Adventures

## What is an Adventure?

An Adventure is a guided mini-story where player characters are given the opportunity to use their skills to take on some kind of challenge or unusual experience. Adventures are usually run by a single Adventure Runner, sometimes called a DM or a Pathfinder. Participating in an Adventure is a great chance to demonstrate your character’s skills, getting to meet new people and engaging in a more active and responsive form of storytelling, whilst running an Adventure can be a fantastic way of telling interactive stories that might be difficult to tell through applications or normal RP.

Adventures are split into three core types in the Model: Trivial, Casual and Dramatic Adventures, which differ mainly in the types of rewards and stakes that they expose the players to.

*While Casual and Dramatic Adventures require approval by admins in a discussion via the Apps Private Discussion Queue on the Worldbuilding Server, Trivial Adventures can be run at any time though we encourage you to ensure that an admin is DM’d with a brief summary of the Adventure just to make sure that everything is in order and that nothing will raise any causes for concern.*

## Adventure Rules

There are some general rules surrounding each adventure:

* Rewards are to be given only after the whole adventure is completed.
* If people do not want their OC in danger, they do not get the rewards provided. Rewards must be proportional to the risks.
* Monologues and offscreens are not allowed. All adventure decision making, puzzle solving, combat etc RPs must be done on the server in the rooms provided or in the general channels. Reactions to what's happening, or other various fluff may still be used in a monologue or offscreen.

## Trivial Adventure

*Recommended to send a quick message to any admin to confirm ideas*

Trivial Adventures are short and simple adventures that do not involve any special rewards, meaningful danger or especially unusual magical creatures or phenomena. Good examples of a Trivial Adventure for Hogwarts characters could include:

* A group of older students finding a first-year being bullied by an NPC bully and stepping in to protect the first-year

* First-years getting harassed by Peeves the Poltergeist on the way to class and having to escape or placate the mischievous spectre
* Second years running an errand to find a Professor’s missing Sneakoscope somewhere in the castle, going only off the Professor’s half-remembered account of where they’ve been in the past day

A trivial adventure should usually avoid having rewards in mind, but Adventure Runners may still feel welcome to hand out rewards that wouldn’t cost a Token to purchase in normal circumstances, where realistic: things like small amounts of money, chocolate frogs or similar. When in doubt about whether an adventure’s scope or rewards qualify as Trivial, please check with the admins!

**Please note that, for graduate characters, a character’s day-to-day work should usually be considered in scope for a Trivial Adventure. For example:**

* Aurors hunting low-tier Dark Wizards on the run, ready to bring them to justice for their crimes
* A Magizoologist helping to soothe a frightened herd of winged horses (or any other magical creature that would cost a Journeyman or less to purchase)
* Professors heading into the Forbidden Forest to retrieve a foolhardy student, possibly having to fight off some of the Forest’s denizens in the process

In any of these contexts, graduates shouldn’t feel constrained by the need to get permission to RP their job in this way **as long as they adhere to the avoidance of rewards for themselves or the usage of unusual magical phenomena (such as rare and powerful late-game Dark spells or Master Token items or creatures).**

One exception to this is the canon profession of dragon taming work, which would of course necessitate contact with dragons - though bear in mind that your usual dragon tamer must work with a large team to handle these powerful magical creatures!

## Casual Adventure

*Requires admin approval via the Apps Private Discussion Queue on the Worldbuilding Server.*

Casual adventures are intended to be experiences with moderate stakes and magic, with the potential for smaller rewards. Good examples of a Casual Adventure could include:

* Infiltrating an underground dueling ring in Knockturn Alley that’s been growing in infamy- but to break it up or to compete?

* Fighting or working with magical creatures (as a general rule, if a creature isn’t canonically extremely rare and seems easy enough for a student character to survive fighting without real risk of death or severe injury, it’s probably fine for use in a Casual Adventure)
* Going on a scavenger hunt through the castle to recover some of the Runes Professor’s experimental magical items, hoping to keep a small one afterwards, only to find the items are going haywire and causing all sorts of strange incidents

Rewards for a Casual Adventure could include minor cosmetic magical items without real functionality, non-magical pets or valuable information: think the kind of things that you’d usually spend a minor token on. **When in doubt about whether an adventure’s scope or rewards qualify as Casual, please check with the admins!**

Casual Adventures should have little risk of serious injury and no risk of permanent damage to the player characters. These are best for when you just want to have a fun and exciting time, or let players experience a more involved story that involves slightly more peril or unusual magic than a Trivial Adventure.

