Scenarios / modules : what should and shouldn't feature?

Be it a commercial module, or one found for free on the internet, what are the essential features of an adventure?

I mean:

-- I guess, something easy to put in most campaign setting with little work, but does it make a module bland and boring vanilla?

-- Long and complex adventures, or something short and small easy to run in one gaming session?

-- Detailed texts about every furniture and stone carving in a given room, or something short, easy to read quickly, that will let the DM improvise?

-- Myself I am tired, if not irritated by riddles at every corner, and traps that are there for no reason*. I am also tired of dungeons with living creatures waiting in a room that someone eventually enters it. What are the things that aggravate you?

-- In short, the must have and must not have of modules for you being enticed to run them.


(*: I still remember an adventure 20 years ago, when my character did put his hand into a natural hole in a tree, to see if there was something inside. The DM was upset that I didn't ask for a notice (spot) check beforehand, so punished me into having a trap inside that hole, waiting for the first hand to come by. How stupid it was. Now, the same DM was fond of inept dungeon where you must solve all powerful magical riddles to go ahead.)

While rooting through Planescape adventures for a path to run my players through, I was disappointed to discover just how many of them use an essentially identical premise: looking for an elusive NPC, or finding a serial killer. I already ran a "looking for an elusive NPC" adventure to start the campaign, and I want to make use of Harbinger House, which is a "finding a serial killer" adventure, but I don't want the premise to feel tired by the time I run it. That makes a majority of the Planescape adventures unusable.

The problem there is simple. Although the adventures themselves are pretty different, they reuse the same tired hooks, and the adventure hooks are all the players see for the first half of the adventure. Whether they're chasing Heiron or Ghuntomas or Eliath or Sougad, they're going to think "we've done this before".

Let's see some refreshing hooks.

Also, tell me what the doors are made of and if they're locked in the description of the room, I can't count how many times I've had to make this up. Sometimes it turns out to be important.

JustKim said:

Also, tell me what the doors are made of and if they're locked in the description of the room, I can't count how many times I've had to make this up. Sometimes it turns out to be important.

Click to expand...

VERY important. Detect magic will go through wood, but not iron.

If you're just looking for something different, check out this thread:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=102706&page=1&pp=40)

-logical room fillings. as mentioned by the OP, I hate monsters that are just waiting for something to enter. Also, dungeon ecology is important! If you have a closed ecology, (ie, entrances to dungeon are closed untill the adventurers enter) then there should be critters that eat fungus, fungus, and creatures that eat the fungus eaters at the least. The alternative is of course to go with undead (who can wait for eternity)

-encounters that fit the adventure. If you have a dungeon that is supposed to be the lower regions of a city, what the **** is that medusa doing there? Also, don't put manticores in closed rooms. They should be reserved for outside encounters, where they can profit from the fact that they can fly!

-about fitting into campaigns, keep the fluff to a minimum. It is very interesting to read pages and pages of background about the module, but if it doesn't fit the campaign, I have to actively ignore the background and write my own! In other words, keep it simple!

Herzog

I agree with a lot of what's been said here. Here are some of my key things:

- As herzog said, "dungeon ecology is important! If you have a closed ecology, (ie, entrances to dungeon are closed untill the adventurers enter) then there should be critters that eat fungus, fungus, and creatures that eat the fungus eaters at the least. The alternative is of course to go with undead (who can wait for eternity)" Equally important is that the storyline and defined parameters of the world fit what you mind in the dungeon. i.e. if undead are rare then you need to have a good world history/plot reason to have a dungeon full of them not just "I don't need an ecology for them" In sort - It needs to all make internally consistant sense within the world it describes.

- I prefer something well described and flavorful with suggestions for adaptation into typical sorts of settings than something bland and cookie cutter.

- I want something that reads well, not something dictionary like that I need to struggle to stay awake through - it makes prepping the adventure much easier. City of the Spider Queen was great actually playing it, but reading it during prep it was dull as a textbook, for me at least.

- I have no preference for short and sweet or long and complex as long as it's well written

- As for "Detailed texts about every furniture and stone carving in a given room, or something short, easy to read quickly, that will let the DM improvise?" I prefer detailed descriptions of what's in there - I'll improvise things I want to change anyway, but a good strong theme to improvise off of is helpful. Again these descriptive texts, while very informative, should be interesting and informative to read as opposed to a laundry list, and be internally consistant with the rest of the described world.

- Sidebars with design insight are very good!! This helps me understand what the designers were thinking, whether or not I agree, and decide what I want to do with any given portion.

I recently got The Red Hand of Doom and for me it excels in all ways so far. I have not had a chance to run it yet, but I can't wait to - it is internally consistant, has great flavor and description, is interesting to read, fires my imagination, is well detailed and still adaptable, has sidebars to help me know what they were thinking and I'm confident I could adapt it to be exciting for almost any set of characters my players wish to play.