Adventure Design

[Waylander the Slayer]

Modules and published adventures have been around for 40 plus years. However, in my opinion, the design of modules and adventures have not improved. In fact, the trends that I see in adventures seem to make them patently worse. Specifically, a lot of adventures appear to be designed to be full of "content" without any consideration of what the content is. Walls of text, with passive language seems to predominate with very little consideration given to what the players actually feel, see, smell and interract with. Back stories are great, if they are relevant. Relevance and user experience seem secondary than massive explanatory text.Further compounding this issue appears to be a lack of structure and ease of use consideration as to what would be the best way to present the information. Often, critical information is scattered across multiple areas; information that the PCs/DMs need to know up front. Exacerbating this is all the 4-5 star reviews that seem predominant, without any actual play testing. Are the adventure designers even running and play testing these adventures? Ultimately critical thought needs to be applied to some of these considerations if we want to have some great memorable adventures.

 

[Gradine]

I was pretty surprised when I went searching for advice on writing adventurers for publication and finding very, very little on the subject, and even most of that is more advice on the design/business end of it (how to find freelance artists; where/how to promote; play-testing, as you've said; etc.) Of course there's a ton of great (and not-so-great) advice out there on how to write adventurers, but these are almost exclusively geared toward home games. While a lot of it still applies, some of it clearly doesn't.

For instance, there's a lot of great advice out there about designing encounters with your party's PC's in mind. On the other hand, there's little-to-no guidance on the opposite; designing encounters when you have no way of knowing what the party make-up is going to be. I've been wrapping my head around this for a few days and I think I have a few basic ideas of how to go about it, it'd be nice to hear other people's thoughts on the subject.

But I think if there has been stagnation or decline in adventure design over the years (and I don't have the depth of experience to agree or disagree with that), it might have something to do with the dearth of (at least easily accessible) advice and guidance there is on the subject.

 

[pdzoch]

There are still publishers who publish adventure modules so I am sure they have guidance for their writers. Because there is a marketing aspect to actually selling the modules, they have write what will most likely sell and for a most likely party structure (the standard: fighter, cleric, wizard, thief). Despite the design of the module, I think all publishers (and the game designers) expect that the game master will make necessary adjustments for the actual party character mix and play styles of the players.

I do not know if they have actually gotten worse. However, I definitely preferred the shorter modules (ones that advance the party only one level, or maybe up to three levels) over the longer adventure books recently publish that advance the party five and then levels. The latest adventure books provide a lot of content to allow for an open ended game environment while also trying to predict the progression of the story over the long term. When players make majorly unexpected decisions in the game of a published adventure, the DM has to make changes on the fly to keep the story going. On home adventures, it is easier to do because I doubt the home DM has written out the entire adventure campaign already. Personally, I do not write the next adventure in the campaign until the current adventure (or chapter) is completed. When players make radically different choices than expected early in the large adventure modules, it can easily make the rest of the material almost worthless.

I still buy those larger adventure books though because I like to see how the wrote the segments and borrow the ideas as needed. However, I have not been successful in running any of them because of the choices of the players. AND I have to swap out much of the treasure, make encounter modifications due to larger or smaller part size. The old adventures required less of that because they were shorter. But even then, the player choices can make the sequel module moot. For example, I remember running the old Scourge of the Slave Lords (A1-4) series a few times. Only once did I get a party through the entire series. The others took strange turns that resulted in the subsequent modules requiring much more revision or even completely different branch. I had more success in using the short adventures published in the Dungeon Magazine (R.I.P.).

Overall, I would love the module adventures to be published more often, and not the massive hardback book adventures that seldom work as a complete adventure and function more as an adventure setting. But maybe, that is their intent.

 

[RangerWickett]

So, I write adventures -- E.N. Publishing's ZEITGEIST and War of the Burning Sky adventure paths, produced by this website.

My design philosophy with adventures is that a good published adventure is a theme park. Now sure, if you have the time to plan your own vacation, you'll probably have a great time going out into the world, seeing the sights, eating at fine restaurants, and maybe having a bit of adventure. That's the homebrew game, and I homebrew myself, and I honestly prefer it to modules.

But sometimes you look at Disneyland and think, "That place has a lot of fun in one place. They've worked to make sure that visitors have fun. I'm going to give them money and see what they came up with."

