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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Salamandyr" data-source="post: 6172531" data-attributes="member: 40233">I can think of a couple of modules where there really is no story...Keep on the Borderlands, for instance.  There's no villain, only the barest of threats.  It's a cast of characters who have been given no motivation.  They're just there, waiting for a DM to decide what they're doing.  No story, just a setting.Temple of Elemental Evil almost has a story, but misses out in the end I think.  There is a main villain, but it's a prisoner, and there is a good chance the PC's will never face her.  The sub-villains are plotting...something.  But it's such a nebulous plot that until the PC's show up nothing will ever happen.  So while there is some motivation floating around, there's no real arc, no expected climax, just a bunch of possibilities, so it misses being a story in and of itself.But Sunless Citadel is different.   It has an arc, the characters have a reason to go there, they have a  mystery to solve, and a main villain who is the mover and shaker of everything going on that they have to thwart in a climactic battle.   There is something going on and what the PC's do will affect what  happens.  That's a story.  What the characters do in between the exposition and the climactic fight with the major bad guy is the kind of adventure filler.  But it's a story-no matter what the players do, the world at the end will be different from the world at the beginning.  And writers of modules generally have some idea of how they want the world to change, even if the players don't actually cooperate.</blockquote>

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