Help me make WotC adventures better.

[Rechan]

Echoing two points above: Poster Maps and New Monsters! These are big incentives for me to pick up an adventure (even if I game online, and therefore don't NEED the poster maps).

Two points I will add:

The DMGs are toolkits to show you how to build exciting encounters, including advice on how to incorporate them. All sorts of things from fantastic terrain to mundane terrain to interactive set pieces to, well, anything. But most combats in the modules (aside from Pyramid of Shadows) do not utilize these tools.

The modules should, among other things, be a demonstration, an example to DMs: "This is how you build encounters".

Also, on the topic of "exploration" and such: I'd like to see little things that are curious and fun to fiddle with, but do not impact things significantly. A talking statue. The projected illusion of a trap that is no longer there. Things that will make PCs stop and interact with it. This sort of thing is usually what sticks in the mind after the adventure: the novelty of something. It also lets the PCs do something about it; sort of like how every party has a story about what they did with Meepo, now every party who runs throught eh module will have a story of "What we did to the Statue".

 

[Klaus]

I haven't read the entire thread, but it's 10 pages! So here goes:

1 - Theme: Look at Red Hand of Doom. It had a tight theme (PCs vs. army of hobgoblins + dragons). Adventures benefit from a theme.

2 - Foreshadow: One of my favorite 3e adventures was Forge of Fury. But the big bad, the dragon Nightscale, seemed like it was dropped into it out of the blue. And this happens quite often in WotC adventures, where a creature such as a dragon is merely hanging about the dungeon, sometimes without as much as a name.

3 - No repetitive encounters: Keep on the Shadowfell had a lot of these, with the kobolds, kobolds, kobolds, kobolds, then goblins, goblins, hobgoblins, hobgoblins... you get the idea.

4 - More out-of-combat challenges: skill challenges, wilderness treks, investigation, etc. This helps with the next suggestion.

5 - Less combat: A single encounter in D&D can take an hour or more to resolve. Let's have less of those.

6 - Multiple approaches: Scepter Tower of Spellguard had this: you could enter the tower from the bottom or the top, and the encounters were adjusted accordingly. More of this, please.

7 - Set pieces: think of a cool scene in a movie, TV series or book, and try to include something with that impact. For instance, in the Fiery Dragon adventure The Silver Summoning the PCs had to sneak into a dwarven fortress being attacked by an orc horde, not unlike the Siege of Helm's Deep from Lord of the Rings. Imagine how cool to see the players visualizing that scene, with their PCs in the middle of it!

 

[The_Gneech]

I haven't read the entire thread, but it's 10 pages! So here goes:

1 - Theme: Look at Red Hand of Doom. It had a tight theme (PCs vs. army of hobgoblins + dragons). Adventures benefit from a theme.

...

3 - No repetitive encounters: Keep on the Shadowfell had a lot of these, with the kobolds, kobolds, kobolds, kobolds, then goblins, goblins, hobgoblins, hobgoblins... you get the idea.

The tough part is doing both of these at once!

It can be done, of course, by varying locales, encounter goals, that kind of thing. But it can be tricky to pull off.

-The Gneech

 

[Henry]

1. I really dislike the delve format: The two-page spread with nothing but a blowup map, the list of monsters and blow-by-blow tactics just feels like a waste to me. It breaks the flow of a module for me, if that makes any sense. Perhaps it's the placement: In the modules I've looked at, they reference the combat afterwards, and so if I'm reading an adventure to get the flow of the module, I have to stop where I am, turn in the book to read the delve-piece, then turn back to where I was, see what's next, then turn BACK to the next delve-piece, etc. It's like if I were reading a D&D novel, and everytime the hero gets in a fight, I have to flip to an appendix to see what happened in the fight, and then flip back to the body of the story to continue - it's REALLY annoying to me.

2. I do feel the more recent 4E modules are far too scarce on evocative flavor for the locales and NPCs they include. Examples like the Forge of Fury from 3E, or the Speaker in Dreams are what captured me back in 3E, and back in 1E, I3 through I5, the Desert of Desolation series, are good examples of flavor that was evocative. Those are NPCs that really breathed to me.

3. I will say this on the repetitive creatures theme: I can completely understand the complaint, but at the same time it's more PLAUSIBLE, to me, to have a single threat instead of a menagerie of threats. the Menagerie is more fun, but makes no sense. Remember the old complaint, that the beholder was two rooms down from the platoon of orcs, who were both across the corridor from the 90-foot dragon in the 10' x 10' room? Too many monster types with shared goals tends to stretch plausibility for me. I think WotC's design of same creatures with different roles (kobold skirmishers, kobold archers, kobold solders, etc.) works pretty well to vary this up.

