DUNGEON: A suggestion

[johnsemlak]

My copy of Queen of the Spiders, one of the most valuable superadventures in the history of D&D, has the hit point totals of about half of the bad guys crossed out in pencil.

Mine has conversion notes for the moduel to D&D Expert rules I made when I was 13 or so.

 

[Erik Mona]

>>>
Fantasy Flight's Horizon line is a great model that I like to think is inspired by Dungeon/Polyhedron.
>>>

Heh. I like to think so too.

--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dungeon

 

[Izerath]

One for the money

Indeed it does say "6-10" in the graphic. What I'd like the graphic to say instead is "6". "6-10" isn't even accurate. The Scaling Adventure bar doesn't scale to this range. It scales around the actual level of the adventure. If they'd just print the actual level of the adventure in the graphic, I wouldn't have to read the first paragraph. If I wanted to run "Zenith Trajectory", and I looked at the graphic (6-10) I might think
I could scale it to a 10th level party. I would be wrong.

A half-column doesn't sound like much, but split amongst 2 or 3 adventures, that's a page. Remove the intro sections, and thats another page. That's a lot of space for content. Faces of Cauldron, Critical Threats, Maps of Mystery, or a major encounter could fit in this much space.

I'd rather have content than extra convenience.

Ok, I can't argue content - we all want more for less...and you have some good points, but I believe they are flawed not by your logic, but by the fact the CR system itself will never be as accurate as your request would require.

By its very nature, the CR and EL system is a "ball-park measure" of how tough an encounter will be. I honestly don't put much stock in it, except to say that is represents the difficulty of the encounter in isolation. Strung together with other encounters, it screws up the estimation to varying degrees based on how much a party's resources have been drained. Essentially, you still have to wing it a little, adjusting the encounters accordingly if they might wipe out the PCs unfairly.

IMO, the CR system isn't accurate and making it out to be would be irresponsible. I don't have a problem with the estimated level ranges, since most everything needs to be modified in some way anyhow to fit it into your story plans. If the system were as accurate as you desire, we wouldn't be having this conversation and your dreams would come true.....

Sure Zenith Trajectory had a misnomer in that the highlight said 6-10 but scaled 4-8, but I think we might be splitting hairs here. It takes time to make up those graphics after all.

Ultimately, it is up to Erik. I am sure after this long winded thread, we've been heard, and possibly ignored.

Respectfully,

 

[Alzrius]

LIGHT/SOUNDS/REACTION/AURAS entries: I LOVE these sections. I have time enough to read the adventure, but the Light/Sounds/Reaction/Aura pieces are INVALUABLE for a DM who doesn't have the time to take notes while he's on a plane, train or in some other automobile.

Amen to that! These entries are by far the single greatest change to the formatting of adventures I've seen since I began reading Dungeon (back in mid-2E). These are incredible time-savers, since the DM would otherwise be flipping back and forth through books to figure out what auras were present, and how strong they were. Erik, PLEASE make these mandatory for all future adventures when you publish the new writer's guidelines in a few issues!

I could live with the absence of an entry which simply states none - that is logical.

I disagree. I can see that if these entries were missing when there were no detectable auras of such-and-so type, that it would lead to confusing incidents of DMs thinking the omission was some sort of error, and not just because there were no auras. This leaves the confused DM looking through books and such to check for auras...the very thing those entries are supposed to avoid. Have the entries there even if there are no auras of that type, please.

 

[MerricB]

Mine has conversion notes for the moduel to D&D Expert rules I made when I was 13 or so.

My D&D Basic set (Moldvay edition) has an extra page I pasted in with the stats for Draconians in it. They're tougher than the real stats were when I acquired the modules a year later!

Cheers!

 

[tmaaas]

LIGHT/SOUNDS/REACTION/AURAS entries: I LOVE these sections. I have time enough to read the adventure, but the Light/Sounds/Reaction/Aura pieces are INVALUABLE for a DM...

Add me to the bandwagon. I love them and wish every adventure in Dungeon (and most elsewhere) used them. Incredibly useful.