Best practices for easy-to-run modules [+]

[Fenris-77]

Beginner GMs need some safety net, so adventures designed specifically to scafford new GMs will have features and details that other adventures may not, but I agree that making any adventure a hard railroad isn't actually that helpful in most cases.

 

[Fenris-77]

Too much white space for my liking (to me white space = wasted space) but I really like having the thumbnail map at the top corner of each page. Brilliant idea.

White space is useful for all sorts of things, not least among those as a way to reduce strain in parsing massive blocks of dense text, which was very much a feature of a lot of early advenutres. Those were written with page count at the front of the queue, but I don't think that we need to design adventures quite like that anymore in this age of easy and affordable digital and PoD pricing. My stuff is all A5, not 8.5x11 or A4, so the percieved whitespace is less than it might look if you were holding it in your hand. What I don't do is run room descriptions from one page to the next except for the biggest and most densly packed final encounter sorts of rooms. The A5 layout lets you comfortably do one or two rooms a page, and I number my dungeon rooms to help that out.

 

[Lanefan]

White space is useful for all sorts of things, not least among those as a way to reduce strain in parsing massive blocks of dense text, which was very much a feature of a lot of early advenutres. Those were written with page count at the front of the queue, but I don't think that we need to design adventures quite like that anymore in this age of easy and affordable digital and PoD pricing.

Anything I do is still done as if being printed on paper, usually 8.5x11 or close. Similar to the classic adventures, I'll put as many area write-ups on a page as happen to fit. The map is detached so you can always see how an area or room relates to the others around it; your thumbnail idea would work great for this in cases where the map isn't detachable.

 

[Fenris-77]

Anything I do is still done as if being printed on paper, usually 8.5x11 or close. Similar to the classic adventures, I'll put as many area write-ups on a page as happen to fit. The map is detached so you can always see how an area or room relates to the others around it; your thumbnail idea would work great for this in cases where the map isn't detachable.

I do the same, and my personal preference for at-table use is A5 and digest sized books over 8.5x11. I do also provide seperate map files with my adventures though, with the idea that better map coverage is always a good thing. So the GM can have the big map out, but the inset map helps navigate while that is what they're looking at. One thing reinforces the other.

 

[Truename]

I spend a lot of time on layout to try and make my adventures as easy to run as possible. One thing that I think is helpful there is to include everything the GM needs to run a room/location on the same page as the location. No flipping for stat blocks or maps. So I put inset maps up in one corner and have a sidebar in my layout that I use for GM advice and monster stas blocks. Like so...

View attachment 422591

This is fantastic. A5 sizing makes a lot of sense, too. I particularly like the stats and items in the margins. Just a beautiful layout job overall. (And I like your writing too.)

If I may nitpick, area 6 didn't work perfectly for me. The italics at the top of the page are what I'd read to get a sense of the room. The fact that the room is crowded with skeletons seems like a key point, and I might miss that if I'm just skimming. It took me a bit of reading and rereading to grasp that the "madoi warriors" and "crowded" sections were actually referring to the same thing.

Here's my attempt at improving it:

6. Hall of Heroes
A bronze door decorated with a pair of Madoi Warriors, one wielding a kopesh and the other a bow. The heavy door opens to release a rush of air that smells of old leather and dust. The room inside is crowded with skeletal Madoi Warriors who fill the room from side to side.

Madoi Warriors. The Madoi are inert, but will awake and attack if touched. Anyone moving into the room must pass a DC 12 DEX check or activate all of them. A full patrol of 10 warriors and 8 archers are present.

Crowded.

Altar. At the back of the room is a small altar to Sobek, on which rests a golden crocodile statue worth 300gp.

 

[EpicureanDM]

I spend a lot of time on layout to try and make my adventures as easy to run as possible. One thing that I think is helpful there is to include everything the GM needs to run a room/location on the same page as the location. No flipping for stat blocks or maps. So I put inset maps up in one corner and have a sidebar in my layout that I use for GM advice and monster stas blocks. Like so...

View attachment 422591

I like this very much.

Huh. I've got some modules here that are worth a fair bit of money (relative to their purchase cost) these days in part because I didn'twrite in them when I ran them. I also unknowingly at the time cost myself somewhat dearly by writing in some modules that turned out later to be worth a fair bit.

That's great. You'd need to follow the same approach as comic book collectors then: one to play and one to put in a plastic bag.

To a point this is fine, but the obvious risk is crossing the line into advising the GM to lead the players by the nose such that the situation or scenario works as intended. And far too many GMs by default need the opposite advice!

The metaphor wasn't that strong. The designer should be transparent about what they intended, but only so that GMs can feel confident when they deviate from it if that's what's best.

Beginner GMs need some safety net, so adventures designed specifically to scafford new GMs will have features and details that other adventures may not, but I agree that making any adventure a hard railroad isn't actually that helpful in most cases.

I see this idea expressed from time to time and it makes no sense to me. I don't think of it in terms of a safety net. I don't think that new GMs should be given hard railroads and veteran GMs should be given freeform sandboxes or whatever. What would a scenario designed for "expert" GMs even look like? How would you, as the designer, assess expertise? Is the idea somehow that veteran GMs wouldn't benefit from the same ideas we're discussing here?

Every published scenario should be written to the same standard whether it's for new or veteran GMs. Maybe a veteran GM will get up to speed with it a bit faster, but that shouldn't change how the information is structured.

 

[Bill Zebub]

A format I've used for area descriptions is:

First Glance: (what they see when they first look in the door; VERY brief)
Closer Inspection: (if they spend a minute surveying from the room...typical area description)
Full Search: (what might not be noticed from the door, but is found automatically if they spend ~10 minutes searching)
Secrets: (what they discover if requirements are met, e.g. "DC 20 Spot" or "cast Detect Magic" etc.)

As a GM I have found this really handy in play.

 

[Reynard]

This is fantastic. A5 sizing makes a lot of sense, too. I particularly like the stats and items in the margins. Just a beautiful layout job overall. (And I like your writing too.)

If I may nitpick, area 6 didn't work perfectly for me. The italics at the top of the page are what I'd read to get a sense of the room. The fact that the room is crowded with skeletons seems like a key point, and I might miss that if I'm just skimming. It took me a bit of reading and rereading to grasp that the "madoi warriors" and "crowded" sections were actually referring to the same thing.

Here's my attempt at improving it:

6. Hall of Heroes
A bronze door decorated with a pair of Madoi Warriors, one wielding a kopesh and the other a bow. The heavy door opens to release a rush of air that smells of old leather and dust. The room inside is crowded with skeletal Madoi Warriors who fill the room from side to side.

Madoi Warriors. The Madoi are inert, but will awake and attack if touched. Anyone moving into the room must pass a DC 12 DEX check or activate all of them. A full patrol of 10 warriors and 8 archers are present.

Crowded.

Altar. At the back of the room is a small altar to Sobek, on which rests a golden crocodile statue worth 300gp.

This continues the mistake of not being clear about whether contact with a single Madoi awakens them all or just the one touched. Clarity is paramount in trap rooms.

 

[Truename]

This continues the mistake of not being clear about whether contact with a single Madoi awakens them all or just the one touched. Clarity is paramount in trap rooms.

It says “activate all of them,” so I have to disagree. So did the original, for that matter. But it could be made more clear by saying “all will awake if any are touched.”

 

[Reynard]

It says “activate all of them,” so I have to disagree. So did the original, for that matter.

Nope, you're right, I scanned too quickly. Sorry about that.

My only complaint in the original was that it did not mention it the first time, which can be troublesome.