D&D 5E What do you want in a published adventure? / Adventure design best practices?

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] Is the adventure in question going to be available purely through PDF format? I would expect that's the case, but I figure it's best to confirm.

Going on that assumption, I think you should consider setting aside formats and methods established by print media. So, linking to relevant info throughout the PDF is better than an index.

I personally would set aside boxed text in favor of clear and concise room descriptions that the DM can tailor as needed (the PCs are entering from one direction instead of the expected one, etc.). I personally find the boxed text to shift things...I go into reading mode and players pick up on it and they aren't as engaged. I think a few clear lines of description that a DM can absorb quickly and then use to establish his own description is a far better option. I realize that I may be in the minority on this so far, but I wanted to present that take.

If you're familiar with the Maze of the Blue Medusa adventure, it's a great example of layout and organization, and also in terse yet clear and evocative description. If you're not familiar with it, the PDF is probably worth the $10 or so it would cost you. Even if you don't like the material, I think that the way it is presented is innovative and thoughtful.

As for linearity versus sandbox...I think most worthwhile adventures have elements of both. Ultimately, I think that it really depends on the story that you want to tell. Go with the option that best fits the story, that serves the theme and ideas you want to portray, and go with that.

Unfortunately "Best Practice" seems, since 3.5 days, to be Adventures that read really well as a type of book, but are actually quite difficult to use at the table. For example, in the Paizo days of Dungeon magazine, there were heaps of great adventures published, but the style was way too much "wall of text", and the key information for running encounters was spread all over the place (stuff like NPC Motives hidden early on in the background etc). The 5e book-adventures, for the most part, suffer exactly the same problems (Curse of Strahd is a prime example; Storm King's Thunder is slightly better but not much).

The other main things missing are usually:
1) Motives for NPC's, 'monsters' etc - mostly all we really get are bags of hit points waiting to get killed or ambushing the PC's so it's always 'kill or be killed'
2) Time-based and/or 'flowchart' plots - mostly the adventure is 100% static

So what I'm looking for, is mostly two things:
1) an adventure that is actually giving me all the key information I might need to run an Encounter, in a nice format that is in one place. For example, if the players are in a Town: who are the main NPC's, what might they be doing, what are their goals, flaws, etc; also any key time-based events, possible plot lines, etc. all in a page or two
2) an adventure that has lots of Great Ideas - I don't mind rough edges, but if I can get 80% of what I need, I'm happy to flesh out the missing bits, tweak it for my group, etc.

Bonus points for giving us some kind of Dynamic plot points - harder to write, and harder to DM, but ultimately these are often the best adventures. But to be honest, it's not essential as the players only ever see the plot that happens in the game, so even if it's a full-on railroad no-one has to know or care, if it's well written and well run.

I do run published adventures, mostly because I can find ones with loads of cool ideas, pre-made encounters, maps, etc, so I only have to round off the rough edges, flesh out motives and so on. Unfortunately, it's just more like 40% my work, not 20%.

I don't often use modules, but were I to do so. It would be nice if a given room or encounter spec fit on either a single page or a spread. I hate having to flip around, and would much rather just leave it open to that sheet. Maps can be separate, in this regard, AFAIC.

My $.02

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hawkeyefan said:

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] Is the adventure in question going to be available purely through PDF format? I would expect that's the case, but I figure it's best to confirm.

Going on that assumption, I think you should consider setting aside formats and methods established by print media. So, linking to relevant info throughout the PDF is better than an index.

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For the purposes of our conversation, I didn't want to limit our discussion to one particular media. Print, PDF, or something else entirely – I think the question of best practice is universal. Sure, "index" might mean different things in print or PDF form, but the idea is the same.

On a related note, I recently discovered that DMs Guild has added the often for print-on-demand softcover content...not just from WotC...but from DMs Guild creators. Wow! I need to read up on the details.