Some theme parks, and some adventures, are dinky. I played a module this past weekend which was basically just a three room dungeon with few ways to overcome problems other than by attacking them. (Seriously, there was a puzzle, and even it was solved by attacking walls to do damage with different energy types.) I don't see the point of publishing these sorts of things but, eh, it was for a 'coordinated play' series, where the bar is lower. I can forgive that.

By contrast, when I write an adventure, I'm usually doing something that will span 2 or 3 levels. I'm shooting more for 'feature film' than 'weekly 30-minute episode.' I try to check the following boxes.

• Narrow-wide-narrow design, where you assume you'll have player buy-in to "this is where we start the adventure," and you set up the antagonist to be doing something in a particular location that means the adventure will probably end up somewhere you can set up a cool climax, but the middle has a lot of routes the PCs can travel. Railroading is anathema. The players should always feel like they made the adventure.
• An antagonist whom you interact with before the climax. This has worked particularly well in ZEITGEIST, which has a heavy mystery and investigation component. It has also involved brainstorming with friends and then playtesting to make sure there's no railroading.
• An introduction that walks the GM through the most likely storyline. I present the backstory, the goals of the antagonists, and a synopsis of what events probably occur. It should always be clear to the GM what happens if the PCs don't get involved, and the GM should have a sense of what the villain's reactions are. In fact, assume the PCs cause trouble, and have interesting responses.
• NPCs with easy hooks. I've tried to give each NPC some physical trait that will stick in the players' minds, and also a personality trait.
• A 'show off' action scene, in which the PCs get to deal with people who are not a real challenge, giving the players a chance to be silly instead of brutally efficient.
• A 'puzzle combat' action scene, where the environment can be used against the enemy.
• A 'boss fight' where the boss has a goal other than just killing the PCs. Or where the PCs have a goal other than 'kill the boss.' The human brain can handle multiple threads at once, so give the players more than one lever they can pull to affect the finale.
• No 'random encounters.' These days, video games do a much better job of giving you a quick, pointless challenge that triggers an endorphin rush upon success. That's not the area where tabletop RPGs shine, so don't waste time on it. If there must be a 'traveling through this area is dangerous' encounter, have it also inform the plot or the characters somehow, or be a puzzle. God of War doesn't let you lull monsters to sleep with music, even though that's a supremely Greek thing to do.
• Denouement. In the course of the adventure the PCs should have met people who are affected by their victory (or failure). Whatever kicked off the adventure should have more consequence than "Oh, the bad guy's dead. Cool. Well, that's done." I like to include scenes where NPCs want to thank, or condemn, or offer information that will lead to the next adventure.

Now, as for designing encounters with variant party builds in mind, ultimately some of that is on the GM to tweak things to give the PCs a chance to use their cool ability to solve an otherwise hard challenge. But really, as long as you have a nice variety in threats, people will find times to shine. And since I've mostly written adventure paths, I have the benefit of being able to put material in the Player's Guide to steer PCs toward certain builds. ZEITGEIST has 9 character themes, each of which gives you a special ability, and I've mostly made sure that each adventure has one or two scenes where each of those abilities do something cool.

(Okay, the Vekeshi Mystic theme is a little under-utilized mechanically, but the plot elements tied to it are very prominent.)

The adventures I write and produce do require a lot of investment from the GM, but they offer a lot of reward. I think the GMs who post about their campaigns in the E.N. Publishing forum here are a pretty good indicator that the adventures are providing them and their players a lot of fun.

Now with that, I've got to get back to writing the final adventure. If you think making a module interesting is hard, try balancing it for 20th level PCs. Uff da. Thanks for the topic. It was nice to be prompted to consider my game design philosophy (and realize that I didn't stick to it as well as I'd like a few times).

 

[AWizardInDallas]

Modules and published adventures have been around for 40 plus years. However, in my opinion, the design of modules and adventures have not improved. In fact, the trends that I see in adventures seem to make them patently worse. Specifically, a lot of adventures appear to be designed to be full of "content" without any consideration of what the content is. Walls of text, with passive language seems to predominate with very little consideration given to what the players actually feel, see, smell and interract with. Back stories are great, if they are relevant. Relevance and user experience seem secondary than massive explanatory text.Further compounding this issue appears to be a lack of structure and ease of use consideration as to what would be the best way to present the information. Often, critical information is scattered across multiple areas; information that the PCs/DMs need to know up front. Exacerbating this is all the 4-5 star reviews that seem predominant, without any actual play testing. Are the adventure designers even running and play testing these adventures? Ultimately critical thought needs to be applied to some of these considerations if we want to have some great memorable adventures.

