I didn't want to hijack the discussion in the Manifesto thread, so I'm trying to move this part of the discussion to a separate thread.Solomoriah wrote: ↑Tue Jan 10, 2023 5:50 pm As far as "proposing" your adventures... dude, I haven't turned much of anything down yet. Odds are kind of in your favor.
If you have more than 40 or so pages total, we'd probably publish them as a multimodule; if you have more than 40 in just the solos, I'd like to separate them and put them in their own book, but I'm agreeable to whatever approach you want. It's your baby, but if you submit them we'll give them our standard treatment, art, redrawn maps if needed, format standardization, covers, you name it.
The idea is to make the barrier to entry for introduction to RPGs for people with zero prior experience, and no one around them to help, learn incrementally through differential learning techniques in the story, rather than "massed learning" and reading through the rulebook, following research and evidence-in-practice approaches based on cognitive neuropsychology of learning and neurosciences principles.
We are also drawing from the RPG Ability Model shown here:
https://rpgresearch.com/rpg-ability-model
Basically we want to "port" BECMI principles of learning RPGs to BFRPG. We have found that although the BECMI system has issues, their approach from beginner through to high level campaigns, is by far the most effective approach _ever published_ in RPGs that we can find anywhere. But the system is problematic, and there are no legal in-print options available. We're hoping BFRPG can be the vehicle to show the entire RPG industry the "right way" to design "Starter Sets" and "Introductory Boxes", because none of them have done so for _both_ player and GM. There have been some okay for players, like Call of Cthulhu 7th edition, but they fall flat after that, unfortunately. https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ctory_Play
The first SAM (Solo Adventure Module) is targeted for a play time average around 15-30 minutes for an average reader of 6th grade level, and can be read by average third graders or so (albeit much more slowly, and we encourage looking words up to grow vocabulary). It is mostly an interactive fiction (IF), but incrementally adds introduction to creating and using an attribute one at a time in story context. By the end of the first adventure, they have a basic understanding of their primary attributes and saving throws (or whatever term that might be changed to, resistance roles in Rolemaster, etc.). There is a smidgen of the most basic action and combat resolution concepts, elaborated more in the second SAM.
The second SAM is targeted for play time average around 60-90 minutes (if we can get it closer to the 15-45 minutes range eventually, that would be better). It is geared toward rounding out the knowledge of basic RPG principles for taking and resolving a variety of actions, as well as some helpful tips/tropes for TRPG adventuring. By the time they are finished with both SAMs, they should be fully ready to go adventuring in a GM 1:1 or group setting, knowing enough of the basics to play.
The third adventure, is assuming the GM has no prior RPG experience, and has only gone through the 2 SAMs. It is the "GM's First Adventure". It is intentionally highly railroaded for both the player and the GM. It wants the GM to just open the adventure, go through the "preparing for your first game" checklist and scheduling. Then once one or more players have arrived, begin playing within 5 minutes, with no prep work required. They can learn as they go, just as they did with the SAMs. It is filled heavily with "read this" boxes, and requires the players to be willing to play in a very railroaded way, supporting that the GM is trying this for the first time, so all working together to learn "how to do this GM thing", so a lot of the usual PC free agency will be limited initially, and there is a "social contract" that everyone in the session is okay with this approach for now. Over time it will expand (as per the RPG Ability Model), as everyone learns incrementally the basics. This adventure is targeted for a single session of 2-3 hours for game play from when the players sit down to when the adventure is complete. It is assuming the players have only been through the 2 SAMs, just like the GM, and no other foreknowledge.
The fourth adventure, "GM's Second Adventure", begins to loose up the railroad as it progresses, getting closer to "training wheels", beginning to offer the GM and players incrementally more freedom of ideas and approaches. This is also geared to be played in a single session of 2-3 hours.
By the time they have finished the 4 adventures, they will have "caught the bug" without being overwhelmed by the massed learning to take it to the next level. Now that the want more adventures, they are more intrinsically motivated to do the "hard work" of burrowing into the tomes of rules options and adventures before them. We are first testing these adventures with our training staff, then having them run the adventures in our community settings at the RPG Center and Spark Central. Then refine the adventures, and expand them to our other community, school, mobile facilities tours, online programs, etc.
We need to have the first draft of all of these working before our next batch of GM Trainees start around February 23rd or so. Then, as we always do, we'll iterate through many times, taking extensive observational notes for data, and the subjective feedback forms every session gets. Hopefully by summer or the end of the year we'll have all the bugs worked out.
That being said, I'm worried about making incorrect training decisions that aren't quite right for the BFRPG rules.
We run a LOT of different RPGs (I've been RPGing since '77), a few listed here: https://rpgresearch.com/drop-in-and-rpg, and all too often I jumble the different d20 rules variants (for example different variations in the rules about how many tasks you can do in a round, or initiative differences, or "attacks of opportunity" variations, disengaging from combat, etc.), including BFRPG. So I am hoping to be able to work with the BFRPG community, as we get the drafts closer, to make sure we don't screw up the rules lessons learned. We want, as will all our works, to have these freely and openly available to the public in both digital and (inexpensive) print options, which is also why we like BFRPG so much for our programs.
That being said, we do have some of our own house rules that will be incorporated for our training, but they will be clearly spelled out as such (and used as examples of how GMs can make their own house rules, that this is a normal thing for RPGs - which trips up a some boardgamers)). Previously I submitted our Accessible PC Sheet to BFRPG, and it was noted that only the version that conformed to the core rules was allowed in the repository, not our house rules modified version. For example, every RPG we run, we separate Charisma from Appearance, there are important psychological and learning ramifications in doing so, so we do so with every RPG. But these are little things, and it will be easy enough to strip out the house rules sections for a core rules compliant version when the time comes.
We've been niggling away at this for quite some time, but we must getting working versions of all 4 adventures before our next batch of GM volunteer trainees start their training around February 23rd.
So, any and all help on the best process to coordinate with you and the BFRPG community as a whole for such endeavors is greatly appreciated. Happy Gaming!
-Hawke
