Help me make WotC adventures better.

Personally, I don't think WotC will give up the delve format.
I sure hope they don't. The delve format made running some of the later 3.5 adventures much easier on me as a DM. Not having to flip pages or refer to multiple books to run one encounter is a godsend. I don't want to go back to those barbarian days.
 

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I sure hope they don't. The delve format made running some of the later 3.5 adventures much easier on me as a DM. Not having to flip pages or refer to multiple books to run one encounter is a godsend. I don't want to go back to those barbarian days.

You recall Red Hand of Doom. It provided the stat blocks in a 'Delve Style' as a free web enhancement, so that the authors could utilize the printed product space to provide a compelling module.

Then Keep on the Shadowfell came along and reversed this, by essentially giving us $30 worth of stat blocks, with more meat for the actual adventure provided as a web enhancement (on DDI / Dungeon magazine).

I'm curious to see how the customer base would react if WotC did this again, except at a stage where these web enhancements are behind a pay-only subscription wall.

I mean, this is exactly what you're suggesting, and to me it sounds like the safe road to marginalize the market for published modules even further.
 

You recall Red Hand of Doom. It provided the stat blocks in a 'Delve Style' as a free web enhancement, so that the authors could utilize the printed product space to provide a compelling module.

Then Keep on the Shadowfell came along and reversed this, by essentially giving us $30 worth of stat blocks, with more meat for the actual adventure on DDI (Dungeon magazine).

I'm curious to see how the customer base would react if WotC did this again, except at a stage where DDI is behind a pay-only subscription wall. I mean, this is exactly what you're suggesting, and to me it sounds like the safe promise to marginalize the market for published modules even further.
The adventure should stand on its own as a solid adventure, even without DDI content - that's a given. Most DMs probably won't even look to DDI to add something to their canned adventure. But I also believe that the DMs who perceive something lacking are also the sorts of people who would take advantage of something offered to them online to remedy what they see as a problem. DDI is such a robust set of tools that the decision to subscribe is not a difficult one (at least, not for the DMs I know). Or perhaps offer the supplements as a series, to run alongside the published adventures. Make the first digital supplement free, and make it clear that the following supplements will require a subscription, and if you like the first one enough you ought to subscribe to get the others.
 

I'm very pleased that you have posted such a frank invitation, Rodney. I guess this is what "social networking" actually meant. :)
 

I'm going to just stick to using modules H1-3, P1 & 3, the Scepter Tower of Spellguard, and the Scales of War AP (because I'm familiar with those). As far as I'm concerned, those are where WotC is putting its Publishing on the line; everything else in Dungeon is under the radar/less casual, I haven't read every adventure that's been out, and I think the Published official modules are the most important here. So the following post contains spoilers.

Published adventures seem to be the gateway here. It lets people get a handle for the system (as well as a taste), and if the delivery (the adventure) doesn't taste good, the system likely isn't going to either. And it leaves a bad meal for those who use adventures 90+% of the time (a recent poll here, the majority was split between little to no adventures, or almost exclusively published adventures).

So here's the problem areas I feel exist with the modules. Bare in mind that these flaws I think exist in many modules, not just WotC's, and are colored by what I want to see in addition to what I just don't see. I see three areas that need the most work. I'll break this into three posts.

Plot

1: The Villain in the Story

The villain's plot is not compelling. Typically, the plot consists of "There's bad stuff going on over here, and there's a guy behind it all. This isn't related to you in any way. He's at the bottom of the dungeon. You hear his name dropped once or twice, or read a letter(!) or get asked to just go deal with him."

In KotS, Pyramid of Shadows, and in P3, the villain Sits in his Room and is only tangentally related to the PCs; they get there and face him at the end. Until this point, he really isn't present at all. The PCs never interact with him, see him, or see what he has done in general (making lots of undead/stealing souls), but not experiencing the loss, or seeing the damage he has wrot. Thus the villains are not compelling, interesting, or personal. He isn't an antagonist, he's just the final speedbump. An antagonist needs to antagonize.

To some respect, this made me really enjoy Trollhaunt, because it meant that the PCs interact with Skalmad thrice. It really let them build a relationship with him, if at least it was "You're going to get it now!" But more on Skalmad later.

