Modules as Touchstones

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about "off shelf" campaign settings, I thought I'd write a bit about a related topic: pre-packaged adventures, often called "modules." Old school RPG lore has it that, at the dawn of the hobby, few people, certainly not the fine folks at TSR Hobbies, thought there'd be any market for pre-packaged adventures. Then as now, referees took pride in crafting their own adventures. Just as worldbuilding is one of the great joys of roleplaying games, so too is the process of developing a scenario tailored to one’s own vision and tastes. Given that, why would anyone turn to a pre-packaged adventure module? Why run The Keep on the Borderlands, Masks of Nyarlathotep, or The Traveller Adventure when one could simply create something original?

The greatest virtue of pre-packaged adventures is the shared experience they foster across the hobby. To put it simply: a great module is a touchstone. It links players and referees across tables, generations, and even continents. There is something remarkable in the fact that so many roleplayers, across decades, have ventured into the Caves of Chaos, uncovered the secrets of Saltmarsh, or braved the alien horrors of the Barrier Peaks. These modules have become part of the collective consciousness of the hobby, a language that players can speak regardless of where or when they first sat down at the table. The mere mention of certain locations, villains, or twists within these adventures can evoke instant recognition, stirring memories of triumph, disaster, and everything in between.

This shared literacy is no small thing. Roleplaying is, by its nature, ephemeral. Each campaign a unique blend of personalities, decisions, and improvisations. Unlike a novel or a film, no two games unfold in exactly the same way. And yet, within that variability, a published module provides a thread of continuity. When two players who have never met before can swap stories about their first run-in with Bargle from the solo adventure in the 1984 D&D Basic Set or how they barely escaped Strahd’s castle, they are engaging in something akin to an oral tradition, passing down tales from table to table, from one generation of gamers to the next. Modules provide the foundation for that tradition, ensuring that, even as campaigns come and go, some stories remain universal touchstones.

This is especially valuable in an era where the roleplaying hobby has expanded dramatically. The old days, where most gaming circles were small and isolated, have given way to online communities and virtual tabletop play. The existence of widely recognized modules gives newcomers a way to connect with veterans. They provide common ground in this expanding landscape. Even for those of us who prefer homebrew adventures, having a few classic modules under one’s belt is a kind of shared literacy that allows one to participate in a conversation that stretches back to the origins of the hobby itself. In a way, running a module is a way of stepping into history, reliving and reshaping the same challenges that earlier players have faced.

Beyond simply fostering camaraderie, shared adventures also provide an entry point for new players. A new referee faced with the daunting prospect of designing a whole scenario from scratch can take comfort in the fact that many have run The Village of Hommlet before him. A new player can look up discussions of Tomb of Horrors and know that he is stepping into something larger than his game – a tradition of play that stretches back decades. Even when a module is adapted, altered, or expanded, it still serves as a bridge between individual tables and the broader history of roleplaying. There is something powerful in knowing that, even as each group makes the adventure their own, they are still participating in the same grand tradition of play.

Consider the sheer number of classic modules that have shaped the way we think about adventure design. The open-ended nature of Keep on the Borderlands, the intricate mysteries of Masks of Nyarlathotep, the faction play of The Enemy Within, each of these has not just provided individual groups with hours of entertainment but has influenced the way the hobby itself has evolved. When someone describes a scenario as "like Keep on the Borderlands but in space" or "like Tomb of Horrors but with political intrigue," they are drawing on a shared vocabulary that allows roleplayers to communicate complex ideas in a few words. In a way, these modules form the grammar of the game, the foundation upon which new ideas are built and communicated.

None of this is to say that referees should rely exclusively on published modules. There is something deeply satisfying about crafting one’s own adventures, tailoring them to the specific interests of a group, and introducing them into a campaign. But, as I said about pre-existing settings, the use of adventure modules is not a lesser choice. It is, rather, an acknowledgment of the rich history and communal nature of the hobby, an embrace of the shared stories that have shaped roleplaying for decades.

There's something deeply satisfying about the shared language adventure modules provide. They can tie your table into the larger tapestry of roleplaying history. They allow players across time and space to say, "Ah, you got your soul sucked by Acererak too?" and know, in that moment, that they are part of something greater. The modules may differ, the details may change, but the experience – the shared adventure – remains. I think that's something worthy of celebration.

