partly what makes D and&D so accessible. It makes it so ubiquitous because everybody knows what you're going to be doing when you play a D and&D adventure. Right. You're going to create this archetype character for D and&D, right? The thief, the cleric, the you know fighter, the wizard. The bard. The bard. You're going to go through this dungeon. You're going to fight some dragons and you're going to kill them and take their stuff.
00:02:44
Speaker
Yes. I mean, you know, that that's the basics. There's subtlety there. But there's yeah, and there's a lot more obviously exploration. well And we'll get into this with regards to the settings and, you know, things like that. Like, because D and&D isn't just one one setting. No, it is not. It is not. And I don't mean to boil it and reduce it down like that. right creating the iconic adventure doesn't necessarily mean that it's one thing that you're doing. It's what's the average normal everyday session like in this setting, right?
Motivations Behind RPG World Creation
00:03:17
Speaker
Right. And so when we create these worlds of ours, right, you creating Han cluster, Jen and I creating Explorer,
00:03:25
Speaker
And you know we we have we have a thing in mind of of the experience that we want to convey, right? And this this usually comes from something we've seen, read, watched, or even experienced, um which well we'll, in an episode, we'll talk about inspiration in depth. so But typically our goal is to, when we're creating this world, we want to create we want to bring that experience to other people.
00:03:49
Speaker
We want to share that with others. We want them to experience what we you know have and as a vision um of of a role-playing experience. And you know so we're you know scrambling to to try to create that. and And I guess what the iconic adventure is, is is ah it's a...
00:04:08
Speaker
It's a facilitator for that, right? Cause I mean, we could read the setting, we can get an idea of what the world is like. And then as GMs, we can try to like figure out what an adventure should be, but you know, but we're putting a lot of weight on the words that we wrote describing the world.
Tracy Sizemore on Hon Cluster Setting
00:04:24
Speaker
And I feel like the adventure, the iconic adventure is sort of a way to kind of usher the GM and the players through the world in terms of what our intent was for, for that experience. Yes. Yes.
00:04:36
Speaker
so So just as an example, Tracy, if you can tell us, when you you know when you were creating Hon Cluster, what was what was the experience you were trying to convey and what did your, ah like I'm assuming you have, ah I've played in one of your Hon Cluster adventures. I don't know which of those is the like the iconic one or if they're all iconic, but I guess what were you conveying through those through those adventures that you wanted to make sure the players experience?
00:05:04
Speaker
Well, that evolved over time, because and and part of that part of answering this question, this question is not an easy question, by the way. I know. I can't make it easy for you, man. I'm going to put you on the spot later. Yeah, please do. But it's just not an easy question. It can take a lot of time to answer it, and a lot of work in development to answer. it And so, HongCluster, what finally gelled as what I felt like you know a really good example of an iconic adventure in Hong Cluster was the jumpstart. And it's called reunification. I don't think you've played it, Christian. No. But um that one, a lot of people have seen it. And basically what's happened is that you are you start all in different locations within the Hong Cluster. You're all three days away from each other via interstellar travel, right?
00:05:59
Speaker
So you're not getting to each other anytime soon. And the whole adventure takes place over maybe a couple of hours. um game time, right? So number one, it forces you to use your X bonds and the next to ah help solve this adventure because then you're forced to communicate with each other through the next. You're forced to ghost travel to each other and then help each other that way.
Connection and Collaboration Themes in RPGs
00:06:25
Speaker
So that is like, it forces you to do that. Like this is one of the iconic elements of the setting and I'm going to introduce it to you by forcing you to do it.
00:06:35
Speaker
right Right? And then beyond that, there's the connection aspect. We're going to solve this huge problem, and I don't want to spoil too much, but it's a huge problem that only you can solve because of your X bond. And in doing so, it's it's it's making people realize that when we work together, we can solve these problems.
