The Almanacs of Old Adventures
The same freedom I believe is good to exercise in Setting Guides is the same sort of freedom I think is appropriate in the almanacs of old adventures kept and sold by publication houses. Adventures like Ravenloft with the wicked Count Strahd or the Temple of Elemental Evil in Dungeons & Dragons, need not be stringently held to in our fiction. They are guidelines for play. Adventure fuel. But they don’t need to be the whole car.Â
Some who hold rather tightly to these source texts stifle their game and the creativity of the other co-creatives at the table. The book becomes the creative and the players must simply make decisions within its constraints. Instead, I think we should be liberal with these texts. We should build OUR ADVENTURES out from the ones the books are handing us. Because, once again, we own the book now - not the publisher - and we can do with it what we please.Â
Now, I think Ravenloft is a well made adventure with enough twists and turns to make every play through unique and strange in its own right - as well as deadly. So I may not need to change much for my own enjoyment. Perhaps my players will though. And why should they not? They are free to play. We are liberated creatives, not constrained slaves to the systems we play. The Temple of Elemental Evil however, needs a better ending, to put it mildly, and I feel liberated to do so as many others before me have. Perhaps it is the punk in me, but I see no reason to let a book be Authoritarian, especially when I don’t think people should be.
