4th ed's adventure layout: best thing it has brought to D&D?

[Silverblade The Ench]

An odd thought:
As a DM, I adore the way adventures are laid out in modules in 4th ed. The format is so SO much easier and fun to use than what's been before, it makes my job as DM a heck of a lot nicer

It's obviously based on concepts that came up in very late 3.5.
You have overview of the story, with monsters/items in one booklet.
In the other you have teh adventure "path", and set encounters on the path.
Each encounter has it's own 2 pages, with stats, area info, and crucially, a mini map showing where NPCs etc are.
Plus 4th ed makes a lot of use of special feaures of an area: dangerous runes, sticky mud etc.
So on two pages, I have everything I need to reference for an encounter! (bar of course PCs and RP issues). Wow, lovely and simple!

Now, anyone recall the old 1st ed modules? dense blocks of text....trying to DM that was a pain!! Really, you had to copy stuff out into a writing pad so you could unscramble it, soemtimes fix errors, and it often had little or no data on the area of the encounter: simple fights chop chop chop...no tactics built into it most of the time.
And unlike 4th ed, where you get a full creature stat block, only the creature's hit points and maybe magic treasure are noted.

having the creature's stats, ALL of them, there, makes it easy on the DM as he doens't have to switch between the MM etc all the damn time, sigh. Do player's realize how annoying that is? In 1st and 2nd ed, mosnters were far mroe regimented and unchanging, so emorizing them MMs was ok (especially for being able ot throw in of the cuff encounters, which I loved doing)
But, in later editiosn we're moving more towars custom creatures, an orcis no longer just a !HD humanoid, so you cannot memorize all the variants, and therefor, must have the MM or combat stats, all at hand.

2nd ed, thank goodness, improved the module layout a bit, more formatting so it wasn't solid blocks, etc, see "The Book of Lairs" for example. Still pretty basic though. ALso, better artwork, I really appreciate nice artwork on pages!

3rd ed, ah, now we're seeing some changes! And by late 3.5 we see the format of 4th ed style evolving, a huge step forward.
See the "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil" for 3rd ed, a good, easier to work with layout than original IMHO, but by 3.5, maps, critters and encounters on pages, a LOT better! See "Return to Undermountain".

And then, we have 4th ed layouts.

IMHO, having more space taken up by 2 page encounter layouts is very VERY necessary, never mind worthwhile. The DM is not a robot, so ease of use, with reference ot the map at hand, critters and area features on a set of 2facing pages is a world away from the painful 1st ed layout.

Amazing change over the decades, and one I don't know if folk appreciate enough? It's like, oh cars from 1970s until today, we may love the styling of the oldone sbut they suck for safety and performance.
Again, not an edition war, please! talking layouts of adventures

I know purists may shriek but if I was wanting to play/buy 1st and 2nd ed game modules, I'd like that kind of layout it's just much nicer for the DM.
If folk are putitng them out as pdfs, well, consideration on page size, and thus bookweight and space, is less an issue?

For the future, it has been, for DMs anyway, a MAJOR improvement.
So just want to say thanks to whoever worke don evovling the format over the years, and hope to see it continue or improve

[Windjammer]

I'm not going to replicate everything that's been discussed in a thread I started on that topic on another forum, but I'd recommend you to have a casual read if you're interested. I linked a pretty interesting R&D article by WotC on the delve format later on in discussion, and there's other stuff.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=13909

My main point there is that the delve format has led to a deterioration of story-arc-heavy and (non-player)character-intricate content in modules. With the possible exception of Demon Queen's Enclave, the evidence on that is dishearteningly incontestible, if hardly surprising.

Ok, so what about the layout? I've got nothing else to say about the format except this. In terms of layout, of visual presentation, it's grand. You don't just have all the information you need at your fingertips - you FIND it in a heart beat.

