Wednesday, October 14, 2009

RPing Thoughts & The Sunless Citadel

This past weekend the wife, dogs and I went camping.  I brought along a whole box full of card games as well as my M20 binder and the 3.0 adventure The Sunless Citadel.  It's a good adventure with a fantastic background, that is left completely untouched.  The background states that the Gulthias Tree, which produces 2 fruits a year - a red apple that can cure at midsummer and a white apple that can kill at midwinter - was sprouted from a still-green stake used to kill a vampire in the depths of a sunken fortress.  How fantastic is that for a story seed?  Yet not even a mention of it in any of the offered character hooks. 

Also the village of Oakhurst is criminally under-developed. 

Anyway, what I had planned on doing was playing through Oakhurst with lots of role-playing, and then into the citadel, but I wasn't necessarily going to follow the dungeon map.  Too complex for camping and not really what Virginia is looking for... at least not as written.  We didn't end up playing D&D, though we did play a bunch of card games, but we did talk about it.  We read through parts of the adventure together and she told me what she felt was wrong with it as presented.  For instance comparing the map to the room descriptions, well, they just don't provide the info that a character needs.  She suggested that having a copy of the map, so that she can say "I move to room 21" and I can then tell her what the flavor of the room is.  I pointed out the problem of secret rooms, and she asked if the room was important. 

You know, it really wasn't. 

So what if she does have a copy of the map?  Would that make the adventure worse?  Even if it shows the secret doors?  I don't think it would.  I could even redraw it as if it was a map drawn by a previous party, say the party that hunted the vampire...

2 comments:

  1. In many ways, it shouldn't matter, other than it takes away from the "sense of the unknown" that you get from mapping and exploring.

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  2. @Paladin~

    That's the feeling I get too. And while I enjoy the mapping and exploring I don't think she does. In a solo game it's way more important to give your one player what she wants! If I had a group, and one of them really liked the exploring and mapping, then I'd let them do that.

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