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

[Eyes of Nine]

People have covered a lot of good stuff regarding what I look for, but specifically:

Organisation. How easy is it to find information within the book? Will it still be easy if I'm trying to do it mid-session, with the players asking questions and making irritatingly high perception checks? Ideally you ought to be able to read the text in full once, comprehend it, then be able to get the most important bits of it from a quick glance back mid-sesh. I recently read the remastered edition of Deep Carbon Observatory, and found it to be my platonic ideal of a well-organised adventure; it's got clear headings, oversized page numbers, and constantly cross-references itself so you're never in doubt as to where to turn for what you're looking for.

About to do a re-read of DCO to run it using DungeonCaster with a group of more indie rpg inclined friends. Glad it holds up - I did remember liking it when I read through the first time (which is why I selected it for this group)

 

[Micah Sweet]

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!

Perhaps other people don't find it boring. This might be a you problem, as has been referenced above.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Well, it depends on the adventure really. Gygaxian Naturalism was still a thing, and "because the master of the dungeon put them there" is an in-universe reason even if it's not enough for you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

An adventure is as good as the DM running it makes it. You read an adventure to decide if it’s something you’d be interested in running. When a DM reads an adventure and says it’s bad, they’re essentially saying that to make playing it a fun experience is not work they would want to do.

That implies that all adventures are equally good. Is that what you're saying?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I find actual play reviews much, much more valuable than read-through reviews. Every single published adventure that I've run has in some ways been different from what I read it as. You can never really grasp the full structure and feel of an adventure until you prep and run it. There is always something in the product that works or comes off different compared to how it appears from just reading.

Thus it's very difficult to get an understanding of an adventure's quality when it first comes out. You have to wait like a year for the actual play reviews to come trickling in, and then you can get a rough consensus. So my advice is to search for reviews and opinions from people who've played through the product, not the first-day reviews where the reviewer has only had time to read the book.

I love the idea that if everyone followed that advice, they would stop making adventures because they wouldn't sell until long after they're released.

 

[Charlaquin]

That implies that all adventures are equally good. Is that what you're saying?

No, I’m saying any adventure can be good. Some adventures will take more work to make good than others, and when a DM reads an adventure and thinks “this looks bad” it’s because the work it would take them to make it good is more than they want to do to run that adventure.

 

[Reynard]

Perhaps other people don't find it boring. This might be a you problem, as has been referenced above.

You can have it both ways, with concise information laid out initially, then expounded upon by walls of dubious prose.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There is a difference between playing and DMing as well. A good DM can make a silk purse from a sows ear, but it takes a lot of non-fun work and prep to do that for the DM.

Sometimes I want to do lots of prep, sometimes I just want a plug 'n' play adventure where I read through the adventure once and thenonly do short prep for the next installment each time we play.

WotC seems to be assuming that everyone wants plug'n'play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You can have it both ways, with concise information laid out initially, then expounded upon by walls of dubious prose.

Dubious is subjective. I tend to see these kinds of statements as arguments for less material.

 

[Reynard]

Dubious is subjective. I tend to see these kinds of statements as arguments for less material.

I write this stuff and I think it is usually too long. Paizo is particularly bad about it, because they know a large portion of their AP buys never run the adventures, they just read them. And that is fine. People like to read adventures. But these are also tools for use at the table and should be designed as such.