 

[Crothian]

I like modules that don't assume what the players are going to do. Give a situation, describe it, but don't assume combat or skill resolution, or anything. I like it when I'm given the tools to run the encounter how the players want it run.

I like city based adventures. They are tough to do but Rodney I think you did a very good one for Games Mechanics Liberty setting so I know you are able.

I also like fantastic locations. We have plenty that go into caverns, but we don't have enough that go into the clouds for instance.

 

[Festivus]

1. I really dislike the delve format: The two-page spread with nothing but a blowup map, the list of monsters and blow-by-blow tactics just feels like a waste to me. It breaks the flow of a module for me, if that makes any sense. Perhaps it's the placement: In the modules I've looked at, they reference the combat afterwards, and so if I'm reading an adventure to get the flow of the module, I have to stop where I am, turn in the book to read the delve-piece, then turn back to where I was, see what's next, then turn BACK to the next delve-piece, etc. It's like if I were reading a D&D novel, and everytime the hero gets in a fight, I have to flip to an appendix to see what happened in the fight, and then flip back to the body of the story to continue - it's REALLY annoying to me.

What I do like about the "delve" format, is that everything I need for combat is there. How about this for a idea... ditch the map that shows minis placement and put them all on one map at the back of the book or on a section of pages, and then insert something we find in LFR modules, a "Ending the Encounter" section. Because I really don't look at the map after combat begins, but I sure do look at "Features of the area", "Tactics", and stat blocks. That to me, would be an improvement.

 

[Votan]

I will say this on the repetitive creatures theme: I can completely understand the complaint, but at the same time it's more PLAUSIBLE, to me, to have a single threat instead of a menagerie of threats. the Menagerie is more fun, but makes no sense. Remember the old complaint, that the beholder was two rooms down from the platoon of orcs, who were both across the corridor from the 90-foot dragon in the 10' x 10' room? Too many monster types with shared goals tends to stretch plausibility for me. I think WotC's design of same creatures with different roles (kobold skirmishers, kobold archers, kobold solders, etc.) works pretty well to vary this up.

This is a very good point and a massive advantage of 4E (that should be taken advantage of). If anything, going further down this pathway makes sense. After all, in a historical game (say replaying Agincourt) all of one's opponents are likely to be human but that does not necessarily lead to boring combats!

 

[Rechan]

To retort Henry, part of the issue of the Repetitiveness is not, necessarily, that "I want to fight kobolds now and orcs in the next room".

It's "I'm fighting kobolds now, and then the same mix of kobolds in the next room."

4e lets each enemy have different kinds of powers. So fighting the same enemy over and over, the same mix of said enemies, is a travesty.

Granted, it's good that the same monster pops up occasionally so PCs can learn and react according (Oh crap it's a Dragonscale - nuke his face first.) But fighting Dragonscales in every encounter will overstay its welcome. Again I point to the fact that in KotS, the first two encounters differ ONLY in that the second had kobold skirmishers.

And, one thing 4e wants to do is make different Monsters play nice together. It's not JUST goblins, it's goblins and whoever's in charge, goblins and whatever monster they're using as pets/mounts, goblins and their champions, etc. So that should be taken advantage of.

 

[vagabundo]

I'm currently running H2 and having a blast: last nights game was awesome, a revolving bridge trap (Skill Challenge) across the Duergar fortress chasm and tonnes of Duergar from the MM2.

But I have ripped out many of the encounters and replaced them with my own and spiced up the whole thing. I also had to redo the plot as it didn't make much sense to me as written.

Kudos to WotC for the great setting and many of the Random Encounters - something that you should put in every adventure - are excellent.

Change the delve format a little, it really needs some tweaking, but I do find it handy to have all the info open in front of me when running the game - page flipping sucks - but I think you should have a second booklet with all the background information and large scale maps, NPC bio's and the like.

Anyway I really came here to post a Blog link. I found it very helpful when I was revising H2 to the Campaign of Awesome it is turning out to be:

Eleven Foot Pole

He goes through H1 and H2, up to the Duergar fortress, well worth a read (and I did put a Gauth Beholder into the Chamber of Eyes, my players loved it).

 

[UngainlyTitan]

On the topic of too many of the same monsters, I must say I prefer if the location has all more or less the sane monsters it makes more sense than a menagarie but it is also an aspect of the too many fights.
The encounters should be more multiroom, in that the monsters should be conducting a fighting retreat to allies if they are being bested with the allies mooving up to reinforce them.
That way you would have less fights but they would be more dynamic.