D&D General How do you know an adventure is "good" just from reading it?

[Rabbitbait]

Does it inspire me? If not, there is no point in going any further.

If it does, then I start looking at:

• how coherent is it?
• how flexible is it?
• can I easily change it without breaking it
• does it give room for character arcs
• can I insert it into different worlds

The last WOTC adventure that ticked enough of those boxes for me was Temple of Annihilation. That was a goodie. It only really failed on the character arcs for me (partly because it was mostly in the jungle, partly because everyone kept dying).

 

[Reynard]

Thankfully, modern adventure design is getting better and relying less on walls of text and more on actual gameplay. This has been spearheaded largely by the OSR movement but has been slowly making inroads into the D&D design space. I understand why it's hard: I am a freelancer and I get paid by the word. But folks publishing their own work are starting to embrace concise, evocative text and starting to eschew overly verbose prose.

For my part, I start with readability, then move on to modability. Without both of those things, an adventure is probably useless at my individual table, no matter how enticing the back cover text.

 

[delericho]

This thread hits on my major issue with RPG reviews - in order to be relevant they need to come out close to product release, but that means that the reviewers may well not have read the thing in detail, much less run it. (And even if they have run it, you still only get an impression of how it went for your group - you don't see any of the roads not taken.)

For me, the first thing I look for is a premise that interests me. Strictly speaking, that's not actually a requirement of a good adventure, but it is a requirement to get me to read on.

Beyond that, I'm looking mostly for things that will make for a good game experience - decision points being a big one, but also a balance of action in the three pillars, and also an absence of deliberate time wasting.

Oh, and a really good synopsis.

One other thing that I really hate seeing, that showed up an awful lot in early-5e adventures: a 'cheat' in the final battle. By this I mean that the designers really wanted to include a final fight against some super-powerful BBEG, but couldn't (or didn't want to) run the adventure up to a high enough level to actually justify it. So they build in a way for the PCs to somehow prevail in this final fight - the enemy has been somehow weakened, the party is given special additional powers, or allies, or whatever.

 

[Retreater]

"Actual play" reviews aren't incredibly valuable. Imagine all the differences among tables, DMs, etc. Even if you read a review from a GM who ran a campaign for 1+ years (assuming you'd want to wait that long for the review), there's no guarantee that it was run precisely the way you'd run it.
Some of you have unrealistic expectations for reviews.
In the end, we can look at an adventure and see if we think it will work for us, based on theme, general quality of the writing, etc. It can't be reviewed in the same way a novel or film is - it's not that kind of product.
At best an RPG review is like taking a used car to a trusted mechanic. You look under the hood, take it for a quick spin, and that's really all you can do.
You guys are acting like "mechanic, I need you to buy this used car, test drive it for a year, perform regular maintenance, and get back to me if it's a good purchase."

 

[payn]

At best an RPG review is like taking a used car to a trusted mechanic. You look under the hood, take it for a quick spin, and that's really all you can do.
You guys are acting like "mechanic, I need you to buy this used car, test drive it for a year, perform regular maintenance, and get back to me if it's a good purchase."

A product review is very different than an actual play review IME. Product review is like consumer reports, you are going to get a general review of how the adventure is constructed. An actual play review is more like hearing personal experience with the product. Using the car example, general review tells me quality of tires and purpose on the vehicle. Actual play tells me if the tires hold up both on and off road. Maybe the tires are great for off road, but give a bad on road feel. Or, maybe the car works great, but the factory tires are bad and should be replaced. I can tailor my experience and needs based on other users experiences and its invaluable.

The good news is there are piles and piles of adventures out there with tons of actual play reviews. I have found them quite useful for improving my own experience. So much so, that I feel a duty to share my own experiences. If you have a strong desire to use a new product, well you are going to have to be a trailblazer. After a decade or longer, they just redesigned the Toyota Tacoma. Nobody has a wealth of actual play experience with it yet. Thats the risk of being a trailblazer.

 

[LordEntrails]

First, is it an easy read? If it's a hassle to read and understand, I'm not going to read it. Meaning;

• Adequate editing
• Story or situation makes sense and does not have gaping holes or flaws
• Layout and order of information is workable. i.e. you can find the info you need without jumping around too much

Second, how well is the story/plot/situation/hook laid out and is it interesting? Another go rescue the kidnapped princess who is being held by orcs in a cave with no plot twists is so mundane I don't need an adventure to run this. Is it a creative story? Are their unknowns or mysteries that the players can discover or solve? (The princess is actually a necromancer and the orcs are holding her because she raided their cemetery and are afraid to release her.) Is there something to overcome?

