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<blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 56321" data-attributes="member: 697">First, I hope I have a clear view of what you're proposing. I'm currently playing through Speaker in Dreams, and skipped the spoiler.Anyway, I think the structure you propose is sound. So long as you keep an NPC's personality, motivations, and resources clear, a good DM should be able to think on his feet. I like location-based modules the best, but event-based ones usually leave me cold. Too often, they say things like &quot;In this scene, don't let the party capture Mr. Wizard.&quot;That really gets on my nerves. What if the players come up with a real cool plan to take down Mr. Wizard in that scene? Players shouldn't be penalized by DM fiat because they out-thought the designer.Your idea, if I read it right, is to place less emphasis on a hard-coded set of events, and present a time line built with the assumption that the PCs do nothing, and then provide details on what happens in response to what the PCs do.Going back to the Mr. Wizard example, the adventure would say: &quot;This is how Mr. Wizard escapes.&quot; If the PCs manage to foil that, the adventure still rolls on.I do some design work for d20 companies, and one of my mantras is &quot;You, the DM reading this, are a far better designer than I am.&quot; You know your players, you know what their characters can do, you know what kind of adventures they like and you like, and you know how your campaign world works. My goal is to give you the structure, tools, and features in an adventure that allow you to cannibalize and adapt it. I'm sure there are some people who use adventures as printed, but I'm also sure far more people loot them for ideas and plots. The key lies in striking a good balance between the two.Anyway, the structure you propose looks like it would do a good job at that. I think I may have seen adventures built like that in the past, but off the top of my head I can't think of any d20 ones that work like it.- Mearls</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mearls, post: 56321, member: 697"] First, I hope I have a clear view of what you're proposing. I'm currently playing through Speaker in Dreams, and skipped the spoiler. Anyway, I think the structure you propose is sound. So long as you keep an NPC's personality, motivations, and resources clear, a good DM should be able to think on his feet. I like location-based modules the best, but event-based ones usually leave me cold. Too often, they say things like "In this scene, don't let the party capture Mr. Wizard." That really gets on my nerves. What if the players come up with a real cool plan to take down Mr. Wizard in that scene? Players shouldn't be penalized by DM fiat because they out-thought the designer. Your idea, if I read it right, is to place less emphasis on a hard-coded set of events, and present a time line built with the assumption that the PCs do nothing, and then provide details on what happens in response to what the PCs do. Going back to the Mr. Wizard example, the adventure would say: "This is how Mr. Wizard escapes." If the PCs manage to foil that, the adventure still rolls on. I do some design work for d20 companies, and one of my mantras is "You, the DM reading this, are a far better designer than I am." You know your players, you know what their characters can do, you know what kind of adventures they like and you like, and you know how your campaign world works. My goal is to give you the structure, tools, and features in an adventure that allow you to cannibalize and adapt it. I'm sure there are some people who use adventures as printed, but I'm also sure far more people loot them for ideas and plots. The key lies in striking a good balance between the two. Anyway, the structure you propose looks like it would do a good job at that. I think I may have seen adventures built like that in the past, but off the top of my head I can't think of any d20 ones that work like it. - Mearls [/QUOTE]

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