Help me make WotC adventures better.

[bert1000]

1. Pacing. This is the big one. As someone else said, there needs to be some kind of story between every 1-2 combat encounters (and even skill challenges). See my next post for my thoughts on Eyes of the Lich Queen, which I thought did this pretty well.

2. Exploration “encounters”. This is the micro version of pacing. Areas need more interesting non-encounter details. See this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/244799-old-school-modules-space.html

In summary, I agree that a completely empty dungeon room is boring, but a non-combat / non-skill challenge area does not need to be. Cult of the Reptile God is an awesome old school module and the final cavern complex has a bunch of “non encounter” rooms that are really cool: 1) a store room with provisions that lets PCs know there are humans around and their approximate number (information conveyed!), 2) an otherwise empty muddy floor cavern that looks similar to another cavern with monsters in the mud (tension!), 3) a cavern with non threatening skeletons acting as a bilge pump to keep the area from flooding! (awesome fantasy detail, sense of wonder!!!).

3. Variety. Many, smaller interesting locations are much more entertaining, allow a wider variety of plausible creatures to interact with, and create the sense of moving forward. Alternatively, a reason not to clear every room of a large location also works (luke didn’t clear every room of the death star but instead had several meaningful encounters toward his goal). Lich Queen did variety well.

4. Choices and consequences. Give the players meaningful choices and consequences and incorporate the results into the story. This is my beef with a lot of as written skill challenges right now. Failing a skill challenge results in some kind of trivial consequence (e.g., fight an extra level +1 battle). I think skill challenge results should always include a real story element. The skill challenge example in Galaxy of Intrigue had failure result in the loss of fellow prisoners at each failure. This is great, and even better if they had several interactions with some of these NPCs before hand. Not only will the PCs feel that they failed (even though they still escape and move the story along), but one of the lost NPCs might come back and hunt them down because they “abandoned them in the mines to save your own skin”. Incorporate more elements like this. More if the PCs choose to do this, then… Lich Queen did not really do this well.

5. Antagonist motivations revealed to PCs. First, the villains need better fleshed out motivations and background. But equally as important, some of this motivation and evil plotting needs to be conveyed to the characters in-game (and please don’t overuse the note, journal entry please). Otherwise all that background and motivation is just fun DM reading. The players are motivated to participate because they want to play an rpg, but great adventures are when the characters are also logically motivated to participate. So the larger point is create reasons for why the characters might care. Lich Queen was too heavy handed with this (basically characters get magically cursed and have to lift the curse).

 

[bert1000]

Eyes of the Lich Queen (lots of SPOILERS)

As I said in the post above, I thought this module did a great job of pacing and variety. Its flaws are the heavy handed character motivation (basically characters get magically cursed and have to lift the curse), lack of real choices (it’s straight up linear), and to some extent the lack of friendly NPC interaction.

In current WOTC style this would probably be 2-3 modules worth of plot with 60-90 combat encounters. In the end, this module covers a lot of ground but I think you could do this module in 4E with 15-20 combat encounters that were all integral to the plot. I’ve marked a quick strawman below:

*So the characters get a job from a mysterious patron (clichéd and would be better if they knew this person from earlier adventures, but DMs can adjust this).

*Next, we get a jungle trek (always good, skill challenge), combat at a ancient temple with 2 young dragons pestering us (cool) [2 combat encounters]

* And then a reveal of a sub area from a different age and some combat to get the mcguffin. Good transition – advances the story and allows for a completely different set of opponents. [2 combat encounters]

*PCs get ambushed and have combat by emerald claw who think the characters have an item. Great, introduces one of the main villain groups and gives the PCs additional info. [1 combat encounter]

*Next, PCs getting strange dragonmarks – good story advances. PCs get some down time, then find out the dragon marks are similar to an ancient explorers and the marks eventually killed him. Their patron wants a mcguffin the explorer may have found (the same thing the emerald claw was looking for) but the threat of death also provides motivation for the PCs to find the tomb of this explorer.