Yellow Journalism

Here's another strangely prescient sidebar from that Dark Conspiracy preview insert that appeared in issue #47 of Challenge (December 1990). This is obviously dated from a socio-technological standpoint. In 1991, when the game was released, the consumer Internet barely existed, but the writing was already on the wall by that point, even if most people hadn't realized it yet. 

Off the Shelf

Last week,a reader had some interesting things to say in the comments to my post, "Now Make It YOUR Tékumel" (Part I):

James, I know your Tekumel campaign has been a joy for you and your players, but because there’s this continuous “gap” of not knowing the entire ins and outs of the world, doesn’t it make you just want to go back and run your own campaign worlds you were GM’ing in the past or develop a new one? My own setting may not be as rich as Tekumel, Glorantha, or others, but it is mine and mine alone, and the time I spend developing and learning about it is a far greater satisfaction than using someone else’s secondary world, so to speak.

These are questions that have probably been asked since the appearance of the first published settings for use with roleplaying games and they're very good ones. They're especially relevant in the context of old school gaming, which, by and large, tends to valorize "do it yourself" approaches to most aspects of our hobby. As with some many things, I don't think there's a "right" answer to these questions. However, I can offer my thoughts on the matter.

Without a doubt, one of the greatest joys I've had in this hobby is worldbuilding. I suspect many, if not most, referees first take up that mantle out of a desire to create – to sketch out maps, populate them with grand cities and petty fiefdoms, invent cultures, histories, pantheons, even languages and then watch as players interact with what they've created. The creative impulse is a powerful one and indeed central to why I've kept up this hobby for more than four decades. Given that, why then would anyone ever choose to use a setting created by someone else rather than make his own? Why play in Glorantha, Tékumel, the Third Imperium, or the Forgotten Realms rather than a world of one’s own devising?

The most obvious answer is this: pre-existing settings can possess virtues all their own. Chief among these benefits is depth. A well-established setting, particularly one with decades of development, represents an accumulation of creativity far beyond what any individual could achieve alone. Consider Tékumel, which is the fruit of a lifetime of imagining (and play!), from which were born details of multiple societies, cultures, languages, etc. The richness of Tékumel, its sense of authenticity and depth, would be difficult, if not impossible, to replicate without investing a similarly long amount of time into developing a new setting. 

Of course, one might reasonably argue that that's precisely the point of creating one's own setting – to build it up over time through imagination and play. I'm not disputing that and certainly not denigrating the value of it. However, not everyone desires or indeed is even able to devote that much time and effort into building up an imaginary setting in this way. Campaigns, after all, can be fleeting things. Players come and go, life circumstances change, and many referees may not have the luxury of decades to let a world gradually accrete the layers of history, culture, and depth that make a setting feel truly lived-in. There is something to be said for stepping into a world that is already rich with detail, one where the referee doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time he needs a new culture, language, or historical event to ground his adventures. With an established setting, that work has already been done, allowing the referee to focus on incorporating the player characters into an existing framework rather than painstakingly constructing it piece by piece.

Additionally, the act of worldbuilding itself is a different skill from running a compelling campaign. Some referees are natural improvisers, capable of crafting intricate scenarios and memorable characters on the fly, but may struggle to construct the background details that give a world texture. Others might excel at creating histories and cultures but find it challenging to translate those into dynamic and engaging play at the table. Pre-existing settings offer a way to balance those strengths and weaknesses, providing a solid foundation of background and depth while still leaving ample room for creativity and interpretation. By using a well-established world, referees can benefit from the hard work of others while still making the game their own, customizing and adapting elements to suit the needs of their campaigns without having to start from scratch.

This depth can translate into greater immersion. Players unfamiliar with a referee’s homebrew world often struggle to grasp its nuances. What’s the dominant religion? Who rules this land? What’s the history between these two nations? A pre-existing setting obviates some of the need for that by providing a shared foundation of understanding. Even if players aren’t deeply familiar with RuneQuest's Glorantha, for example, they can quickly grasp that it’s a Bronze Age-inspired world of myth and heroism, where the gods are real and ever-present. For many, that's a more solid base for engagement than the uncertainties of a homebrew setting.

