What are the elements of a good published campaign/module/adventure path?

I have never run a published module before 1E ToEE last year. I know a lot of people thought it came up short, especially in the nodes. But I ran it without any of the troubles others seemed to be having. Maybe it's because I don't have any "good" ones to compare it to, having never run any.

So what, in your opinion, makes a published campaign, module, or adventure path "good"? What published material exemplifies these attributes for you? Contrapositively, what are the elements of a "bad" published module?

And I understand good and bad are completely subjective, but I'm looking for opinions anyway.

I have to admit that I think pretty much all adventure ever released for D&D 3rd Edition and Planescape are not great, because of a flaw inherent in the rules system.

The biggest problem is, that these adventures require that the PCs are of a certain level. There are lots of adventures that look interesting, but are of no use for my campaigns because PCs are mostly 1st to 4th level. I think it's better to only assign roles for the NPCs, monsters, and enemies, and leave it to the GM to select a creature of the appropriate level for his campaign. But since making NPCs and customizing creatures is such a big amount of work in d20 games, having to create them yourself is something that many GMs would probably want to avoid.
In a lighter rules system, it's enough to state than an NPC is a Fighter with a level of "Average PC level +2" and a special amor that raised his AC by +4. Because of that, you can easily use any AD&D module for pretty much any group you have, since it takes no time at all to come up with the neccesary stats.

Another big problem with the WotC/Paizo-style adventures is their very strict linearity. Virtually every adventure released by them (which means every single one I can remember), is practically a series of dungeons in which there are only one or two routes to the "final room", where the PCs will fight the "final boss" and gain from him a map or letter that tells them where the next dungeon is. Because of that structure, there is no room for failure. If the PCs, at any point, are unable to complete a dungeon from start to end and defeat the final boss, the adventure comes to a stop and there isn't really any way to continue the game. Because players at least subconsciously know this, and also know that the GM wants them to reach the end of the adventure, they know that their characters can not fail. Success is guaranteed and if they fail, the GM will come up with a way to remove the obstacle for them. When you know you will win and can never fail, there is no room for tension, improvisation, creative planning, avoiding fights, or judging the risks. You know that everything you'll ever encounter, you can defeat in straight on battle. There will be no creatures that you can not defeat.
The solution here are task-based or goal-based quests. Instead of sending the PCs to storm a dungeon and clear every room of monsters, send them in to kill one specific monster or steal one specific item. And make the opposition strong enough so the PCs will be unable to clear out every living thing in the dungeon.

Also, adventures should generally be setting independent. In some cases, where the adventure is about a particular unique aspect of a setting, you have to make it setting-specific. Something involving the warforged of Eberron, defiler magic from Dark Sun, or the planar adventures of Planescape just doesn't work setting independent. But you can still easily adept generic desert adventures to Dark Sun and find a place for most adventures in Eberron. If the adventure does not absolutely require to be set in a specific setting, it shouldn't be setting specific.

"Good" is, of course, subjective. At one time, long ago, a map populated with a whole lot of monsters and traps was enough to make a module good for me - good was, "give me a fast way to killing things and taking their stuff," I suppose.

These days, for me, a good adventure gives me things that are difficult for me to come up with myself - that means either taking work off my shoulders, or give me elements that are compelling, but I wouldn't have thought of for myself.

I look back on the modules of early Shadowrun, and think much better of them now than I used to. "Queen Euphoria" for example - introduction to a new adversary that is otherwise only hinted at in the rulebooks, cloaked in a scenario such that they make perfect sense and are being intelligent, but are coming out of left field as far as the players are concerned. And, well, it's all wonderfully creepy. Masterful! Several of the other early modules for SR are a step above many other published adventures in their ability to provide imaginative, entirely logical, yet unexpected, plot twists for the players to have to deal with.

Halivar said:

So what, in your opinion, makes a published campaign, module, or adventure path "good"? What published material exemplifies these attributes for you? Contrapositively, what are the elements of a "bad" published module?

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A lot of these are tricky to answer - it's hard to define what exactly it is, but "I know it when I see it".

That said, I'm inclined to think that the difference between a good adventure and a bad one boils down to meaningful choices. That is, it should be possible for the PCs to approach the adventure in many different ways and have the choices they make cause the adventure to play out very differently.

So, there should be multiple routes through the encounters in the adventure, including skipping some encounters entirely. There should be multiple ways to deal with those encounters: fighting, diplomacy, stealth...

The other important thing, that is less important (IMO) that meaningful choice, but is still vital is that the adventure itself must be of interest. There should be an interesting setting and/or interesting villains and/or and interesting story... sort of. That last one, in particular, is a risk, because it can conflict with the need to have choices, so the designers should probably provide, at most, the outline for a story which the PCs can then proceed to thoroughly derail.

