Adventure sites will make your RPG way more fun - RPG Talk featuring Forbidden Lands

[@DaveThaumavore]

(Apologies for the low quality audio on this one.) Support the channel by joining my Patreon! www.patreon.com/thaumavore Sign up for my newsletter! bit.ly/ThaumavoreNewsletter

[@kdolanjr]

First off: how dare you. Second: great vid, I'm looking closer at these mechanics!

[@Critical_Pixel]

This design philosophy goes all the way back to their Mutant Year Zero rulebook, a book that in my opinion has some of the best site design of any TTRPG book. The sites are presented with so many seeds for possible directions and really feel like they are written from the perspective of a GM and not an author. I have structured all of my GM notes using Free League's adventure site design ever since reading MYZ. I cannot recommend this style enough.

[@DocEonChannel]

This. MYZ is the game that finally taught me how to GM a sandbox, after years of failed tries.

[@cassmi8783]

MYZ locations are just the best. I really wish the game was more popular these days, since it’s easily my favourite post-apocalyptic setting.

[@areeh.haecker9985]

I really liked the few locations that were redundant or didn't add to the plot, they made the town feel more like a real place for me

[@chandlerpearce6213]

Also, depending on style of game/players, it’s important to have places they can “waist time” to progress things and make their decision to go somewhere fee more impactful

[@PyrotechNick77]

This is the third time Free League has come up in recommendations and conversations for me in 2 days. I definitely will look at forbidden lands, this video was very informative and you definitely got a new subscriber

[@natel7151]

FBL is a really good adaptation of Free League's year zero engine to the OSR-style fantasy. Many player options, magic isn't overpowering. It's a giant hex crawl, with many rules and frameworks for the hex crawl. Also, super thoughtful solo rules (optional) that are clearly made for a single player character (plus companions). Just a very thoughtful approach overall. (And I hear that the original Swedish rules are superb to read as well.)

[@hungryewok1684]

I have everything for FORBIDDEN LANDS and haven't been disappointed

[@ZeAshTonz]

The short descriptions might require more prep for some people, but it can be less if you have a certain style of GMing. For improv guys like myself, having too many puzzle pieces that need to connect will stifle the game. We instead like to focus on memorizing what factions want and what they can throw at the party. That way, we always have a general idea of how the world will respond the party's crazy schemes.

[@McLainOppy]

19:06 Tips for creating an adventure site 🥇⛏ 1. Establish major plot 2. Come up with an intriguing hook 3. Make items interesting 4. Use deadly monsters 5. Create dynamic, logical areas 6. Do memorable NPCs 7. Honor your player's ideas 8. Practice on two-page spreads

[@Ars_Fabula_TTRPG]

I’ve been stressing all week about how to prep for my next session until last night I remembered “just set up the areas” and suddenly your video is on my feed. The gods smile upon me

[@robertchmielecki2580]

That is awesome :) I am about to run Forbidden Lands and Grindbone is the location I have chosen to be visited by PCs first, after a short period of travelling through the wild and some old abandoned places :) And here you are, dropping tips on the location (and good general advice too!) and just revising it in my head :D Thx!

[@TheCatThatWasMan]

I’ve been thinking about putting together something like this myself and the video really confirms the ideas I’ve been having independently. If you play enough games that you don’t enjoy and can figure out why you don’t enjoy them. I think you have the upper hand and creating something that might actually work for people. A little sandbox with some fun toys to play with seems like the best solution for sparking off the kind of play and creativity that makes RPG so much fun for me and I think a lot of other people. Thank you so much for posting this. you got a new phone.

[@jamesrizza2640]

As a DM, I love running sandbox campaigns, but a good one requires a lot of front load work if it's going to last a while. That being said, whenever I do run a group that isn't certain about what to do, I have suggestions always at the ready. A common example is the players enter the city and don't know what to do. I give suggestions such as, " You overhear the gate guard mentioning a bounty to a couple of toughs nearby, he mentions that they can get more information by the sheriff's office in the administrative district of the city." "As this is transpiring {Pick a Character} hears a couple looking over a bulletin board. Would you look at that Harry, Mr. Smith has gone missing, and his daughter Isabella is offering a tidy sum to find him." Anytime the players walk or look somewhere, I can give clues and suggestions as to what they might do. I can also take direct actions such as guards questioning them, a thief attempting to rob them a beggar asking alms. Adventure sites give a lot of freedom for both the DM and the Players. Great video thanks for sharing.

[@goyasolidar]

I actually have no problem with "railroaded" events as a player as long as the hand of the GM isn't visible in that endeavor. It's a fine balancing act but I can definitely see huge advantages to steering the PCs towards specific goals rather than letting them aimlessly wander about in search of the plot. Dark gods know I've seen enough situations where players gormlessly futzed about over multiple sessions, making little to no progress in bringing the adventure to its resolution.

