Help me make WotC adventures better.

[Rechan]

Tomb of Horrors was very popular, and it was *full* of traps and puzzles.

I don't consider ToH to be "traps/puzzles".

Tomb of Horror can be boiled down to this: "Flip a coin. Tails? You die. Heads? You move to the next flip. Flip a coin..."

ToH would be the quintessential "Save or Die", but you don't even get saves with many of those things, you just Die.

I'd like 4e to never do "Oh, you touched the wrong thing? Hand me your character sheet."

 

[the Jester]

I just want to speak to the delve format really briefly here.

I really hate having the info split up across multiple books. IMHO Red Hand of Doom had the best format of any module yet- although I wish the stat blocks had been in the body of the text, but I understand how much repetition that would have caused, so I totally see how that would have been impractical. But I hate jumping from book 1 to book 2 to figure out what happens next in a module. That's my big format complaint.

 

[Whisper72]

I'd have to say that would be utterly impossible, as every group plays at a different pace and for a different amount of time each session.

An adventure that group A might blast through in 2/3 of a session might take group B 2 sessions and group C 6 sessions. Personally, other than intentional one-offs and minor side-treks I can't remember the last time I ran an adventure all the way through in one session. (admittedly, 4e might be different in this respect; I wouldn't know)

I'd say just lay the adventure out and let groups play through it at their own speed instead of even trying to set a pace.

Lanefan

Although I agree with your assessment that each group has it's own pacing, one way to deal with this is to build into the adventure several 'cliffhanger points' which form logical points to stop te game and name them so. Maybe even complete with suggestions for XP to date etc. Depending upon the speed of play, the DM can aim for one of these points. Naturally this will not cater to everyone's pacings, but still could be helpful for many.

 

[ExploderWizard]

While I might not be WotC, maybe I can help. Last year, I started a conversion of Red Hand of Doom, here on this site, in the blog section. Several posters started claiming that I might be breaking the rules of the GSL, and I would bring down law-suits and other bad things(tm) on ENworld. This was around the time where a few sites were being closed by C&D-letters sent by WotC.

Curious if I had completely misunderstood the GSL, I sent Scott Rouse a PM, asking if such conversions were okay, and he said "don't worry, go ahead" or something along those lines. Now, I never finished the conversion, I grew bored with it, but it should still be there, so that you can see what Scott thought was okay.

Although my argument probably wouldn't hold in court, I have faith in Scott's call, and wouldn't worry if I ever chose to make another conversion.

That is all well and good but I would feel better if someone from WOTC would chime in and say something to that effect now. How do we know if what Scott said back then has any meaning now? I am very interested in converting and posting some old adventures but will need some reasonable assurance of being allowed to do so before bothering to put forth the effort.

 

[MortonStromgal]

I'm not sure if the OP is still reading but here are my thoughts.

DL1 did a great job of having things happen in the world without the PCs. Tracking what the army did. Thumbs up to that.

B2 did a great job of having an area to run a long term game.

Now some from Shadowrun
Harliquin - Did a great job of mixing up the main plot and keeping the players in the dark till near the end.

Queen Euphoria - WOW! what a surprise for the PCs

Ghost Cartels - I personally like this format way better. I dont enjoy scripted text.


Final thoughts

The world and plot should move regardless of what the players do
The area should have things to do that are outside of the main plot
Surprises are good, let the PCs find them, don't hide them in a GM only section that the PCs will never find out.
There should always be more than 1 solution to a problem
If your going to have box text please include a summery page so experience GMs can glean the story without reading through bad dialog

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'll just give a run down of some things that strike me as a player

1. Too many creatures with very high defenses.

2. Too many daze/stun effects.

3. Too little treasure.

4. Treasure that's too specialised. As an example, one of the early modules gives out bloodcut hide armor. Since at the time only PHB1 was out, the classes that wear hide armour out-of-the-book are... rangers. And even then, many melee rangers will end up in chain. I mean sure, DMs are supposed to tailor treasure to the party, but the default state for treasure shouldn't be "stuff that only one class can/will use".

#1 makes for long fights, #2 exacerbates the problem, and #3+#4 is the candle on the cake.

5. To many villains that seem to be out to get us for no particular reason, and whom we only meet during our final encounter, and whom we only kill because they attack us. Surely SOME of them could meet and annoy us earlier under the trappings of civilisation? I mean, sure, they all keep leaving incriminating signed notes on their minions, so at least we learn their names and some fraction of their evil plans, but it would have been a lot more interesting if we'd actually seen them earlier on, and they HADN'T signed their notes. Then we'd have been chasing a mystery villain and we'd have gotten a plot twist!