Yora said:

I have to admit that I think pretty much all adventure ever released for D&D 3rd Edition and Planescape are not great

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I agree, though not actually for the same reason. Too many of them are sorely lacking in meaningful choices for my taste. And even the 'good' ones too often provide the illusion of choice only.

Indeed, even many of the 'good' Pathfinder adventure path volumes have a nasty habit of offering the choice between A, B, and C... only for it to turn out that the PCs eventually have to tackle all three, so they're really only choosing the order in which they tackle things.

The biggest problem is, that these adventures require that the PCs are of a certain level. There are lots of adventures that look interesting, but are of no use for my campaigns because PCs are mostly 1st to 4th level. I think it's better to only assign roles for the NPCs, monsters, and enemies, and leave it to the GM to select a creature of the appropriate level for his campaign. But since making NPCs and customizing creatures is such a big amount of work in d20 games, having to create them yourself is something that many GMs would probably want to avoid.

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What I don't like about your approach is that it leaves too much for the DM to do. If I'm using a pre-gen adventure, it's because I don't have time to put something together myself. I don't want it to leave lots of stuff undefined - I want to read the adventure and be good to go.

Given the sheer number and breadth of adventures that are available, I don't think I need any individual adventure to adapt very far in level range - if I have 8th level PCs, I'll just pick and adventure to suit.

Also, adventures should generally be setting independent. In some cases, where the adventure is about a particular unique aspect of a setting, you have to make it setting-specific.

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Again, I'm inclined to disagree. Ideally, there would be scope for a great many adventures, both setting specific and setting independent, and DMs could choose accordingly. I don't see any need for adventures by default to be usable by everyone.

(Having said that, there are very solid commercial reasons for WotC and others to only produce setting independent adventures - specifically, that doing so maximises the potential customer base. But that's a commercial consideration; I'm not sure it's a factor in adventure quality.)

Yora said:

The biggest problem is, that these adventures require that the PCs are of a certain level. There are lots of adventures that look interesting, but are of no use for my campaigns because PCs are mostly 1st to 4th level.

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That's not a problem, just a characteristic (in my opinion). Indeed, it's a strength - it makes it very easy to determine which adventures you can use easily with minimal work.

Power level is an environmental feature of D&D as much as "in a dungeon" or "underwater" is. A political intrgue adventure isn't much use for someone looking for a dungeon crawl; a high level adventure isn't much use for someone looking for a low level one; the LotR trilogy isn't much use to someone looking for a contemporary romantic comedy.

But I don't see that as a problem. If there's an issue, maybe it's that there aren't enough of them that you can find the one that suits you, your players, and their characters?

The biggest thing I need for an adventure to be good is for it to be something I wouldn't have made myself. They temper my natural inclinations and let me give my players something other than what I would have ad libbed on my own.

In my case, this means adventures light on the conspiracies, mysteries, Lovecraftian tropes, and body horror. If I'm running the adventure, they're going to be there, but an adventure with other strong themes will help keep my campaigns from all seeming kind of the same.

So, if you take the best Delta Green adventure (Delta Green being a game built on a foundation of things I love) and compare it to a mediocre D&D dungeon crawl, I'll actually probably get more use out of the dungeon crawl.

After that, it's just a matter of providing a mix of scenes and executing whatever genres it's in well. A dungeon crawl should have some interesting fights, some of which can be turned on their head through roleplay or exploration; good atmosphere; justified traps; and a few puzzles or mysteries to keep the players engaged as well as the characters.

Cheers!
Kinak

I agree that providing full stats for all creatures and NPCs in d20-based adventures is neccessary. Because it is a lot of work to do for the GM. It's not that the writers of the adventures are doing it wrong, but that it's a problem caused by the rules system.
An adventure must either be made for a specified level, or it has to include a lot of work for the GM. You can only take care of one of these problems, but not both. It's a no-win situation created by the system, and probably one of the bigger reasons that makes some GMs turn to OSR games.

Picking up another point that I didn't adress in my other post, what I really want from a published adventure is a good story. Using a rules-light system, I can do all the crunching myself. Creating creature stats, NPC stats, treasure, traps, and even detailed area maps.
But what I am really looking for in published adventures are good backgrounds, antagonist, and villainous plans. Ocasionally I do use published adventure, but in those cases I really recreate the basic story with the right creatures, organizations, and so on, that fit best into my campaigns setting.
While I think there are lots of things that are wrong with Lamentations of the Flame Princess, this is one aspect I really like very much. Those modules that I've read are explaining an idea for an adventure, rather than being a complete adventure. Comming up with the idea is by far the hardest part for me, when creating campaigns.