00:06:59
Speaker
And that's the experience that I started with. is you know It wasn't it wasn't um really articulated in the early goings, but it was there. like Underneath, like in my soul, there was like a longing to express this we all If we all work together, we can do amazing things. How to express that took a little time, but it was always there. And the next came along as ah as a as a mechanical reinforcement to that idea, right? Like not only- It like embodies that element, right? It's a mechanical embodiment of of that exact idea, which is when we all work together, we can accomplish amazing things. Right.
00:07:45
Speaker
And that came about later as development continued. And so that's what I think the iconic adventure for Hong Cluster is, is using these transhuman abilities to work together to solve problems and bring people together. those There's multiple iconic adventures for the Hong Cluster, and one of them you played was Trinity's Mustang, which does almost the same thing.
00:08:09
Speaker
it is a You're presented with a weird problem And there's a reason behind the problem and the the the reason behind why Trinity wants to do this.
00:08:23
Speaker
it's Number one, it's very hard, surprisingly hard to do. that Otherwise, she would have gotten anybody to do it. right But number two, she has a reason for wanting to do it in that she wants to break people out of their paranoia and their their uptightness. right she wants to She wants to ease people's tensions.
Evolution of Hon Cluster Themes
00:08:43
Speaker
And there's a mechanical aspect of the Hunk cluster called the yellow shift and shift intensity that um also embodies that.
00:08:51
Speaker
And so it's kind of like fear levels, right? So you're trying to lower the shift intensity of the yellow shift. and right Trinity's Mustang does that by creating this weird daredevil stunt for Trinity that goes over the city, Arcadium, and breaks them out of this paranoia and and just sort of weird frustration that they're feeling. And nobody really knows why. So anyway. It's like this expression of freedom incarnate that they can witness. It is. It is. And her wanting to skyright, light lighten up. Right. And and it it scares people into connecting with each other, right? And so that's that's that's that's another one. And there's there's multiple, but they all explore that same theme. and And that's where I'm coming from on that. At some point, and I i don't want to turn this into you know an interview with Tracy and her wonderful creation right now, but you know and I do, at some point I i would like to have this conversation, um but there there had to be a moment
00:09:54
Speaker
at the beginning of the creation of Han cluster, where you felt that, that that was the thing you wanted to, to bring to gaming. Yes. And, you know, was that, was was that based on something you saw, something you felt, something you experienced personally, or just something you observed, you know? I don't think there was any specific one influence. I think that I had been working on Han cluster, whether I knew it or not, since I was in high school. Interesting.
00:10:20
Speaker
So I had another machination that basically was an early, early, early, early draft of Honcluster. And I ran it for my friends, Mac, and a few of my other high school friends at that point. It was really the first time i I'd messed around with any kind of GMing. And um it worked. I mean, you know it worked well. But it was a fantasy setting. and But it's it also and incorporated these elements of let's let's connect together. And to me, modern role-playing is so far into, let's find people we don't like or don't agree with and attack them. I wanted something different. murray That's not to say that Hong cluster doesn't have conflict. And and part of the part of the other thing is we get into the like the mechanics outside of theme.
00:11:19
Speaker
of of what of what I like, which is I want to have an exciting, fun adventure. But underneath that adventure, I want to have a sort of through line of heart. right And you can optionally engage with that heart if you're a GM. If you're me, I'm going to optionally engage with that. So that also is part of it.
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think that's really cool. And we'll probably, we're going to talk a little bit about this a little later on about um there are being multiple elements, right? And you can pick and choose in a setting, um you know, which elements you want to focus on or which elements the GM and the players might want to focus on. um But like I said, we'll, we'll get into
Supernatural Horror in the Old West
00:11:58
Speaker
that. I don't want to, I don't want to jump too far ahead. but like yeah Yeah. For Deadlands, the iconic adventure is, you know, you're, you're, you're dealing with horrors in the old West.
