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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5587617" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, I'd be the last person to say "this way is good, this other way is bad." There can be downsides to having too extensive background info etc. if it detracts too much from other parts of the adventure.Here's the thing though, I read that King Maker #1 and it makes sense to me. I understand what is going on. The bandits make sense as a group. The PCs have a solid motivation for what they're doing. The adventure also gains a lot in terms of different ways that it can go. The PCs could infiltrate the bandits and play one off against another, easy to do when you have a basic personality sketch of the main figures. I know for instance that the Stag Lord may just not even give a crud if the PCs off a couple of his henchmen as long as they don't bug him and keep the liquor flowing, etc. I'm not saying I wouldn't rather have a slightly greater balance towards the encounters, but I don't actually think the background stuff detracts a lot from that. It could also be cleaned up and shrunk in size a bit without really detracting from it. A little cleverness could use 2-3 extra pages of space to fix most of the encounters, they really aren't horribly badly detailed.However, there is another somewhat more fundamental issue. Heavyweight encounter descriptions tend to 'pin down' the module. For example the bandit lair in King Maker #1. The map given is a pretty general high level map of the lair and some surrounding terrain. This gives the DM and the party a good bit more flexibility in how they approach getting into the lair. The 'Delve Format' for encounters is IMHO often too limited, it produces very set encounters.Between the delve encounter format pinning things down and a significant lack of both background and story in WotC modules I think what tends to happen is the DM is highly encouraged to simply run them in a rather linear fashion. You CAN do all sorts of stuff around the encounters, build up a nice story, etc, but it takes a lot of creative work and some good judgment.Lastly look at the community reaction to the two types of modules. I think it is practically inarguable that the vast majority of players seem to appreciate Paizo's style and favor it. WotC needs to take note.</blockquote>

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