But what about the selection of information, of the actual content being selected? Here things turn detrimental. The delve format (as a type of visual presentation) has led to an immense reduction of visual illustrations in the module. This has been compensated by the illlustration booklet (or section) in H2 onwards, primarily because of uniformly negative customer feedback on that point (have a look at H1 - no illustration of a major NPC (Sir Keegan), how ridiculous is that? - or any of the earlier 3.5 stuff in the "Expedition to..." product line).

So where has all the page space gone which was previously (in 3E) dedicated to wonderful, helpful illustrations?

The answer to that question brings us to the next great sucker of the delve format .... cartography. When I ran Scourge of the Howling Horde (late in 3.5), I blew up the dungeon overview to A3, and then .... made the SINGLE visual contribution that is added by the individual room maps within the module: capital letters with circles around it, these indicating the monsters' starting position.

Yep gentlemen, that's the visual contribution of the delve format. Encircled capital letters. I suggest we treat it as the second coming of our lord, sliced bread. Because indicating a monster's starting position in a room of 3x3 squares is a matter of character life and death, and makes all the difference in the world as to how an encounter plays out at the table.

Is there a rationale for repeating the enlarged cartography of dungeon sections in the main body of the product? Sure, it gets you a parcelled out understanding of the entire dungeon. Is there another way to accomplish that? Sure, just look at 30 years of (A)D&D modules and you'll see aplenty. Revert to that, and use the new space on the page for information (visual or otherwise) which COMPLEMENTS the product in a useful way, as opposed to wasting it on material that painfully reminds me, page by page, of pointless filler.

Pointless filler? Oh, there's more to be had - the stat blocks. There's a great line by Rich Baker and James Jacobs in Red Hand of Doom as to why they organized the stat blocks the way they did (print them in a separate appendix): every repeated stat block sucks up product space that could be used to, you know, ENHANCE the product.

This point blends over into my final one. On top of everything else, the delve format has led to something else: each encounter is treated as a self-contained unit with next to no impact on the encounters surrounding it. (In H1, a monster stat block - that of the Kobold Dragonshield - was repeated on two non-facing successive pages, because, you know, A DM FLIPPING A SINGLE PAGE IS THE PITALL OF A PROPERLY RUN DUNGEON.) That's something else that you have, when the dungeon - both visually and in content- is no longer conceptualized as an integral, dynamic whole.

Gone are the good times when Mike Mearls would write articles in Dragon magazine on how to make things in one dungeon room interact with things happening next door.
Gone are the good times when Dan Noonan wrote a module in which these things were a HUGE part of the challenge in exploring a dungeon.
Actually, gone are the good times when Dan Noonan WROTE stuff for WotC.

Is the delve format good? It's visually pleasing - I mimic it in my own dungeon write-ups.

But does it carry conceptual persuasiveness? No, sir.

[Wormwood]

Originally Posted by Silverblade The Ench

For the future, it has been, for DMs anyway, a MAJOR improvement.
So just want to say thanks to whoever worke don evovling the format over the years, and hope to see it continue or improve

Hear hear.

I'm a graphic designer, and layout is one of the most challenging aspects of my job. It is often difficult to organize information in such a fashion that it is both accessible and pleasant.

4e's design is a striking blend of utility and clarity. I can open nearly any spread of Dungeon and run a complete encounter without ever feeling overwhelmed. Even ad hoc/random encounters are easily accomplished by just flipping open the Monster Manual and running them directly from the book.

By allowing me to run the mechanical aspects of an encounter so easily, I find myself able to concentrate more on flavor, strategy, and my own enjoyment.