Another virtue of using an established setting is that it frees the referee from the burden of having to create everything from whole cloth. Worldbuilding is rewarding, yes, but it’s also time-consuming, and many of us have only limited time to devote to the hobby. By using Tékumel or the Third Imperium, a referee can focus on what really matters: developing adventures, presenting engaging scenarios, and bringing the world to life at the table rather than, say, detailing the taxonomy of his world’s flora and fauna or coming up with the names of its deities. This doesn’t mean that one must slavishly adhere to every canonical detail; rather, an established setting provides a sturdy scaffolding upon which a referee can build, altering and expanding as needed without having to start from scratch.

Furthermore, a pre-existing setting has already been tested. The referee knows that Glorantha is a compelling place to explore, that Traveller’s Imperium provides a solid framework for intrigue and adventure, that the Forgotten Realms is filled to the brim with adventuring locales and NPCs. When crafting a homebrew setting, there’s always the risk that it won’t hold together under scrutiny, that it lacks cohesion, or that it simply doesn’t inspire one's players. A well-developed, pre-established setting has already proven itself.

There’s also the communal aspect of a shared setting. When a referee runs a game in Glorantha or Tékumel, he is participating in a wider conversation, connecting with an audience that extends beyond his own table. He can draw on the experiences of others, take inspiration from decades of published material, and contribute to a living world that exists in the collective imagination of thousands of players. This sense of shared history is part of what makes these settings so compelling. When one plays in Glorantha, for example, one walks the same mythic paths as countless other players, building on the stories and legends that came before. (This is also part of the appeal of pre-packaged adventure modules, but perhaps that's a topic for another post.)

As a general rule, I still prefer homebrew settings. There is an undeniable satisfaction in crafting one’s own setting and watching it take shape over time. However, I think it would be a misconception to assume that using a pre-existing world is somehow a lesser choice or that it stifles creativity. On the contrary, it provides a foundation upon which creativity can flourish. That's certainly been the case in my House of Worms campaign, for example. Adopting a well-established setting can enable a referee to gain access to a wealth of material, allowing him to focus on breathing life into the world and creating fun adventures that his players will remember for years to come.

Once again, I think I've rambled on longer than I'd intended. At the very least, I hope I've done a decent job of laying out some of the reasons why a referee might decide to make use of an "off the shelf" campaign setting rather than one he'd created himself. 

"I've Got a Really Swell Life."

Here's one of the more evocative sidebars from the Dark Conspiracy preview appearing in issue #47 of Challenge magazine (December 1990).

Retrospective: Dark Conspiracy

My history with roleplaying games is littered with games I desperately wanted to like but that, for one reason or another – sometimes many reasons – I simply couldn't. A prime example of what I'm talking about is Dark Conspiracy, a near-future horror RPG released by Game Designers' Workshop in 1991. Even now, more than three decades later, my feelings about Dark Conspiracy (or DarkCon, as it was often abbreviated back in the day) are complicated, so complicated, in fact, that I'm not entirely sure how well I'll be able to articulate them in this post. Please forgive me if what follows is more rambling than usual.

Let's start with some context. At the turn of the 1990s, the RPG world was in a state of transition. Arguably, that's been the default state of the hobby since its inception, but I think it's fair to say that, by the last decade of the 20th century, the times, they were a-changin'. Signs of the decline in the dominance of both Dungeons & Dragons and TSR were, by this time, becoming obvious and this created an opening for new games, new companies, and new approaches to roleplaying. 

Of course, TSR wasn't the only venerable RPG company to show signs of decline as the '90s dawned. Game Designers' Workshop was another one. Founded in 1973 as a wargames publisher, GDW nevertheless entered the roleplaying market quite early, when it released Traveller in 1977, only three years after the appearance of OD&D. However, by 1991, the fortunes of Traveller – and GDW along with it – were in doubt. Traveller was stuck in the doldrums of the Rebellion Era established by MegaTraveller and it was clear that something had to be done to reinvigorate the moribund game line. Likewise, history had caught up with Twilight: 2000. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 put into serious question the game's speculative history of World War III, resulting in a second edition in 1990 that not only altered its timeline to bring it closer to reality but also changed its entire rules system.

