The Pilot Adventure
The Gnomes over at Gnome Stew (who must still be reeling at their removal from 4th Edition) have posted a very interesting article entitled “The Pilot Adventure,” in which they discuss the idea of presenting your players with a 2-3 session “Mini-Adventure,” set in the world that a full campaign will soon be set in. Not unlike a TV pilot, this takes place out of continuity and the players can rewrite their personality, history, or completely change their characters if they don’t see them fitting into the world. I really like this idea, and think I might use it in the future. You can click here to read the whole thing, or hit the jump for a little taste.
Pilot adventures should be self-contained.
Even if you’re designing a complex web of intrigue, the pilot should include some short-term goal that the players can attain and feel a sense of accomplishment. This does a number of things:
- It reinforces the “pilot” concept.
- It keeps the players from feeling overwhelmed by unresolved plot threads.
- It makes them feel competent.
- It provides a natural breaking point to make the necessary game adjustments.
- It enables PCs and NPCs that aren’t gelling to be retooled, removed, or replaced.
It’s usually a bad idea to make the PCs fail or get a good smackdown from the baddies. While you may want to give the players some sense of loss (especially in a campaign with dark themes), there should still be something that they can successfully accomplish. In other words, they may not be able to defeat Cthulhu, but they can prevent him from manifesting today.