* Next phase involves 3 set pieces with information gathering in between. A great scene where the PCs need to recover a book from a mansion’s burning library that is being ransacked by the emerald claw. Great motivation to be there, and reason to have a combat. Encounter area is small and interesting. [2 combat encounters]

* [1 skill challenge] This leads to some information gathering and a new town port verge. The PCs efforts lead to a prison break in of the most notorious prison in eberron!! Another great location and set piece. This is set up as a “bust in and out” affair. So even though the prison itself is huge, the PCs can have 2-3 meaningful combat encounters and leave. It’s not a slog. [2-3 combat encounters]

*This leads to more info gathering and a great (likely non combat) encounter. The PCS must now convince a pirate king to let them see his rare map, or somehow steal it. Great non-combat stuff. [skill challenge]

*Now that the PCs have enough info to locate the tomb, they get to go to a haunted island (another different type of location). There is a cool “island guardian” combat encounter with an undead orca. The PCs then fight a somewhat random encounter with an deranged fire elemental that was used to power a crashed airship but it’s evocative of the setting so I think its fine. The tomb itself it somewhat generic but small enough that again its not a slog. The quori is a nice touch as a way to spice up the mosters encountered. The tomb ends with a bunch of information for the PCs given by the ghost of the explorer – good stuff, the PCs need to be informed of what is really going on at some point before the very end. [4-5 combat encounters total for the island and tomb]

*On their way back they get pirate ship to pirate ship boarded by the reanimated corpse of some they fought at the mansion. Great, reoccurring villain and cool location. [1 combat encounter]

* The last part involves going to the land of dragons, getting involved in a barbarian tribe civil war, and fighting a blue dragon on top of a ancient dragon astrological observatory. Again mixing up the location allowing for different types of combat and non-combat. [2 combat encounters with barbarians, 1 skill challenge to get allegiance with tribe, 1 skill challenge to sneak up on tower, 2-3 combat encounters in tower]

 

[darjr]

RPGA. It's a great resource, you have access to what adventures get played and how often. Not to mention a captive audience to ask about what has worked and what doesn't.

I realize that the kind of adventure that are rpga adventures are not everones cup of tea, but there are some fantastic adventures there and some great ideas.

The Mini campaign keeps getting requested, forex, and it's combats are mostly very easy, cept the last couple which are doozies.

The Radiant Vessel of Thesk gets lots of praize around here, and it has, what, only two combats? One of which is a hybrid of lots of roleplaying, skill challenge and combat.

 

[darjr]

Oh and not to mention RPGA adventures may be a great place to experiment. Labled appropriately you'd probably get a ton of volunteers to try out new and wacky things at RPGA tables.

 

[crash_beedo]

Rodney, you're still reading this thread? Well, hopefully you've made it this far!

We've been playing 4E since the beginning, we've gone from H1-through-P2 so far so I have a fair amount of experience running your H/P/E series of modules, and will reference them the most.

Shorter Delves
The adventures that we've liked the most (to run and play) have had shorter combat sequences - 3, maybe 4 fights, then a natural break. H2 - Thunderspire Labyrinth, and P2 - Demon Queen's Enclave, do this very well by presenting a series of small locations to explore. H3 and P1 really slowed down at time.

3-level adventures don't need 25-30 combat encounters... put in more quests and story opportunities. In 4E, every combat encounter needs to add something interesting to the story - too often in H3 and P1, there seemed to be filler.

Re-Usable Locations
The Thunderspire Labyrinth, Seven-Pillared Hall, Village of Winterhaven, Town of Moonstair, City of Phaervorul - I've liked these elements in the modules because the locations provide re-use when the main story is over. The Seven-Pillared Hall has acted as lair, hideout, and general-use market since early Heroic. Love it!

Revenge of the Giants has that 'City of Argent' - definitely looking forward to using it in the next campaign.

