D&D General How do you know an adventure is "good" just from reading it?

[Parmandur]

Exactly. An actual play review isnt bad/useless because you cant replicate it, and an adventure isnt bad because you cant make it feel right. There is a you factor involved at the end of the experience that matters most of all. Folks like to blame the material, but you chose it, you ran it, you do have some responsibility for it too.

Heck, and I know from experience that a hot mess of an Adventure can ne turned into a fun time at the table.

 

[Reynard]

Heck, and I know from experience that a hot mess of an Adventure can ne turned into a fun time at the table.

Exhibit A: Waterdeep Dragon Heist

 

[Parmandur]

Exhibit A: Waterdeep Dragon Heist

I was thinking Hoard of the Dragon Queen, bit that also works. I don't believe either of those books fully gel, but the parts are greater than their sum and can be used successfully.

 

[Reynard]

I was thinking Hoard of the Dragon Queen, bit that also works. I don't believe either of those books fully gel, but the parts are greater than their sum and can be used successfully.

I don't own or have played the Dragon Queen adventures. Sometimes I am tempted to get the combined reissue but I donknow if it is sufficiently "fixed."

 

[Parmandur]

I don't own or have played the Dragon Queen adventures. Sometimes I am tempted to get the combined reissue but I donknow if it is sufficiently "fixed."

I own both! The combined book is worth getting, IMO, but more for the individual chapters as modules to have on hand than expecting to run the whole thing straight through as a path. That Chapters after the initial set-up (so Level 5+ material) are actually pretty great and easy to pull out of the railroad context entirely. The railroad is the main structural problem: at every step, the Advejust sort of takes a leap of faith that the PCs will follow the breadcrumbs...which, yeah, going more sandbox in subsequent books wad smart.

The main thing they fixed wad the Encounter math, so Level 1-3 TPKs shouldn't be as likely. I really like the en media's res gonzo opening gambit, but the Encounters were not up to snuff with the DMG standards (yeah, even that low bar) so it killed an awfully larger number of people before things get going. But now that should be fine.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Does it inspire me?

What kind of things inspire you? Like - is it the name? The historical connections? (Tomb for example related but diff from Tomb of Horrors, etc) The setting?

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Thankfully, modern adventure design is getting better and relying less on walls of text and more on actual gameplay. This has been spearheaded largely by the OSR movement but has been slowly making inroads into the D&D design space. I understand why it's hard: I am a freelancer and I get paid by the word. But folks publishing their own work are starting to embrace concise, evocative text and starting to eschew overly verbose prose.

For my part, I start with readability, then move on to modability. Without both of those things, an adventure is probably useless at my individual table, no matter how enticing the back cover text.

Side conversation - but I never made the connection between wordy adventure text and the "pay by the word" model of compensation for RPG writers! No wonder OSR/indy RPGs have better information communication than wall-of-text RPGs. Mongoose's DeepNight Revelation mega campaign SUFFERS hugely from this. The whole thing could have been one 128 page book; maybe 256 including illustrations. Like I have to read an entire boring 3 paragraphs of text to understand how to play an NPC in one single encounter. My time is too valuable Mongoose!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I always wonder and am curious - what are people's criteria for whether an adventure is "good" or "bad"?

For me, my assessment might be different depending on whether I have an idealized or actual play-group I'm considering running an adventure for. For an actual group - it'll depend on the group of course. For the "ideal" play-group, I guess I'm looking for a good set of combat, role-play, puzzle/trap encounters. Maybe faction play.

An example. I have read White Plume Mountain a couple of times, and played in it once (until my wizard blew a fireball in a 15x15 room (AD&D) that we were standing in at the time. TPK, and also the end of that campaign as the DM moved away soon after. ) I read it and thought it was a fun funhouse dungeon. But I read it with the "ideal" group in mind. When I ran it for a specific group - for that group there were too many traps and puzzles, and not enough role play - and what role-play there was didn't actually make sense (like... why are these people here in this dungeon?!?)