I think it's even worse than that. I've put a "pause" on buying adventures from anyone, because I agree with your assessment. Here's a list of what I think is wrong with adventures today, in no particular order:

1. Reliance on the tired old gimmick of adding new magic items and monsters, which are: a) hard to use or reference elsewhere; b) often are not a value add to the game or adventure; c) are often of questionable quality and clearly not play tested.

2. Maps have grown too complicated to draw quickly on vinyl during a session are often difficult to read due to their complexity and use of full color. Color maps are not as easy or are impossible to modify or make notes on. I like black and white maps I can write on or color code. I like battle maps and reusable dungeon tiles and will abandon the original map in an adventure to make my life easier. I also really liked the D&D 3.5 mapping that showed bad guy size and position, which has been abandoned (admittedly, probably really high effort to produce). I will sometimes judge an entire adventure by its maps.

3. (Agree) They are too verbose and, as you said, contain walls of passive, uninteresting text, making preparation seem like cramming for exams. Content is supposed to be king. It should never take two full color pages to describe a room. Dungeon Magazine could once cover an entire evening's play in two pages.

4. (Agree) Adventures are often poorly structured. I particularly hate when there are keys to chests scattered everywhere, rooms that refer to rooms, that refer to rooms, that refer to stats, etc. and other bad referencing that slows play and causes fumbling, confusion, and boredom.

5. I don't trust reviews. I've done work in the industry and there is some schmoozing going on that's dishonest. I can virtually guarantee you that very little or only light play testing goes on. It costs time and money and time to market is the first consideration. Bigger shops have editorial staffs that proof the crap out of their products so serious errors are almost non-existent. Having said that, there are a couple of reviewers I will heed.

6. Bad logic, poor "scene" construction, and plot holes you can fly a plane through. I once read an adventure which started with the dramatic bursting open of a temple door. Then it repeated it, with obviously less impact. It sounded comic to me, rather than dramatic. I'm beginning to think folks who write adventures should consider looking at how screen plays are written.

7. High quality art that sells the adventure, but doesn't actually represent what's inside. Use of ill-fitting stock art in smaller shops.

I'm sure there's more, but that's just off the top of my head.

 

[Gradine]

Thanks for the incredible insight, Ryan! It's definitely great to hear insight from someone actually currently doing the work. I'd actually been meaning to ask around what people thought about how the recent trends regarding "random encounters" seem to be going, at least for 5e; that is, not all random, level appropriate baddies to crush, but also plot relevant non-combat encounters ("you stumble across a fresh grave...") that provide foreshadowing and opportunities for interaction. I'd been leaning going that way on a recent project of mine.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

So, I write adventures -- E.N. Publishing's ZEITGEIST and War of the Burning Sky adventure paths, produced by this website.

My design philosophy with adventures is that a good published adventure is a theme park. Now sure, if you have the time to plan your own vacation, you'll probably have a great time going out into the world, seeing the sights, eating at fine restaurants, and maybe having a bit of adventure. That's the homebrew game, and I homebrew myself, and I honestly prefer it to modules.

But sometimes you look at Disneyland and think, "That place has a lot of fun in one place. They've worked to make sure that visitors have fun. I'm going to give them money and see what they came up with."

Some theme parks, and some adventures, are dinky. I played a module this past weekend which was basically just a three room dungeon with few ways to overcome problems other than by attacking them. (Seriously, there was a puzzle, and even it was solved by attacking walls to do damage with different energy types.) I don't see the point of publishing these sorts of things but, eh, it was for a 'coordinated play' series, where the bar is lower. I can forgive that.

By contrast, when I write an adventure, I'm usually doing something that will span 2 or 3 levels. I'm shooting more for 'feature film' than 'weekly 30-minute episode.' I try to check the following boxes.