Larger cultural shifts were also at play. The winding down of the Cold War, the rapid advance of computer technology, and the impending arrival of the new millennium fueled widespread anxieties. Some of these found expression in the cyberpunk genre, with its visions of corporate tyranny and technological alienation. Others surfaced in conspiracy theories about the New World Order, UFOs, and even apocalyptic religious prophecies. Like many turn-of-the-century moments, it was a chaotic, uncertain time, equal parts thrilling and unsettling. I was just entering adulthood then, and I remember the early '90s with strange affection. On bad days, I find myself longing for those times.

Enter Dark Conspiracy. Written by Lester W. Smith, Dark Conspiracy attempted to fuse cyberpunk’s dystopian corporate control with supernatural horror and alien invasion. At first glance, it seemed to be the perfect game for the era: a paranoid, near-future setting in which America had collapsed into vast urban metroplexes and lawless wastelands, while eldritch entities known as the Dark Ones manipulated humanity from behind the scenes. Thematically, it was an ambitious blend of Cyberpunk and Call of Cthulhu, a world where high technology coexisted with conspiracies, cults, and Lovecraftian nightmares.

In its published form, however, Dark Conspiracy was a game of contradictions. Its setting concept was rich and evocative, but its execution was often unwieldy. GDW, perhaps trying to draw on its existing fanbase, built the game’s mechanics on the same ruleset as the second edition of Twilight: 2000. While that system (which came to be known as the "House System") worked well enough for military survival scenarios, it was clunky and a poor match for horror gaming in my opinion. Character creation was detailed but slow, leaning heavily on a career-based progression system that felt more suited to military campaigns than to the investigative horror that Dark Conspiracy promised. Likewise, combat was intricate – perhaps overly so – while supernatural and investigative mechanics felt like an afterthought by comparison.

Despite these flaws, Dark Conspiracy had undeniable strengths. Its setting, which painted a grimly fascinating picture of a broken America where the supernatural lurked at the fringes of perception, held a lot of possibilities, even if they were never fully realized. The game encouraged a mix of adventure styles, from corporate espionage to alien-hunting and post-apocalyptic survival. In some ways, it was ahead of its time, prefiguring the pop culture explosion of conspiracy fiction that would define the late '90s and early 2000s. Remember that the genre-defining television series, The X-Files, wouldn't air until 1993, two years after the publication of this game. People often use the phrase "ahead of its time" too casually, but, in this respect at least, Dark Conspiracy earns it.

The game never quite found its footing. GDW supported it with a range of supplements, including adventures and setting expansions that deepened its world, but they were uneven both in terms of quality and their portrayal of the game world. Some, for example, suggested that its early 21st century setting was not too dissimilar to the real 1990s but with slightly more advanced technology, while others implied much greater social and technological changes. Early promotional materials for the game in the pages of Challenge painted a very dark, even bleak, picture of the setting, where vast swaths of the world had been largely abandoned and given over to the Dark Ones and their human co-conspirators and minions. Unfortunately, the published game was inconsistent on this point, which hampered my enjoyment of it. 

This is a great shame. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I really wanted to like Dark Conspiracy. In principle, it's a perfect mash-up of lots of ideas and genres that are right up my alley – science fiction, horror, dystopianism, conspiracy theories, and more. The potential of the game is immense and, especially at the time of its original publication, it managed to tap into an emerging zeitgeist. If only it had been better – better rules, better presentation, better adventures – it's possible that it could have made a bigger splash and helped lift GDW out of its doldrums. Alas, that was not meant to be and I'm left only with my conflicted feelings. 

USMEA Official Statement on the Richmond Action

Issued by the Office of the Civil-Military Administrator Colonel Walter E. Dorsey

November 7, 2000

The United States Military Emergency Administration recognizes that the events in Richmond have caused alarm, anger, and grief among those who still believe in law, order, and the future of this nation. The destruction and loss of life are regrettable, but let us be clear: Richmond had ceased to be a city governed by its people. It had become a battleground, occupied and brutalized by an extremist faction that sought to impose its rule through fear and force.