[Silverblade The Ench]

Windjammer,
Remember "The Books of Lairs"? I loved their ideas and artwork....delves, hm?
Anyone remember the old AD&D computer game "Dungeon Hack"? random dungeons...D&D ha salways been about such things.
Delves are great for use as "inclusions into any story a DM wants". Also not all gorups have time to play a nice coherent story arc (which woudl suck IMHO but tha'ts life)

And having things replicated is good because I suspect they know many DM's will slap their books down onto a copier and print it out, taking htos epages to their sessions, rather than the whole heavy book

Some folk liek deep involved RP (me and my mates do, plus heavydollosp of over the top mayhem and skullduggery, hehe)
Others just love dungeons crawls.
Each to his own So it's not an issue for me. Except the art (note below and other thread)
(And less said about WOTC the better, sigh )

Wormwood,
agreed!
my one gripe though is lack of artistic evocation in page layout in 4th ed.
Great for clarity, bad for evoking "D&D".
Personally I wish they'd add nice borders around the crisp text blocks, use evocative fonts for "fluff" and so on, so you have crisp precision for crunch, and beautiful fluff to evoke the atmosphere (hence my other post today).

[Wormwood]

Originally Posted by Silverblade The Ench

my one gripe though is lack of artistic evocation in page layout in 4th ed.
Great for clarity, bad for evoking "D&D".
Personally I wish they'd add nice borders around the crisp text blocks, use evocative fonts for "fluff" and so on, so you have crisp precision for crunch, and beautiful fluff to evoke the atmosphere (hence my other post today).

Surprisingly, I actually agree with you on this.

I agree that the D&D style sheet could be a little more 'D&D evocative', but NEVER at the expense of clarity and ease of use.

But honestly, it'd take a better designer than me to come up with a happy medium in this case. Of course, that's not really saying much.

[Shemeska]

I truly, truly abhore the "delve" format. I loathed it during 3.5, and I still loathe it now.

I've found it to be a real disconnect when trying to follow any sort of story or suggested plot within a module. It's a testament to Wolfgang Baur's talent that I liked 'Expedition to the Demonweb Pits' as much as I did, in spite of the awkward, annoying presence of the "delve" format.

I really wish they'd dropped it after its first uses in 3.5 and not returned to it.

[Hussar]

Honestly, I wish they'd go even further. Why have maps with only the initial positions of bad guys? Add in all the things you need to know about the room ON the map. If a fight in room X brings reinforcements from room Y in Z rounds, put that on the map. If there are lighting issues, or any sort of terrain issues, put that on the map.

I should be able to look at the map and get a very good overview of the entire adventure without even opening the module. The location of every enemy, every trap, every terrain feature, and probably more information, should be on the DM's map.

[ardoughter]

I like the delve format and have no problems with info being repeated a couple of pages later. I do not find any problem with it making the encounters static or the bad guys running away and reinforceing other encounters and so forth.

[Windjammer]

As an example of enhanced visual content to a module, consider these fan-made visuals for Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Goodman Games • View topic - None the Wiser's 3-D Wildsgate Excursion...

I pick them any day over bland repetitions of 2D visuals.

[Jack Colby]

The new style is a mixed blessing. Maybe if the adventures had the substance of the old Gygaxian era ones I could better compare, but they are just fluff nowadays (fun tactical fluff, but still fluff - and no, not in the fluff/crunch meaning of the word). Easy to read and run they may be, but I really have to wonder what the point is given the shallowness of today's "adventures", at least from WotC.

[Hellzon]

Having the encounters on dedicated pages is okay, but shoving all of them to the end of the document is pretty bad for a PDF. I can't stick my thumb in the "encounter chapter" of a PDF, so it becomes a matter of reading the main adventure text and then having to remember the approximate page the encounters are at so I can flip forward when the main text says "see encounter X3". Probably works better in books.

It's not like the adventures in Dungeon Magazine are non-linear anyway. If free roaming was possible like in Temple of Elemental Evil, it would make more sense, but as it is now, why not put encounter descriptions where they actually appear in the text.

My 5 copper pieces.

[Stoat]

Originally Posted by Hellzon

Having the encounters on dedicated pages is okay, but shoving all of them to the end of the document is pretty bad for a PDF. I can't stick my thumb in the "encounter chapter" of a PDF, so it becomes a matter of reading the main adventure text and then having to remember the approximate page the encounters are at so I can flip forward when the main text says "see encounter X3". Probably works better in books.