Granted, you're making an adventure generic enough to suit even a homebrew game and any general party. It's hard to make it relevant to any character, and tailoring to the PCs is the DM's job. But the PCs need to put a face to this guy. They need to hate him, they need to want to stop him. Let them see him do bad things. Let them know "Oh, it's the work of THIS guy? Oh it's on now." Do that, and you have a memorable villain.

2. The Villain's Goals

As stated before, the plot isn't compelling. "Go here to kill this guy in order to stop whatever he's doing."

That works. It's traditional. And really, there's nothing wrong with simple and straight forward. But a published adventure should be a cut above the average adventure.

There needs to be more to it than just "Putting your sword in him pulls the plug". The plot needs more than "it was going smoothly until the adventurers walked into my inner sanctum". A recent post on Sly Flourish[/b] addressed this issue at length: The villain needs quests. This gives the feeling that the world is alive, gives the PCs something to go after, and give them a sense of time crunch.

Hell, perhaps even the villain's Plan is all ready in motion, and fighting the villain is almost secondary; when someone pushes a boulder down a hill, it's the rolling boulder that's the real thing to address, not the guy who pushed it. Stop the boulder first.
 

All this goes with the disclaimer of "for my preferences" -- obviously, I am not your sole customer and, frankly, things that I like may well be disliked by the majority at large. But here is food for thought since you're asking :)

Consecutive Pages
I'll start with a favorite thing that WotC -is- doing well. The recent trend in layout has been to have all info for a given encounter on 2 page, or at least on consecutive pages for the longer ones. I don't like flipping to multiple books or an index. I love the fact that it is all right there with minimal flipping. I'd be sad if this format went away.


Shorter but more frequent descriptive text
The block of text for DMs to read aloud - After a sentence or two, players often zone out. But at the same time, they are great ways to fill in flavor and atmosphere. So perhaps keep them on the short side but possibly peppered in more often?


Plot Hook Variety:
For longer modules, I'd like to see more variety in plot hooks. This is a tricky one since you can not make a plot hook for the millions of self-evolving campaign worlds and PCs out there. But (generally speaking) the existing plot hooks often boil down to a) "the default: you answer a letter for help" b) "the friend who some PC knows from his past is in trouble and needs help" and c) "you hear of treasure/monster/dungeon of legend and want to see/tame/explore it for yourself"

And, yes, these make good stand by hooks. But sometimes it's hard to know how far you can stray from the given plot hooks to make it more personalized to your own campaign. I am not sure what to suggest here since potential plot hooks vary by plot, but my main point here is that some additional variety to help make it easier for a DM to personalize a plot hook to the party... and for these longer adventures, you want/need a stronger buy-in from the PCs rather than just because the player controlling the PC says so.


Nonlinear:
Linear adventures are easier to write, I get that. They are also easier for a DM to follow, I get that too. But when playing, the path sometimes feels very constricting to the point of making me (as a player) feel powerless in choice;'why bother making a decision, just follow the trail without pause" Yes, dungeons are often linear by architectural design. But when outside the dungeon, often is the case that the NPCs will just keep pointing you back to the linear path even if you wanted to try and do something different.


Location, Location, Location...
Every low level adventure seems to center around going in to ruins as the dungeon. I like ruin-style dungeons (they offer great places to stick in history and lore along the way), but I'd also like it if some more adventures that did not center around a ruin-based dungeon crawl (but above ground temples, castles, wilderness, taverns, etc that as the 'dungeon' is fine.. just something to offer variety!)


Interesting encounter features
Even if I don't use the encounter as scripted, there should be potential to take a great location or terrain feature for my own encounter. In general, this is something WotC adventures (that i've seen) often try to do, at least for the climactic encounters. And more often than not, WotC does this well.