Ancillary to the story, is it a railroad? Does it include sufficient NPC details & motivations so that when the party goes off the rails I can easily adjust? Not every adventure needs to be a sandbox, but is the adventure written so linearly that their are no meaningful choices the party can make? IMO, meaningful choices that impact the adventure are mandatory.

Other things that are important to me:

• Maps. Does the area map(s) fit the adventure? (Do travel distances match the story? Do distances, locations and points of interest fit?) Are their adequate encounter maps so I don't have to make or find my own? (imo, every location should have a battle/encounter map, its just not that hard these days to make custom maps).
• Flexibility. Akin to sandbox vs railroad, can the material be used more than once? Can you turn the location into a home base? Can the villain be used again if they escape/live? Is the benefactor interesting enough that they could become a campaign patron?
• Balance. Are the encounters flexible enough to be adjusted based on party capabilities? Treasure and magic, do they make sense for the tier of adventure it is for? And does magic that NPCs have accounted for in the possible treasure the party can acquire? (i.e. a Staff of Power to make power up a Tier 2 opponent is going to throw off the party magic item balance if they acquire it.)

 

[LordEntrails]

All this talk of "reviews" brings to mind one point I'd like to add. It depends on the reviewer. A product or play review that only talks about some creative aspect or opinion is not very valuable ("The art is so pretty!", "We laughed so hard when we played this.") A good review, imo, will have some objective statements ("The adventure is well edited, concise and easy to find information."), and will put a perspective on subjective opinions ("The art is highly evocative and will help set the mood.").

(Yes, I know, very little is actually objective. Ignore that debate and look to the intention of my words, not the literally meanings.)

 

[Mannahnin]

This seems like a good place to mention Bryce Lynch, who's done insane numbers of adventure reviews over the past 10+ years. Literally thousands of them on his site tenfootpole.org. You may not agree with his specific criteria, but they align with mine reasonably well, and I find his The Best and No Regerts sections on the site to be goldmines for finding good modules.

 

[Parmandur]

A product review is very different than an actual play review IME. Product review is like consumer reports, you are going to get a general review of how the adventure is constructed. An actual play review is more like hearing personal experience with the product. Using the car example, general review tells me quality of tires and purpose on the vehicle. Actual play tells me if the tires hold up both on and off road. Maybe the tires are great for off road, but give a bad on road feel. Or, maybe the car works great, but the factory tires are bad and should be replaced. I can tailor my experience and needs based on other users experiences and its invaluable.

The good news is there are piles and piles of adventures out there with tons of actual play reviews. I have found them quite useful for improving my own experience. So much so, that I feel a duty to share my own experiences. If you have a strong desire to use a new product, well you are going to have to be a trailblazer. After a decade or longer, they just redesigned the Toyota Tacoma. Nobody has a wealth of actual play experience with it yet. Thats the risk of being a trailblazer.

It's like cookbook reviews: it's one thing to say : "Theblayout is elegant and the pictures are nice" versus actually talking about the experience of cooking the food in terms of "does it taste good?" or "did the instructions help me actuslly follow the process of cooming the diah?" (as an aside, Heroes Feast is both pleasantly laid out and the recipes are legit).

Except running an Adventure is probably more volatile and individual, so it's even harder to determine whether an Adventure will work for you even with actual play reviews.

 

[payn]

It's like cookbook reviews: it's one thing to say : "Theblayout is elegant and the pictures are nice" versus actually talking about the experience of cooking the food in terms of "does it taste good?" or "did the instructions help me actuslly follow the process of cooming the diah?" (as an aside, Heroes Feast is both pleasantly laid out and the recipes are legit).

Except running an Adventure is probably more volatile and individual, so it's even harder to determine whether an Adventure will work for you even with actual play reviews.

Exactly. An actual play review isnt bad/useless because you cant replicate it, and an adventure isnt bad because you cant make it feel right. There is a you factor involved at the end of the experience that matters most of all. Folks like to blame the material, but you chose it, you ran it, you do have some responsibility for it too.