How long should an adventure be?

 

Bilbo once asked, “Don’t adventures ever have an end?” This was likely his unfortunate response to playing the original Dungeons and Dragons game module, Temple of Elemental Evil (First Edition, AD&D, TSR Inc, 1985). Nothing against that grand and well-read and never-finished adventure, other than it is long…really long; totally devoid of much variation other than the a-z roster of things you will kill and rob. This is a classic example of what we now call “grinding” games. Grinding, or the act of playing to get stronger so that someday the game can be enjoyed, is usually a video game issue. In this case, it is so that you don’t have to enter another room with an illogical set of adversaries, who are totally unaware that you slaughtered their buddies in the last room.

 

So then, is it really about length, or is it about continuity of content and variation of encounters that determines what a good adventure looks like? I would opine that an adventure can be one page and still be too long, or one thousand and still not belong enough. Think about the one-page example, can’t be that bad, right? Now imagine the old school Hex Crawling maps that had various environments in each hex, and entering into the hex results in encounters with wandering monsters from the key on the bottom of the page. Each hex results in repeated encounters with the same 1-6 creatures, no variation, no changes, no real story, all sandbox, no point.

 

Now consider something that has varied environments and tasks that simulate Aragorn’s journey throughout The Lord of the Rings books (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954). If the maps, placement of creatures, events, timeline, and characters remain the same, that adventure would run into the thousands of pages. But would it be too long? The answer lies in one single issue: does the party have free will to take another course of action, or are they subject to the movie disguised as the adventure? In the first case, the adventure could last until the end of time and be amazing; in the second, it would be a monotonous slog over years to reach the preordained outcome, assisted by faked die rolls and amazing saves.

 

So then, I guess the answer is “as long as it is entertaining.”

 

 

Concept art for a creature in the upcoming adventure Old Man of the Woods.