Optimization Options
Many times, the published encounters just aren't that challenging to an optimized group. Write tougher encounters, with more lethality for the XP budget, or provide some ideas to the DM on how to bump the difficulty (um, within the budget... anyone can scale the monsters, duh). Optimized groups can smoke the mods as written. (Sly Flourish has great optimization articles on creating monster synergy).

Better Dungeon-Tile Usage
Another vote here for making more use of the tiles in the published adventures.

Experimentation!
Try some alternate presentations. The free-form approach of P2, with all the faction roleplaying and opportunity for self-directed exploration, is pure joy. I'd like to see you guys try a small wilderness sandbox setting like Keep on the Borderlands. I'm looking forward to some of the 2010 adventures that sound like keyed settings (Vor Rukoth, and the Slaying Stones one) instead of linear sequences of encounters.

Exploration is fun... let us hop off the tracks!

Last-Minute Bad-Guys
This one doesn't bother me as much, because we use vignettes, cut scenes, foreshadowing, etc to introduce the villain early (regardless of how the module was written), and create a sense of build-up as the module progress - but it's a fair criticism; villains are more meaningful where there's a relationship established with the villain.

More Classic Revisions
Love to see all the 4E renditions of classic locales and adventures, keep them coming (as long as you can keep the quality high). Let's see the Temple of Elemental Evil boxed set!

 

[occam]

One of the reasons folks cite Paizo as so great at making adventures is because Paizo puts things in the adventures to make them an enjoyable read. Now, I know that you are writing adventures to be run as adventures, but to have enjoyable ideas pouring out of the pages (rather than encounters set up on the framework fo plot) is going to make the adventure better.

One thing that makes it better are NPCs, and things the players can enjoy.

These are two of the things I was going to mention.

Adventures are meant to be read, as well as played. While you can definitely go overboard on presenting background that will never see the light of play, some amount of story for the DM doesn't hurt. Get the DM involved in a good story when reading the adventure, and that enthusiasm will transfer to the players, in addition to making it more likely that the adventure will be selected for play. Nearly all of the 4e adventures I've read (which is all of those in Dungeon, plus a few of the standalone and D&D Game Day ones) come off as very dry. They tend to be highly focused, straight to the point when presenting information intended to see play. They're utilitarian, which has its advantages, but generally not engaging reading.

Plus, you never know what piece of seemingly unimportant background information will make it into the game; players are unpredictable in the questions they ask, and DMs often pick up on the smallest of hooks to expand, and use as major tie-ins to existing campaigns.

Examples of good reading, although not for reasons of richer background, are Dave Noonan's Dungeon adventures (which is why I was particularly sorry to see him leave WotC). In "Betrayal at Monadhan" and "Last Breath of the Dragon Queen", he excels at providing useful advice to the DM in a conversational tone. Even the monster tactics sections are fun to read, instead of something to skip over.

On another point (mentioned by several others), NPCs need to be more interesting. The two 4e DMGs, which are the best DM advice books ever published for D&D, have tips on creating memorable NPCs, but the NPCs in WotC's published 4e adventures tend to be treated as means to ends, if they're characterized or even mentioned at all. Paraphrasing DMG advice, a little background motivation or a few appearance/personality quirks go a long way.

I'm torn on the delve format. I get the advantages, but it does make reading an adventure (see above) difficult. There's also the problem many others have brought up, the seemingly endless string of level-appropriate encounters. I'd suggest using the delve format only for 2-3 important set-piece encounters in an adventure, where you make full use of 4e's great encounter-building tools: terrain, traps, sophisticated group tactics, etc. Make those set pieces hard, just within the PCs' abilities to handle.

