What makes a published adventure great?

[Li Shenron]

I guess we have almost all said "Adventures don't sell" and "I can design a better adventure myself" at some point...

But, in the most generic and open-ended sense of the question, what can WotC do to make you buy a published adventure and after running/playing it make you say that it was well-designed, definitely worth buying, and you would recommend it to others?

Also: try to distinguish between content and presentation. Things such as artwork, maps and monster stats are part of the presentation, and they can make a huge difference at the gaming table whether they are done well or horribly, but if the content is badly designed they can't probably turn a poor adventure into a great one.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Nothing.

Not sure if you read my post in the other thread or not, but I don't think there is such a thing as a great (or event decent) published adventure. On occasion, a book of loose-leaf ideas (like Ultimate Toolbox) can be worthwhile, but even that is hardly great.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

Memorable storylines with NPCs that you are invited to feel strongly about, and at least one unforgettable encounter.

 

[Kinak]

My honest answer is "like the Pathfinder Adventure Paths" but I'm not sure that's entirely helpful.

A normal adventure (rather than a one shot or adventure path) needs a lot of incoming and outgoing hooks to help it integrate into an ongoing campaign. That's honestly the hardest part in my view, creating an interesting core in a generic enough package that people can drop it in.

Unless it's being sold as "All Combat" or "All Talking" or "the Skill Challenge Adventure," it needs to have a robust variety of encounters that highlight different play types. This goes deeper than just having combat and roleplaying scenes to having different types of combats.

The combats themselves can vary from simple to complex, but at least some of them need to be memorable. The occasional "line 'em up and knock 'em down" is fine, but it also needs setpiece fights.

Lastly, it needs to include background and enough information to run things off the rails. I want contingencies and characterizations that I didn't expect. Surprise me.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Bluenose]

A hook. Something that gets the players/PCs attention, and involves them in the adventure. Whether it's a treasure map, an ambush, a barge, a poem - anything can work.

Either:
A place. Some place where they need to go. Something that feels appropriate for the type of site, rather than a series of rooms and corridors with enemies in them. The Thanatar temple in Shadows on the Borderlands is spooky, dangerous, and sometimes disgusting - all very appropriate. Bogenhafen during the festival is exciting, chaotic, full of distractions; and at night it's misty, closed in, and damp.

Or:
An event. Something is happening/has happened. What are the PCs doing about it? People to talk to, things to investigate, rituals to disrupt. Shadows over Bogenhafen is one of the best examples of an adventure where the event is important, with things happening at their own pace unless the PCs stop them.

Complications. The things that stop the PCs just doing what they want. Note that doesn't necessarily mean enemies. The head of the Watch isn't necessarily in league with the ritualist, he's watching out for his town and doesn't want heavily armed adventurers wandering around causing trouble.

Resolution. The success and failure conditions, and the wider consequences thereof. Did the ritual take place and

Spoiler

a major demonic outbreak swallow a town

? The witch hunters will probably want a word or two with that band of trouble-makers who were reported wandering around doing strange things in the hours before that happened.

And then there's other types of adventure, where there's a hook and a resolution and everything inbetween is left to the PCs and their GM, who is probably armed with a large number of tables to generate events and encounters.

Get most of those right, implement them well, and you've got the basis of a good adventure. Do all of them well or excellently, and you've got something people will remember for a long time.

Edit to add: Freedom. Giving players plenty of freedom is much more important to some groups than others, but a scripted adventure where the PCs progress from one place to another is not likely to be better than average for my tastes.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

I don't know how practical it would be, but I also reckon that adventures should provide a tool-kit of suggestions on how it could be modified for personal tastes, perhaps something approaching "modular";- alternate monsters, or even alternate suites of denizens that might be used, with advice on small changes that could be made to make it work; alternate endings and twists; tie ins to multiple other published adventures and products, this sort of thing.

 

[delericho]

What makes a published adventure great?

The short answer, and probably the truest one, is "great players". Including the DM, of course. IME, about 90% of the enjoyment of the game comes from the other people around the table, and everything else is very far behind that in importance. I would rather sit at a table with my friends and play "N2 The Forest Oracle" converted to FATAL than play through the best adventure ever in the best system ever... but have to play with a group of... well, you know.

Because a good group can rescue a bad adventure/game; a bad group cannot be rescued from themselves.

Of course, that's not terribly helpful, so...

But, in the most generic and open-ended sense of the question, what can WotC do to make you buy a published adventure...

