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What do you want in a published adventure? / Adventure design best practices?
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<blockquote data-quote="Charles Rampant" data-source="post: 7175275" data-attributes="member: 32659"><p>A few comments on the last few pages' worth of discussion:</p><p></p><p>One thing that 5e WotC adventures are confident in doing is very quick modifications to a monster. Princes of the Apocalypse is the best example. In one place, the book says, "this is an aquatic Troll, it can swim 30ft. and breathe underwater." In another, it says, "The leader of the Minotaurs can breathe fire as an action. Save DC 14, 30ft. cone, Dexterity save for half damage, 6d6 damage." It's elegant. Sometimes you can go overboard with this method, however - Iymrith from SKT was highlighted by Power Score for this, as her Storm Giant profile had a hefty list of changes, enough to suggest that they should have just printed it out entirely. </p><p></p><p>As for mundane rooms... well, it firstly makes me think of Terry Pratchett's comment that "When creating a fantasy city, start with the sewers. How do they get rid of the waste?" But, then again, his work focused on poo for comedy purposes <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" /> For dungeons, it isn't necessarily <em>wrong</em> to have five boring rooms in the dungeon, especially when you are realistically going to only have a very small number of words to describe them so it isn't that big a deal. Sometimes you can just skip them; especially if, for example, your dungeon is only a small part of a larger settlement, so it is easy to assume that the boring bits are elsewhere. Sometimes you can make them interesting; my group is now at the end of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and are wandering around the Cloud Giant castle. They found a kitchen, within which they saw twenty Kobolds and a griffon, the latter sitting on a perch in the rafters and ensuring that the Kobolds don't slack off. That one simple detail - taking only a line of text - was enough to give that room a distinct hook, and the players certainly seemed more impressed by it than the usual kitchen description!</p><p></p><p>If you must have inline monster stats, at least make them legible. The first example there wasn't, so I'd consider it a double failure.</p><p></p><p>There's something else interesting that was discussed, but I can't remember it now. Ah well. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charles Rampant, post: 7175275, member: 32659"] A few comments on the last few pages' worth of discussion: One thing that 5e WotC adventures are confident in doing is very quick modifications to a monster. Princes of the Apocalypse is the best example. In one place, the book says, "this is an aquatic Troll, it can swim 30ft. and breathe underwater." In another, it says, "The leader of the Minotaurs can breathe fire as an action. Save DC 14, 30ft. cone, Dexterity save for half damage, 6d6 damage." It's elegant. Sometimes you can go overboard with this method, however - Iymrith from SKT was highlighted by Power Score for this, as her Storm Giant profile had a hefty list of changes, enough to suggest that they should have just printed it out entirely. As for mundane rooms... well, it firstly makes me think of Terry Pratchett's comment that "When creating a fantasy city, start with the sewers. How do they get rid of the waste?" But, then again, his work focused on poo for comedy purposes :D For dungeons, it isn't necessarily [i]wrong[/i] to have five boring rooms in the dungeon, especially when you are realistically going to only have a very small number of words to describe them so it isn't that big a deal. Sometimes you can just skip them; especially if, for example, your dungeon is only a small part of a larger settlement, so it is easy to assume that the boring bits are elsewhere. Sometimes you can make them interesting; my group is now at the end of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and are wandering around the Cloud Giant castle. They found a kitchen, within which they saw twenty Kobolds and a griffon, the latter sitting on a perch in the rafters and ensuring that the Kobolds don't slack off. That one simple detail - taking only a line of text - was enough to give that room a distinct hook, and the players certainly seemed more impressed by it than the usual kitchen description! If you must have inline monster stats, at least make them legible. The first example there wasn't, so I'd consider it a double failure. There's something else interesting that was discussed, but I can't remember it now. Ah well. :) [/QUOTE]
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