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What do you want in a published adventure? / Adventure design best practices?
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7160488" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>In some published adventures, you mean. Sure, and that'd always been the way, some modules felt like un-related monsters just sitting in their rooms waiting to be killed & looted (Munchkin's like that for a reason). Other's didn't. </p><p>But in 4e you not only had decent encounter guidelines to make your set-piece encounters to the level of difficulty desired, you had decent skill challenge guidelines to deal with the possibility of evading them or taking them on different terms. You could even combine them. And, ironically, while they were /called/ 'set-piece,' they could be much more dynamic in how they played out...</p><p></p><p> Sure, lots of modules have gotten presented that way, going back pretty far. (I won't say 'all the way,' since I believe I've seen the very first published adventure, and it wasn't railroady, at all - it was hard to tell how PCs would engage with it at all, really.) </p><p>Some would have notes like "if there's a combat in area 51 the orcs from area 13 move to area 49 and set an ambush," or whatever, some would just say there's so many hundred orcs in the complex and let the DM decide how many were in a given area at a given time, most would have a wandering damage table somewhere... <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p>Once 3e introduced CR, you'd see more (and more concrete) notes about adjusting an encounter up or down based on the number or levels of the players, because encounter design became a more quantitative thing.</p><p></p><p></p><p> But published modules without DM latitude or embellishment?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7160488, member: 996"] In some published adventures, you mean. Sure, and that'd always been the way, some modules felt like un-related monsters just sitting in their rooms waiting to be killed & looted (Munchkin's like that for a reason). Other's didn't. But in 4e you not only had decent encounter guidelines to make your set-piece encounters to the level of difficulty desired, you had decent skill challenge guidelines to deal with the possibility of evading them or taking them on different terms. You could even combine them. And, ironically, while they were /called/ 'set-piece,' they could be much more dynamic in how they played out... Sure, lots of modules have gotten presented that way, going back pretty far. (I won't say 'all the way,' since I believe I've seen the very first published adventure, and it wasn't railroady, at all - it was hard to tell how PCs would engage with it at all, really.) Some would have notes like "if there's a combat in area 51 the orcs from area 13 move to area 49 and set an ambush," or whatever, some would just say there's so many hundred orcs in the complex and let the DM decide how many were in a given area at a given time, most would have a wandering damage table somewhere... ;) Once 3e introduced CR, you'd see more (and more concrete) notes about adjusting an encounter up or down based on the number or levels of the players, because encounter design became a more quantitative thing. But published modules without DM latitude or embellishment? [/QUOTE]
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