• Narrow-wide-narrow design, where you assume you'll have player buy-in to "this is where we start the adventure," and you set up the antagonist to be doing something in a particular location that means the adventure will probably end up somewhere you can set up a cool climax, but the middle has a lot of routes the PCs can travel. Railroading is anathema. The players should always feel like they made the adventure.
• An antagonist whom you interact with before the climax. This has worked particularly well in ZEITGEIST, which has a heavy mystery and investigation component. It has also involved brainstorming with friends and then playtesting to make sure there's no railroading.
• An introduction that walks the GM through the most likely storyline. I present the backstory, the goals of the antagonists, and a synopsis of what events probably occur. It should always be clear to the GM what happens if the PCs don't get involved, and the GM should have a sense of what the villain's reactions are. In fact, assume the PCs cause trouble, and have interesting responses.
• NPCs with easy hooks. I've tried to give each NPC some physical trait that will stick in the players' minds, and also a personality trait.
• A 'show off' action scene, in which the PCs get to deal with people who are not a real challenge, giving the players a chance to be silly instead of brutally efficient.
• A 'puzzle combat' action scene, where the environment can be used against the enemy.
• A 'boss fight' where the boss has a goal other than just killing the PCs. Or where the PCs have a goal other than 'kill the boss.' The human brain can handle multiple threads at once, so give the players more than one lever they can pull to affect the finale.
• No 'random encounters.' These days, video games do a much better job of giving you a quick, pointless challenge that triggers an endorphin rush upon success. That's not the area where tabletop RPGs shine, so don't waste time on it. If there must be a 'traveling through this area is dangerous' encounter, have it also inform the plot or the characters somehow, or be a puzzle. God of War doesn't let you lull monsters to sleep with music, even though that's a supremely Greek thing to do.
• Denouement. In the course of the adventure the PCs should have met people who are affected by their victory (or failure). Whatever kicked off the adventure should have more consequence than "Oh, the bad guy's dead. Cool. Well, that's done." I like to include scenes where NPCs want to thank, or condemn, or offer information that will lead to the next adventure.

Now, as for designing encounters with variant party builds in mind, ultimately some of that is on the GM to tweak things to give the PCs a chance to use their cool ability to solve an otherwise hard challenge. But really, as long as you have a nice variety in threats, people will find times to shine. And since I've mostly written adventure paths, I have the benefit of being able to put material in the Player's Guide to steer PCs toward certain builds. ZEITGEIST has 9 character themes, each of which gives you a special ability, and I've mostly made sure that each adventure has one or two scenes where each of those abilities do something cool.

(Okay, the Vekeshi Mystic theme is a little under-utilized mechanically, but the plot elements tied to it are very prominent.)

The adventures I write and produce do require a lot of investment from the GM, but they offer a lot of reward. I think the GMs who post about their campaigns in the E.N. Publishing forum here are a pretty good indicator that the adventures are providing them and their players a lot of fun.

Now with that, I've got to get back to writing the final adventure. If you think making a module interesting is hard, try balancing it for 20th level PCs. Uff da. Thanks for the topic. It was nice to be prompted to consider my game design philosophy (and realize that I didn't stick to it as well as I'd like a few times).

Good considerations Ryan. Some questions; do you think of the "use" test and what PCs see, smell, hear, feel when designing adventures, especially when designing locals and encounters? How much do you give to information presentation and accessibility?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Personally I like adventures that feel like a setting book. I also enjoy when they blend in adventure possibilities. A good example of the kind I tend to go for would be the Feast of Goblyns adventure that came out for Ravenloft in the 90s. 100 Bushels of Rye for HARN is another one I quite liked.

I know a lot of folks complain about passive voice, but personally I tend to prefer it. I do like warm writing, but not writing that feels too punchy or overly stylized (I actually get a bit irked when the language is too active, or flows in a way assumes too much about what the player characters do----really like cautious "If the players do X" type language over "The players do X").

I certainly understand why folks like less wall of text, and I do think there can be places where this is really annoying. But I also have to admit, as a GM, I like reading a module and getting pulled into the material a bit in advance. So I'll happily buy something that has that sort of thing.

What I don't like are adventures that have clear beginnings, middles and ends; or ones that flow like a story with a climax or beats you have to hit. I'd rather just kind of let my players go at it how they want, without feeling like it is a an episode of a show that needs to hit all the right moments in the night. I want potentially dramatic elements to be in play, so they can come up naturally if they happen to arise....I just don't want my players to feel like I am imposing some kind of plot on them. I much prefer that stuff to flow from the NPCs, PCs, and all the other elements as they interact.

 

[Desh-Rae-Halra]

So, I write adventures -- E.N. Publishing's ZEITGEIST and War of the Burning Sky adventure paths, produced by this website.

