Help me make WotC adventures better.

[Aberzanzorax]

1. What is at stake in this encounter (beyond PC survival)? What happens if the PCs fail to overcome it? How can this information be communicated to the PCs?

2. What is distinctive or interesting about this encounter that would make it stand out from the other encounters in the adventure? How can the DM bring out or emphasize the distinctive or interesting elements? If it is a monster's special ability, how should the DM ensure that it is used in a way that maximizes its impact? If it is a terrain element, how can the DM ensure that the PCs are aware of it and deal with it? (Even if that means staying well away from it.)

3. Perhaps more broadly, what is the purpose of this encounter? What sort of feelings, emotions or thoughts should the DM be trying to evoke in the players, and how should he do it? If it is meant to be a simple encounter for the players to beat down on inferior opponents and feed good about themselves, how should the DM describe the opponents' appearance and reactions? If it is meant to be the climactic encounter of the adventure or campaign arc, how can the DM ensure that tension remains high until the final blow (whichever the winning side happens to be) is struck?
​

And perhaps the acid test for any encounter should be: if there isn't much at stake, there isn't anything distinctive, and it doesn't have much purpose, then it shouldn't even be in the adventure in the first place!

QFT.

My understanding/conceptualization of WotC adventures (both past and present) to other companies has been as Budweiser is to microbrews (hear me out here).

Budweiser is not a great beer. It's palatable and innofensive. Anyone can drink a bud, but few REALLY enjoy it. Why? Budweiser shoots for generic and volume of sales. They're the big guys. Microbrews, similar to 3pp publishers, can focus on more specific "flavors" that appeal to some, but just aren't someone else's cup of tea (beer). So I see WotC as "ok, but not great" for everyone. I think PART of that is the nature of the beast...being the biggest company and working in volume.

But let me belabor the analogy a bit more. Sam adams was a microbrew. I'd now put them on the same level as Budweiser (not in total sales, but in availablility in bars and liquor stores). It's a better beer, still innofensive, and wins multiple awards. How do they do it? As has been stated in this thread: variety and depth. 1. Variety. There are multiple "flavors" available from them. Imagine, for adventures, this being separate "Themes". I'd like to see Dungeon change to the "adventure of the month club." This month? Underwater. Next month espionage. The following month horror. After that-gladiator ring encounters. 2. Depth. This is a quality beer. It's evident that, no matter how mass produced it is, they seem to put the extra money into making it of sufficient quality. It costs more, but only a little more, than Bud. The price difference is made up for easily by the quality difference. I submit that better maps, better layout, more attention to/better plot etc are important in WotC adventures. Throwing combats/encounters in left and right leaves an adventure "watered down."

Finally, look to your competitors. I'll fork this thread, and edit in the link in just a moment.
EDIT. Look here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...d-4th-edition-adventures-why.html#post5109592

 

[MerricB]

He was mysterious, which naturally aroused my players' interest, but I didn't have any ability to roleplay him. I just did 'generally kooky' because I didn't know any better.

It wasn't until

Spoiler

the final epic tier adventure

was published that I learned the old man was

Spoiler

Bahamut

. My characterization was completely off-base, and if I knew then what I knew now, I would have played him completely differently.

Actually, your characterisation was completely on-base if you've ever seen the Dragonlance take on the character.

Cheers!

 

[jhallum]

Lack of context

In contrast, Scales of War is very light on context. The best example is The Lost Mines of Karak. They encountered

Spoiler

an old man with canaries

during that adventure. It was clear that he had some sort of special meaning, but nothing in the adventure alluded to who he was, what he was doing there, or what his goals were. He was mysterious, which naturally aroused my players' interest, but I didn't have any ability to roleplay him. I just did 'generally kooky' because I didn't know any better.

It wasn't until

Spoiler

the final epic tier adventure

was published that I learned the old man was

Spoiler

Bahamut

. My characterization was completely off-base, and if I knew then what I knew now, I would have played him completely differently.

To be fair, this information was also presented in a sidebar in another hardback, I think, almost 4-6 months before the Epic adventure was released. I couldn't tell you where, exactly, as I'm at work and I don't have the books in front of me. Of course, in my game, the heroes completely avoided those areas of the mines, thus missing the warning and at that point, any reason for an encounter with the Old Man. I'm now in Temple Between and am thinking about having the Old Man show up in Bitter Glass for other reasons, but still in the background.

