Running Games

Designing Adventures

  • Remember that Renaissance is supposed to be balanced between several different areas — acquiring resources, fighting, sneaking, social scenes and analysis. Don’t let any one of these become too large.

  • Individual adventures are often short.

  • Long “arcs” can be broken into chapters, where a chapter represents a single, contained adventure.

    • Chapters can take anywhere between 4-12 sessions, and usually represent between 3 and 14 days in the game world.

  • Separate chapters with stretches of down time.

    • This is important: healing is hard, and psychological healing is very hard; your players will need plenty of time between chapters to rest and recuperate.
    • This is also when players will recharge their Trade Goods, crafters will make things, and players will pursue their projects (like building businesses, or crewing ships, or developing new powers).

  • An individual chapter — whether a self-contained adventure or a component of a longer arc — should include an even balance of elements.

    • A common pattern is to start by handing players a mission or a clue; then, the early part of the adventure is often investigating, find people of interest and figuring out what’s going on.

  • Remember that climactic events in Renaissance don’t need to be fights.

    • They can be, but they don’t need to be.
    • Nothing is wrong with having the ultimate enemy be a deeply evil noble who is useless in a fight.

  • Problems should have diverse solutions.

    • Make sure there are multiple ways to solve any given problem, so that different characters with different skillsets can all be active and useful.

    • Embrace solutions to problems that aren’t fighting.

    • If you have a Backer-type character, be sure to allow them to occasionally simply use their money or prestige to escape trouble and solve problems.

      • (This is worth being specific about because the kinds of solutions that Backer-type characters will come up with are likely to be the kinds of solutions that GMs would work really hard to disallow in a D&D game.)

  • Renaissance chapters can lean on background and setting a lot more than D&D games do.

    • This is partly because Renaissance has a lot more non-combat than D&D, but
    • it’s also because Renaissance enemies tend to be Spirits, with cinematic (rather than mechanical) powers.
    • You’ll need to have a good enough idea of what the world that the players are in should be like, and what kind of resources should be available to them, that they can explore it, investigate, ask questions and talk to people.

  • Evil Spirits make good ultimate villains.

    • Remember, powerful Spirits should be handled “cinematically,” as opposed to mechanically. Don’t “stat-out the gods.”

    • Defeating Spirits might hinge on having specific magical implements, or knowledge of specific rituals — or the backing of other powerful spirits. The campaign might turn on acquiring these resources.

    • (When this is true, it’s good to hint to your players that they have no chance of defeating a given spirit in a fight, and need to look for other options.)

    • Spirits should also be menacing and strange:

      • menacing in the sense that they are vastly more powerful than the characters, and might be extremely dangerous — and the characters might be helpless if the spirit decides to turn on them, which it might do for no other reason than it wants to.
      • Strange in the sense that mortals may no nothing at all about the intent or nature of a given spirit, and its plans, objectives and behaviors might be completely obscured to lesser beings.

  • Rewards

    • Money, Trade Goods, valuables (like land) and favors the rich and powerful all make good rewards; these can be good fuel for roll-playing, and can be very useful to PCs during Down Time (and future adventures).

    • Specific magical items make very poor rewards. Remember that Renaissance is designed around having a small number of interesting features — that is, powers and items.

      • If you give a player an item that they didn’t ask for, they might not find it interesting; it might become the least of several options the player has available.
      • Remember that players should be the primary authors of their features; if they want a power or weapon, they should be the ones to come up with it.
      • Realize that players can just make their own features; a crafter can make any magical weapon or armor that they want during down-time, and a spellcaster (or psion or fighter or cleric) can make a new power. Why give them an item they may not be interested in, when they can just make their own during the next Down Time?

    • If you feel that you must give your PCs magical “power toys,” then potions make good rewards.

      • Potions can have a range of magical effects, which can be both powerful and interesting.
      • Because they are expensive and single-use, players might not invest resources in stock-piling them.
      • It might be tricky to come up with specific effects, that are interesting without being overpowered (or useless).
      • Again, tho, remember that you shouldn’t reward them with a potion that a character with 50 ranks in Craft: Alchemy couldn’t just make.

  • Enemies

    • One of the down-sides of being mostly defined by skills is that enemies can seem generic.
    • Interesting items and powers can go a long way towards making an enemy seem unique.
    • Sometimes just being an interesting race or employing an interesting tactic can help make an individual enemy stand out.