Encounter Mix
I know this is somewhat of a silly thing to say since it is also in the DMG, but for newbie DMs, and for DMs that are not used to running modules, a small sidebar at the start that reminds DMs to consider changing the enemy mix if their party lacks some particular role. I.e. "If the party doesn't have many strikers, consider replacing 1 orc brute with 4 orc minions in encounters 2, 5, and 8. Or consider reducing John Doe's HP by 10 in encounter 13. Refer to the DMG for other ideas if the party lacks a particular role"

Obviously, this one just refers to your big adventure modules, it's not a practical suggestion for the short Dungeon Magazine adventures.


Fewer Combat Slogs
There have been some adventures where the pacing seems off, they seem to be combat after combat after combat. So some places to stick in NPC interaction and/or noncombat encounters, along with appropriate prompts to help DMs who are not used to doing NPC conversations.


player-ready visuals
These can be handouts or even just a page with a blank&white map or color illustration, but something that the players can see to give them a sense of mood/theme/etc. i mention this because sometimes when there is an image, or map that i would want to show to give a sense of what a corridor might look like or how the castle is so elaborately decorated, it often has DM-secrets showing on it too.

Story
A story that makes me as a player want to keep my PC invested (this goes partially with making good hooks, but also with how the story plays out).




Obviously, there is the struggle between space availability and necessity

You'll notice the general theme in several of my above suggestions are ways to increase feel/immersion for the players.


(I'm tired, so apologies for having scattered thoughts. I may think of more stuff later, but that's it from my sleep-deprived brain at the moment :) )


PS. I would not kick yourselves too hard over your initial assertion. I do not think WotC is overall any better or worse than other publishers when it comes to modules. You have some that work out well in execution, and some that don't, just like everyone else. It's just that it is from you (WotC) that it gets the most attention, table-play, and scrutiny.
 
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Well, on the whole size/number of encounter issues, what is the problem with 16 or 32 page adventures that level up only once, or maybe even do not provide enough XP to level up at all?

Design adventures based on average playtime for ONE session. Which can be played in about 3 hours and are versatile in terms of setting that DM's can drop them anywhere. With the whole POL concept, this should be easy as there are plenty 'black spots' on the world map where anything can be found.

Also on the issue of diverging from the 'normal' or 'standard' fare. In the old days, one of the better remembered adventures are those featuring a crashed space ship (expedition...). Take a cue from the lists / discussions on this board some time back on which were the all-time best adventures, look at some old-school adventures that somehow get rave reviews and have 'good memories' attached and dissect them.

what dit these adventures provide in terms of story, memorable encounters, strange monsters, new magic items etc. etc.
 

Well, on the whole size/number of encounter issues, what is the problem with 16 or 32 page adventures that level up only once, or maybe even do not provide enough XP to level up at all?
You don't want your customers to feel they're not getting enough bang for their buck. A lot of the people who buy published adventures are doing so because it's easier than making their own. If every level of adventuring costs them a $15 published module, they're going to be dropping $450 on an entire 1-30 campaign. That's a steep price to pay. It's much easier to swallow in the more reasonable 9-adventure format seen in the H-P-E series.
 

1. There's too much combat. Now that's not really your fault, it's based on the assumptions of the system. 4e combat just isn't fast for our group, a decent sized encounter takes time, having the full 13 combat encounters to level up would slow leveling down to an unacceptable pace.

Well, can't I just ignore the combat? Sometimes. But plenty of times removing encounters requires plenty of reworking, sometimes when you strip out the encounters, there isn't much of interest left.

2. Adventure Paths. They just seriously decrease the utility of the adventures to me. And it seems like the suck up all the energy from the rest of the adventures. I'd be a lot more interested in tier length paths, and way more interested in three to five level adventure paths.

3. This is sort of vague, and this should be waited third. I feel like there's not a huge range of flavor in the adventures.

4. It's not that you don't produce interesting locations and NPCs, but sometimes it doesn't seem like enough.

So, there's my criticism since you asked for it. But I do feel the quality of Dungeon Magazine to be pretty alright.
 

The adventure should stand on its own as a solid adventure, even without DDI content - that's a given.
Agreed, except...
But I also believe that the DMs who perceive something lacking are also the sorts of people who would take advantage of something offered to them online to remedy what they see as a problem.
If the adventure stands on its own as a solid adventure there shouldn't *be* anything lacking.

Lanefan
 

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