D&D General What are the minimum standards for a published adventure campaign?

[Quickleaf]

Here are my hard lines. These are just my own, and I don’t expect any company to start working to them just because it’s my preference.

I thought you put together a good list! I'm a very very minor self-publisher and freelancer, but haven't been active in the RPG publishing space for a while, and I'm an outlier when it comes to how I run 5e, so take my words with a big grain of salt...

First, what you didn't mention – A Strong Hook. The adventure needs to provide a strong hook for the players to care about it. This is one of the hardest things, at least for me as a writer. Sometimes it hits like a bolt of lightning, and other times I'm scratching my head like a gorilla "they're after bananas maybe?" I've learned to hold a hypothetical hook lightly in mind to begin with, and let it shift and change in response to my writing.

• It has to be inspirational. That doesn’t mean it needs to be novel - it could do the classics very well and that would still be great for me. Ultimately it needs to hook me with the idea that would make me play.
• It has to be interesting to read. If I can’t enjoy reading the book first - it ain’t never gonna make it to the table. I’m not looking for a reference book - it’s got to take me on a journey.

This is crucial - the adventure is actually written for the GM. It's the GM's enthusiasm that typically sparks the rest of the players. It's also the most nebulous principle and can take many different forms.

- It has to have good artwork and good quality colour maps. I play on VTT I don’t want to have to go searching for fan made versions of the maps in the book just so I can use them. Theatre of the mind is valid but it insufficient for me. This also links to the inspirational and fun to read elements before.

For me the key is less about "good" and "quality color" and more about "strategically deployed." For example, Trilemma Adventures is graphically inspirational for me with the black/white hand-drawn iso maps that really give me a sense of the space in a textural/sensory way that 2D maps (no matter how lavish) rarely succeed at. I think, unless you have a stupid art budget, the key is to use the art you can afford in ways that elucidate areas of the text that are trickier to imagine or explain.

- It needs to have great engaging NPCs that make me want to play them as a DM.

- It needs to have sufficient detail to save me time and to allow me to get into the zone of the NPC, monster or location. Names, descriptions, key information.

I'll also add that knowing when to stop with enough detail and keeping the detail focused is really important. Otherwise, it's easy to bury the lead about how the NPC, monster, location, is intended to be presented / the kind of experience it's intended to give players. Clarity and detail? Yes! But also succinctness. Gavin Norman (Old School Essentials), at least from the stuff I've been exposed to so far, is great at succinct clarity.

- It needs to feature Gaming from Below to flesh out the world and make it feel like a real and lived in place.

I received feedback from Henry Lopez on a RPG project that I'd fleshed out the cultural details so much that I was losing the sense of the fantastic necessary to grab the reader. So, there's some tension between what you want here and your very first point about inspiration & interest. I think the key is knowing when enough is enough, and how to fuse areas of your adventure manuscript together to make them feel more connected / integral to each other. That's hard to do, esp. if you had a looming deadline or writing partners, but that's a lesson I keep in the back of my mind.

- It needs to have a mixture of freedom and progression - usually by having small sand boxes with things to do separated by some kind of gate to keep things moving along.

One of the things I love the most, and which I hardly see, is when an adventure sets you up to make BIG choices at points throughout the adventure and not just at the end. WotC books like Descent into Avernus & Rime of the Frostmaiden have interesting varied end states, but the issue is that the players don't get to bask in the outcome of their choices and really see the difference they made. Even embiggening just a few choices even just a bit I think has a big payoff on the players' end.

- It needs to understand and use the rules system that it’s written for in a competent way.

While true, an adventure also benefits from a critical read of the rules. An adventure writer has a rules ecosystem, but they still need to wear a game designer hat, and challenge (or get creative with) what doesn't work. For example, I know from experience that 5e's chase rules will get a resolution but aren't that fun at the table. When I wrote an adventure that involved a werewolf chasing sleds (and vice versa), I knew I had to either cut out that bit from the story OR find a way to gloss over it OR address that deficit in the rules. I ended up rewriting the chase rules for that adventure.