My design philosophy with adventures is that a good published adventure is a theme park. Now sure, if you have the time to plan your own vacation, you'll probably have a great time going out into the world, seeing the sights, eating at fine restaurants, and maybe having a bit of adventure. That's the homebrew game, and I homebrew myself, and I honestly prefer it to modules.

But sometimes you look at Disneyland and think, "That place has a lot of fun in one place. They've worked to make sure that visitors have fun. I'm going to give them money and see what they came up with."

Some theme parks, and some adventures, are dinky. I played a module this past weekend which was basically just a three room dungeon with few ways to overcome problems other than by attacking them. (Seriously, there was a puzzle, and even it was solved by attacking walls to do damage with different energy types.) I don't see the point of publishing these sorts of things but, eh, it was for a 'coordinated play' series, where the bar is lower. I can forgive that.

By contrast, when I write an adventure, I'm usually doing something that will span 2 or 3 levels. I'm shooting more for 'feature film' than 'weekly 30-minute episode.' I try to check the following boxes.

• Narrow-wide-narrow design, where you assume you'll have player buy-in to "this is where we start the adventure," and you set up the antagonist to be doing something in a particular location that means the adventure will probably end up somewhere you can set up a cool climax, but the middle has a lot of routes the PCs can travel. Railroading is anathema. The players should always feel like they made the adventure.
• An antagonist whom you interact with before the climax. This has worked particularly well in ZEITGEIST, which has a heavy mystery and investigation component. It has also involved brainstorming with friends and then playtesting to make sure there's no railroading.
• An introduction that walks the GM through the most likely storyline. I present the backstory, the goals of the antagonists, and a synopsis of what events probably occur. It should always be clear to the GM what happens if the PCs don't get involved, and the GM should have a sense of what the villain's reactions are. In fact, assume the PCs cause trouble, and have interesting responses.
• NPCs with easy hooks. I've tried to give each NPC some physical trait that will stick in the players' minds, and also a personality trait.
• A 'show off' action scene, in which the PCs get to deal with people who are not a real challenge, giving the players a chance to be silly instead of brutally efficient.
• A 'puzzle combat' action scene, where the environment can be used against the enemy.
• A 'boss fight' where the boss has a goal other than just killing the PCs. Or where the PCs have a goal other than 'kill the boss.' The human brain can handle multiple threads at once, so give the players more than one lever they can pull to affect the finale.
• No 'random encounters.' These days, video games do a much better job of giving you a quick, pointless challenge that triggers an endorphin rush upon success. That's not the area where tabletop RPGs shine, so don't waste time on it. If there must be a 'traveling through this area is dangerous' encounter, have it also inform the plot or the characters somehow, or be a puzzle. God of War doesn't let you lull monsters to sleep with music, even though that's a supremely Greek thing to do.
• Denouement. In the course of the adventure the PCs should have met people who are affected by their victory (or failure). Whatever kicked off the adventure should have more consequence than "Oh, the bad guy's dead. Cool. Well, that's done." I like to include scenes where NPCs want to thank, or condemn, or offer information that will lead to the next adventure.

Now, as for designing encounters with variant party builds in mind, ultimately some of that is on the GM to tweak things to give the PCs a chance to use their cool ability to solve an otherwise hard challenge. But really, as long as you have a nice variety in threats, people will find times to shine. And since I've mostly written adventure paths, I have the benefit of being able to put material in the Player's Guide to steer PCs toward certain builds. ZEITGEIST has 9 character themes, each of which gives you a special ability, and I've mostly made sure that each adventure has one or two scenes where each of those abilities do something cool.

(Okay, the Vekeshi Mystic theme is a little under-utilized mechanically, but the plot elements tied to it are very prominent.)

The adventures I write and produce do require a lot of investment from the GM, but they offer a lot of reward. I think the GMs who post about their campaigns in the E.N. Publishing forum here are a pretty good indicator that the adventures are providing them and their players a lot of fun.

Now with that, I've got to get back to writing the final adventure. If you think making a module interesting is hard, try balancing it for 20th level PCs. Uff da. Thanks for the topic. It was nice to be prompted to consider my game design philosophy (and realize that I didn't stick to it as well as I'd like a few times).

Could you please make my GM read this, especially the random encounters part?

 

[RangerWickett]

Sure, what's his or her email address? I'll send over a gnome with a mallet to bonk at non-compliance.