00:12:11
Speaker
Right. You're dealing with supernatural horror in the old west. but and youre you You either went out to seek it or you were thrown into it. Exactly. One way or another, though that's what you're doing. One way or another, it's going to happen, right? Right. Unless you ignore the the the horrors aspect and just want to play Old West, which you can do which is yeah with Deadlands. But really, the intended iconic adventure is that. Yeah, right. There's ah different ways of expressing it. Shane expresses it his way, I express it my way, but and in the end, we're all looking at the same thing.
00:12:42
Speaker
yeah Yeah. So what is the iconic adventure for Explorer? Well, and for us, the only adventure we're really focusing on is the is the plot point campaign, right? which Which is, I guess, multiple adventures, so to speak, that tie together. um But the to kick it off, the the first plot point, first well, I'd say even two plot points, are really um We kind of cheat. we it's sort I say cheat. It's not really cheating, but there's another party. You're you're part of a an exploration party, right? Like an expedition party rather. And you're one of many or several, right? Then everybody goes out and they they go to different sections and explore and come back, report back their findings and whatever.
Explorer Setting Adventures and Themes
00:13:24
Speaker
And there's one particular group that's been missing for too long. And so you're sent out to go find them. And part of that is, uh, you, you end up discovering pretty early on this strange, it looks like, it looks like a structure inside of a cave that is, it's essentially a teleportation type of thing. It's a big giant circular slab with carvings and stones in it and whatever. And then the party is they accidentally activate it and they're teleported elsewhere.
00:13:54
Speaker
and And then that's where they find the remaining members of that other expedition party. And where they're taken to are ruins. Now, this is the first time anybody you know who who resides you know on this new planet, this new world has seen any ruins of any type. So that's like the big you know first reveal. It's like, okay.
00:14:14
Speaker
so So the whole point of this is like, okay, you're you're explorers, you're exploring you know terrain, you're part of several teams you know that do this. And guess what? You've just discovered ruins that of some other civilization that has lived on this planet. And then there are other reveals that occur throughout the rest of the adventures. um Things that connect dots and fill in blanks and and so on.
00:14:40
Speaker
So the idea then is you are exploring an unknown land. Exactly. You're exploring an unknown land. Um, you start discovering magical flora and fauna. You start discovering magical artifacts in these ruins. You start discovering magical resources, like natural resources. And then, you know, there's more that you, you discover that I don't want to spoil it, but sure. Sure.
00:15:05
Speaker
Are you trying to get back home? Yeah, yeah. Well, so so the the cool thing about these, we call them, I think right now we call them Nexi or and like there's an a Nexus, you know, these gates basically, that and there's not just the one, there's actually many all all across the land.
00:15:24
Speaker
And so you can discover new ones that take you to other locations, right? and um And basically you're able to then start tracking like a map of how to get back to the one that originally brought you out here. um So you're able to always go back to to hearth, which is like your home base. There may be a couple of plot points where like, yeah, you're kind of stuck temporarily, but not like you're lost. You know, you can always make your way back home.
00:15:50
Speaker
But the other theme is that right off the gate, east when you're creating your characters, you're going to have an arcane background of some type. And there are actually three three types of arcane backgrounds. um one is What they amount to are basically like a wizard, an artificer, and somebody who has innate powers.
00:16:09
Speaker
The Wizards are the people who are studying this these magical properties of this natural world in a very scientific way. The Artificers, I forgot what we call them specifically, but they're the ones who are then taking that knowledge and applying it practically. So now we're being we're able to create tools and and such that help us with our exploration.
00:16:32
Speaker
And then there are people for un some unknown reason, or undisclosed as of yet, um that just have innate magical abilities. And and there nobody knows why. And so then there's also some tension there within the community of like, well,
00:16:49
Speaker
Why do some of these people have these abilities, but others don't? And you know should we you know force them to to into these roles to help us or do we let them you know choose you know who what they want to do or you know things like that? um Not to say it's like enslavement or anything, it's just like, you know we're trying we're all trying to survive here. How do we how do we best utilize all this?
00:17:13
Speaker
I will give one spoiler. One of the big main themes is that you actually just came from a world that has become ruined because of exploiting resources. And it was literally falling apart, like literally becoming like an apocalypse. And the people that reside here on this planet are from that other world. And they've just been magically teleported somehow for some unexplained reason to this world.
