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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benimoto" data-source="post: 5187161" data-attributes="member: 40093">Realize that personally, I think Lanefan's approach sounds good, and I'm mostly plying Devil's advocate here. But, there have to be constraints here.  Let's look at what those constraints might be.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cost: Sure you say that you'd buy a better module at 150% the price, but would everybody?  Keep on the Shadowfell was an expensive module.  Amazon.com shows the list price at $29.99.  I remember a lot of people complaining about that price.  Would it be worth it if it contained more non-combat options, but listed for $44.99?  I doubt it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Page count: We're not in the electronic era yet, and so modules have to be printed.  I'm not an expert, but as I understand it, 32 pages is not a random number.  There are some sort of mechanical constraints, such as the fact that modules are actually printed on 3 or 4 foot-long sheets of paper, then cut and folded into a booklet.  We can't just increase the page count to 37.  Instead it has to be something like 48 or 64 pages as the next step.  This increases all the other costs associated with the module.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Complexity: More content means more editing, playtesting, and a greater chance for errors to slip in.  When a module has 4 paths through it, it's more complicated to make sure all the paths are the same difficulty and to keep the pacing correct.  And then there's DM complexity.  You have to make sure that a module that contains 4 times the options is as easy to read and run as a module that's more focused on one path.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Player's expecatations:  If I get a 64 page module for twice the price, I expect it to last me twice as long as the 32 page module.  You're advocating that we give 3-4 times as many options to players, but really that just means that every single group is wasting 2/3rds to 3/4s of the module.  That's going to make some people unhappy.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Talent: Let's face it, certain writers may just not be as good at writing for certain types of play.  2-4 different paths through a module means that every module writer needs to be more skilled at writing.  More skill means more money, or it may mean writing teams with managers.  The cost here may end up increasing at a greater rate than the benefit.</li> </ul>The whole debate here is kind of silly.  Of course we would prefer to have more options rather than less.  To use a food-related analogy, I'm sure we would say that we prefer a restaurant to have 4 times as many options on a menu.  But, contradictorily, many successful restaurants actually work to reduce the size of their menus.  A successful module has to be simple to read and understand and also it has to fit in a certain page count.  Some of these things indicate it should have less complexity, not more.</blockquote>

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