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Scenarios / Adventures: System Or Systemless?

I did a search for an adventure I wrote, called Winter's Cold Heart, in Google and was extremely surprised to see it actually come up somewhere besides my own site or one or two sites where I uploaded it! The scenario was "systemless", meaning instead of giving the creature a "stat block" (Str, Con, etc), I fudged it with vague descriptives like Attack Accuracy: *** and similar ratings.

I'll skip the amusing and interesting anecdotes which all writers have, which are actually neither, and address the point of this thread, which is the systemless design in an adventure. To be honest, although WCH is systemless, and I didn't really struggle with that decision, I've since reconsidered and now it's a tossup, leaning noticeably toward system specific.

Reason number one is that I read through my scenario the other day and *I* did not even know what basis or relatable scale was being used in the generic ratings I gave the creature. That was a pretty bad oversight on my part, and I think in a way, THIS is probably THE most risky part of a systemless scenario where you use some sort of stats, even pseudo-descriptives like I did. People (GM's) are used to a stat block for a system, and understand it and the relative "power level" the minimum and maximum scores encompass, and where the ratings fall and how to eyeball that and fairly easily translate that into any other system they want, so systemless scenario design is questionable to me, now. I originally wrote it for WFRP2, but I think, honestly. I was just lazy and didn't want to put in all the stats, so I just fudged it with the "maverick" idea of systemless ratings.


I do feel systemless gives GMs much more elbow room and ability to interpret values, without resorting completely to fiat and just assigning scores, immediately. The other upside is that the systemless ratings are vague and broad, intentionally crunchy, because the GM has to figure out the most suitable stat block for the current adventure and players, so can feel confident with a potentially higher or lower system score than what he might have imagined on first blush, looking at the scenario.


It is really more of an "optical illusion", giving the GM implicit "permission" to use whatever values he wants to interface appropriately, without feeling wrong or unfair (this is only for those GM's that DO feel like this when they fudge things or don't go "by the book" of course).


Anyway, thanks for reading, and just because I'm very proud of it, I'm posting a brief couple quotes of endorsement - very high praise - of my adventure, from someone on a RPG forum. -JP

Rather off topic, but...
PS: I ran... Well, attempted to run WCH as a forum game, even using a simple system (basically Dan Bayn's Wushu), and while the freedom of narrative stance was very popular with the players, it was apparently a little TOO open and the pace was apparently much too slow for a play-by-post forum adventure, as the four people playing all just slowly started logging in less and finally just quit - I suppose it might be my own iffy GM skills too though.


Jan 26, 2010, jdrakeh (he has 6,500 posts on that site's forum) kindly mentioned my Winter's Cold Heart scenario, and had positive things to say about it, and I just wanted to say I appreciate it, that someone was ... Able to... Appreciate it... Or something like that. I don't think even *I* have the other version he talks about, with the "better authorial voice", whatever that is. I know one thing - the non-game-immediately relevant text was just plain way too long; as you can tell, I tend to core dump when I write or "have a good idea".


jdrakeh:
The best adventure scenario I've ever read/run was a non-system-specific freebie. OTOH, it's nice to have adventures playable "out of the box" (I.e., adventures that I don't have to create my own stats for as a GM).


* * *

It's called Winter's Cold Heart and is written by Jason Patterson. It involves a group of adventurers trapped at a snowed in roadhouse during a blizzard with a wendigo stalking the patrons. The adventure itself has a nice non-traditional (read "not boring") spin on the wendigo as a monster, optional sub-plots, and very three-dimensional NPCs. There are two iterations of it out there on the web. The newer one has better layout and such, though I like the older one better in terms of authorial voice.

Systemless System Adventures Scenarios

Congratulations on your accomplishment. When I think of "Systemless" I tend to remember share book RPGs which Krakyn used to run before he went away on his work projects. Basically the only thing you do is make choices and the outcome of those choices are told to you.

Scenarios / Adventures: System Or Systemless? Reviews RPG & Card Board

Thanks for the good words, Boss. Ahh, I see, so share books are more like the Choose Your Own Adventure books, no stats, just "If you decide to go downstairs, turn to page 17", etc. I'm well familiar with CYOA type books, and the AD&D books which were slightly more sophisticated, but still had no stats, but got into Gygax's Sagard the Barbarian and the Lone Wolf and other series, which DID (do) have stats and a system, so while I was reading ad learning "adventure gamebooks", I was also working on doing the same for RPGs, so they two dovetailed for me nicely.

As I said in my initial post above, what I'm referring to is basically do you want this:

Monster: Attack% 80, Damage 2D6, Hit Points 16, etc.

or:

Monster: Attack% High, Damage Moderate, Hit Points: Very Tough.

Overall, from what I've read, both recently and over the years, it remains a fairly even split, taking into account the "environment" when this issue comes up each time - sometimes it is in favor of system, sometimes it is all ready to be avant-guard and embrace pseudo-stats instead of actual numbers and such. Like I said, for me, I could do either one, and can use both to be able to interpret or translate stuff from one system to another, but ones with an established stat structure I'm familiar with, is much more likely to go more smoothly and faster, than trying to learn a completely new "system", even if the ratings are just broad descriptives, and how to determine exactly what "moderate" means, in which category, if different categories use different ranges (like 1-20 for HP, 1-100% for Attack, etc).

If/when I release any more scenarios, I think I'd probably go for a system, even if it's my go-to game for fantasy, Warhammer, because I'm most familiar with it and its ranges and characterizations, unless the scenario lends itself to make systemless more appropriate - I don't know an example offhand but I'm sure one exists.

The downside to this example is that I've got a scenario written for Call of Cthulhu, that uses stats ranged 1-21, and percentile skills, but the system I'm wanting to use to actually run that scenario is Feng Shui's 1-10 (usually), so, system the adventure is very concretely one for CoC, I have to go through it and come up with as close as I can get to the 1:1 ration of "Str 15 in CoC = about 8 in FS, and a skill of 75% in CoC = 12 in FS. If the adventure had been "systemless", I'd just need to ballpark stats from the broad descriptives given, instead of trying to match up one system to another in order to transfer the relevant information from one system mechanic to the other.

The long as short of it is, even though it's up to the GM to cipher and translate and interpret, the bottom line is, the whole thing is still for the PLAYERS' benefit, so you have to weigh how much good it will do one way or the other, of letting the GM present the adventure or stats to the players, accurately and efficiently.