00:17:41
Speaker
So part of the themes of this world is, okay, you've got these natural resources that you're able to use. to create tools and devices and things like that. How far do you go in harvesting these? How far do you go in, in exploiting these resources or do you try to preserve or, you know, a little bit almost like a dark sun kind of thing, like before dark sun becomes, you know, a post-apocalyptic where it's like, do you preserve or do you just, you know, use as much as you need to survive and to build up your community as fast as you can? You know, it's like, so there's a little bit of that. We try not to get too heavy handed with it.
00:18:19
Speaker
But um what you discover throughout the adventure, you know, kind of reveals what's happening with the with the planet. Right. and So that brings up an interesting problem because both of our settings seem to rely on an element of mystery. Yeah.
00:18:40
Speaker
an element of discovery. like We don't want to spoil everything that's happened that's going to happen in our plot point campaign.
Challenges in RPG Playtesting and Mystery
00:18:48
Speaker
and and part of and Each of our plot point campaigns is central to the setting. Whereas Deadlands, we could say, all right, we're dealing with supernatural horrors in the old west.
00:18:59
Speaker
yeah you know There's many, many possible adventures that GMs could easily come up with based on the bestiary that's in the back of the book and some basic idea about what each city is and whatever. So if we're in Shanfan or if we're in the you know the maze in Lost Angels or wherever, wherever we we are, we can see some source material in the book and we can create our iconic adventure based on that.
00:19:25
Speaker
right right Right. With our settings, both of them, so we don't have, neither of us has a setting that that is easier this way. I don't want to reveal too much about what you' what the real problem is yet.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yes. Right? But I have to reveal some. Right. And this has come up recently with ah my blind play test ah people who are who are blind play testing on cluster, right? Where I've, I've got in the book, a very clear, like the yellow shift is coming. People are acting very strange. There's this miasma around and you can see it physically by in their next door as they're starting to change colors, right? And they're starting to act,
00:20:13
Speaker
unusually, meaning they're starting to be more paranoid, a little bit more frustrated, a little bit more angry, a little bit, you know just just little things, both on a person-to-person level and on a like governmental decisions level, where We're having a little less empathy than we used to, and now we're having more conflict than we used to. And the idea behind what the PCs are doing is that they're immune to this miasma. They are what I call all the way blue, meaning their next auras have not changed color. They're still pure blue next auras, and they are immune to what's going on, but they can see it.
00:20:51
Speaker
Right? That's all. and what you're And what I say, what you're going to do is you're going to solve problems that that come up. You're going to try to create connection because that seems to limit the effectiveness or progression of the yellow shift. Right? That's what you're going to do.
00:21:11
Speaker
Now, I could go much further than that. I could try it could be much more upfront about what the yellow shift is, what the end game is, what's what's happening, but I don't want to do that yet. All I want to do is get you to whet your appetite enough to feel like you can create a character and then trust that when the GM starts you on an adventure, they're going to help you reveal this mystery to yourselves.
00:21:39
Speaker
right And I, it feels like Explorer is a little of
Influences and Mystery in RPG Design
00:21:43
Speaker
the same. It is. And it, you know, it's kind of like what I wonder if we both took prompt from say 50 fathoms.
00:21:53
Speaker
Oh, 50,000 is a huge influence on this. Right. Because that's one of those where the reveal happens as you play. The reveal happens a little. You get it in like the second plot point or whatever, right? Yeah. You're like, like the test of the red tells you the world is drowning, right? And maybe in the book it tells you the world is drowning. Maybe in the back of the book, I'm not, I don't even remember if it tells you that. It's a plot point thing, not a setting thing.
00:22:17
Speaker
I think there's something to that though about, um, yeah, what if, what if it did start like necessary evil, for example, you, you know, right off the bat, your villains fighting against yeah and the alien occupation. Exactly. That's, that's that's where i and they're they're trying to kill earth. That's where I keep my stuff. We can't have that.
