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

[EpicureanDM]

To anyone with any remaining interest, I'd like to point you to Beau Rancourt's blog. He reviews scenarios and does it better than anyone else I've found. Here's his review of In The Shadow of Tower Silveraxe that also doubles as a rubric for his review methodology. No other reviewer I've found actually examines the game-based underpinnings of D&D scenarios to see whether or not the designers are actually doing any good game design rather than good narrative design. We need fewer Bryce Lynch types, more Beau Rancourts.

Anyone looking to improve how their adventures are written should design in the way that Rancourt reads.

 

[Lanefan]

To anyone with any remaining interest, I'd like to point you to Beau Rancourt's blog. He reviews scenarios and does it better than anyone else I've found. Here's his review of In The Shadow of Tower Silveraxe that also doubles as a rubric for his review methodology. No other reviewer I've found actually examines the game-based underpinnings of D&D scenarios to see whether or not the designers are actually doing any good game design rather than good narrative design. We need fewer Bryce Lynch types, more Beau Rancourts.

Anyone looking to improve how their adventures are written should design in the way that Rancourt reads.

That's a pretty solid review, though I have some issues with the reviewer's preferences (some even relate to the thread topic!):

--- not all traps and secret doors should have a "tell" or clue that they exist, as hiding them is supposed to be the point
--- the reviewer complains about noting doors, exits, dimensions in the room write-ups because they're on the map; I prefer these things be noted in the write-ups so I don't have to refer to both the map and the write-up while describing the room (even more so if the map is on a different non-detached page thus requiring page-flipping). Listing them in the write-up flat-out makes the module easier to run.
--- it's possible, I suppose, that the reviewer is assuming the module will be used exclusively for VTT play where the map is revealed on the screen as the PCs see it (meaning the exits etc. don't need to be narrated by the DM); if so, this is a very poor assumption on which to base a review
--- the reviewer seems to want uncertain elements nailed down a bit too solidly. For example there's an entry along the lines of "Skeletons may be present here" that the reviewer IMO unfairly takes issue with; for all we know this could be the author's attempt to account for the skeletons possibly either being elsewhere or already having been destroyed

But it's not all bad by any means:

The reviewer is quite right in noting the monster stat blocks are incomplete: they don't list the monsters' special attacks, special defenses, and-or special qualities in any detail. This would annoy me too.

Also, good on the reviewer for praising "loops" in the dungeon design.

 

[Bill Zebub]

--- not all traps and secret doors should have a "tell" or clue that they exist, as hiding them is supposed to be the point

Yes, they should.

Now, it's ok if the 'tell' isn't right there in front of the door or trap. Maybe the players have to rely on clues found elsewhere. Maybe they just have to keep careful maps to realize there's a big blank in the middle of the dungeon. Whatever.

But relying on:

1. Players just happening to look in the right spot, or...
2. Players getting into the habit of looking in every spot, or...
3. The DM either asking for a roll, without any action declaration by the player, or...
4. The DM secretly rolling or relying on a "passive" skill...

...are all antiquated, board-gamey, bad RPG design philosophy.

Success in combat, or with spellcasting, should be a combination of player (choices/tactics) and character (mechanics/rng).
Likewise, resolving secrets (opening a secret door, or disarming/avoiding a trap) can be a combination of player and character.

But discovering secrets should always be 100% player.

But, hey, that's just my opin....

No, actually, that's not just my opinion. It's fact.

 

[EpicureanDM]

I should have been more clear about how Rancourt's blog applies to this thread. I didn't introduce it to derail the thread with discussions about dungeon design philosophy.

Look at the Auditing Guidelines near the start of the post. Those questions should be adapted (if necessary) into section headers for a scenario's introduction. Not all of them will work, but some version of some of them would be great introductory material in a published product.

In an ideal world, the scenario designers themselves would be asking themselves these questions as they work on their designs. I think that things start to go wrong when the writing and presentation try to translate the answers into the conventional style and tone we've seen for the last fifty years. As I keep saying, this is an understandable impulse because almost all scenario designers think of themselves primarily as narrative designers - as writers - not game designers. A novelist or screenwriter would never dream of submitting their outline (even part of it) as part of their final product. I think RPG scenario designers share those sympathies, but it's holding the form itself back.

I would love to see an RPG scenario written in response to Rancourt's Auditing Guidelines and that incorporates answers to them in the published text. I don't mean that the published text would be informed by the answers. I mean that the actual answers should be published in a direct, transparent style. I would love to see answers written as if they're being sent to the designer's editor/developer, the informal, informative tone you'd take between colleagues. This is what I try to point to when trying to redefine the relationship between RPG scenario designer and GM as something other than novelist and reader.

