As I'm doing a soft relaunch of Super Dead, complete with two new starter adventures to help people learn the game, I was excited by a recent Angry GM blog that laid out a template for starter adventures. This was the perfect thing at the perfect time.
For those who aren't familiar with Angry GM, Angry advocates for the belief that good game design can promote good gaming, combined with a skilled game runner, can consistently provide a top-tier tabletop experience; with the corollary that if you do not pay any attention to game design (adventure flow, encounter types, narrative progression, etc.), you're likely to have a worse – or at the very least less consistent, game.
I find this viewpoint compelling. So, I was curious our started adventure's stacked up against Angry's criteria.
Here, we'll review Angry's criteria, give an overview of our two starter adventures, and assess each point by point.
The Angry GM's criteria for a good starter adventure
In his blogpost on the topic, the Angry GM lays out a 9 things a starter adventure should do to introduce new players to a system, or to tabletop gaming writ-large. There are a few more in his original post, but some of those are game master facing – and can't really be enforced as a matter of game design.
In short, those 8 are:
- Invite players into the world
- Give the players a specific goal
- Force them into character with an NPC
- Introduce basic mechanics with low-stakes challenges
- Introduce: "Everyone Doing Everything All At Once"
- Introduce: "Now, Explore On Your Own"
- Have the PCs rest
- Begin the "real adventure"
The overarching premise is basically, start slow, build, pause, and then take off the training wheels and let them play the actual game.
I think this works pretty well and, before doing a detailed reading of our starter adventures, this meshes pretty well with what we're trying to do. I'd say if I was trying to run a dedicated "newbie" adventure, I might hew to this script a bit more closely. In general, I think that the people who are new to Super Dead won't be new to tabletop gaming. Super Dead will probably be their many-th TTRPG, so we can be a bit more flexible. But the idea of saving high-stakes stuff to the end is a great one.
An Overview of Super Dead's Starter Adventures
The two starter adventures we're going to review are:
- Subterfuge in the Station (itch link, solo play report)
- Batty Bio Lab Breakout (itch link, solo play report)
Subterfuge in the Station is a foray into a police station. Player characters are given one of three prompts: investigate survivor activity, find some ammo, or stop a mutant villain who wants something valuable there. Based on these prompts, they'll explore the station, chat with some NPCs, fight it out with a villain and his henchmen, maybe fight or run from some zombies.
Batty Bio Lab Breakout has a similar feel, but has a bit more going on. This time, the characters are asked to recover some medicine to heal an ally, find some survivors, or recover a mutant who might be alive somewhere inside. Unbeknownst to them, there are three mutant sisters toying with the survivors while one of them works on a cure for her cursed appearance, and a motorcycle gang on the way to the pharmacy for a smash and grab raid. There is also a mutant frozen in cryogenic liquid and another locked up in the psych ward. Lots of ways this one can play out, but it almost always ends with a shootout with the biker gang.
The Self-Review
Just writing these up, it's obvious that the overall pacing for starter adventures is consistent in these two. They both feature a slow build and then climactic changes of pace. Let's dig in and see how they fare across the eight points.
Adventure Setup (1, 2)
We'll group Angry GM's points on inviting the players into the world and giving them a specific goal into a single bucket on adventure setup. There's no real read aloud provided to the game master on the setting – so they are a bit on their own for that one, but each adventure does give three specific goals (and consequences, should they fail) for the game master to relay to the players.
Overall, let's give ourselves a B here. There's some evocative fiction writing in each adventure to help the GM get in the setting themselves, but a single paragraph of "setting" could bridge the gap. Might be worthwhile to do in the future. The explicit goals are good. To make this more beginner friendly, it might be good to highlight which goal is the most beginner friendly, and which is the least.
Have an NPC interaction
Neither adventure starts with an explicit NPC interaction. One of the Bio Lab goals has an NPC tagging along with your party, but this isn't detailed out. In the Station adventure, the players are on their own until they meet Mack, Jane or Nora. In the Bio Lab example, the players probably encounter their first challenges before they face an NPC. So we've got a bit of a delay there.
I'll give us a C here. We don't really do this in either adventure.
The Mechanics Ramp
Steps 4-6 are the mechanics ramp. Starting with something low stakes, and ramping to more complex, freeform investigation. In both adventures, you start outside the location, with the assumption that the players will stake out the joint and find a way in. Neither location is fortified. And nobody inside is hostile (except for zombies in the hospital). This is pretty good – but not great.
Angry would probably want to see a bit more linearity for a beginner adventure here.
Tell them to scope the joint and find a way in. Tell them to explore the lobby. Okay, now you've got a few options – where do you want to go?
We don't do that in either adventure. They're a bit more free form. That probably makes them better adventures for established players, but worse for newbies. You could run each module like that – but neither is explicitly geared for it. I'll give us a B, because I think the support for low-stakes rules exploration is good and captures the essence of the advice, if not the letter of it.
Rest
Oof. We fail this one right away. There's no dedicated resting spot in Super Dead. In fact, each of the adventures has a secret, time-based trigger: an NPC showing up to do something at the adventure site. This could probably be converted into a rest, but... it's just not there.
Let's not spend too many words belaboring this one. Grade: F.
Let the adventure begin!
And this one we knock out of the park. Despite not having a dedicated rest, each of the adventures has a clear "part 1" and "part 2". Namely: some people show up and start to make noise and mess things up. When other people show up, especially when they're possibly aggressive towards you, they begin to make noise, you have to use combat, you have to figure out what to do now that zombies are coming, how do you achieve your objectives, how important is it to you to stop other people from achieving their objectives versus staying alive... these are the questions of Super Dead. And they're forced after the switch.
Angry even mentions using the setting to make it obvious.
Whatever you’re doing, though, it’s important to mark the transition with some kind of threshold. In my adventure, everything changes ... Even the weather changes. I ain’t subtle. ...
We've got loud clangs, the roar of motorcycles, and shit coming at you fast. Our transition is obvious and big. Go us. Solid A for us here.
Overall Comments
Overall grade here is probably a B. Good first adventure, but not as structured as Angry would have wanted us to be. There are goals, NPCs to push players into character, the general ramp structure, and a clear act 1 and act 2 format. But there's a bit too little hand holding and some things are out of order.
The perfect first adventure is probably travel plus explore. Our very first intro adventure for Super Dead – Surviving Skunk City – might actually get a better grade here. In that, players start with a specific goal, at a location where they can fight a single isolated zombie, search for medicine, and then need to travel to a hospital, where they investigate and can negotiate or fight to get the medicine they need.
Might be worthwhile to build something more structured, but I do like the more open-ended, threats-based design. It's more readily applied and injected into campaign play. But there's a question about whether that should be a goal for introductory adventures at all.
Angry's perspective, certainly, would be that an intro adventures should be dedicated to more one-shot, con-style play. And these scratch that itch a bit, but aren't perfect at it.
At the end, I'm happy I did this exercise – and I might write another adventure to better address the needs of newbie gamer and or convention GM.