00:22:38
Speaker
Right. I may be a villain, but these aliens gotta go. It's mine to take control of. Yes, yes. So you know, right up front. That's a cool idea. It's a great idea. It's easy to make adventures with that. Now, there are reveals throughout the story, throughout the original, that explain
00:22:59
Speaker
bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep our presentation. Why Tracy? bleep That's why this is hard. My illustration here is that's why this is a very, very difficult question because you've got to balance what you want to have the experience be with just giving them just enough to know kind of what they're going to be doing.
00:23:41
Speaker
Right. And Honcluster does that. There is stuff in there that that I explained like, okay, so this yellow shift is coming. You don't know what it is yet. You don't know why it is yet, but you know what sort of general effect it's causing and that you are immune to it and that you are the people who know that you've got to do something about it. You're not sure what to do about it yet. You're not sure how bad it's going to get yet, but that's what you're going to be doing in the setting, right? Right.
00:24:09
Speaker
and It's really hard because i don't I didn't even want to give that much away because part of the fun of this is to discover, oh my gosh, this is what's happening. This is this is what's actually happening. But I knew I needed to. I needed to. Otherwise, there's no reason for anybody to buy my my setting at all. Yeah. And i you know, a middle ground could be, and and we've toyed with this and we might we might swing back in this direction, is you see that there's a thing happening.
Engaging Players with Unique RPG Elements
00:24:40
Speaker
but there's still the discovery of why it's happening e and what you can do about it. yeah so there's So that's always a possibility as well. But I think there's i think there's multiple ways to handle that, but yeah with our particular settings.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah. Because Honcluster's weird, and I even wrote a sidebar today where Honcluster's weird in the sense that the the bad thing isn't out there already. you don't You're not sure what the bad thing is yet. It looks like we're in a safe optimistic world, right? And we are for the most part, but that it's also an illusion. yeah And then i and I tell you in the sidebar, that's an illusion. Here's what you're actually facing. And here's the kind of characters you might like.
00:25:26
Speaker
There's also that aspect of don't worry about creating a character that will fit what you're facing. Worry about creating a character that will that you want to inhabit in the world yeah and trust that whatever skills you give them, you will be able to apply to this problem.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess that, that touches on the idea then too of, you know, when you're, when you're thinking about our adventure, like, you know, we kind of, we're already stepping into this. When you're thinking about your adventure in terms of, um, who are the players, what's their role, right? In this world, what's the PCs, right? Who are the PCs? Who are the PCs? Correct. Right. Sorry. Who are these players? like People sitting around your table. Jeez.
00:26:08
Speaker
Strangers. um So who are the PCs? What's their role in the story? What's what's their role in the world, right? And and you know and and then to some extent, like do how do those roles a line or not a line. What is the reason for working together? What is the reason for
Conveying Ideas in Adventures
00:26:27
Speaker
coming together? Like Necessary Evil, your villain's saving the world. The heroes are gone. So there's two different roles we're talking about there.
00:26:37
Speaker
um you know and then And then of course, you know like we were just talking about just now, is how does making sure that the adventure conveys these ideas, right? And that's hard, right? It's hard. It's hard hard to pull that off. It really is hard. So we touched on this earlier, like you know you said, for example, if you wanna ignore the um people coming together to do good things and you want to focus on other elements. Like how do you choose which elements to focus on? Like for you, it's important because that that's the important thing for you as as ah as a creator, but you know that it might not be everybody's thing and you know and and you're creating elements in the setting to allow for those other things. So how do you how do you reconcile when you're writing an adventure, you've written what, three adventures now?
00:27:26
Speaker
Uh, you mean one shots or one shots, right? Yeah. For on cluster. Yeah. For four, four, four. I've, I've, I've run raster calamity, which is a plot point and the plot point campaign has one shot. Yeah. I've also run what to do with the shock as a plot point as a one shot, which is also in the plot point. And then Trinity's Mustang. Right. So I've run those four as one shots at a, at a convention game.