For most other encounters, I think I'd like to see a return to an old-school-style presentation. As you read through the encounter areas in a dungeon, for instance, each room has a paragraph of description. A few (2 or 3) refer to the delve-format pages for the big set pieces. But most of the rooms with monsters just list the monsters and reference their sources, like encounter groups in the Monster Manuals, e.g.:

2 orc raiders (Monster Manual)
2 orc berserkers (Monster Manual)
1 dire boar (Monster Manual)
1 false-floor pit (Dungeon Master's Guide)

Let the DM place them on the map and figure out tactics. These encounters should be easy, several levels below the PCs, so that they can be finished in a round or two. Not every combat needs to be life-or-death; in the old days, most weren't. If a combat takes 10 minutes, that's still fun, and doesn't feel like a waste of time. These should be the majority of encounters; save the complex and potentially deadly encounters for the ones really significant to the story, which will make them much more memorable. This way the players can have fun beating up on monsters without wasting resources (if that's what they like; the DM can easily cut encounters if the players aren't into fast but essentially meaningless combats), get the XP they need more quickly when that's an issue, and save the full delve treatment for the encounters that really matter.

On another topic, I'd like to see more range in adventure settings. A long time ago, Dungeon used to publish scenarios for Oriental Adventures, Al-Qadim, etc. For a DM running a non-standard campaign setting, he'd be grasping to use any of the 4e Dungeon adventures; even Eberron or FR adventures are nearly nonexistent. While the Points of Light setting was supposed to be completely generic and adaptable, in practice it feels very concrete, pigeon-holing nearly every published adventure into a setting with a specific set of deities, races, etc. While letting adventure writers branch out would mean publishing some adventures that most readers won't use if they're far afield of the standard D&D-type setting, a broader selection would reach more DMs overall.

 

[Dragonblade]

I've been playing and DMing 4e for almost two years now. I've played through Keep on the Shadowfell and Thunderspire Labyrinth and DMed Scepter Tower of Spellgard, Pyramid of Shadows, and numerous Dungeon adventures.

Here are my critiques and recommendations:

Adventures should be fun to read - When I read 4e adventures, I feel like I'm reading a collection of tactical encounters for a miniatures game. Thats boring. All 4e adventure writers should go read 1st and 2nd edition adventures. Particularly those written by Gygax, Monte Cook and others. These adventures told a story and reading these adventures was almost as fun as DMing them. 4e adventures should read more like these.

The world should feel old and mysterious - Add lots of backstory and interesting little tidbits. Historical references and so on. Gygax was a master at throwing in little bits in his dungeons that had nothing to do with the current adventure but allowed the DM to hint to his players that the world was a far older, more mysterious and dangerous place than they knew. I believe this contributed strongly to the elusive "sense of wonder" that 1e is so famous for. For example, a secret door that might lead an older more ancient section of dungeon that the current inhabitants don't know about. Or the players might come across a wall carving that tells the story of an ancient battle that the original inhabitants of the dungeon wanted to memorialize. That story may have nothing to do with the current reason the PCs are there but it makes the world seem alive, that it doesn't just exist for the PCs to stand on.

Exploration should be encouraged - Don't just fill rooms with endless combat encounters. But don't just throw in a ton of empty rooms either. Have areas of interest that are just neat to explore.

Consider pacing - After four encounters or so, the players are about ready to need an extended rest. The adventure design should provide a natural break at this point. Players need a mental break from all that combat as well. Provide a place to take an extended rest along with a social encounter, or just some fascinating area to explore without an imminent fight.

Less combat - Pyramid of shadows does a good job and providing interesting combats but the sheer number of them is just mind numbing. Sure there is a token effort made in some of the encounters to provide some RPing, but ultimately every NPC betrays you. More friendly NPCs, less combat and more quest XP. If it takes 10 encounters to level up, only 6 or 7 of those should be combat. Quest and story XP should make up the difference. Scepter Tower is also bad in this respect. You're just grinding through different levels of the tower. It gets old. The best encounters in that dungeon was the illithid haunt that replayed its death by trap and the magic curtain that made it look like your gear was teleported away. Those encounters were fun and really had that old school feel to them. Also it was annoying the boss fight came in the middle of the tower. The PCs still had to grind through several levels of tower but there was no sense they were building to a climax any more. It seemed like grinding for the sake of XP to get that level.

