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Message: <blockquote data-quote="occam" data-source="post: 5111486" data-attributes="member: 39815">These are two of the things I was going to mention.Adventures are meant to be read, as well as played. While you can definitely go overboard on presenting background that will never see the light of play, some amount of story for the DM doesn't hurt. Get the DM involved in a good story when reading the adventure, and that enthusiasm will transfer to the players, in addition to making it more likely that the adventure will be selected for play. Nearly all of the 4e adventures I've read (which is all of those in Dungeon, plus a few of the standalone and D&D Game Day ones) come off as very dry. They tend to be highly focused, straight to the point when presenting information intended to see play. They're utilitarian, which has its advantages, but generally not engaging reading.Plus, you never know what piece of seemingly unimportant background information will make it into the game; players are unpredictable in the questions they ask, and DMs often pick up on the smallest of hooks to expand, and use as major tie-ins to existing campaigns.Examples of good reading, although not for reasons of richer background, are Dave Noonan's Dungeon adventures (which is why I was particularly sorry to see him leave WotC). In "Betrayal at Monadhan" and "Last Breath of the Dragon Queen", he excels at providing useful advice to the DM in a conversational tone. Even the monster tactics sections are fun to read, instead of something to skip over.On another point (mentioned by several others), NPCs need to be more interesting. The two 4e DMGs, which are the best DM advice books ever published for D&D, have tips on creating memorable NPCs, but the NPCs in WotC's published 4e adventures tend to be treated as means to ends, if they're characterized or even mentioned at all. Paraphrasing DMG advice, a little background motivation or a few appearance/personality quirks go a long way.I'm torn on the delve format. I get the advantages, but it does make reading an adventure (see above) difficult. There's also the problem many others have brought up, the seemingly endless string of level-appropriate encounters. I'd suggest using the delve format only for 2-3 important set-piece encounters in an adventure, where you make full use of 4e's great encounter-building tools: terrain, traps, sophisticated group tactics, etc. Make those set pieces hard, just within the PCs' abilities to handle.For most other encounters, I think I'd like to see a return to an old-school-style presentation. As you read through the encounter areas in a dungeon, for instance, each room has a paragraph of description. A few (2 or 3) refer to the delve-format pages for the big set pieces. But most of the rooms with monsters just list the monsters and reference their sources, like encounter groups in the Monster Manuals, e.g.:    2 orc raiders (Monster Manual)    2 orc berserkers (Monster Manual)    1 dire boar (Monster Manual)    1 false-floor pit (Dungeon Master's Guide)Let the DM place them on the map and figure out tactics. These encounters should be easy, several levels below the PCs, so that they can be finished in a round or two. Not every combat needs to be life-or-death; in the old days, most weren't. If a combat takes 10 minutes, that's still fun, and doesn't feel like a waste of time. These should be the majority of encounters; save the complex and potentially deadly encounters for the ones really significant to the story, which will make them much more memorable. This way the players can have fun beating up on monsters without wasting resources (if that's what they like; the DM can easily cut encounters if the players aren't into fast but essentially meaningless combats), get the XP they need more quickly when that's an issue, and save the full delve treatment for the encounters that really matter.On another topic, I'd like to see more range in adventure settings. A long time ago, Dungeon used to publish scenarios for Oriental Adventures, Al-Qadim, etc. For a DM running a non-standard campaign setting, he'd be grasping to use any of the 4e Dungeon adventures; even Eberron or FR adventures are nearly nonexistent. While the Points of Light setting was supposed to be completely generic and adaptable, in practice it feels very concrete, pigeon-holing nearly every published adventure into a setting with a specific set of deities, races, etc. While letting adventure writers branch out would mean publishing some adventures that most readers won't use if they're far afield of the standard D&D-type setting, a broader selection would reach more DMs overall.</blockquote>

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