00:27:53
Speaker
So from what I gathered earlier, each of those might focus on different elements of the setting. yes they might They might have all the elements, but they focus on different elements. Yes, they do. um How do you pick that? how do you like you know When I think of Eberron, right Eberron has like, I joke, I say, if you ask 13, this is an Eberron joke.
00:28:14
Speaker
If you ask 13 people what makes everyone Eberron, you'll get 12 different answers. Yes. That's the 13 minus one thing that, you know, numerology and Eberron is. Yeah. Anyway. Um, because yeah, there's all these different types of stories, different setting elements and such that you can draw on. Whereas, you know, one person, it might be the, the really deep noir intrigue against cultists or whatever, or, or political intrigue for somebody else. It's the pulp adventure and the jungles of Zendrick. It's, you know, for somebody else, it's, you know, fighting demons and, you know, trying to collaborate with the dragons or, you know, like it's insane. The number of things you can explore. There's there's the dreaming dark and the Kalistar and the whole psionics dream thing that's going on too. It's, it's, you know, you could do blade runner, shadow run type stuff with the dragon Mark houses. It's it's insane. It's so much you can do. So how do you, you know, if like people would tell me, Oh, why don't you do everyone with the serial numbers found off? I'm like, what would that even look like? Yeah.
00:29:13
Speaker
What elements would I pick yeah to represent that this is what an iconic Eberron thing is? Yeah. And I think that's part of, that's, that, that will get into your influences and what you want to get right. Right. Right. And then, and yeah, and in touch on that, that's, that's what Explorer is. It's like, we wanted to explore the magic as a practical tool. Um, and the resources like dragon shards, but you know, something else and, um, exploration. And those were the things we wanted to focus on. We we didn't want to get into these people versus these people, you know, kind of a thing. yeah
00:29:48
Speaker
um so that that was yeah to so Speaking to that point, what did we want
Designing Fun and Thematic RPG Adventures
00:29:54
Speaker
to focus on? That was it. know and i and i think i you know What I think is as a designer, for when you're creating a setting for other people to run, to buy into, to spend their money on or whatever it is, um My strategy is to make adventures, like I said before, that are interesting and fun on the surface
00:30:23
Speaker
and not necessarily, I mean, they're gonna, hopefully they're gonna explore some of the themes that you want to explore in the setting, right? But ultimately, like in this particular Savage Tale, here's our problem. We've got weird ghosted clowns out there that that are running around as ex-ghosts. They look like clowns and they're attacking college students. This is a Savage Tale in the book, right? And it's simple, right? That's what's happening.
00:30:52
Speaker
What are you going to do about it? First, you got to find them and then you got to figure out like who they really are because if they're ghosted, they can always snap back to their bodies and they disappear and you don't know where they are. So that engages with some of the really fundamental like mechanics of the Hong cluster is they're ghosted clowns. They can just snap back to their bodies at any time. How are you going to find them? How are you going to catch them? you know All this stuff.
00:31:19
Speaker
right At the same time, though, and what's really important here is that's number one, a very interesting premise, because like, wow, how do they how do they look like clowns? Like, what are they doing to look like clowns? And and they're ghosted. So that's interesting by itself, because it's a song cluster thing. And then there's just the fact that they're hurting other people and you want to stop that.
00:31:42
Speaker
right right There's a reason they're hurting other people. It has to do with the yellow shift. And that's that's another sort of integrated aspect of why the Hong cluster is the Hong cluster. Like these are not necessarily bad people that are doing this. They're under a very, very bad influence.
00:31:57
Speaker
So that adds another little wrinkle to it because you're like, well, I can't just assume they're evil. They're not evil, right? They're not just undead where I can feel good about killing them. In this sense, I actually have to solve this problem somehow. Right.