About the Delve Format - I like the Delve format in the sense that all the monster stats are right there along with the tactical layout of the room. But I dislike how I don't get to read more detailed backstory and plot about these particular monsters and why they are in this room doing what they are doing. Also I strongly dislike how part of the room description is written in one section but the rest in another. Scepter Tower of Spellgard was really bad. I had to flip between different pages to get the full description of one room. I shouldn't have to do that. Its ok to break the two page Delve format and not try to squeeze everything into those two pages. I don't mind if it means I don't have to hunt down the rest of the room description because it wouldn't fit on the two page delve format spread.

 

[Festivus]

Things I really like in 4E adventure modules:

1. Two facing pages for every combat encounter. Working with Red Hand of Doom for a second run through reminded me of how much I hate page flipping.

2. Poster maps - sometimes I buy products JUST for the maps. I would like to see more use of this, or a closer tie to Dungeon Tiles products, perhaps once the master set comes out.

3. More skill challenges - I really appreciate that in every Living Forgotten Realms game, I know there will be a skill challenge or two. It's my favorite part of the game now. Also, more skill challenges as part of combats would be neat to see. The fight with Kalarel at the end is a good example of this.

4. Terrain in combat encounters - straight up fights are boring and not very challenging. A good example of a fight I didn't like was the dragon in trollhaunt... he died way to easily, and had nowhere to run or fight from. A dragon strafing a bridge (a la Red Hand of Doom) is a good use. Having the terrain add to the challenge of a fight is fun for players and DMs alike.

5. I was reading Hammerfast last night (store got copies early... thank you WoTC!) and would really like to see other products that dovetail to the setting. There are great plot-lets and quests in there and a lot of detail for a setting, but as a busy father of two I don't have time to write adventures. I know it's in the Nentir Vale and ties with the original 9 adventures, but I'd like to see products that are set around this place. The detail in the setting is really excellent, a good example of what you can do when you set aside 32 pages to talk about it. I also like the 20' scale city map.

6. Keyed and unkeyed maps. We use a projection system to display maps on the table, it would be nice if we could keep room numbers, secret doors, traps, etc, off the unkeyed maps for this. I think folks have been asking for this for years, I know I have wanted it for years.

7. New Monsters - I love adventures that include new monsters and treasure... it's almost a tradition with published adventures from TSR/WoTC, please continue it. It's the second reason I buy adventures.

 

[Emryys]

One reason I buy the adventures is for the poster maps!

I've noticed the new products Hammerfast and Vor Rukoth have the maps, yet HS2 Orcs of Stonefang Pass and HS1 The Slaying Stone do not list one, but they have similar page counts and price.

I like the smaller page count and price as it hopefully means it's a more compact and vesatile adventure/locale, but please include a map!

As it stands I'll only be buys 2 of the 4...

 

[tomBitonti]

Rodney, you're still reading this thread? Well, hopefully you've made it this far!

Excellent! I think this captures a lot of what is missing from the 4E adventures.

As exemplars, I would look at (in no particular order, and not hardly inclusive; these are what I can think of quickly):

The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, as a bang up great module

Drums on Fire Mountain, and When a Star Falls, for their great maps, and excellent structure.

Death on the Reik, or the Doomstones series (WFRP), for atmosphere and characterizations.

Red Hand of Doom, for the huge amount of content, storyline, and high production values

Return to the Tomb of Horrors, for the side panels depicting a part traversing the dungeon, and the dooms that befall many of them.

Of the 4E modules (I have them all), I enjoyed reading through Revenge of the Giants the most. A large improvement over other 4E adventures, the book suffers from a few editing errors, and from what seems to be a rush / short shrift in the detailing of the section on the fire giants. Also, the bit about the lich seemed, well, unheroic for the players.

(This seems to be a recurring problem: Editing mistakes, or folks not seeing how encounters or a story fit together as a whole, and whether they make sense.)

I do have to say that I think the 4E design has you boxed into a corner, as a key design feature is to abstract out a lot of the details that help create immersive, rich, stories. But enough about that!

Thx!

Patience, and Peace,

TomB