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D&D General How do you know an adventure is "good" just from reading it?

Rabbitbait

Grog-nerd
The trick is that really they can't. There's so much a DM (and a party) add, even through the most basic, by-the-book play. I've found that even most consensus "bad" adventures are enjoyed by most of the people who've actually played it (HotDQ comes to mind as the most egregious example)

There is a difference between playing and DMing as well. A good DM can make a silk purse from a sows ear, but it takes a lot of non-fun work and prep to do that for the DM.

Sometimes I want to do lots of prep, sometimes I just want a plug 'n' play adventure where I read through the adventure once and thenonly do short prep for the next installment each time we play.
 

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This seems like a good place to mention Bryce Lynch, who's done insane numbers of adventure reviews over the past 10+ years. Literally thousands of them on his site tenfootpole.org. You may not agree with his specific criteria, but they align with mine reasonably well, and I find his The Best and No Regerts sections on the site to be goldmines for finding good modules.
He definitely has his own criteria (e.g., hating Eberron). I’ve been reading all of Dungeon over the last several years (75 issues down, so halfway) and checking my notes/impression/personal ratings for myself against his. Sometimes he doesn’t give stuff a chance that’s actually good, but more often that not we arrive at the conclusions, if for different reasons.
 
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Zardnaar

Legend
The trick is that really they can't. There's so much a DM (and a party) add, even through the most basic, by-the-book play. I've found that even most consensus "bad" adventures are enjoyed by most of the people who've actually played it (HotDQ comes to mind as the most egregious example)

Thus I like playing and running PotA more than the general internet.

Disclaimer haven't completed it but the start is fun and I generally like it's format.
 

Yeah, that stopped my players from enjoying it. Maybe my fault, as I tried to shoehorn it into an existing campaign and to put some big bad artifacts from my own campaign in there; and even drop some clues about my big bad

If I had just said "hey, we're going to play a funhouse dungeon - it will make no sense, really" I'm sure they and I would have enjoyed more
When you are looking to drop an adventure into an ongoing campaign, "does it fit the tone of the campaign?" and "is it the sort of thing my players enjoy?" are more important questions than "is it good or bad?"

WPM was written as a one-shot, not as part of an ongoing campaign, and (IMO) is best treated as a comedy. But at least it makes more sense than The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (which is also awesome).
 
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maps and room write-ups often wildly disagreed as to room and hallway dimension
This is surprisingly common in published adventures. There is some of this in Keys from The Golden Vault for example. And can easily catch you out unless you study the maps very carefully before the start,
 

Vraal

you can scroll on down, the abyss is massive
People have covered a lot of good stuff regarding what I look for, but specifically:

Organisation. How easy is it to find information within the book? Will it still be easy if I'm trying to do it mid-session, with the players asking questions and making irritatingly high perception checks? Ideally you ought to be able to read the text in full once, comprehend it, then be able to get the most important bits of it from a quick glance back mid-sesh. I recently read the remastered edition of Deep Carbon Observatory, and found it to be my platonic ideal of a well-organised adventure; it's got clear headings, oversized page numbers, and constantly cross-references itself so you're never in doubt as to where to turn for what you're looking for.

Theme and aesthetics. A pure subjective judgement, of course. My tastes are pretty broad, but if it's standard pseudo-medieval fantasy I'm going to need something else to sweeten the deal, like a less common environment (like the tropical jungle from Tomb of Annihilation), or an incursion from/journey to something stranger and more otherwordly (like the weird dungeons in Call of the Netherdeep, or the bulk of the feywild shenanigans in Wild Beyond the Witchlight), or mash aspects of another genre in there (the Indiana Jones-style treasure hunting in, again, Tomb of Annihilation, or the deranged gothic mood of Castle Amber).

The player perspective. Is this adventure actually about the player characters? How easy is it to work in backstories and relationships with the NPCs and histories already in place? I've lost track of the amount of adventures I've read that are perfectly good stories, but consider the PCs as background extras who just happened to have stumbled in; or else they'll have fascinating backstory that the players have absolutely no way of finding out.
 

Yeah, that stopped my players from enjoying it. Maybe my fault, as I tried to shoehorn it into an existing campaign and to put some big bad artifacts from my own campaign in there; and even drop some clues about my big bad

If I had just said "hey, we're going to play a funhouse dungeon - it will make no sense, really" I'm sure they and I would have enjoyed more
I also played it as part of an ongoing (3rd edition) campaign, and it did feel kind-of shoe-horned in. However, I'm not sure what practical impact that had, since we were very much the wrong group for a "funhouse" dungeon anyway. The relative novice player in our group was fine, but the two experienced players (of which I was one) were way too risk-averse to enjoy it.

DM: You open the door, and see [strange lights and/or other bizarre stuff that doesn't make any sense, gives off a dangerous vibe yet has no apparent treasure]

Novice: Cool, I wonder what this room does?

Experienced Player: I shut the door and try the next room.
 

Voadam

Legend
It is very multifactor.

I am running a 5e conversion of the Pathfinder 1e Iron Gods adventure path and it has a fantastic theme and interesting plots and environments and mini stories that come together but I have been frustrated on certain organizational things that are poor.

Just looking up the names and quick descriptions of the various Lords of Rust at the table for social encounters to impart information to the PCs while running the second module The Lords of Rust was fairly awkward even with the PDF open and using Ctrl F. There is a breakdown of them on page 35 with exactly the quick info I wanted when they started interacting with people around page 17, but it is fairly buried and does not show up on the Table of Contents or in the PDF bookmarks. Searching on "Lords of Rust" leads to a huge number of hits, so not really a help.

In module 3 The Choking Tower the map for the town of Iadenveigh has 16 numbered entries for its key. The text descriptions for the town has 19 numbered notable locations that do not match the numbers on the map. Big editing fail that can lead to problems when trying to run it at the table, particularly as a sandbox type of thing. Also handling the party first entering the town is just skimmed over, nothing about likely interactions as they come in the one main gate the way the AP did for the prior module when they entered the sandbox city of Scrapwall.
 

MerricB

Eternal Optimist
Supporter
The more adventures you run and read, the better you get at determining what adventures are good for you.

It's generally pretty easy to tell a terrible adventure. If you can't understand how to run it, then it's not good!

Some adventures read poorly and run well. Some run poorly after reading well.

There are certain things that will put an adventure in my "failed" pile, such as terrible structure and logic. (So, Lulu takes you to some kenku she remembers, but they know nothing and it's a dead end - again!)

We paper over a litany of problems in our sessions, just because running adventures for our friends is fun, and we adapt on the fly. I know that Tyranny of Dragons is one of my top 5 adventures of all time, but I do not insist it is that way for everyone.

Cheers,
Merric
 

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