00:32:12
Speaker
And so it becomes this multi-layered tiered thing of fun adventure idea. And we're going to have fun and laugh and come up with stupid ideas that the GM is going to adjudicate and roll some dice and fight some things. But underneath also, it engages with the theme of the setting and and and the things that I have set up that are sort of fundamental to what the setting is.
00:32:39
Speaker
That I think is still an iconic adventure. And it's just like a three or four page Savage. And I think it's three pages, three page Savage tales, what it is. And it's fun. I've i've run it. Like it's ah it's a nice nice departure from my more heavy stuff where I get into deep theme and dilemmas that are going to come up in the plot point campaign, right? But it's still Han cluster. It's still uniquely Han cluster. yeah Coming up with that, super hard to do.
00:33:08
Speaker
yeah because it's The danger is that you're going to create your serial numbers filed off Star Wars setting. I just want to have smugglers and be on rickety starships that can do all kinds of stuff and act like there's atmosphere in space or whatever it is, you know this this the the the tropes of Star Wars, whatever you're glomming onto as a designer or a GM to create this this adventure. But if you don't have something
00:33:41
Speaker
interesting, something special, something something fun to grab onto, there's going to be less interest there.
Iconic Adventures and Plot Point Campaigns
00:33:49
Speaker
mar you know Why not just go and play Deadlands? Because Deadlands has a very unique, specific concept. it's it's That's why it's super hard. and i don't know that there's I'm not answering any questions here, but i am I'm just saying
00:34:06
Speaker
As a designer, when you want to get people to to pay for your stuff and to and to to run it, you got to find that that uniqueness. What is the iconic adventure? What is it that that GMs will be able to say, ah, this is a HAN cluster adventure. right This is an Explorer adventure.
00:34:26
Speaker
This is a Deadlands adventure, you know what I mean? I think you touched on something there too, that one of the benefits of, and I know this is Savage World specific, but one of the benefits of a plot point campaign is is the Savage Tales, where you can create these little sub adventures that can explore or just touch on or hint at those those other setting elements. Yes. right And say, hey, you know here's a thing, explore this as deep as you'd like,
00:34:54
Speaker
Or just not at all, even if you don't want to. Or as shallow as you like. Or as shallow as you'd like, right. Put it in where you want, you know, kind of thing. So I think that's kind of a neat advantage to the plot point campaign slash savage tale structure. Yeah.
00:35:10
Speaker
Same with Holler. like Holler has has these savage tails that go outside the plot point campaign, but explore things that are part of Holler. like You want to do a racing thing, there's a racing savage tail. You want to do explore meat yardians and the creepy stuff that's going on with them, there's a savage tail for that. It allows you to do to to do something small, something deliberately small, but still engage with kind of the setting as a whole.
00:35:35
Speaker
Right. yeah I think back to, because i was ah I've been thinking about Eberron, like what defines an Eberron's adventure. Yeah, so what does? like Well, so so I was thinking back to the adventure that came in the back of the original Eberron campaign setting book way back in 3.5 edition D and&D. And and it was you know it was it was an interesting um selection of of elements where it starts with ah there's a murder in the rain in Sharn, right? You're on a sky bridge in Sharn and there's um there's a body and you see somebody like leaping over the the rail or whatever, right? And you know you investigate the body and there's then there's a fight and then you find a journal and
00:36:21
Speaker
um you know And then that you're meeting with a House Caneth heir to you know investigate further this thing, you know this lost schema that's down in the depths of Sharn and these ruins that you have to go then explore. And you know yeah then you have your big fight and whatever, you bring back the artifact you know and return it to to this you know dragon marked heir. And that felt iconic to you?
00:36:48
Speaker
Yeah. Cause you kind of, you're kind of like highlighting. What was it? What was it that felt iconic about it? So, you know, you got the noir entry. Oh, there's a, there's a, there's a body in the streets of sharn, you know, like it's, and it's raining and it's, you know, uh, so there's that. And then you get into, okay, here's this, like, you know, um,
00:37:08
Speaker
not quite femme fatale type of character, but, you know, mysterious dragon mark heir who's like, help me find this thing that this journal discusses.