[@TheCongzilla]

Forbidden Lands has a plot but the game is more about survival in an alien world. There is no reason to steer the players and it would really take away from the game.

[@jeromeverret]

@@TheCongzilla TTRPG tell stories and even emergent storytelling needs to have a narrative arc. You can very much portray survival in an alien world while having an endgame objective insteand of only "survive and we'll see what happens". Even a vague objective like: "Learn what happened to the world" pushes player to move their ass and discover the adventure sites and the lore.

[@TheCongzilla]

@@jeromeverret You can have an end game objective, but it isn't needed. Letting the story just emerge based on the player choices is just as much fun.

[@antigrav6004]

There are also Quetzel's spire, and Crypt of the Mellified Mage if you want more adventure sites. People tend to forget about those supplements. As for what you bring up in regards to art, usually the only art my group sees is the map, if we have one. everything in terms of NPCs is conveyed through mannerisms and the occasional voice if i can commit to one. Improvisation is key to this kind of gameplay. Runehammer's RPG mainframe taught me the value of bullet points. My players *hate* when i read a few uninterrupted paragraphs. They disengage hard. Just quick little details that i can come up with my own words for on the fly are way more valuable than great prose.

[@nicklarocco4178]

I don't think they're available anymore. At least they aren't on free league's shop. But they are very cool books.

[@DGB_Smyth]

Thank you for talking about these! I didn’t know they exist and can see that they can quite nicely fit into other systems as they are almost system agnostic. They are exactly what I’ve been trying to do with my players and remind me of the Low Fantasy Gaming adventures.

[@YukonJack88]

Dave Our Amazing 3 year Symbaroum campaign has just naturally fallen into this style of navigation and thus has leveraged this to such visceral intensity Mind you every location in The whole setting is a land mine of potentials I’m so used to this style of organic play

[@robertdavis7464]

I wish i had discovered your content sooner. I've unintentionally rewritten the Pathfinder campaign adventure path Serpents Skull as an adventure site, but struggled to bridge the gap as a gm from a linear story (lile Ironfanf Invasion) to this adventure style. So you've earned another subscriber

[@timothyyoung2962]

I've always found that when my game group was crunched for time, but still wanted to play, a location based game was always a great idea and pretty easy to prep. The good old classic dungeon, troubled town, abandoned space colony, or crime-ridden mega block.

[@hoos-karl7807]

This is exactly why I love HârnWorld material. Most think it is all a huge amount of detail. While that is true, each article has snippets to flesh out an area and so many adventure hooks that it is easy to prep for a session.

[@sarcomere1454]

Really have been down on D&D lately, but this reminds me a lot of the early sandbox chapters of Rime of the Frostmaiden, the only D&D module I've enjoyed running! Great advice for this sort of GMing, keep it up!

[@mateofantasma]

I like the adventure site approach to sandbox games, it's really great and very powerful. I do not fancy much the way the text is organized in Forbidden lands, but I do enjoy the idea.

[@miked5562]

My party just got to grindbone last session. It's the third adventure site they've found so far, and I love the balance it takes as a gm, both for absorbing the various moving parts in an adventure site but needing to be ready to improv on the fly. I have more fun than my players do, I'm sure 😂

[@diegotartaglia]

Great. I've been playing Forbidden lands for a while now, and the adventure site approach is really interesting..I was a Homebrew GM for most of my life, but I'll loving the freedom of this format.

[@brady9592]

Nice vid, enjoy the deeper mechanic dives.

[@paavohirn3728]

Free downloads of the adventure site maps for Forbidden Lands are available on the FL site including color versions.

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@paavohirn3728 what? That’s awesome!

[@paavohirn3728]

@@DaveThaumavore Yeah! The new website makes them a bit unintuitive to find but they're all there for all campaign sites. It's pretty cool!

[@mrnixon2287]

I love this approach. Events and rumours will typically steer ur players towards certain locations. Its the same as a sandbox adventure. Iv run many adventures in a city setting :Thieves' World over 3 decades. This style of adventure gives the skeleton to the GM and allows interesting options for the players. What really brings a setting to life are its unique locations, interesting NPC's with motivations and goals which the players can discover, conflicting factions which provide opportunities for conflict, spying, double-dealing and betrayal and interesting lore which hooks in your players. In my adventure setting one PC is a member of a secretive assassins guild working to overthrow a rival assassins guild, one PC is a thief who has been recruited and trained as a magician by an ancient order of Blue Star Adepts, one is a PC barbarian who wants to rebuild a smugglers guild that he once was a member of but was destroyed by a rival crime-lord and a PC paladin who is the member of a secret faction of knights who is seeking to destroy a cult of vampire worshipping priests. Thieves World gives you generic maps and tables to populate large sections of the city with businesses and also encounter tables and NPC descriptions for both major and minor NPCs. These help bring your world to life and add depth and flavour few other settings offer.