EDIT:

Look at the bullet points borrowed from ACKs in the Theory subsection of Do The Details Have Internal Consistency? I would tell designers to include those exact questions from those bullet points along with the answers in their scenario's published text.

 

[The Firebird]

Look at the bullet points borrowed from ACKs in the Theory subsection of Do The Details Have Internal Consistency? I would tell designers to include those exact questions from those bullet points along with the answers in their scenario's published text.

There is some internal tension here. When I read @Bill Zebub's post, my response is "but not all traps would have a tell". Having there always be a tell harms my sense of verisimilitude. Or perhaps, the door being in a dungeon built by an evil lich is enough of a tell. A good dungeon expedition both finds the traps they can and takes precautions for the ones they can't.

 

[Bill Zebub]

There is some internal tension here. When I read @Bill Zebub's post, my response is "but not all traps would have a tell". Having there always be a tell harms my sense of verisimilitude.

What part of it feels nonverisimilitudinal?

Is it the idea that all traps in the game universe have tells? Or that only some of them do, but that it's statistically improbable for a group of adventurers to encounter only those that have tells?

Or perhaps, the door being in a dungeon built by an evil lich is enough of a tell. A good dungeon expedition both finds the traps they can and takes precautions for the ones they can't.

What kind of precautions are you thinking of?

For the record, I think it's fine for players to miss the tells. Sometimes they'll realize after the fact that what the tell was, but even when they miss it completely they'll know that there always is a tell and so somehow they missed it, and thus they are victims of their own choices, and not of arbitrary dice rolls completely divorced from those choices.

 

[EpicureanDM]

There is some internal tension here. When I read @Bill Zebub's post, my response is "but not all traps would have a tell". Having there always be a tell harms my sense of verisimilitude. Or perhaps, the door being in a dungeon built by an evil lich is enough of a tell. A good dungeon expedition both finds the traps they can and takes precautions for the ones they can't.

Tension with what I wrote? I don't quite follow.

 

[The Firebird]

What part of it feels nonverisimilitudinal?

Is it the idea that all traps in the game universe have tells? Or that only some of them do, but that it's statistically improbable for a group of adventurers to encounter only those that have tells?

The first one; it seems to preclude the idea that there are good traps.

Suppose the players got enough money to build a fort and added some traps to it. Would these be required to have tells? If so, that feels artificial. If not, then why can't anyone else build that way?

What kind of precautions are you thinking of?

I suppose no different than the ones they'd take for traps with tells that they can't find. And making sure they have spells remaining to deal with hazards, have supplies and hps to spare.

Tension with what I wrote? I don't quite follow.

The desire that the world is internally consistent and that all traps have a tell are in tension. Traps having a tell is a choice made for gameplay reasons. In-universe, people would want to build traps that don't have tells. So making there be a tell to give the players a puzzle can break internal consistency.

 

[zakael19]

Suppose the players got enough money to build a fort and added some traps to it. Would these be required to have tells? If so, that feels artificial. If not, then why can't anyone else build that way?

If you conceal a trap with magic, the presence of magic is a tell. If you build a trap into the environment, it has some sort of clue that it's there for those with experience with traps who take time and energy to look.

Ideally, some nod towards those tells is present in the Landmark -> Hidden levels of information presentation within the module. As @Bill Zebub said it's totally fine for players to miss them, or if you're running in a system that's abstracted that sort of curiosity away to passive statistics not have the passive stat which clues them in (although I think that's uninteresting and poor design).

 

[Voadam]

In D&D as a player I generally expect there might be both traps I cannot see that I trigger and ones that I can figure out to avoid.

Some games you might want it to be all things that can be figured out, sort of an Indiana Jones/Doctor Who style one and that can be fun and give a specific tone where the PCs are clever protagonists who most always overcome obstacles (consistent with most D&D combat) and there are foreshadowing clues to be used to overcome the challenge. But since being hit with a trap in D&D is often just some abstract hp being hit by a trap can also be more like Indiana Jones being just missed by dart traps as he runs out of the ruins, it adds to stress and danger but does not stop him or kill him.

I generally don't like unavoidable save or die traps, I want characters to live and continue with the campaign for the most part. I also do not really care for traps that make little sense. But as a PC I have thoroughly enjoyed triggering an unknown illusion covered pit as I charged an enemy in a war battle where I was part of the forefront attacking forces, then took no damage from it and popped up the other side to punch an embedded bad guy in the face thanks to using monk super speed and jumping. I quite appreciated the logic of the defensive trap set up and how I had no real way to know it was there (pretty much only if I had let others go first and trigger it) and how I had run straight into it.