I'm looking for a number of things from a published adventure, in roughly this order:

1) Good encounters. Interesting puzzles, monster combinations, situations and locations that can be cribbed from the adventure and inserted into any campaign. I'll bet that most DMs steal individual encounters at some point from published sources without running the whole scenario.
2) A great story to unravel. "Unravel" being a key point there - many adventures provide a great story, but fail by preventing the players from ever actually uncovering it (or they uncover it in a back-to-front way).
3) All the work done for me. I don't like blank rooms, single-line stat blocks, or unmapped encounter areas. I buy a published adventure to avoid doing all that grunt work.
4) Pretty maps and handouts. Published adventures provide better quality art that I can create myself, so that's definitely one of the reasons I'm drawn to them.

For me, the WFRP Campaign "Enemy Within" still ranks among my favourites, and exemplifies all of these qualities (especially "Death on the Reik").

Halivar said:

So what, in your opinion, makes a published campaign, module, or adventure path "good"? What published material exemplifies these attributes for you? Contrapositively, what are the elements of a "bad" published module?

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It depends- I'm not entirely certain that the demands of a published campaign (I am assuming you mean "setting" here) are the same as those of a published adventure, for instance. Furthermore, what may be good for one group may be bad for another, depending on playstyle; I'll use strong stories in an adventure as an example. For a heavy-story gaming group, these might be the most awesome of adventures, while for a more sandbox-style group, they might rate very low. (Take early DragonLance modules as an example).

All that said, here's what I like, for my style. I'm speaking primarily as a dm here. I'm going to leave setting behind; even so, I apologize for rambling on... Anyway:

I want any adventure or path that I buy to be customizable as much as I want anything. I want to feel like I can safely swap out the evil god behind the evil cult for one that actually exists in my campaign without upending the whole thing, at least if it relies on that cult and the cult is recognizably from a major setting (ain't no Bhaal in my campaign, but maybe I can shoe horn this into someone else's plans).

I want any bad guys' agendas to make sense. Likewise, with good guys' agendas. And neutral guys. In fact, I want the major npcs to have reasonable plans appropriate to their intellects. I want at least a clue as to how the bad guys respond to pc intervention; a timeline of their activities if not interfered with is great, too.

I want at least a bit of thought paid towards ecological issues- where does the tribe of goblins get its food in this dank underground lair with no exit? Is there a water source? Is there a midden, and if not, where do they poop?

I want room to expand- not like an unmapped dungeon level attached to the main locale (that's just lazy design), but lots of links to possible future adventures (a treasure map, a legend about a magic sword, the bad guy has ties to a villainous organization, etc).

I want good maps. God save us from any other published product ever that uses Dungeon Tiles for maps. Aargh! By 'good,' I mean clear, comprehensible, reasonably attractive and actually what they look like. One major problem with tiles is "This crystal thing is actually a trap door in the floor, and this pipe is really a stream." IF IT AIN'T WHAT IT IS, DRAW A GOD DAMNED NEW MAP.

I really favor a variety of encounters requiring more than just hack-and-slash, and an adventure that offers many approaches to victory without prescribing a particular one is excellent.

I do not want encounters that make no sense and only exist to fluff the page count. Nor do I want stupid encounters that exist just to show off new mechanics. (I'm fine with new mechanics that exist just to accommodate a cool encounter, though!) Nor should an adventure remove the pcs' agency. If they have no meaningful choices to make, I can just read a book and get more satisfaction from the heroic adventures of whoever without wasting my players' time. Also, if the module ends the same way whatever the pcs do (Pyramid of Shadows, I am looking at you), it's a waste of everyone's time.

So, a great example of good published adventure design would be Red Hand of Doom, from 3.5. HOLY COW does this hit all the right notes! Villains with an agenda and a timeline, lots of options for the pcs, different ways the whole thing can turn out, a variety of encounters, great cartography- yeah, this one does it for me.

Bad? Try Keep on the Shadowfell. Specifically, the encounter at the archaeological dig is pointless- there's a maguffin whose only purpose is to make the encounter have a reason to exist, that isn't even defined, never matters later and has no effect whatsoever on how it turns out. And the skill challenge with the undead guy is so utterly stupid that it hurts to think about. "Here, make a skill check with whatever you're good at!" Yeah, AWFUL.

For me, a good adventure:

1. Makes me excited about running it for my players.
2. Gives me lots of bite-sized details that I can bring out to show the players during play. I like to spoon-feed encounters to the players, so I like lots of evocative, specific details to match my DM style.
3. Gives me in-character quotes of things that NPCs are likely to say while interacting with the PCs
4. Gives me details about how traps might be telegraphed to the players without relying on 3e/4e/pathfinder's awful (IMO) perception-based exploration.
5. NPC motivations and timelines that withstand scrutiny.

Other than #4, Paizo adventures are usually pretty good, for my money. And with DDN, I'll be able to run them without relying on 3.x, which is even better still.

But I wish they would give more details about the traps.