New America is not a legitimate government, nor does it represent the will of Richmond’s citizens. It is a radical offshoot of the Free State movement that had seized control of the city by force, purging those who opposed its rule and silencing any dissent through summary executions. The people of Richmond are not its followers; they were its prisoners.

Every opportunity was given for New America’s leadership to surrender peacefully. Instead, they dug in, using the city's population as human shields and converting civilian infrastructure into military assets. Their actions left us with no choice but to intervene decisively.

Moreover, intelligence reports indicated that New America had acquired or was seeking access to chemical weapons, including VX nerve gas. We could not allow that risk to remain unchecked. A faction that had already demonstrated its willingness to use terror and mass execution as tools of governance could not be trusted with weapons of mass destruction. Had we hesitated, the consequences could have been far worse, not only for Richmond but for any community that stood in New America's way.

We acknowledge the heavy toll this action took on the city and its people. To those who lost loved ones in the crossfire, we offer our deepest regret. But there must be no misunderstanding: Richmond was not liberated from its own people. It was freed from an occupying force that seeks to remake this country in its own twisted image.

The United States Military Emergency Administration remains committed to the survival of this nation. We will not cede its future to radicals, separatists, or opportunists. We will act where others hesitate. We will hold the line where others falter. Richmond was not the first test of our resolve, nor will it be the last.

This nation will endure. And we will see to it.

The Articles of Dragon: "All Games Need Names"

As much as I loved "Even Orcish is Logical" by Clyde Heaton, the article in issue #75 of Dragon (July 1983) that really had a lasting impact on me was Katharine Kerr's "All Games Need Names." Partly, that's a function of the fact that Kerr's article was much lengthier than Heaton's. Take up seven pages in the issue (some partial pages, to be clear), Kerr's piece is necessarily more extensive in its coverage of its subject matter. However, it's not simply its length that gave it greater purchase on my imagination. Rather, it's that Kerr seems to know even more about linguistics – and how to present that knowledge in a useful, practical way.

Kerr devotes a lot of attention to phonemes, which is to say, the sounds of a language. Heaton did this, too, but Kerr's discussion is more sophisticated and grounded in the academic study of linguistics. I can't say for certain, but it's quite likely that this article was the place where I first encountered consonantal groupings, like labials, dentals, alveolars, etc. The article includes a useful table of the different sounds and how they're made by the human mouth. Some might not unreasonably suggest that this is pointless pedantry. For me, though, as a nerdy 13 year-old, this was pure gold. It helped me to understand the differences between consonants and the sounds they made, which, in turn, informed my ability to think about constructed languages.

In a similar vein, Kerr categorizes languages themselves, based on their broad grammatical structure. For example, she talks about isolating languages, whose words don't change much or at all, depending on usage, and compares them to inflectional languages, whose words change to varying degrees based on usage. She talks about grammatical gender, number, possession, and place, among many other related topics. Kerr also taught me the word "infix," which I have never forgotten in the decades since. Taken together, she puts a lot of effort into showing that languages differ from one another not just in their sounds but also in their forms and these differences should be considered, even if you're only interested in coming up with plausible names for use in a roleplaying game setting. 

As a kid, I learned a lot from this article. I found myself heading to the local library and checking out books about foreign languages, especially dictionaries. Just a few months after "All Games Need Names" appeared, I was in high school, learning Latin and French, which further increased my enthusiasm for making use of languages, both real and constructed, in my roleplaying campaigns. Kerr's focus here was on plausible (and interesting) names for RPGs and I certainly followed her advice on that score. However, it also gave me the itch to expand beyond that and try my hand at something closer to a full constructed language. 

My main complaint about the language is that, unlike Heaton's discussion of Orcish, Kerr gives only very fleeting examples of how to use all the information she presents in her article. It's mostly theoretical in its content and, while that was great for a person like me, I can easily see how it might be inadequate for others. I imagine that's why Dragon published the two articles side by side and even dubbed them "Language Lessons," parts I and II. Together, they provide a decent tool box for referees hoping to make languages and names a bit more coherent and believable. They're no substitute for more academic study of these topics, naturally. For most of us, though, they're more than sufficient. I loved them both in my youth, especially Kerr's article. Good stuff!