00:37:19
Speaker
um And then, you know, you're you're going down into the dumps and exploring these ruins, you know, and then there's like a swarm of beetles and all these other things, you know, typical, you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of thing. and yeah And there's other smaller encounters along the way, of course.
Exploring Eberron's Unique Features
00:37:37
Speaker
But, um you know, so you're dealing with like, you know, the magical aspects of every magical items, magical things. ah You're dealing with that as well. um You know, you have a conflict with some shifters, which are Eberron specific, you know, people. Yeah. So things like that.
00:37:54
Speaker
So if I were to if i were to like break that down just from what I hear, yeah and from what i've and some of the things I've pieced together about Eberron, because I don't really know it very well at all, is we're looking at a sort of noir fantasy steampunk kind of thing. Am I right about that?
00:38:10
Speaker
Yeah. I hate the term steam punk specifically when describing Eberron, but I'll let it slide. no but but' kind of There's something there, right? I mean, there's there's the war forged and all that stuff going on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. so it's So it's, and the murderer was a war forged as well. So you're fighting a war forged right off the bat, you know? um But yeah, it's that whole magical our magic as a as a resource and tool for everyday conveniences kind of thing, as well as bigger like Eldritch machine type things. you know um And so it's... So not steampunk, maybe maybe just scientific fantasy noir. Kind of, yeah. It's like, it's like why would we not use like you know ever burning torches to light our streets? you know like Doesn't that make sense? And so are those three things true of every Everon adventure?
00:39:03
Speaker
um No, not necessarily. I think that one, that's just the first introductory adventure. And I think that's why they did that. um Others can be completely like noir, you know, maybe with a little pulp action thrown in. Others can be like you're exploring ruins, you know, giant ruins, literally giants, ruins of giants in the jungles of Zendrick. It can be, you know, a chase on the top of a lightning rail.
00:39:30
Speaker
it's it's It's hard to define this.
Role of Art in RPG Development
00:39:33
Speaker
It's hard, yeah. And yet you, I think it kind of needs to be there. Yeah. Oh, I agree. It's worth thinking about and it's really hard and nobody wants to do it, but that's, if you want to create something that people are going to be interested in and be passionate about, I think you have to answer that question.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. and And we'll probably talk about this in a future episode, but I think this is kind of one of those places where art also helps. It does. Like visually conveying. It does. it's It's a give and take. Because you could get some art and then go, oh.
00:40:05
Speaker
That's a great idea. I didn't think of that. right yeah But it's based on the thing that I gave them to do. yeah And now all of a sudden, your your setting is starting to be informed by the art that you ordered that you got back. It becomes a conversation that way. And and certainly, Hong Klaas was a little bit that way. yeah But coming up with that What does this look like? That's a whole nother thing. Like what is, what is, what is this setting look like? Yeah. And to express that visually as a whole other ball of wax, you know, yeah yeah that we will explore
Community Engagement and Podcast Wrap-up
00:40:40
Speaker
later. We will. I'm sure. We will.
00:40:42
Speaker
Are we done? Did we, did we do it? do I think we covered it. Yeah. I think, um, yeah. So in summary, uh, just like with every other episode we've covered, you know, or a topic we've covered, it it's hard is the answer.
00:40:56
Speaker
yeah yes it is it's It's hard. so Good luck, everyone. know yeah No, i i hope I hope what this has helped is for people who are creating their own worlds and are planning to, you know, whether it's a setting in adventure or whatever, to really, you know, take the time to think about, you know, is your adventure conveying what you're hoping to express with this setting?
00:41:23
Speaker
yeah All right. Well, thank you for listening to the Designing Problems podcast. We want this to be more than a podcast. We want it to be a community. So if you'd like to engage directly with us, share your creative triumphs, your roadblocks, or simply interact with a cool group of supportive people, we have our own Discord server. Please come by, join the discussion and share some inspiration. Until next time, keep designing your problems because you're bound to solve a few along the way.