Witty and nimble, if skillfully controlled

This means you get to say “that was a fun experience” and then go play something else and experience a wider variety of games. (For everyone who says “I don’t have time or energy to learn another TTRPG system,” the reason you think you don’t have time is because you’re playing a forever campaign that the GM has to spend dozens of hours a month prepping. Playing something of a more reasonably scope, as (good) adventure modules often are, allows you to get what feels like a full and complete experience within 1-12 sessions instead of 100+ sessions.)

You can also return to that game more easily with the same characters that you have probably grown attached to. If you leave off while the party is in the middle of a dungeon and then want to continue that game with the same characters a year or more later, you will have forgotten what the fuck was going on and what shit was around, etc., but if the characters were between adventures all you have to do is establish the new adventure. Sure, you could just say “and then they somehow got out of the dungeon and are now on a new adventure” but that kinda sucks.

The stopping point that comes after “okay they have now explored this dungeon or solved this mystery that was of explicit and limited scope” is also a the perfect time to rotate PCs and/or GMs. You may want to try a new class or something, the current GM may want to play the game as a player, etc. Being between adventures of definite scope instead of perpetually in the middle of a forever adventure is the perfect time for this - and modules also help somebody just jump straight into the GM seat on relatively short notice without having to do too much prep because all a module is is just a bunch of pre-prepped GM prep.

What got me on this line of thought was thinking about how I miss this same sort of thing in video games, and it made me realize I value this in both video and tabletop games.

My mind is a console for TTRPGs, the rulebooks are the game disks or maybe the game engines (it doesn’t translate perfectly but bear with me), and the fact that no game designers but myself (hyperbole) think that it’s necessary to make any modules means that whenever I launch a new game (that I paid money for), press Start, and select New Game, the thing crashes, because there aren’t any fucking levels!

I have to either open the level editor (which may not be reasonably easy to use without instructions or an example level to go off of) and design a level myself before I can play, or ask a friend to do it for me - and that’s work. It’s fun work for many, including myself, but it does take time and energy and is almost always unpaid.

There are video games that have gotten away with shipping with no fucking levels to play, but those games all provide explicit, easy-to-use level editors and dedicated servers to download other people’s custom levels - and pulling up a prepackaged level made by somebody else is really no different from a GM running a dungeon that was designed by another GM, either one paid by the developers as part of their team, or a hobbyist. That’s an adventure module.

And while I have not personally read it, @jburneko also has a thing about writing dungeon crawl adventure modules called Dungeons and Dilemmas which I am told is also quite good.

What i can tell you about modules (for trad/OSR challenge games) here on this post quickly before clock out time is “write situations, not plots.” Some shit happened or is happening, and then the PCs show up, and the NPCs and environment then react to the actions of the PCs.

It also helps to have some kind of outcome for it the PCs do basically nothing.

It helps GMs a lot to write what we at A.N.I.M. call “actionable information” about NPCs. It’s like “show don’t tell” for RPGs.

If you write “Joe NPC is an asshole,” what youre actually saying to the GM is “make up a character who is an asshole yourself.”

If you want Joe NPC to be an asshole, and don’t want to foist that work on the GM, you could write something like “Joe NPC will sneer when the PCs approach him and say ‘What the fuck do you want?’”

Don’t write “Bill NPC is a coward.” Write “Bill NPC will surrender immediately if threatened. If the orcs attack the town, Bill NPC will abandon his post and hide in the barn.”

You shouldnt write a script, but it helps to throw in like one line of exact dialogue that an NPC will say in a certain situation or in response to certain actions. This is not only “actionable information,” it will help the GM get an idea for the NPC’s cadence and attitude.

Man ranting on the internet about the Superbowl halftime show or complaining that something is "woke"? Hobbyless Behaviour. Girls mocking another girl for not looking right? Hobbyless Behaviour. Mindless vandalism? Hobbyless Behaviour.

Gonna give it a shot here and post some of my OC manga. This is the prologue of "Starlit Skies, Moonlit Eyes"~