Published adventures need to do something you can't do yourself. They should preferably include encounters and combats and mechanics and side side systems that are just hard to design and require a skilled game and adventure designer to plan and balance.
They should teach new DMs how to run and design advanced games and save experienced DMs from having to design those elements.

Good adventures should be a time saver. Cool maps, inventive design, creative NPCs, detailed locations, etc. it shouldn't be stuff you could just do yourself. They should be inaginative and just try harder to think of creative situations, locations, characters, and stories. Content that you can either use in your game, or inspire you to think in new and different directions.
At the same time, they should also include iconic places and locations that can be dropped into an ongoing campaign. Locations you can employ on the fly when you need a castle in a swamp or wizard's tower.

A well structured adventure product needs to give you a story overview at the beginning and clearly break down what happens when and where. The major story beats and NPCs but also the content of the book: the introduction needs to tell you where information can be found.

Quickleaf said:

For the purposes of our conversation, I didn't want to limit our discussion to one particular media. Print, PDF, or something else entirely – I think the question of best practice is universal. Sure, "index" might mean different things in print or PDF form, but the idea is the same.

On a related note, I recently discovered that DMs Guild has added the often for print-on-demand softcover content...not just from WotC...but from DMs Guild creators. Wow! I need to read up on the details.

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Understood. I do think there are some thinga you can do in one medium and not in the kther, but I can understand your desire to go with a more universal approach.

I still recommend the Maze of the Blue Medusa, but I don't think a print copy will be easy to come by. It was also pretty innovatovely desiged for use at the table.

hawkeyefan said:

Understood. I do think there are some thinga you can do in one medium and not in the kther, but I can understand your desire to go with a more universal approach.

I still recommend the Maze of the Blue Medusa, but I don't think a print copy will be easy to come by. It was also pretty innovatovely desiged for use at the table.

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I have a PDF copy of Blue Medusa. I found it to be a delightfully creative experiment pushing the edges of design and layout. As a "fun house" / "zoo" mega-dungeon, I think it succeeds.

However, for me personally, I found it very...opaque. I couldn't grasp how it was supposed to be used. Everything felt very...arcane. The maps, while beautiful, were hard for me to decipher due to the...chaotic...art style. I couldn't see how it all went together...everything seemed to exist in isolation.

I wanted to like it much more than I actually did.

shoak1 said:

Good question. Rather than try to answer that question directly, let me give you an example that might better articulate what I seek. Let's look at curse of strahd.

CoS is a sandbox module that allows PCs to venture wherever they wish, to any of the areas therein regardless of level. A linear adventure however, would put up strong roadblocks to deviating from the course outlined therein on p.6. Of course in between those two extremes there are many other styles and options re. strength of either "roadblocks" or the lesser control method we might call "steering mechanisms."

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I'll just have to take your word for this, as I've never even looked at Curse of Strahd and most likely won't any time soon (I kinda had my fill of vampire-based adventures many a year ago).

For instance, I like PotA, but it is not easy to run. Unless you completely railroad the party along a proscribed path, then it's not a good adventure. But, if you run it open, then it's a good adventure (path) but the module organization is difficult and it requires a great deal of DM prep to run it well. To me, it's not a good "published adventure" and is much closer to a campaign setting or plot.

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This one, however, I can speak to; as I own it and have actually used (very modified) bits of it.

PotA is not in and of itself an adventure module, at least as most of us would probably use the term; and is not an example of anything I've been talking about. It's more like about 12 or 15 separate little adventure modules (each of which is an example of what I've been talking about) all in the same book, with a more or less vague thread connecting them together which could be seen and used as an adventure path by those so inclined. Me, I bought it on the basis of it gave me a dozen or more standalone adventures in one book, and screw the plot.

(Then again, part of that goes back to my feelings that an adventure should be something that takes a level or 3 to accomplish, and a campaign is something that takes 10, 15, or 20 levels to accomplish.)

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While we may differ on the numbers I think we agree on the principle.