So to my point, White Plume might be a fun dungeon to read; but in play with a real group - it didn't go very well. I didn't catch that the NPCs really had no reasons to be in the dungeon; which led to strange NPC interactions.

What are your criteria for quality when you first read through an adventure?

(no need to defend White Plume, it's still one of my favorites as a read. If I was to run it again, depending on the group it might require so much modification it wouldn't be worth it probably)

You don't.

You can usually tell if something is bad, or not to your taste, but you never really know until you run it. And even then it depends on your players.

As for White Plume Mountain, I've run it twice. The inhabitants are there because a mad dungeon master put them there. That was all the logic needed in the early days of D&D. The idea that the world should be coherent, logical, and resemble the real world hadn't been invented. It's about as logical as Monty Python and the Holy Grail. But that doesn't have to stop you enjoying it.

 

[jasper]

Are the maps good? Can I read the detail and know how big the room is? Or did you barf up your various shades of brown or blue for an art map.
Is the information buried or scattered? Bad.
Does appear to be a fun run?
Can I pronounce the names or is Bob, Bob1, and the evil Oofta going make another guest appearance.

 

[overgeeked]

What are your criteria for quality when you first read through an adventure?

I look at two broad categories. Organization and content.

Organization. This mostly comes down to whether the designer understands that the module is a game accessory and treats it as such. Table of Contents and the index (or lack thereof) are the first things I look at. Is the ToC thorough or anemic? Is there an index? Does it look thorough or anemic?

Layout and design is the next thing I look at. Are the pages well done, is information easily findable, is everything you need to run an encounter there on one spread? The more info you have to flip pages to find the worse I’ll rate a module. Are the relevant maps on the same spread as the related encounter? If there’s a bigger map is there a quick way to tell how this map relates to the whole?

Summaries, check lists, and bullet points. If the writers use a lot of these, the module will most likely be better than average in the usability department. A summary of every scene is great; a summary of every important NPC is necessary. A summary of what's happening in the module is required; a long-winded explanation of the entire history of events leading up to the situation in the module is cool, but largely useless. It's especially maddening if this is the only summary given as you have to read it multiple times highlighting things and taking notes for use at the table.

In general, D&D 4E and OSR modules utterly dominate in this area. The designers treated the module like what it is: a game aid for the referee to use at the table to run for players at the table. Treating the module like a novel is a terrible mistake and leads to terrible organization.

Content. As for the module proper, the contents, that all depends on how much the module constrains player choice, assumes what they will do, how detailed the villain's plot is, and how modular the content is.

Player choice. If the module assumes they will turn left at a T intersection and places no info at all for them turning right, then it’s bad. It's not hard to place hooks that will pull players in certain directions but some modules don't even bother with that. Like the 5E Dragonlance module. After the first scene or two it's just assumed you will travel to this one place. No hook, no reason...that's just where the next leg of the adventure is...so that must be where you go. There's the whole world of Krynn you could theoretically choose from, but somehow you have to go there. If hooks are done badly it amounts to fetch quests for plot coupons, but even that is an improvement over...just randomly pick the right location to go to in the whole world. Is every step of the module scripted? That's incredibly bad design. You can usually spot a lack of player choice when you see lines like, "In this chapter the player characters will..." Nope. No prep survives contact with the players. That goes doubly so for prepped modules.

The villain's plot. The referee in an RPG controls the NPCs and the whole wide world. Not the PCs. So whatever story a module presents should focus on what the referee controls at the table, the NPCs and the world. What is the villain's plan? What will they do if/when that plan is disrupted? And how will the world react as the villain nears completion of their plan? What are the weak points of their plan? How can the PCs disrupt those plans? How will the villain react? Etc. Is none of this detailed? That's bad. The amount of this present in the module usually has a direct correlation to the above criteria, player choice. The more choice the players have, the more detailed the villain's plot needs to be. The less choice the players have, the less detailed the villain's plot needs to be.

Modular. Because most modules are linear with little player agency or details on the villain's plot, I tend to not run them. But I do strip them for parts. So the more modular individual scenes, NPCs, locations, magic items, etc are the better.