[@Skanah_]

I havent run any of the Forbidden Lands scenario sites but I have run a few of the scenario sites from Twilight 2000, which uses the sake format. Those have all gone really well and were reasonably easy to prep and run.

[@deusvault5732]

I always have enjoyed the black and white maps. And I enjoy the almost dark souls storytelling that just giving the place, events and some people can bring.

[@ChrisChapmanIAm]

This is an excellent overview of Grindbone that inadvertently (?) serves as fantastic prep guidance for running it. I could watch vids like this all day for the way you put together the pieces with visuals and tips.

[@nicklarocco4178]

Adventure sites are basically all I do anymore. They're a good middle ground between a completely free sandbox, and a narrative focused story. The sandbox here does have walls, and players can butt up against them and realize theres nothing of interest outside the box. It also means that if the GM is pretty well prepped with a site means they can easily improvise things by moving npcs around, or just having events happen to spur the players.

[@natel7151]

Per's guidelines are super helpful, even when you're conceptualizing a solo context (say, for example, you're playing The Walking Dead... or even Forbidden Lands' rules in Book of Beasts). Good framework to be more creative & adding various pressures to the environments. EDIT: The two-page site idea is also a good one, like the "One Page Dungeon" concept. It's a good, disciplined approach to help keep the writing punchy.

[@opscontaylor8195]

Fun fact - cause I hate linear prepped dungeon ride adventures, I have been running ALL my games like this since about 1989... which makes sense why the Free League design methods naturally called to me when I discovered them. Honestly, FL might owe you some money Dave... your videos got me to buy like 90% of their current production... shame on you. ;)

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@opscontaylor8195 They really should be cutting me a check at this point. Good on you for running games with sophistication!

[@KyleMaxwell]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding (entirely possible!) - this sounds like old "adventure modules" and popular OSR works like Trilemma Adventures?

[@DocEonChannel]

The big difference is that it isn't intended (or even possible) to murder hobo your way through an adventure site of this type.

[@torinmccabe]

I think the most important part of non-railroad RPGs is that the PCs have to have goals that drive forward action. Maybe your PCs are on a quest to end slavery or gather allies against a common foe. If the PCs don't have goals and you are not running an adventure path then you might have a very boring session in front of you.

[@robertchmielecki2580]

Tbh characters should always have their internal motivations. If they don't they are badly designed characters. Even if the GM turns up and at the start of the session says "Nothing is happening. What do you do?" they should immediately spring into action because they can't just sit on their hands when they need to find their lost sister and enact revenge on the evil baron! Otherwise characters feel like heavy carts that need to be pushed instantly by the GM and grind to a halt immediately the GM stops pushing.

[@kalleendo7577]

This is the way

[@Rakkitt]

Great video with loads of good advice

[@chrism6315]

The way free league books are written/laidout is IMO perfect for me as a semi experienced DM, comfortable in how i run games. However if my first adventure was one of their books i think it woild have been difficult. I needed the very clear dungeons and magufin quests and think most new dms should run those, but free league books are the perfect 'ok, now you know what youre doing, take a look at this' style books/settings/adventures.

[@KiMo7PDC]

Awesome stuff… I am curious about this type of prep and might take this as a sign to make something along those lines… usually I’ll have a single location ready, since I normally run oneshots or more episodic type campaigns. But maybe it’s time I prep something a bit bigger without necessarily going full blown hexcrawl

[@swordsnstones]

Pretty much the approach i took to creating my game. I give a general locale and encourage game hosts to insert encounter locations as they travel the main world. Nothing set in stone as i want game hosts to be free to create locations of their own. The reason is that the main "world" is an alternate universe (world) where pretty much anything can happen. So for world building its just a matter of inserting your own locale, and let the story build around it as you play. Try not to spend too much time creating the how or why this location is found here, but focus on how to survive it, and what it has to offer to the story being created by the players.

[@whynaut1]

This why I think Lost Mines of Phandelver is under appreciated. While it seems like a linear adventure, there are actually many many different ways to get to each main encounter.

[@randomtvninja]

What makes this game so good is its basically all the things it seems DnD5e DMs are scared about a player doing. So many jokes about players telling their story and it going wrong.. if you can't trust your players boot em, and if you DM for money make your style extremely clear and what is and isnt allowed, and if they fail to meet the standard at the table boot em.. now before someone says something silly like well that mean it could be used for hate by booting people due to xyz.. chances of that are lower than you'd actually think. Anyway its an enjoyable game and alchemy VTT has some cool built in to it.