Ignoring Yawning Portal, which is just reprints anyway, the WotC hardcover adventure books I've seen (and I freely admit I've not seen them all) over the last several years going back into the 4e era have all been attempts at APs and thus don't make good examples at all for this discussion - they're too big to be single adventures, and at least in the case of PotA too small to be considered a setting...though it could represent a fine start to one.

Lan-"if WotC ignore all our fine advice here and keep doing these hardcover adventure books, I'd like the next one to be similar to Yawning Portal only with all-new material rather than reprints"-efan

Quickleaf said:

A bit more "white space" than some formats – and I probably will close that space between the 2 monster stat blocks and just let them be separated by a line – but (I think) it reads more clearly.

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My immediate response on seeing that is you could save a bunch of page count and get much more info in a single two-page spread by both slashing the font size in the main and boxed text (you're using 11, I'd go 9) and finding a non-serif typeface like what you've used for the monster stat blocks.

The headers can be whatever.

Another way to save some space is instead of actually putting boxes around the boxed text, just highlight it or italicize it or make it a different colour.

hawkeyefan said:

Is the adventure in question going to be available purely through PDF format? I would expect that's the case, but I figure it's best to confirm.

Going on that assumption, I think you should consider setting aside formats and methods established by print media. So, linking to relevant info throughout the PDF is better than an index.

Click to expand...

In case it matters, everything I'm saying here is based on print only. If it's not on paper, I don't want it.

That said, [MENTION=6804070]LordEntrails[/MENTION] suggested upthread that DMs who run sandbox/open world campaigns aren't the target for most published adventures. I've several bookshelves here that would like to respectfully disagree with that opinion.

Lan-"the game world is the sandbox; the adventure modules are the toys in it"-efan

I'd push back against [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]; taking the font size too small is a recipe for disaster. That said, I'm not actually sure how big the font size in the WotC APs is; I'd guess that's a solid size to mimic, if you can work it out. Doubtless it'll turn out to be font size 9, now that I've said that

I think that [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] makes a pertinent point when he says that the adventure needs to do something that the DM couldn't do on the fly. Like, anyone can manage to on the fly develop and run five rooms in a row with 12 Orcs total, a pit trap, and a cursed sword that attacks people if they don't speak nice to it. If you're going to do an Orc Hold as an adventure, then the added value of the prewritten adventure could come from...

- A nice map (hard to do at home to professional level)
- Interesting NPCs with relationships that matter to the adventure. [1] You're up on Planescape, so I refer you to In The Cage: Faces of Sigil as a great example, albeit not an adventure.
- Complex combats presented simply. This could be a 3e tactical approach; it could be a room with waves of reinforcements and terrain that takes more than five minutes to develop, thus benefits from pre-writing.
- New stuff, be it a custom magic item or whatever.
- A subsystem. Say... this Orc Hold is built atop the ruins of a Netheril Flying City, and there are certain doors that need to be opened with cunning applications of magic. Having a bit of crunch devoted to that - tables, if-then-but clauses for using spells to open it, that sort of thing - is going to be added value since it would be real effort to develop. I'm going to pick up the adventures for AiME since they come with, among other things, pre-developed and custom Journey tables for the benefit of that subsystem. I could make those, but it'd take time.
- Sometimes - just to be a good example of something. Another reason why I'm buying AiME adventures - I love the Lord of the Rings, and I don't want to mess it up! So a book of 'here is what an adventure in this setting looks like' is really helpful. It'd be the same for Dark Sun, if that was an option. High Level modules are often mentioned on here. Orc Holds probably don't fall into this category, but you know what I mean.
- Developing a town or region for the DM's further use. Curse of Strahd or Out of the Abyss are obvious examples of this, as is Phandalin from Lost Mines.

I'm aware that's all perfectly obvious, but stating the obvious is sometimes helpful.

[1] On here someone once related the story of a module where an assassin appeared! The module gave a page long description of her history and motivations, her difficult childhood, etc; and then ended with, "She attacks instantly and fights to the death." A glorious waste of time