 

[Windjammer]

That 'Old Man' you talk about appeared in Draconomicon 2, final section. Nice 6 page section, in many regards the thematic core of the book.

And I totally agree with Merric that the poster portrayed him in the best possible way, if you go by the Dragonlance Chronicles for point of orientation (and I'd be hard pressed to think of a better reference point here).

 

[Nebulous]

Rodney, in 4e i've run Shadowfell Keep, Thunderspire Labyrinth, Pyramid of Shadows, and a large number of one-offs and homebrew adventures added to the mix.

I have to say that the quality of the overall stories is...Average, puncutated by some really, really awesome set pieces.

In my opinion here are some things you need to change (and this is not exhaustive):

1) Encounter Format. Why does it have to be only two pages? What if there is enough material for only 1 page or 4 pages? Also, scrap the two book thing and meld plot and mechanics so that the book is actually more fun to READ.

2) Monster stat blocks: while it can be handy to have the block right there (and it is) i've seen cases where the SAME monster is printed throughout a book and it wastes too much space. What about an electronic download for DDI customers (or for free) that bundles all stats for a module into one place?

3) INCOMPLETE VILLAINS!
This happened with Kalarel, Paldemar and Karavakos. All three were sketchy outlines with little motivation, or a complex motivation in the case of Karavakos (the whole trapped in the Pyramid of Shadows as punishment but with full powers and a nice life just didn't make sense). I had to add so much to all three adventures to make the villains more compelling, including elevating Paldemar to the BBEG at the end of Thunderspire, have him live, be the villain through all of Pyramid of Shadows, live at the end, and he's now an ongoing villain in the paragon tier.

4) more as i muse about it....AH! Skill Challenges! I really hate to say that after all the effort WotC has put into skill challenges, i think the whole system is overshadowed by Obsidian that a clever Enworlder made up. Wotc SC's, for me, require a big laundry list of memorization and referencing the book. The bigger the challenge, the more complex.

Obsidian scraps that with a 3-round process that forces players to create the situation and what happens with simple accumulation of success, no failures (or rather failures just don't count). I have found that it creates great tension and roleplaying and there is nothing for me to reference as it all unfolds in real time.

5) Too much friggin combat.
I cut out 50% of the encounters in Pyramid of Shadows and finished it in 9 sessions. Even then i got some moans of "when the hell are we getting out of this horrible place?"

6) Monster and Encounter Tactics
So many, many times the descriptive text will say something like "The troglodyte waits until an enemy is near and uses Stench. Other troglodytes then advance and attack with spears. There is a bed that can flipped over to offer cover and counts as difficult terrain."

Now this isn't bad exactly, but it is really just rehashing the basics of a monster attack that every single DM is going to use anyway! Unless the monster is going to specifically use terrain or powers or items in abnormal fashion, i'd leave that part out. But i'm just complaining, that's not a as big a deal as some of my other points.

 

[Nebulous]

Oh, I just remembered a more "minor" thing - sometimes I don't understand what's supposed to be going on. This can apply to weird trap descriptions (I still don't know how the trap with the Otyough in the Pyramid is supposed to work - Understand the mechanic, but not the visuals) or to PC powers whose names are not sufficient to explain or visualize the effect.

Oh my God, i know. I had to draw a picture just to explain it to myself before i could even start to tell the players and i STILL don't know if i did it right. This really, really, really needed a diagram!

Believe it or not, a full strength 8th level barbarian died in that pit in 2 rounds all by himself.

 

[Skyscraper]

WotC has been doing great stuff with rules and layout, but I admit to not liking several among the adventures I've read (mostly, 3E stuff e.g. Ravenloft, some Dungeon DDI adventures, Keep on the Shadowfell and now I'm playing through Scales of War but it's early to judge - we're finishing Rivenroar) due to story and general pace.

Random thoughts (I haven't read through this long thread, sorry for repeats):

- I don't like the structured encounters, i.e. not only do we know when and where PCs will be attacked by monsters, but each monster's position is already defined at the start of combat. I mean: what if the players' decisions actually mattered? Railroad has never been more obvious IMO.

Proposed solution: have some encounters be predefined, but leave some open-ended. E.g. Encounter A will occur only if condition 1 is met; Encounter B will only include X, Y, Z creatures if the PCs managed to do this or that beforehand; Encounter C will occur somewhere in the castle, if the PCs are not stealthy enough (no pre-prepared plan for this one!); Encounter D will occur if the PCs have befriended NPC #5; Encounter E is left to the DM has a option to change the pace, lay an ambush, add a guard patrol, in case the DM feels like PCs should have a confrontation with the group of (guards, cultists, thieves, ...); ...