[@paulll47]

Maybe it's me but I've seen an ugly trend where published adventures turn into railroads, it's not limited to a single game either, come writers, step up your game will ya?

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@paulll47 I think that’s more the norm, and has been for decades. It sucks for the players and GM.

[@SimpleRoad]

Do players actually like the sandbox-like format or mostly game masters? I know people complain about adventures that railroad the story but, in reality, the sandbox often generates adventures which never seem to progress and often are never finished.

[@bitteralmonds5717]

People get hung up on buzzwords, sandbox, railroad. The truth is, if your players don't have an overarching plot or story to go with, they will just start asking within the sessions 'what are we even doing though?'. Good GMs present an overarching story which is preplanned with NPCs, plotlines and areas with interesting possible outcomes and consequences, but in a way that gives the players the sense of control so they come away saying it was a 'sandbox' game even when realistically it really wasn't. Curse of Strahd is a good example. Many people adore that module and call it sandbox, but it literally has an invisible wall baked into it in the form of 'the mist' all around the outside of the map. The trick is giving the perception that the players they can do anything they want and then guiding them along the threads you've already created, and therefore as you say, that's much more to do with the GM than the game actually being sandbox.

[@SimpleRoad]

@@bitteralmonds5717 It would be hilarious if the GM would, everytime the players stray too far, simply say, "WARNING: Return to the combat zone in: 15 seconds..."

[@jshud3]

I'm thinking this adventure site style, would help to make the PCs more proactive instead of reactive... it's the PCs decisions and actions that lay the groundwork for how the NPCs react and then that drives a more collaborative, emerging adventure.

[@CountryBwoy]

6:00 I'm just this far in and I don't see that as redundant. I feel like this location is where new slave fighters prove themselves and then move up to the other location where they can possibly win their freedom.

[@SamuraiMujuru]

I'm not seeing the links to Per Holmstrom's work apart from the official FBL books. Am I missing something?

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@SamuraiMujuru sorry, must have forgotten: www.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?author=%22Per%20Holmstr%C3%B6m%22

[@OgieSifter]

Oh dang these are little like point crawl rhizomes i love it!!!

[@jasonsunday2932]

I love the location cards. Where can I get them?

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@jasonsunday2932 I posted them on my Patreon

[@MaceLupo]

Are the monsters not deadly enough as they are? I have not played yet, but they seem pretty dangerous to me.

[@Alydar-one]

Dave: All those pictures you showed look to have the same art style. Where do you get those? Thanks.

[@EpicoLirico]

This is a great video, and the advice of "Two Pages" is the best. Yes, this takes a lot of improv, but the payoff is huge.

[@BunnyNiyori]

I agree fully.

[@Streetsam]

Great!

[@orkcol]

"Where we're going we dont need roads.."

[@anselmoffrisia2930]

And then when he comes back, it's literally on a train. Cars are intrinsically less railroaded than trains. 😌

[@luffysh]

Did you use AI for the portraits and pictures? Love the style! What software did you use? What prompts did you use?

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@luffysh Leonardo, Anime XL. I can’t remember the prompts though.

[@luffysh]

@@DaveThaumavore thank you! 😊

[@babonilla]

@@DaveThaumavore Those location images were absolutely perfect and I'd love to be able to replicate it for my table. Any tips?

[@Ifryt_]

I really like your material - both the presented idea and the visual aspect of it (highlighting, cutting parts of text, pictures). 🙂

[@Ulitemyfyre]

thats how d&d used to be played

[@airsheeps]

The AI art renderings of the town's locales looked way too warm and inviting for a city built on slavery and blighted with bloodshed and death cults 😨

[@darkjack164]

BG3 is laid out exactly like this, if you think about it. My go to adventure site is "Lastlook" a refugee camp ruled over by a madman named "Tanner" who, along with his gang rules the settlement with fear and torment, being known to skin his enemies and problem people

[@samchafin4623]

So, this slaver town developed during the age when no one could travel due to magical mists? But then, who did they sell slaves to, or buy them from? I know it's fiction, and can be handwaved, but the economics of this town in this world are a bit of a stumbling block for me, and seem largely designed around making it feel darker and edgier.

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@samchafin4623 Rust Brothers could move freely because they had no fear and felt content with themselves even in the mist. Bloodlings only fed upon those harboring fear and discontent. Also, everyone could move during the day, they just had to be in a place of safety by nightfall when the mist came out. This place of safety was almost always their own homes, but could have been safe houses.

[@claudiaborges8406]

“They grab you knock you to the ground and steal from you when they attack” Excuse me… what? I get your point but that’s not what it should look like