Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Level Ranges of Advanced Adventures

James over at Grognardia has just done a level analysis of the classic modules. He's come to the conclusion that there was an abundance of entry-level mods (1-3) and one of higher-level mods (9-12). This got me to thinking about the level ratio of our Advanced Adventures so I whipped up a spreadsheet and arranged them by level (please excuse the poor graph below, I don't know how to make tables at blogger).

Advanced Adventures #22: Stonepick Crossing                                  1-3
Advanced Adventures #1: The Pod-Caverns of the Sinister Shroom    2-4
Advanced Adventures #7: The Sarcophagus Legion                            2-4
Advanced Adventures #13: White Dragon Run                                   2-4
Advanced Adventures #5: The Flaming Footprints of Jilanth                3-5
Advanced Adventures #17: The Frozen Wave Satsuma                      3-5
Advanced Adventures #23: Down the Shadowvein                             3-5
Advanced Adventures #24: The Mouth of the Shadowvein                 3-5
Advanced Adventures #19: The Secret of the Callair Hills                  3-6
Advanced Adventures #9: The Lost Pyramid of Imhoptep                 4-7
Advanced Adventures #15: Stonesky Delve                                     4-7
Advanced Adventures #21: The Obsidian Sands of Syncrates          4-7
Advanced Adventures #12: The Barrow Mound of Gravemoor         5-7
Advanced Adventures #3: The Curse of the Witch Head                 6-10
Advanced Adventures #6: The Chasm of the Damned                     6-10
Advanced Adventures #10: The Lost Keys of Solitude                   6-10
Advanced Adventures #14: The Verdant Vault of Malakum           6-10
Advanced Adventures #20: The Riddle of Anandi                          6-10
Advanced Adventures #4: The Prison of Meneptah                        8-10
Advanced Adventures #8: The Seven Shrines of Nav'k-Qar           8-12
Advanced Adventures #16: Under Shattered Mountain                  9-12
Advanced Adventures #11: The Conqueror Worm                       10-14
Advanced Adventures #18: The Forsaken Sepulcher                    10-15
Advanced Adventures #2: The Red Mausoleum                           12-15


Breaking that down into low level (1-4), mid level (5-8), and high level (9+) we've got 4 low level adventures, 5 mid level adventures, 5 mid-to-high adventures, and 6 high level adventures. I termed mid-to-high as those that straddle the range, typically 6-10 for us.

What does that show? I think, more than anything, it shows that the writers (we have 8 different so far) who have been writing our adventures have a broad range of level interests but that they favor mid and high levels over low levels. What we do have is a noticeable lack of introductory adventures (1-3). Even though there are many classic adventures for that level (perhaps more than any other) I would still like to correct that weakness in our line.

This could become quite an interesting OSR study, were *all* of the modules from the many OSR publishers included to see how the OSR is providing support to gamers as compared to the original support. Hrm...

3 comments:

Unknown said...

That is an interesting breakdown. I am most likely to run low to mid level adventures myself, the last two I used being #3 and #6. I was tempted to use #2 last Saturday night, but the high levels warded me off in the end. That said, I do desire and expect to use it at some point in the near future.

jgbrowning said...

The level distribution is even a bit more off-kilter if you were to exclude the not-yet-published adventures. Of the unpublished 8, 4 are for levels 5 or below. I'd like a few more low level adventures.

Anonymous said...

I love to see more low level adventures - perhaps even an introductory module or two - from the Advanced Adventures line.

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