It's not like the adventures in Dungeon Magazine are non-linear anyway. If free roaming was possible like in Temple of Elemental Evil, it would make more sense, but as it is now, why not put encounter descriptions where they actually appear in the text.

My 5 copper pieces.

This is my biggest beef with the Delve format. Consider the most recent Dungeon adventure: Alliance at Nefelus. The adventure itself is 17 pages long, followed by another 31 pages of delve encounters. The first 17 pages are skeletal to the point that I have a hard time understanding what's supposed to be happening when I read them. The following delve encounters are isolated from each other to the point that I have a hard time getting the big picture when I read them.

I find the booklets in published adventures easier to follow, mostly because its easier to flip back and forth with the hard copy.

I think the delve format is aces for laying out an encounter, but WotC needs to find a better way to integrate the format into its adventures.

[Jhaelen]

Originally Posted by Windjammer

Gone are the good times when Mike Mearls would write articles in Dragon magazine on how to make things in one dungeon room interact with things happening next door.
Gone are the good times when Dan Noonan wrote a module in which these things were a HUGE part of the challenge in exploring a dungeon.
Actually, gone are the good times when Dan Noonan WROTE stuff for WotC.

Well, I don't know at which modules you've been looking, but the ones I own (H2, P1) typically describe several rooms in a single encounter area and also tell you if there's a chance that monsters from nearby areas come as reinforcements or at least hear if there's fighting and prepare themselves for the arrival of the pcs.

In other words: The advice of Mearls & Noonan has been fully integrated into the delve format.

I quite like the format and actually think it's an advantage that you can treat an encounter as a single entity and remove it, replace it, or put it somewhere else without much hassle.

About the only thing I'd like WotC to add to their modules are some lists in the adventure overview: a list of encounter areas, monsters, their xp budgets, and treasure. Then it would be perfect.

[EP]

Originally Posted by Hellzon

Having the encounters on dedicated pages is okay, but shoving all of them to the end of the document is pretty bad for a PDF. I can't stick my thumb in the "encounter chapter" of a PDF, so it becomes a matter of reading the main adventure text and then having to remember the approximate page the encounters are at so I can flip forward when the main text says "see encounter X3". Probably works better in books..

This is the biggest issue I'm having with this layout as far as a PDF adventure is concerned. Page flipping is almost mandatory to use that format exactly, but it does work in a sense for print (though I'm not fond of page arrangement still in print). Finding something that works on screen and in printable format is still being juggled with the option of a complete reformat for 4e PDF adventures likely to take over.

[Windjammer]

Originally Posted by Jhaelen

Well, I don't know at which modules you've been looking, but the ones I own (H2, P1) typically describe several rooms in a single encounter area and also tell you if there's a chance that monsters from nearby areas come as reinforcements or at least hear if there's fighting and prepare themselves for the arrival of the pcs.

In other words: The advice of Mearls & Noonan has been fully integrated into the delve format.

Sure, 4E includes such cases, but only cosmetically. Or can you cite a single instance where such cases affect the actual EL's? No? Because if they don't, then the mechanical impact of these things has been nullified. And if that's true, then single room encounters are just as mechanically self-enclosed as I claimed.

I totally understand your response, and I do stand corrected: these things make an appearance of some sort in 4E. But when Gygax said that 3E had removed alignments from the game, he didn't intend to say alignments weren't there any longer by name. He meant that the mechanical impact of alignments where no longer a significant enough element of the game mechanics as they used to in D&D. Of course, compared with 4E, the mechanical belittlement of alignments in 3E is minor.

[neuronphaser]

Originally Posted by Hussar

Honestly, I wish they'd go even further. Why have maps with only the initial positions of bad guys? Add in all the things you need to know about the room ON the map. If a fight in room X brings reinforcements from room Y in Z rounds, put that on the map. If there are lighting issues, or any sort of terrain issues, put that on the map.