As previously noted in the Trivial Adventures section, please do bear in mind that Graduate characters are typically permitted to tell stories **without rewards** of a scope that might usually require approval of a casual adventure or story token, as long as they directly relate to their primary profession.

## Dramatic Adventure

*Requires admin approval via the Apps Private Discussion Queue on the Worldbuilding Server.*

Dramatic adventures are intended to be experiences with the potential for high stakes and more unusual magical phenomena, with the potential for more meaningful rewards. Good examples of a Dramatic Adventure could include:

* A group of combat-capable graduate characters being asked to help when a routine Dragon transportation goes horribly wrong, and a deadly fire-breathing monster is loosed upon the Welsh countryside

* A group of fifth-year students finding out about a seventh-year currently practising Dark Magic who needs to be stopped before they hurt somebody badly - or worse!
* An archaeologist recruits intelligent and capable adult wix to support them in excavating a mysterious cursed ruin that could hide treasure, a terrible curse, or both...

Rewards for Dramatic Adventures could include a degree of acknowledgement or even renown for your achievements, magical items or pets recovered over the course of the adventure, or other interesting things of this scope: think the kind of things that you’d usually spend a **Journeyman Token or lower** on. **When in doubt about whether an adventure’s scope or rewards qualify as Dramatic, please check with the admins!**

Dramatic adventures will often contain very real threats of danger and other meaningful consequences to the participating character, and players who agree to attend a dramatic adventure also consent to the possible injuries their character might incur, including potentially permanent injuries. Where necessary, adventure runners should work with players to ensure that these consequences are appropriate and fair, factoring in both the player’s personal comfort with RPing a particular consequence and balancing the risk incurred against the potential rewards on offer in the adventure (see: Consequences).

Note: by nature of including powerful and exciting magics, Dramatic Adventures might lead to situations where a character gains something that would normally require a Master Token application and expenditure. Situations like this should be designed to be very unlikely by Adventure Runners, though we understand that this isn’t always possible. **If this does happen, the situation will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis by admins but it is not implausible that an application and/or token expenditure will be expected.**

## Running an Adventure

Anyone in the model can run an adventure, but there are a few guidelines!

* If your own character(s) will be involved in a non-Trivial adventure in any way, the exact nature of their participation must be cleared with admins during the discussion via the private discussion where the adventure is approved. **It is unlikely that they will be permitted to receive any rewards from the adventure, particularly without being costed.**

* Try and allow open participation in your adventures. You can have a limited number of slots available or a focused adventure around a certain group, but if multiple adventures keep focusing on a very similar core group, mod intervention can occur at any time. You can use the #adventures-lfg channel to look for people interested in adventures.
* Try to be transparent about the dangers and scope of the adventure when posting about it or inviting people to participate.
* Though agreeing to participate in a dramatic adventure often implies some degree of consent to a character being injured, please be respectful of your player’s limits and if they seem uncomfortable or state they are uncomfortable, stop and talk to them to figure out a way to keep the scene fun for everyone. The safe word (+safeword) applies at all times, even in dramatic adventures.
* Your private discussion will remain open even after your adventure has been confirmed. **Once your adventure is concluded, please share with the Admins in the private discussion channel a summary of how the adventure went down, and what consequences were incurred, positive or negative, including which rewards were earned.**

## Consequences

If an adventure-runner has communicated the likelihood of a particular risk before the start of an adventure (e.g. the presence of curse-scarring dark magic users), players who opt in to the adventure should accept the possibility of that risk taking place. However, players should always feel free to propose and discuss alternative outcomes with the adventure runner if a particular consequence is deeply undesirable or another outcome would provide better narrative development, provided that said outcome is of equal or greater magnitude to the original (e.g. requesting that a proposed curse scarring attack wounding the body instead scars the face).

If the adventure-runner is concerned about whether a player's desired consequences are too light/unreasonably aligned to potential reward, it is recommended that admins are sought out for the sake of a second opinion. Similarly, if the adventure-runner feels that unexpected circumstances have forced a Casual or Trivial Adventure to escalate with regards to potential consequences (for example, if illegal magics are used by players in a way that would force the involvement of Magical Law Enforcement), admins ought to be notified immediately.

## Adventure Mechanic Suggestions

Make an inventory system for your adventure! Have players list their inventory contents prior to the adventure so you can tailor the adventure around the things they have, or potentially make them choose a limited number of items they can take with them. For instance, you could tell your adventurers they can take up to 5 items, with you having the final say on what is or isn’t allowed.

You can make adventures that require the mastery of a certain spell to progress, and you can base it on either your players’ spellbooks or by requiring the skill to even start the adventure!

More suggestions will be added at a later date!