Riverine Adventures

The southern reaches of the River Stir perhaps?

"A river is a source of conflict because it will not bend its course for anyone. If the river is in your way, you cannot appeal to its mercy, its kindness, or its desires. And if you plunge yourself into it, the river does not care who you are. It will sweep you away. Or drown you. A river is actually a manifestation of the force of nature, which cannot be controlled or dominated, lacks sympathy or care, and kills those who do not respect it without guilt or shame". - the Angry DM

Sure, I've quoted this out of context (see the link for the whole article), but I think it captures some of the elements about rivers that I find intriguing as a potential adventure setting. I've liked the concept of a river-borne adventure, ever since I stumbled across the 1st edition Twilight 2000 module Pirates of the Vistula, even if river adventures are in many ways a "railroad", if not the *original* wilderness railroad analogue in the pre-industrial sense!

And maybe there's something in that, in terms of just how explicit an RPG railroad a river can be?

Overtly and *physically* a river manifests restriction of choice without needing to invoke often poorly contrived or unfair boundaries - it clearly indicates the story or the adventure is being channelled openly and honestly. And maybe that's an important distinction because it seems a lot of the negative pushback against RPG railroads is their element of subterfuge or heavy-handed way of enforcing the lack of choice and denial of player agency.

Yet a river-as-railroad does present several choices (albeit as a form of "choker", see below):

• Move upriver or downriver, with or against the current.
• Stay in the channel or explore one of the banks, left or right. 
• Travel at night or day, take up a mooring.

All these are still choices and can even be the basis of a hexcrawl I suppose, but they're (mostly) binary choices and perhaps, like the implications of the famous "the jam jar experiment", less choice may be better in this age of overwhelming choice and call for sandbox style play?

So maybe "railroads" aren't all bad?

"Paths, be they roads or rails, are a form of creative restraint, too. Without barriers or limitations to focus play, a game is hardly about anything." - Will Hindmarsh. 

Will outlines further concepts further in this 2014 article, where he comments on "Rails through the Wilderness", "Roller-Coasters", "Rail Cars", "Railway Stations", and "Railway Networks" - distinct elements that provide a mixture of restriction and choice.

All these elements I think are well represented in arguably the most famous riverborne RPG adventure, the classic "Death on the Reik", the second part of the original WFRP The Enemy Within Campaign. The salvaged river barge is in effect the "rail car", the various towns and cities the "railway stations" and the multiple channels of the Reik form the equivalent of the "railway network".

Similarly, in Pirates of the Vistula, the river tug and the riverbank settlements provide similar elements, although the navigable network is much more limited, ultimately ending in the inevitable destination of Warsaw. In this module, the detail of the "rail car", the Wisla Krolowa, I think adds greatly to the appeal as the river tug becomes almost a valued character in itself.

The Wisla Krolowa ("Vistula Queen")
from Pirates of the Vistula

Addit: this all reminds me of an actual "railroad" adventure, the T2k "Going Home" in which the remnants of the default American unit in Europe use an old steam engine, the Korzub a.k.a. The Last Train to Clarksville, to travel to Bremerhaven. Somehow the Korzub, despite being a literal "rail car", doesn't quite capture my imagination like the riverboats, and the use of an actual railway in the post-apocalyptic context seems to break verisimilitude for me, as I'd consider that a community or an opponent blocking the tracks would be an inevitable occurrence.

But more on Will's article and the defining "rail car" concept in a later post.

As another article notes:

"... maybe the story is just worth going on the railroad for. Players may not object to railroading if the story's good enough to excuse the lack of perceived freedom, or if the ride is fun enough." 

For all this talk of railroads, a good riverine story is something I want to develop regardless.

But maybe a river isn't a railroad at all.

Maybe it's a "Choker" as Zak S. would say instead - we'll have to see about that in a later post, eh?

Collected Riverine Resources & Modules

There's likely more, which I'll add over time, and I welcome suggestions...

The following RPG products provide useful material for a river-borne campaign:

• Death on the Reik (WFRP 1e) - still the best example in many people's opinion!
• River Life of the Empire booklet (WFRP 1e) - the essential resource 
• The Enemy Within: a Companion (TEWAC) has a section for DotR
• "Chapter II: Life & Death on the Reik" (WFRP Companion 2e)
• The Cubicle 7 version of WFRP (4e) has a revision of TEW planned
• My "River Life Encounter Generator" (Google Docs spreadsheet)

• Pirates of the Vistula (Twilight 2k v1) - readily adapted concepts despite modern setting.
• This is my analysis of the adventure structure and the actual encounters.

• River into Darkness (PFRPG) - like Apocalypse Now, but now with Pathfinder!

• Rivers of Blood (DUNGEON #89) - Slavic riverine adventures why not?

• Riverworld (GURPS 3e, Out-of-Print) - if only I could find this... I found it on eBay!

• Dolm River (Labyrinth Lord) - somewhat silly if truth be told but hey, it's OSR...

The following threads and articles/posts are also of interest:

• "Adventure along a river?" (Pope Nag, RPG.net 2014)
• "Life on the Mississipi" (Mark Twain, Project Gutenberg)