- NPCs not credible. Reading through Ravenloft (3E) for example, there is a village rampaged by undead, and when the PCs arrive at the barricaded Inn, what's going on? They hear song and laugher. I mean, WTF? Those people should be scared witless. Or, in Keep of the Shadowfell: they rescue their mentor, he says thank you and leaves to return to see his wife. The guy was there to investigate a dragon grave (if I recall correctly) at the outset, and now he gets rescued and he's in a hurry to leave. There is no depth in this NPC IMO.

Proposed solution: get emotions to filter out of the NPCs. Fear at the threat, humiliation at not being able to do anything, those kind of emotions should transpire. I'm sure you have plenty of people with drama experience, use them! For example, the NPC mentor in Keep on the Shadowfell could have the option to leave to return to his wife, remain in town but be traumatised from his captivity, or become mad from captivity; or any other outcome the DM feels thinking about, the latter three being examples of why he won't join the PCs for the rest of the adventure.

- storyline too thin: was there a storyline in Ravenloft? Hehe. Just kidding. I found it a bit dull, but I'll use Keep on the Shadowfell as my example: there is nothing going on in town when the PCs arrive. Nothing. The only detail we have is about what NPCs know about the goblins and the kobolds and the keep itself. Do the NPCs have lives of their own?

Proposed solution: adding layers in the village itself would have been nice. Example: in the Shackled City adventure path (minor spoilers ahead), there are tons of lines lying all about the city of Cauldron for the PCs to pick up. Priests disappearing at the temple, nobles that have their respective agendas, two competing thieve guilds, rumors about dragons, paladins, etc... It's not just about the "keep near the village" and the DM can make the rest up.

Side note: even if the depth of the adenture will not become known to the players, the story has to be compelling for the DM at the outset. Forming a web interconnecting the NPCs is a good way to achieve that IMO. Getting the DM thrilled about the depth of the setting will in turn help the DM convey that feeling to the players.

- Avoid hollywood stereotypes and try to set up surprising settings where the paladin is not the goodie-two-shoes, the BBEG actually has a reason to be evil, he's not simply evil because he's evil; and surprising stories and settings.

Thanks for asking about this and I hope my opinion helps, although it is but one player's opinion.

Sky

 

[invokethehojo]

nevermind

 

[Riley]

This is unorthadox but I would love to see a campaign that is more free form and written around a starter town...

I used Fallcrest to do this. I used the town exactly how it was, made a small (usually single session) adventure for each plot hook, then connected enough of them to make an overall story arc based around the machinations of a local lord that was attempting to ensue enough chaos in the area to usurp Lord Markelhay by weakening his political power base. It was really fun to DM and the players really got into it, mostly I think because they kept coming back to the town and the relationships with the NPC's kept evolving. Also, when it came time to save the town they felt a bond with the townsfolk, which made saving them feel compelling and meaningful.

Sounds like a great idea - kinda like Chaos Scar, but with continuity and NPC's.

I hoped that this was the kind of thing that Wizards might do with Hammerfast and the HS series, but it doesn't look like those will be connected in this manner.

 

[Paul_Klein]

D&D modules are way too long. Someone above me just said they cut 50% of the combat encounters out of Pyramid of Shadows, and it still took them 9 sessions to finish. That is straight-up boring, no matter how exciting the set pieces inside are.

If I pick up a module and see that not only will it take a dozen or so game sessions to finish, but it is also contained almost entirely in the same location - or worse, in the same dungeon - no way in heck am I going to buy and run that adventure.

Next, I have to echo nearly everyone else, in that the WotC D&D modules contain little to no meaningful story, and what is there isn't really "cool" or "wow" or epic anyway, so it gets further pushed to the wayside.

Honestly, my favorite "new" thing from WotC in terms of adventures and campaigns are the Campaign Arcs, seen in both DMG2 and SW Saga's Galaxy of Intrigue. These are not pre-written adventures or even campaigns, but give a basic, general overview of a campaign. I love these things, and get more excited when I read them about the millions of possibilities I can take and run with them, than I do with a 64-page adventure with 25 2-page detailed encounter spreads.