- It needs to anticipate PCs actions to certain extent. Sufficient to give me at least one path as an example of progression.

This one I always wrestle with. What I think is actually practical is being strategic about where you invest your anticipation as an adventure designer. You can burn a lot of mental energy trying to predict player actions, and that can take you down a sort of tunnel vision that restrains your original spark of "that's cool!" And ultimately, most scenes you can set the ball in motion and barely need to define player actions. What's important is recognizing WHEN I do need to anticipate - for example, countermeasures for a trap? I need to anticipate.

 

[jasper]

• It needs to have an interesting hook to bring me and the players into the adventure.
• The pieces need to connect reasonably well
• It needs to be clear to the DM how the pieces connect.
• It needs to be well written and well edited in terms of the rules of the game.

This is not something I want. I am looking for a reference: a reference on how to run a decent adventure. Parts of it I want to be interesting to read: the overall summary, the backstory, the player information. That gets you my first criteria. After that it I want it written solely to facilitate running the campaign at the table.

5 Maps must be readable. Not brown barf where I can't see the grid lines. Use white grid lines if you using dark colours.
6 Good page cross reference. I am constantly writing the page number of encounters of quest lines.
7 No buried information. Why place the name of the LT three pages over after you introduce him.

 

[MGibster]

It has to be inspirational. That doesn’t mean it needs to be novel - it could do the classics very well and that would still be great for me. Ultimately it needs to hook me with the idea that would make me play.

I haven't really ever given the subject much thought, but ultimately I think this is what I'm looking for. You don't have to re-invent the wheel, even a rescue the princess adventure, played straight, can be a lot of fun if its well written. Ravenloft (I-6 Module for AD&D) is my gold standard. So let's see what makes it so interesting.

1. Strahd is a compelling villain. His motivations, whatever you happen to be going with, are understandable, his behavior is despicable, and if roleplayed by the DM well, is someone the players will love to hate.
2. Castle Ravenloft itself is an interesting location with one of the best gaming maps from the 1980s. I never get sick of using it.
3. There are a good amount of NPCs for the PCs to interact with.
4. The goals of the adventure are pretty clear and straight forward.

This is typically what I look for in an published adventure.

 

[MGibster]

I should add, I’d be really interested in hearing any campaigns people think are really good for any edition and why.

The Two Headed Serpent is a campaign for Pulp Cthulhu but could easily be adapted for other games. In Serpent, the PCs are members of Caduceus, a globe-trotting organization dedicated to helping those suffering from diseases, war, and natural disasters, as they rush to combat a foe that threatens the fate of every nation with the extinction of man! It's a really fun campaign.

 

[Yora]

My minimum base line is that it must not be a railroad.

What happens in the adventure and how the adventure ends has to be a result of the decisions the players make and the actions the players take. If the events of the adventure are already predetermined and the players' participation makes no meaningful difference, then there is really no point in running it.

And I know that 99% of all published adventures don't qualify for even this very most basic requirement for a useful game product.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I want plot and story. I want a narrative that gives me multiple scene scenarios whose reason for existence is to drive the overarching plot forward. Whether that's combats, NPC encounters, locations that have eventual sign-posts leading the story forward... I want the outline or spine of a book the players can play and follow-- especially if there is space around them open enough that I can easily fill in with extra scenes and encounters of my own in case the players do not take the default breadcrumbs. Basically, an Adventure Path.

But what I don't care about is having full-statted combat encounters, because odds are good that my table will be filled with players of a differing amount or power level than what the game would have to give me as a default. So you can tell me what monsters are meant to be there, but I can easily determine the number of them or which type of them I need (because I have more than enough monster statblocks available at hand to create whatever encounter level will be necessary.)

