So I just released Mini-Adventure 1: The Complex of Zombies. One of the things I wanted to do with this release was to change the basic structure and layout of how an adventure module is presented in a way that will make the adventure easier to use and reference during play.
Basically, I've long felt that adventure modules have been struggling under a legacy of inefficient and ineffective layouts: It's difficult to find particular encounter keys. Once you've found the encounter key, important information is often buried in the middle of big blocks of text. And so forth. When you're trying to run an adventure, you want to be able to instantly pull up the information you need right now -- you don't have time to read six paragraphs of text to figure out how to run a particular encounter.
Attempts to remedy this in recent years by various companies and creators have more often resulted in either (a) artificial one-size-fits-all organizational schemes which actually make the information for many encounters more opaque and difficult to process as the author tries to cram it into the preset categories; or (b) elaborate Rube Goldberg devices that don't seem to actually accomplish anything.
What you'll find in The Complex of Zombies is not a radical departure. It's not something that's going to leap off the page at you and slap you in the face with its brilliance. It's not going to require you to completely relearn how to process and use the adventure.
It is better thought of as a tidying. Or perhaps a tweaking.
Here are the major things I've tried to accomplish:
1. Each encounter is given a clear-cut possession to a slice of page space. They are positioned on the page in a way which makes it easy to quickly and easily find any given encounter key when you need to. This is accomplished by, in general, giving each encounter its own column: This means that encounter numbers can be clearly found at the top of each page, and each encounter is clearly delineated from each other. (There are two exceptions: Particularly shot encounter keys may end up being listed two to a column. Longer encounter keys may require more than a single column.)
2. The information in each encounter key is sub-divided into a number of smaller, bite-size chunks that can be quickly processed at a glance. (For example, you don't need to dig through an entire paragraph of text to discover -- buried somewhere near its center -- that there is relevant information to be gained from a Spot check in this area.) These bite-size chunks of data are described with clear titles in bold-face, which makes it easy for the DM to quickly process all the important elements of an encounter at a single glance and then pull out the information they need as they need it.
3. The presentation of certain types of information -- particularly skill checks -- are standardized, making it easier to find that information on the page and use that information while running the adventure. (But such standardization takes place at a fairly low-level of information, where such standardization makes the most sense. At the macro-level, the description of the encounter is structured and ordered in the way which makes the most sense for that particular encounter.)
4. Boxed text for every keyed encounter area. More importantly, this boxed text is properly implemented, which means that it: (a) Makes a consistent assumption of the illumination available to the PCs (and clearly states what this standard is). (b) Never assumes that the PCs are entering an area from a particular direction or at a particular time. (c) Never assumes that the PCs will take certain actions or attempt to make decisions for the PCs. (Not everyone will use boxed text verbatim, but properly executed boxed text is valuable nonetheless because it clearly delineates between "what the PCs will immediately know (and should know) about an encounter area" (the boxed text) and "what the PCs may discover about or do in an encounter area" (everything else in the encounter description.)
5. We took comments from our playtest groups and included their insights as Playtest Tips throughout the adventure. Have you ever run an adventure and realized that, if you had to run it again, things would go much better if you did X instead? Or handled a particular encounter in a slightly different way? Since adventures are so rarely run a second time, a lot of this insight is just wasted. But we've tried to capture some of that from our playtests so that other DMs can benefit from it.
As I say, none of these things are radical departures by any stretch of the imagination. But in the aggregate, I think they result in an adventure module which is clearer in its presentation, cleaner in its prepration, and easier in its running.
But I think that even more can be done. There are two other useful tools I love to see in an adventure module, but which were beyond the budget and/or scope of this particular release:
1. I like illustrations which from the POV of the PCs. You don't necessarily need to do a comprehensive illustration book like Tomb of Horrors, but if you're going to have illustrations, I think those illustrations should be dual-tasked so that they're useful as handouts. Being able to say, "You enter a room and it looks like this!" is great. Illustrations which feature other people's characters going through the adventure may be pretty to look at, but they don't have any utility to me as a DM.
2. For a deluxe product, encounter maps for the players are nice. But these are only useful if they're formatted in a way which allows me to make a copy and slap it down on the table for actual, meaningful use in gameplay. I can't be the only one who looks at the maps in a lot of adventure modules today and say, "Wow, that looks fantastic! It's a pity the only thing my players will see is crude magic marker on a battlemap."
3. For many adventures, I like to include notes on how to incorporate elements of the adventure into the campaign as Groundwork. So if, for example, the bad guys in this particular adventure are the Brotherhood of the Ebon Basilisk, I might include notes on how you can include rumors of the Brotherhood and so forth. This type of detail helps the DM to intergrate an adventure into their campaign before they ever run it.
And, of course, you've got your standard plot hooks and aftermath sessions: How do you get the PCs involved and what happens when the adventure is all said and done.
What features have you found useful in an adventure module? What features would you like to see? What would make your life as a DM easier?
I'm not only curious. I'm looking for ways to continue improving our products.
Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net
Basically, I've long felt that adventure modules have been struggling under a legacy of inefficient and ineffective layouts: It's difficult to find particular encounter keys. Once you've found the encounter key, important information is often buried in the middle of big blocks of text. And so forth. When you're trying to run an adventure, you want to be able to instantly pull up the information you need right now -- you don't have time to read six paragraphs of text to figure out how to run a particular encounter.
Attempts to remedy this in recent years by various companies and creators have more often resulted in either (a) artificial one-size-fits-all organizational schemes which actually make the information for many encounters more opaque and difficult to process as the author tries to cram it into the preset categories; or (b) elaborate Rube Goldberg devices that don't seem to actually accomplish anything.
What you'll find in The Complex of Zombies is not a radical departure. It's not something that's going to leap off the page at you and slap you in the face with its brilliance. It's not going to require you to completely relearn how to process and use the adventure.
It is better thought of as a tidying. Or perhaps a tweaking.
Here are the major things I've tried to accomplish:
1. Each encounter is given a clear-cut possession to a slice of page space. They are positioned on the page in a way which makes it easy to quickly and easily find any given encounter key when you need to. This is accomplished by, in general, giving each encounter its own column: This means that encounter numbers can be clearly found at the top of each page, and each encounter is clearly delineated from each other. (There are two exceptions: Particularly shot encounter keys may end up being listed two to a column. Longer encounter keys may require more than a single column.)
2. The information in each encounter key is sub-divided into a number of smaller, bite-size chunks that can be quickly processed at a glance. (For example, you don't need to dig through an entire paragraph of text to discover -- buried somewhere near its center -- that there is relevant information to be gained from a Spot check in this area.) These bite-size chunks of data are described with clear titles in bold-face, which makes it easy for the DM to quickly process all the important elements of an encounter at a single glance and then pull out the information they need as they need it.
3. The presentation of certain types of information -- particularly skill checks -- are standardized, making it easier to find that information on the page and use that information while running the adventure. (But such standardization takes place at a fairly low-level of information, where such standardization makes the most sense. At the macro-level, the description of the encounter is structured and ordered in the way which makes the most sense for that particular encounter.)
4. Boxed text for every keyed encounter area. More importantly, this boxed text is properly implemented, which means that it: (a) Makes a consistent assumption of the illumination available to the PCs (and clearly states what this standard is). (b) Never assumes that the PCs are entering an area from a particular direction or at a particular time. (c) Never assumes that the PCs will take certain actions or attempt to make decisions for the PCs. (Not everyone will use boxed text verbatim, but properly executed boxed text is valuable nonetheless because it clearly delineates between "what the PCs will immediately know (and should know) about an encounter area" (the boxed text) and "what the PCs may discover about or do in an encounter area" (everything else in the encounter description.)
5. We took comments from our playtest groups and included their insights as Playtest Tips throughout the adventure. Have you ever run an adventure and realized that, if you had to run it again, things would go much better if you did X instead? Or handled a particular encounter in a slightly different way? Since adventures are so rarely run a second time, a lot of this insight is just wasted. But we've tried to capture some of that from our playtests so that other DMs can benefit from it.
As I say, none of these things are radical departures by any stretch of the imagination. But in the aggregate, I think they result in an adventure module which is clearer in its presentation, cleaner in its prepration, and easier in its running.
But I think that even more can be done. There are two other useful tools I love to see in an adventure module, but which were beyond the budget and/or scope of this particular release:
1. I like illustrations which from the POV of the PCs. You don't necessarily need to do a comprehensive illustration book like Tomb of Horrors, but if you're going to have illustrations, I think those illustrations should be dual-tasked so that they're useful as handouts. Being able to say, "You enter a room and it looks like this!" is great. Illustrations which feature other people's characters going through the adventure may be pretty to look at, but they don't have any utility to me as a DM.
2. For a deluxe product, encounter maps for the players are nice. But these are only useful if they're formatted in a way which allows me to make a copy and slap it down on the table for actual, meaningful use in gameplay. I can't be the only one who looks at the maps in a lot of adventure modules today and say, "Wow, that looks fantastic! It's a pity the only thing my players will see is crude magic marker on a battlemap."
3. For many adventures, I like to include notes on how to incorporate elements of the adventure into the campaign as Groundwork. So if, for example, the bad guys in this particular adventure are the Brotherhood of the Ebon Basilisk, I might include notes on how you can include rumors of the Brotherhood and so forth. This type of detail helps the DM to intergrate an adventure into their campaign before they ever run it.
And, of course, you've got your standard plot hooks and aftermath sessions: How do you get the PCs involved and what happens when the adventure is all said and done.
What features have you found useful in an adventure module? What features would you like to see? What would make your life as a DM easier?
I'm not only curious. I'm looking for ways to continue improving our products.
Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net
Seriously, there's a lot of ground to cover, so I salute all attempts to move the ball. Some ideas may turn out to be crap (trust me, I know) but the only dumb questions are unasked ones and all that. In the end better adventure design will make it easier for new GMs to run games, which means more games, which is good for the hobby, and so on.
