Examples Of Minimum Quality For Published Adventures

[Kaodi]

I am not asking this because I plan on publishing anything per se, but the question came to mind when I was thinking about writing a campaign for myself (as I do not own a single entire campaign; I missed two or three issues of Shackled City, the only one that comes close). If I start working on something, I might as well at least think about making it half-way good if I can.

What adventures would you consider to be examples of the minimum quality required to make publishing an adventure worthwhile?

Everyone can think of a few adventures that should probably never have been published, and some that are real classics. But can we pin down the area where the marginal adventures, the one that are of debatable worth, live? This is not a price to quality ratio question per se: the value of a completely free adventure can still be debated on whether the author should have wanted his or her name attached to it.

P.S. Related but different question: Does no one use the term module anymore?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Apparently, the low bar has been set with N2, The Forest Oracle.

 

[Stormonu]

I'd put B8 - Journey to the Rock on the altar of minimum quality. It's a string of unrelated adventures that railroads to the final conclusion.

Ravenloft II - House on Griffon Hill also gets this as well; a meandering schlock of a Hammer Horror film falls so short of the original Ravenloft that TSR seemed ashamed to claim it was ever written.

Also, I am of the opinion that H1 - Keep on the Shadowfell falls here; one-track pathing, disjointed, with too many required, pointless fights and a groaningly bad skill challenge.

 

[Fiddleback]

I believe it was this adventure, Kurishan's Garden that:

A) Stopped us from using AEG's 'half-size' adventures ever again.
B) Caused 4 appropriate level PCs, and their players, to refer to said adventure as "That time we mowed the lawn" for the rest of their days.
C) Had a BBEG so bad that said PCs never even realized they had met, let alone defeated him (In a round and a half!) thereby causing them to wander around the included hedge maze waiting for a BBEG to turn up for an additional hour of game time.
D) Had a "big reward" so bad that the actual module itself was torn up, shredded and then burned.

If there is a minimum standard for a worthwhile module, this module sits one step below it on the scale.

Mod Note: Link removed. If you came across it and used it, that means you didn't write it or publish it - which means you don't get to distribute it either. Please don't post links to copyright infringing content. Thanks. ~Umbran

 

[pogre]

I think it will depend on people's tastes naturally. I think the early Goodman Games modules were about the category you were talking about. Some decent parts, with very average art, but still enough quality to play and enjoy.

Undoubtedly, I have offended someone. However, keep in mind I bought most of these and enjoyed running them. The OP is not asking for horrible modules just minimum quality.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

As published adventures are so diverse a group, one can hardly define a minimum standard, as pogre said.

Why not just write a punch line for your adventure and stick to it during writing and development? Write the ounch line in a way that you could print it on the adventure's cover so that prospective buyers know what they will get.

"Explore the forgotten ruins of Gith Lo" hints at a different style of adventure than "Rescue Princess Shaala Rue from the clutches of an evil mastermind".

So define what you want to achieve and stick to this goal. As really horrible are mostly mentioned adventures which fail to meet the expected style.

 

[delericho]

For a free download, the absolute minimum is that it must be written in comprehensible English* and must use the rules of the game it claims to support. Although if you want someone to even look at anything else you produce, you need to do much better than that.

* or other language, of course.

For a published product, the minimum entry requirement is both simple and deceptively hard: you need to provide some reason for people to buy.

What that means will depend very much on what type of adventure you are offering. If you are presenting a low-level dungeon crawl, then the barrier to entry is immense - just about everyone has (or has access to) "Keep on the Borderlands", "Sunless Citadel", or other good adventures in that field.

On the other hand, Epic-level adventures are incredibly thin on the ground, so if you can produce one of them, that subset of people playing at epic levels are much more likely to take an interest.

Or, alternately, your adventure could offer some sort of other value. For example, all of WotC's 4e adventures meet the minimum standard by virtue of including the poster maps.

I should note also that there is a massive gulf between the minimum standard for an adventure to be worth putting out at all, and the standard required for an adventure to be good. That standard is much higher, gradually moves upwards as more and better adventures are published for a particular edition/genre/level, and is also the standard you need to hit if you want people to buy from you a second time.

 

[Gilladian]

When I peruse free adventures on the web (and there are a surprising dearth of them)' I want a few things:

decent grammar and spelling. Certainly not perfection, but if you cannot differentiate where from we're, I can't read it.

a map or maps that adequately reveal the important features of the adventure, even if it is only a scanned pencil sketch. Art skill is not needed. Clarity is.

full stats for any nonstandard Npc or monster or item. This includes things like personality and tactics, too. I need to know if your villain is a criminal mastermind bent on revenge, or just a spree killer.

Some level of creativity at some point that makes me happy I read your adventure. If I am gonna spend an hour with your work, make it worth my time! This of course is the hardest to do...

 

[Kaodi]

I suppose one other attendant question is: better to go with a generic setting, or to have one that is distinct with its own deities and history?

 

[delericho]

I suppose one other attendant question is: better to go with a generic setting, or to have one that is distinct with its own deities and history?

If all you are publishing is adventures, generic is better.

However,if you secretly have a master plan of publishing a campaign setting that's going to be home to all these things, seeding the adventures with various nuggets of information can work quite well - indeed, that was part of Paizo's early strategy with Golarion.