Favorite Adventure You Ran
The only published scenario I have ever run
faithfully is ‘The Hall of Risk’ for Stormbringer. Wish I still had a copy.
I tried some small D&D dungeons (forget
which ones) but there was no spark. When I ran ‘Hall’, it was like lightning in
a bottle.
‘Hall of Risk’ is a gonzo ‘special episode’
type of adventure that is far removed from the dungeon. Adventurers go to the
gaming hall of Balo, Jester of Chaos, and play such games as craps, chess using
themselves as pawns (about 15 years before Harry Potter did it), and some other
things I disremember, for the chance of getting Chaos-tainted powers.
It was a laugh riot, a micro-dungeon that
really hit the aesthetic of Moorcock’s Elric novels and allowed Stormbringer to
step out of D&D’s shadow, which prior scenarios like ‘Tower of Ykrth Florn’
did not. It also showed me that my mind worked better with freeform
mini-sandboxes, which basically describes the adventures I have successfully
run since then.
Favorite Location
Which brings me to my next answer – NOT the
dungeon. I don’t loathe dungeons, but I don’t run them well, so don’t often try.
My mind works better grasping a whole gameworld or even multiverse loosely than
trying to get the details right of a small locale like a dungeon. My players
seem to enjoy when I do this, as do I, and I even enjoy playing in someone else’s
dungeon. But I don’t usually run them. I am hankering to run B2 or White Plume
Mountain just for the
experience, but more drawn to sandboxes like Isle of Dread.
I even submitted an adventure to Chaosium
back in the day that was kindly rejected by Lynn Willis. In it, players worked
for a treacherous exiled Melnibonean nobleman aiming for the throne of Imryyr,
and had to travel from Melnibone, to the Plane of Air, to the Shadow Realm, to World
War Two Italy, and one or two others I forget to get materials needed. The
scenario is lost to time, but when I read Rogue Mistress I thought how much
better my adventure would have been.
Favorite Trap/Puzzle
I guess another reason I dislike running
dungeons is that I feel old D&D traps are somewhat cheap or gimmicky. Roll
or die. Lose three PCs on a chest with 30 copper coins in it. Fall in a pit.
Yawn, isn’t this supposed to be a game/fun? Grimtooth’s traps were fun to read,
but drew cries of ‘Unfair!’ when they mashed adventurers to a pulp with no real
chance of escape.
I think for traps/puzzles to work (i.e. to
add to the enjoyment of the game) they need to have two elements, namely 1) risk
and 2) reward. And as the risk gets bigger, so should the reward. The pit in
the 1st cave
of B2 is basically roll
or fall in, with no real reward and lots of risk. That’s lame.
Which takes me back to ‘Hall of Risk.’ It
has both these elements, and players willingly risk their characters for the
chance of a reward. In other words, the puzzle/trap of ‘Hall of Risk’ is a
mini-game itself, and players who know the rewards will willingly throw themselves
into it again and again. In D&D, the dungeon itself is a successful trap/puzzle
itself, drawing adventurers who risk death for coin and experience. Where
D&D sometimes falls down, in ALL editions from what I’ve seen, is posing
arbitrary traps with little knowledge of what’s at stake and the chances of
success.
