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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 2917127" data-attributes="member: 7737">OK, I've been thinking about why I consider U1 a well-designed adventure. Here goes.* It's a "peel back the layers of the onion" adventure. The PCs hear about the haunted house. They go there, explore, and realize the house is not haunted. They discover it is in fact the base for some smugglers. They assault the smugglers' ship and realize they are running weapons to some lizardfolk. But, the lizardfolk appear to be arming themselves against a greater threat (this is actually not fully spelled out until U2). Plus, there is the information Oceanus has discovered that hints that the lizardfolk are not the real enemy.So, from a simple haunted house / kill the monsters & take their stuff adventure, it has turned into a much more complex adventure. (Plus there's plenty of monsters to kill and stuff to take.)* It includes nifty side-elements that don't really impact the overall adventure, but are still fun. Such as the alchemist's hidden room with the skeletons and the (fake) philospher's stone.* As I mentioned before, it includes numerous iconic D&D monsters: stirges, green slime, gnolls, skeletons.* It features villains who are reasonably clever and proactive. They are not just waiting around for the PCs to find them; they are actively pursuing their own agenda.* It gives the PCs a base of operations (Saltmarsh) that can be as much or as little fleshed out as the DM desires. In today's game, Saltmarsh in U1 would be considered too sketchy, so I will count this is a weak point of adventure design. The town needs more detail to really come alive for the players and to make them care about saving it from the sahaugin (in U3).* It features interesting encounter areas: the house, the sea cave, and especially the ship. No endless corridors of 20x20 rooms here!* It has some puzzles for the PCs to solve (the coded signal lights). Actually, this is potentially a weak point because it's a partial bottleneck -- if the PCs can't figure out the lights system, they can't signal the Sea Ghost and it won't stop to unload its cargo.* I do think Ned is a poor adventure design element because, as others have said, he potentially teaches newbie players not to trust anyone.* It's just a really well put together adventure. There are no "WTF?" areas that don't make sense.</blockquote>

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