Unfortunately, they're on a sticky wicket here. See, WotC now have a sufficiently bad reputation for published adventures that I won't be buying any from them for a long time. They will need to rebuild their reputation before I'll even give them a look. The problem is, of course, that if enough people stay away until they're good, they become a losing proposition, so there's no point in assigning the top designers, so the quality suffers, and so...

Their best bet is to more or less forget published adventures except in the DDI for the time being, and make sure DDI is good enough (in terms of tools and articles) that people feel they simply must buy-in. Then, relaunch eDungeon, but make sure they only ever publish the best possible adventures. "Good enough" is no longer good enough; they need to be stellar.

That should then get them sufficient exposure of their adventure offerings to rebuild a reputation, and then they can consider going for print again... if print is even a concern five years down the road.

what can WotC do to make... a published adventure {that} after running/playing it {you would say} that it was well-designed, definitely worth buying, and... recommend it to others?

(some edits by me for clarity.)

Meaningful choices.

Most of the 4e adventures (and even 'good' adventures such as "Sunless Citadel" or "Red Hand of Doom") lack many significant choices. You fight encounter A, then you fight encounter B, then you fight encounter C...

("Sunless Citadel", which pretends to have some choices actually has two: do you encounter the goblins or do you encounter the kobolds? and do you fight that first group, or ally with them against the second?)

In general, you can't even skip some of these encounters - in order to survive later encounters, you need the XP and treasure from earlier encounters in order to be of the requisite level. And, very frequently, the NPCs attack on sight, and fight to the death.

Ideally, the PCs should be able to choose from at least four ways to deal with the encounter: fight their way through, evade the encounter (eg stealth), deceive the enemy (eg use disguise), or corrupt the enemy (how about a nice bribe, eh?). Of course, not every encounter will allow for all four solutions, but most should, and every one really should allow at least two.

The third thing I think I would like to see, that would help move an adventure from 'good' to 'great' would be secrets to find - easter eggs for PCs to look for, puzzles to solve, and so on.

Now, puzzles in adventures have always been tricky, because there's the inevitable risk of getting stuck, and the game bogging down as a result. However, I think I saw the answer in some of those Lego video games...

One thing I noticed about those games is that there are at least three levels of puzzle. Firstly, there are the puzzles that are absolutely required to complete the level. These tend to be quite few in number, and generally pretty obvious - you know what you need to do, you have all the bits required easily to hand, so it's just a matter of doing it. Then, there's a second level for finding various stuff - you have to collect 10 canisters to get some Lego spaceship, or something. These aren't required, so it's no big deal if you don't bother, but for people who like puzzles they're there and they're fun.

And then there are the easter eggs - little things that even the walkthroughs tend to miss, stuff that generally doesn't actually get you anything, but if you stumble across them (or if you're truly obsessive), there they are. (Like the disco floor in the first Lego Star Wars game.)

...

Of course, in amongst all that, what I think I've basically got to is that a great adventure should be strong in three pillars. At a straightforward level, it should have good combats (I didn't actually mention that, because most adventures, in 3e and 4e, have actually been fine here). But where I think they've often been lacking, with some notable exceptions, has been in interaction and, all too frequently, exploration.

Hmm. Combat, interaction, exploration. I'm sure I've heard that somewhere recently...

 

[Herzog]

A good adventure has a good backstory to enable a dm to make up his own hooks, interesting npc's with explained relationships to eachother, interesting combats that do not require a particular order and above all, all information relevant to a place, encounter or npc in one place.

I get really frustrated with adventures that list a particular peace of background only in a single, unrelated location. Such as the fact that two of the npc's are lovers in the description of their love nest, but not in either of the npc descriptions. Or not including derived qualities in stat blocks. Such as the effect of their items or spells that are in effect. I recently missed both the effect of a ring of fire protection and the spell resistance from an unhallow on a major npc because they were only listed as the item and spell, and the stat block didn't inckude the effect this had on the npc. If I use an adventure, it's because I want to use less time prepping. I shouldn't have to look up the exact effect their items and spells have unless I cast them during the combat...

 

[Libramarian]

Number one thing is that it actually saves time compared with writing your own. If an adventure says "read the whole thing thoroughly before use" anywhere, it probably fails this test.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Significant choices, allows multiple methods of approach, memorable encounters, replayability, adaptability/adjustability, a mix of encounter types (combat/interaction/trap-trick/exploration), a variety of environments, and experience by a large number of gamers are all important factors.