Question 1 - Environmental Interactivity is important?

[bryce0lynch]

Assume a book with chapters on Ease of Use, Evocative Writing, and Interactivity. Assume a fourth chapter called: and some explicit feedback for more classic D&D type exploratory/investigation games.

Assume that interactivity can be stabbing stuff, like monsters. Or talking to stuff, like monsters, NPC's, and kings. Assume that there is third type of interactivity that we will call Environmental Interactivity. This is pushing button, turning statues, and fucking with those pools of colored water you found.

Assume the word "all", whenever used, is defined as "close enough, but there are corner cases"

Is that third type, Environmental, for lack of a better word, a necessary aspect of all good RPG adventures? Are there genres which you can have a good adventure without that sort of interactivity?

Does this sort of thing go in to the interativity chapter, relevent to all rpg adventures, or in to the "D&D-like exploratory games" chapter?

 

[The Heretic]

Hmm. Environmental Interactivity is important, it does add quite a bit to the game, but I don't know if it's necessary. Let me think.

I suppose you could further split it between mundane and gonzo. Mundane might be like the Sleepless module in Dungeon magazine. The party comes into a room with a bunch of mirrors, and they *know* it's going to be dangerous to interact with these mirrors because they are in a wizard's tower. Nothing out of the ordinary, but it adds a lot to the adventure. Gonzo would be like the mist room in ASE1. There are the alcoves with the different coloured mists, and if you use the pitcher to pour water down the drain of one you get a bizarre magical effect to occur. It's out of left field. That kind of thing adds a lot too, but in a different manner. Instead of "Wizards are dangerous" it turns into "WTF is this thing!".

Environmental is very good for 'crawls' (hex or dungeon). Sandboxes too. Not as necessary, and maybe a little superfluous, for mystery adventures, or adventures more tactical in nature like Kratys Freehold from Dungeon.

A list of adventure genre might be nice. I can't really think of any others except the ones above.

Maybe it should get a light introduction in the Interactivity chapter, but a longer elaboration in the "D&D-like Exploratory Games" chapter.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

File it under "Interactivity", while heavily cross-pollinating it into "Evocative Writing".

Hell, when someone uses the term "interactivity", my mind goes straight to stuff the party can fiddle with, not the NPCs/monsters (which are a base part of the game).

 

[bryce0lynch]

I agree ... and now with added emphasis.

If we take the top 20 games by sales, or by play on (some online platform) then they would ALL benefit from envvironmental interactivity. SO, perfection being the enemy of good enough, it goes under interactivity perhaps with a black swan footnote

 

[Guy Fullerton]

Not sure this helps, but I'd classify the problem as myopic design, overly focusing on the play pieces that the rulebooks list out for the referee or make implicit in the game procedures. For example: dungeon rooms/doors/cooridors, monsters, treasures.

Interactivity comes from those, yes, and sometimes more than enough of it. But...

It's not so much that some designs might benefit from "Environmental Interactivity," so much as the designs might benefit from imagination/visualization first, and use the tables more as a reference, to help fill in the mechanical details later.

It doesn't really matter whether a game is about exploration.

If a referee wants to devise a situation/scenario/module involving captives at a Florida bayou drug smuggling compound, then at least consider a start by brainstorming based on the mental flashes you got from the bold section, instead of a start by flipping through a (modern-day system) enemies & treasure guide.

 

[EOTB]

Yes, it is important where it is contextual, to make a good adventure into a great adventure. But it is complementary, the french horn of adventure writing. It is one of the pieces of adventure writing that can seem out of place if included in everything by rote.

 

[PrinceofNothing]

Is that third type, Environmental, for lack of a better word, a necessary aspect of all good RPG adventures? Are there genres which you can have a good adventure without that sort of interactivity?

No they are not strictly necessary, but they are probably necessary for traditional dungeoncrawling. I think B12 would almost qualify as an adventure that does not have it. It is possible to think of adventures that involve a protracted siege, or adventures that involve complicated faction play, to not have this sort of environmental activity. I would argue every mystery adventure has one part where you search a house looking for secret info or evidence so that could qualify as Environmental Activity.

The adventure The Last Days of Constantinople for D20 is a good example of a very intriguing adventure with multiple NPCs, permutations and complications that has almost no environmental activity. I think it does have a secret passage somewhere if that counts. I imagine as you slide more into the Harn or Historical fantasy side of adventure design, environmental activity decreases as the capabilities of physical objects become more fixed. Infiltration would still have static objects that could potentially be used, a haystack you could hide in etc. etc, but does hiding in it alter the nature of the haystack or merely exploit a static condition?

The other alternative for a non environmental interactive is something like Amber where the entire adventure consists of an arena, with defined but non-interactive features, with multiple NPCs or factions of NPCs, that must be diplomacied/npcd/betrayed or otherwise interacted with to complete the objective. Even Amber had the Pattern, but one can envision something more mundane, a fortress that if occupied provides a strategic advantage, without meeting all the requirements of an Interactive Environment. Vampire the Masquerade is supposed to be this, but that type of play was never captured in a scenario.

 

[Beoric]

I think, as a generic feature of any good encounter, be it combat, social, exploratory, problem-solving, or otherwise, the situation needs to encourage players to participate actively in it. That can mean different things with different playstyles, but (and I expect @Pseudoephedrine can correct me if I am wrong) I suspect it is a universal truth that allowing (let along encouraging) the players to be passive is never a good thing. So the adventure always needs to encourage active participation.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

Some encourage temporary passivity but only ever as something to inflect and contrast with active engagement, the assumed default and ideal. They do often have different senses of what "active engagement" means so far as I can tell.

Personally, I'd distinguish between environmental interactivity where there's an artificially clear affordance in the set-up, and ones where you're expected to imagine the affordances of a real object (as interpreted through the rules, the DM's sense of those affordances, etc.). A button tends to be the former, the haystack in the courtyard the latter, but you could present the haystacks in such a way that their use for hiding shone forth as the primary and relevant affordance in a way that would almost be as strong as that button's mere presence.

 

[Malrex]

Is that third type, Environmental, for lack of a better word, a necessary aspect of all good RPG adventures? Are there genres which you can have a good adventure without that sort of interactivity?

Does this sort of thing go in to the interativity chapter, relevent to all rpg adventures, or in to the "D&D-like exploratory games" chapter?

I agree with Beoric.

Where would you put Traps in your chapter? I see Environmental Interactivity the same as Traps or more appropriately--TRICK--is it required/necessary? no...Does it make an adventure better?--got to read the room--it might be COMPLETELY necessary depending on what type of players you have. Since you can't read the room when publishing something, I think it's a good action to include some sort of trick or environmental interaction. For example, I hate riddles...but once in awhile I try to add one because I know some players like that. Would players who enjoy combat feel slighted if there were no monsters to fight? Well, the players who like to fuck with shit may not have as good of a time if their is nothing to interact with.

 

[Beoric]

To expand on @Malrex's question I would like to point out that a trap, once discovered, becomes a trick, in that you need to figure out how to deal with it. I think a corollary of this is that traps should be easy to find, either by positioning or by common procedures, because you want to turn them into tricks in order to make them interactive. A trap you don't find isn't very interactive at all.

 

[squeen]

I had this one crossroad in my mega-dungeon---between several factions---that one faction kept rotating and resetting booby-traps in. Very obvious, but also innocuous-seeming things (glass sphere on pedestal's, etc.). It was intended to alert them to when someone or something was on their door-step and maybe slow them down---so telegraphing the trap was sort of a part of the design.

I was very surprised to hear my players one-day refer to that cross-roads as "The Hallway of Death".
It felt like an over-achievement.