D&D General Orcs on Stairs (When Adventures Are Incomplete)

[James Gasik]

I don't know if they are paid up front but they do get a cut of the sales.

Ok, so they really should be putting their best efforts forward. I'll let my friends who survived DDEX 1-6: The Scroll Thief that their ire is justified, lol.

 

[pukunui]

Ok, so they really should be putting their best efforts forward. I'll let my friends who survived DDEX 1-6: The Scroll Thief that their ire is justified, lol.

I enjoyed the Scroll Thief. I’ve run it twice, once as part of the season 1 story and once as an interlude in Baldur’s Gate during my Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign.

 

[James Gasik]

I enjoyed the Scroll Thief. I’ve run it twice, once as part of the season 1 story and once as an interlude in Baldur’s Gate during my Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign.

I probably could stand to read it again, but something really went wrong during that adventure. It went over time, I had to cut an encounter, and the final battle proved brutal for the party, with the Fighter making death saves before his first turn!

 

[MarkB]

Levitate. Teleport. Dimension Door. Fly.

Or just something that gives you a Climb speed. My 4e fighter got some Bracers of Brachiation pretty early on, and kept them long after higher-tier items were available, because they just had so much utility. Aside from being able to scale almost any solid obstacle, he'd often use them tactically in combat, running up walls to make it impossible to flank him, or along them to evade difficult terrain.

 

[James Gasik]

Or just something that gives you a Climb speed. My 4e fighter got some Bracers of Brachiation pretty early on, and kept them long after higher-tier items were available, because they just had so much utility. Aside from being able to scale almost any solid obstacle, he'd often use them tactically in combat, running up walls to make it impossible to flank him, or along them to evade difficult terrain.

My Ranger had Wall Walkers for a very long time, until he got Winged Boots in Epic Tier. The ability to wall run like a ninja came in handy a lot!

 

[Lanefan]

Hard disagree and you offer no justification for this claim. You seriously need to offer a detailed justification for a claim that utterly wild. Especially the "probably".

It's easy to write adventures and keep player enjoyment in mind, even when writing generically.

A writer doesn't and can't know what any given player or group of players is going to find to be fun. However, a writer does know, or can be told, what a typical DM will find useful.

Nope.

If the module is designed without even considering whether it will actually be fun, the odds of it being a completely pointless snoozefest (as many published modules are), go up by like 1000%, for the very simple and obvious reason that it was designed thoughtlessly and without any conception of real-world usage.

That's just it, though - what to you is a snoozefest may to others be an excellent adventure module.

Yeah, you can't know the exact situations, but you can know the broad likely parameters, and as an experienced D&D DM, unless you're a terrible DM who isn't fun (which I doubt), you can guess what players are likely to enjoy, and what they're not.

Your own players, yes. Everyone else out there? Much less likely.

That has to be in your mind, otherwise you end up writing an onanistic adventure which pleases you, the writer, but was not written to be played, just read by a DM.

This is a major and common flaw of adventure writers, as this thread discusses. Your line of thinking here is basically a big part of why so many published adventures are so bad, and why some standouts are remarkably reliably good (because they did think about how players would respond).

Curious - which ones do you consider standouts?

That's totally different from "let's ignore whether stuff is likely to be fun". You write so the DM can run the adventure, that doesn't require you to stop thinking about how players are likely to react. Indeed, if you're not thinking about how players will react/respond/enjoy/dislike stuff, please don't write and publish adventures! Or put a health warning on them, like "This is for the DM, your players might well think it's terrible, I don't give two shakes of a lamb's tail!". All the worst adventures I've ever read/run/played were written by people who didn't think about or care about how players would react, and all the ones which I see as "ol' reliable" or the like have at least some consideration of that, and make allowances for it.

Gygax wrote two modules back in the 1e days, doubtless because he thought players would find them to be cool and-or fun. The presentation/layout/etc. of these modules was neither better nor worse than many others of the era, so that aspect is a wash.

These two modules turned out to be among the least popular of the 1e era, and remain so today, because he guessed wrong: players did not find them fun. Nor, from all I can tell, did DMs.

And for those few who haven't yet figured out which modules I'm referring to, they're EX1 Dungeonland and EX2 Beyond the Magic Mirror.

 

[Lanefan]

Birthright should have been way more popular than it was. But...I never found one group that was interested in the premise, in fact, one guy I know rather dismissively said "it's just a big setup to justify PvP". : (

Sounds fine to me.

As for magic is for magic-wielders...here's why this bothers me. When every class in the game but 2 or 3 is locked out of certain kinds of mechanics because "non-magic", but the "magic" classes can get their hands on mechanics the "non-magic" guys use, that's a bit weird.

The problem perhaps is that full casters get too many melee or non-magical combat options. Clerics, sure - there's tradition there. Anyone else*? No. They're casters, and if they've got into melee they're doing it wrong and deserve what comes next.

* - ignoring Bards, who IMO shouldn't be full casters anyway.

 

[Lanefan]

What does DMs needs mean?

If you mean the adventure should be written to ensure the DMs understanding and to ensure the DM has as many tools as possible to properly present the adventure to the players? Then yes, I agree

But too many adventures (ESPECIALLY current adventures) seem to be written for the READING enjoyment of the DM. as in they're written (and organized) more for the DMs reading enjoyment than in a manor optimal for him to run for actual players. IMO this style of presentation tends to make it more difficult for the DM to properly organize and run the scenarios.

Agreed. When I refer to the DM's needs I'm talking about things needed to run the module smoothly and easily.

I'm with @Ruin Explorer on this one. If the "fun" of the players is not a high priority in the writing, the adventure suffers. The whole point of published modules is to have "fun" situations that the DM can present to his players.

I disagree. The whole point of published modules is to have situations. Whether those situations are "fun" or not is going to vary widely from one table - or even one player - to the next, no matter how they are presented.

The main variables the author does have control over are a) how unique or unusual or different those situations are from what's been done before, and b) how clearly and succinctly the material is presented to the DM such that she can run it without hedaches.

Of these, a) comes down to random guess whether any given players will find any of these odd situations fun or not, while getting b) right will always make a DM's job easier regardless of any other considerations.

 

[James Gasik]

Sounds fine to me.

The problem perhaps is that full casters get too many melee or non-magical combat options. Clerics, sure - there's tradition there. Anyone else*? No. They're casters, and if they've got into melee they're doing it wrong and deserve what comes next.

* - ignoring Bards, who IMO shouldn't be full casters anyway.

But then you have Bladesingers and Hexblades...

 

[Scott Christian]

Well you didn't ask me, but a good layout is an adventure that has multiple sections that can be completed in any order, a general timeline for how events unfold (and how the players' actions can affect the timeline)

Again, genuinely curious. How does an author create multiple sections that can be completed in any order and have a timeline. Wouldn't the timeline effect the sections, which in turn, make those sections incredibly lengthy?

a synopsis for how the adventure is meant to proceed, several plot hooks given, as well as more written into the adventure

I always like these. I also think there are many players that like to write their own backgrounds, and incorporating those seems to be more work than hooks. But, that is a part B to this part A. (Sorry for the side rant.)

each major battle having it's tactics and terrain features spelled out, so you can at least have a good sense for how everything is meant to proceed

I am all for incorporating interesting and unique features into combat. I really like it when they do this. That said, sometimes I think it is like salt: use too much and it overwhelms the senses. Use just enough and the food tastes just right. But we all have different salt levels.

and at least a sidebar, if not a page or two, devoted to troubleshooting.

The only thing I disagree with you. The troubleshooting is so different, table by table, I feel like the DM should handle it. But that's just me. I think I am in the minority here.