6. Too many encounter "gotcha's" where the encounter seems to be telling you to try one tactic, but that tactic is useless.
For instance, in keep on the shadowfell:

Spoiler

why would we expect that shoving the main bad guy into the portal would kill him? Isn't he deliberately opening the portal? Why is there a big tentacled thing there? I thought it was the plane where undead come from, not tentacled monstrosities? A more fitting encounter would have been if undead spilled from the portal throughout the fight.

OR
In Thunderspire:

Spoiler

Paldimar(or possibly some other mage, it's difficult to tell one mage from another) has some pillars, and during the encounter he runs over to one, draws power from it, then blasts the party... Why does he run over to it when he can draw power from it from across the room? It would have been a much more satisfying encounter if he'd needed to be within 2 squares of a pillar to draw power from it: then the encounter would have been based around keeping him away from pillars, a pleasant diversion. As it was, we tried to keep him away from a pillar, and he blasted us anyway...

OR
Again in thunderspire:

Spoiler

the only places so far during the entire game that fireplaces have existed in dwellings, and they're in the dwellings of a race who are highly resistant to fire, duergar.

 

[Colmarr]

I'm only a sometimes reader of adventures (I'm mainly a player), but the things I have noticed are:

(most examples are from Dead by Dawn in the latest issue of Dungeon magazine)

1. Make sure the read aloud text matches the map
(eg. the wight in the rectory is described as being slumped in front of the altar when on the map it is positioned on the other side of the room).

2. Check the monster stat blocks for errors
(eg. the hobgoblin zombies have ridiculously high defences - AC 25! Another example is from Rescue at Rivenroar where one of the ettercaps was described as having a "Recharge z" power.

3. Re-check the adventure after editting the content.
(eg. the adventure refers to an Identifying the Necroshard skill challenge that doesn't exist and was obviously taken out during editting).

The three points above are simple editting errors, and really hurt your ability to present information in a professional way.

I would also agree with some of the earlier posters:

4. Page counts are not your friend.
They limit your ability to set the scene appropriately and give the DM all the information they need to run the game well. An arbitrary count of 1 or 2 pages per encounter will simply result in bad writing and/or presentation.

5. Tell some innovative stories, and/or tell them in innovative ways.
Dead by Dawn is the first Dungeon adventure that I've gone out of my way to read in quite some time. Why? Because it tells a story that is unusual for D&D. So it was the concept that hooked me.

And once I read it, I found that I liked the way it handled its premise. It told the story in an innovative way. The combination of innovative story and innovative presentation is really calling me to get back in the DMing seat.

Another example is from the old Shackled City campaign. I forget the name of the adventure, but it's the one where the volcano in the middle of the city begins to errupt and fiends appear everywhere. That adventure didn't lay out linear encounters. It said "here are the things your PCs could do. If they successfully complete X of them, they achieve Y. If not, Z happens".

It was an early template for skill challenges, but on an adventure-wide scale. To this day, I remember being impressed by the author's creativity.

Edit: 6. Not every adventure needs to be a mega-adventure.
I personally feel that Keep on the Shadowfell and Thunderspire Labyrinth were too long (although some sections were worse than others). The Chaos Scar and LFR adventures offer a nice alternative - a snack for when you or your players aren't ready to launch into another multi-month adventure.

However, in saying that, I would be very touchy about price for shorter adventures. I'm not sure how touchy, and won't really know until there's a product on a shelf with a price tag attached. I do think though, that shorter adventures are perfect for DDI because DDI doesn't require separate expenditure just to obtain that adventure.

 

[Klaus]

I agree that Dead by Dawn is a very good adventure, and one easily played in one session. Kudos to Blackdirge, and I want to see more!

 

[Ourph]

My suggestion? Get Chris Perkins and Willie Walsh writing adventures for D&D again. Those guys were the shining stars of TSR-era Dungeon and (while I'm sure Chris is doing great things as D&D creative manager and Willie is a superstar at local government administration) it's an absolute travesty that these guys aren't chained to a desk in the bowels of the WotC writing-dungeons cranking out great, flavor-rich adventures for 4e... IMHO.

 

[BLACKDIRGE]

I agree that Dead by Dawn is a very good adventure, and one easily played in one session. Kudos to Blackdirge, and I want to see more!

Thanks, Klaus. I've got more in the works. =]

BD