I should be able to look at the map and get a very good overview of the entire adventure without even opening the module. The location of every enemy, every trap, every terrain feature, and probably more information, should be on the DM's map.

I agree with this. Very hard to do, though. Very hard.

I blew up the map from Lost City of Barakus (Necromancer Games) and wrote in the enemies in each room. It was great during the initial planning stages, but honestly I didn't return to that map later on. It was lacking so many details that you mention that it really didn't end up being useful enough. But if there was some way I could also put the lighting and traps and other things on there...

Anyway, I think the new delve format is almost there. Indeed, add the lighting effects and some other environmental info, cut the repetition of statblocks, and have a master map that replicates as much of this as possible, and you've got a winner. But that's a HELL of a lot of development work.

Another good example is the player and DM maps made for World's Largest Dungeon. You have maps with all the encounters listed, then separate maps showing color-coded arrangements to tell you which group holds what section of the dungeon, then a master map, then individual area maps...that's a lot of freakin' maps! But combining them would look uglier than sin, so how can you really pull this off?

[Plane Sailing]

Personally, I find that the 'delve' approach is great for running a series of combat encounters, but makes it harder for me to have a good overview of the adventure/dungeon, and thus harder for me to be both evocative of the current situation and link it in well to other situations.

So my personal preference is for the 1e style adventures which I loved so much - maps on the inside of the card cover (doubles as mini screen) and text in the adventure.

Mind you, the worst set-up for usability I've experienced was Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, with monsters all arranged alphabetically in a big appendix at the back. Ugh, was that a mess to use.

Cheers

[Simplicity]

I hated the delve format in 3.5, and I started to appreciate it in 4e... Then I started to run adventures and I realized the horrible, creeping effect that the format had upon the adventures.

I've been using minis for D&D since 2nd edition. I didn't need to know the exact square position for creatures back then. You're a DM. The players are in a room. YOU pick where the monsters are. We don't NEED a map on every page taking up what could have been valuable plot space. Sure, it's gorgeous, but there's a price.

In 2nd edition, a module could say: 6 kobolds (1/2 HD): Spd 30', AC 12, hp 4 each, Atk +1 (1d6). And that'd be enough for me to run the encounter combat-wise. D&D needs to get back to this terseness. You don't NEED to know where things are on a page when you don't take up a page to describe an encounter.

[Windjammer]

@Hussar and Neuronphaser

Have a look at the dungeon visuals in the R&D article I cited earlier,

Design & Development: The "Delve Format" for Adventures

Click on the image - I think that's your dreams come true.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/designdev_format1.jpg

[Pbartender]

Here the thing...

Back before the Delve format, I'd get a published adventure and I go through the whole adventure and take notes. For each encounter, I'd copy and paste together each monster's stats from the SRD, and do my best to keep each encounter to one or two pages. I would repeat stat blocks, if the monster appeared in multiple encounters. It was a lot of work. ahead of time, that saved a lot of time at the gaming table.

Now, with Delve format, it's all done for me, with the sometimes added benefits of a description of the area and how it might affect the combat, suggested tactics for the bad guys, details on how the combat may affect nearby encounters, and a small map of the encounter area.

Honestly, all I need is the monster stats and a map. If the plot outline of the adventure is documented well enough elsewhere in the adventure, I can figure the rest out on my own...

That said, I don't need extraneous maps of each encounter locations, or extensive round-by-round details of what actions the monsters should take, but neither do I need extraneous Monster Manual reprint illustrations of goblins, original illustrations of the generic countryside, or how the monster next door should react when the hear the sounds of battle.

Given the choice, however, I'd rather have the maps, tactics and well-written descriptions, than a pretty picture.

As a DM, I need what's on the paper to be useful. If the players are never going to see it, I don't care if it's pretty.