Adventures: Replaying Modules

The Problem with Most Adventure Modules

Adventure modules are the bread-and-butter of any campaign setting. Nearly every campaign setting has at least one example adventure module at the back of the book. Some of these can be inserted into any campaign, but most of them are very specific in their content and often just have superficial randomness applied unless the GM wishes to deliberately do something different.

In this sense, they are modules you can only play once if it's played as written. The GM can always "homebrew" their own version of the module or just change up one thing, but this defeats the point of a module: that most if not all the creativity has been done for you.

Even worse, if a player has already read or played the module before, the GM is forced to either not use that module or change just enough about the existing one to trip up someone with advanced knowledge of it. The Tomb of Horrors isn't very fun if a character sidesteps all of Acererak's tricks using foreknowledge!

While there's nothing wrong with standard pre-set modules, they lack in one department: Replayability.

What Can be Done Differently?

"Scenic Dunnsmouth" is an adventure module written for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess system, written by Zzarchov Kowalski. The adventure is for a party of level 2-4 characters and is about a swamp town infected by the influence of a malignant species of spider. It also involves a time cube, but that's beside the point. The player characters are tasked with investigating what happened to the town, and if they wish, saving it from the "Spider Cult" and navigating other harrowing situations.

But here's the thing: Every time this adventure is played, it will be different. The NPCs are randomly generated with a deck of playing cards. Dice are rolled to determine the placement of each house in the swamp, the behaviors of certain NPCs, and even the level at which the town is infected by the spider. It's also possible that no one in town has been infected, or everyone!

A GM can play this adventure as many times as he or she wants, and most importantly, the act of generating a new Dunnsmouth is a lot of fun!

A Module Idea!

Let's take this concept of a town in peril and extend it to another one. Let's assume instead of a swamp town, perhaps there's a mountain town. Instead of a xenophobic bunch of swamp folk, perhaps there are hospitable but frightful people.

Instead of an aggressively reproductive mutant spider... perhaps there's a werewolf.

By chrisscalf

The core variable of the adventure would revolve around one roll of the dice by the GM when generating the town: The die that determines which of the NPCs is the werewolf.

This factor would contribute the most to the adventure's replay value, and would change the behavior of all NPCs depending on who the werewolf is that time around. Naturally, as a monster, the werewolf will attack people- sometimes the players. The victim has three possible outcomes from the attack: They are simply wounded, they are dead, or they are infected by the baleful curse themselves. This can be decided in combat, or if it happens "offscreen," by a die roll.

It doesn't even matter if the adventure is quick and easy, or long and grueling. The point is that the players don't know what to expect.

In order to have a good mystery in an adventure module, GMs must either be absolutely certain that no player at their table has read the module, or that it doesn't matter even if they had. I lean more towards the latter case.