I also don't want simplistic plot hooks meant to connect completely random "modules" into a supposed "storyline". Your hexcrawly-like scenario. I can come up with those myself. I can invent a reason why the group would go from finishing The Sunless Citadel to The Forge of Fury... but those two together do not an overarching narrative make. Or the nine HPE adventures from 4E that were all supposedly about the arrival of Orcus, but which barely connected to one another and many of those modules had nothing to do whatsoever to that story spine. Those aren't campaign Adventure Paths. I want a full path forward. A road to follow across the entirety of the adventure. It's okay to take small detours off the path... especially for character-related stories... but I should always be able to still see the path in the distance and if possible, events on the path occurring without the party's involvement that helps draw them back to it by their choice. If the story is good they will WANT to return to the path and will do so to follow the narrative to the end. That's what a useful campaign adventure path book would be for me.

 

[aco175]

I seem to get a lot of millage out of the starter boxes. I can run them as is, or add more filler myself as the players make choices. I can then add more adventure to the end to tie up things or expand further if the players want to continue. The campaign world might only be 100 miles across, but it works. Part of this might be that they are all in Forgotten Realms (FR) and there is a ton of background stuff to be found on that world and bringing in the town of Phandalin only add a little bit.

I think I like to have an adventure-campaign have a base, several short adventures that lead to a larger one to complete. The box sets seem to do fine, but a follow-on would be great to expand on the first. I know that the recent obelisk book does this to a point with Phandalin, but appears to be a whole different adventure just forced there and does not build much. The old, Under Illefarn adventure was another good example of giving a town and a few starter adventures to get to 3-4th level before dealing with the main threat.

 

[Ancalagon]

A adventure I've been very impressed with is Dungeons of Drakkenheim.

• It has a number of adventuring locales - the dungeons of drakkenheim
• It has a ruined city with strange conditions that greatly influences pacing and make it interesting
• There is a lot of details/hooks on getting the PCs to a particular dungeon, and an aftermath section on "what happens after" with each dungeon - possible outcomes and consequences.
• there are factions also doing stuff - it's a living world, the PCs aren't alone.

It is a complex campaign written to be used by a GM. It definitely deserved an Enies award, and it's one of the first 3rd party adventure loaded on DnD beyond.

Like @Shardstone , I too really enjoyed Lost Laboratory of Kwalish, but it does have its flaws... but its merits (length, ease of insertion in an existing campaign, which is a must for a shorter adventure, flexibility, creativity, cool scenes/situations) made it worth it for me to fix said flaws (the maps in particular)

 

[Stormonu]

The issues with campaign-length adventures is one of the main reasons I prefer the old shorter adventures from 1E. A lot of campaign-length adventures have to spend a lot of wordage on properly connecting the scenes, anticipating the player's likely course of action and explaining it all to the DM. Most fail to do a properly adequate job.

So, on that note, my criteria is a follows:

0) It must be interesting and fantastical in some way. If I as a DM can't feel energized to run it, I won't. Besides being interesting, it should also feel magical and fantastical in some way and not just a medieval (peasant) simulator*. Also, it should sound fun for the players - something like Tomb of Horrors sounds like great fun for the DM, but no player would agree.

1) Must not be a railroad. While the adventure should adequately detail the likely course of PC action, it should also be aware of possible branches and offer at least rudimentary detail (and maps, damn it!) for such side quests.

2) Must tell the DM up front what's going to happen. For example, no waiting until the 3rd act to tell me that the NPC that's been accompanying the PCs all along is about to betray them because they actually work for the BBEG.

3) Must be logical. Not only should the overarching adventure make sense, but NPC motivations should be believable and the locations make sense in the PCs absence. There's a lot of art behind this, but I've seen many a case where if the PCs weren't involved, the whole thing wouldn't make a lick of sense.

4) No ex machina ending. When the final scene ends, the players must feel that it was their direct action that brought about victory. While it can allow for some mcguffin to weaken the final enemy or set right some wrong, it was the PCs who hunted it down, wielded it and activated the victory conditions through much difficulty. Same goes for NPC interaction - some random NPC doesn't swoop in fix the end, though the PCs may have tracked down the individual and through much difficulty (that not even the NPC could perform) set up the situation so the NPC could perform their final act.

* As a side note, I personally hate character funnels partly for this reason, as well as taking away the character's feeling of being extraordinary rather than plain lucky.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I should add, I’d be really interested in hearing any campaigns people think are really good for any edition and why.

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