Thank Goodness: Moving away from the Delve format

[jimmifett]

I quite like the delve format for combat encounters with a few caveats. I prefer having story either at the front and encounters at the back or in a separate book so I can flip between them easily. In the delve, i want non-plot important loot. In the story, I want plot important loot. This way I can follow along the story before playing, glancing at the combat to get a feel, and not have to search for a referenced key or item or npc rescued in the delve block. In the delve, I want to have the easy answer for my players of gold, magic items or parcel slot, and XP with the combat itself.

 

[delericho]

This is a good move. They shouldn't abandon the Delve format totally though - it has at least one really useful application: a short one-night, zero-prep adventure. Something for the time-strapped DM to pull out and use at the last minute. That is: a dungeon delve.

Oh great, so we're possibly back to collating the necessary information from different books on the fly?

Note that he didn't actually say that. Removing the two-page spread does not necessarily mean that they won't still include all the information required for the encounter in the encounter description.

Wait, Bruce Cordell - Bruce "Sunless Citadel" Cordell - has a supervisor?!

There was a time when I would have bought any adventure by Bruce Cordell sight-unseen. Sadly, those days are long since gone. Indeed, since "Sunless Citadel", his adventures have been largely mediocre. The only exception I can think of is "The Sinister Spire", which was a collaboration with Ari Marmell.

(I should note that I haven't read them all, of course.)

Not that he's any worse than any other adventure writer at WotC - again, with only a few exceptions, their published adventures have always been generally poor, even as far back as that original 3e Adventure Path.

 

[nikadeemus327]

As a new DM I'm not sure what this actually means. Will I have to consult different pages of potentially different source books for monster stats/tactics, environmental features, etc? Having everything I need to run a combat at my finger tips has been pretty great. I really hope that's not going to change. DMing is a chore as it is.

However, if it just means a more condensed version with the same information then sign me up.

 

[Pbartender]

I love the basic idea of the Delve format (putting all the information for a single encounter in one spot to minimize page-flipping in the midst of action), but hated the implementation (putting all the encounters together in a separate section apart from the rest of the adventure).

 

[TerraDave]

Great column....and we get going ape next week to boot! (I don't what it is...but I bet it has an ape, maybe more then one!)

 

[DNH]

I guess we shall see what they have come up with next week, at least part of it. I don't particularly have a problem with the delve format per se. In fact, I find they work rather well for individual combat encounters. My gripe is with the to-ing and fro-ing that the adventures require. You might have several pages of background and exposition, even for particular events and locations, and then just a reference - "Encounter B2: Out of the Mists (p42)" or somesuch (although you're lucky if you get a page ref!). You then have to skim forward to the delve format encounter on page 42, run that, then page back to where you were, and so on. If they manage to incorporate encounter info at an appropriate place in the adventure, so it all "flows" properly from start to end, then I will be very happy. I am not bothered about turning a few pages during the encounter to get to all my data - it doesn't *have* to all fit on a two-page spread - but I don't like getting lost in amongst all the page-turning that we have now.

 

[Klaus]

As others said, the delve format has its place. As Bruce said, not every encounter should warrant it.

 

[OnlineDM]

I interpret this in part as meaning that there will be more variety in encounters. If every encounter gets the two-page delve format, then every encounter will be of a similar "size" in-game. If there's a possible encounter where the PCs might get jumped by a few goons, that encounter would probably not get written at all if it had to be presented in the two-page format (it's not worth the space). But if all you need is one stat block for the goon and a few lines about tactics and aftermath (maybe not even bothering with a map for an encounter that minor), you can do that if you're not required to make it take up more space.

I have no idea whether this is good or bad, granted, but it's probably a little more "old school". Right now it feels like every combat encounter in D&D4e is a big set piece that takes a lot of time to run. I don't know if it's possible to have some minor quickie encounters that are still fun, but I'm guessing we're going to get to see.

 

[Nullzone]

The way I take the article, they're saying they'll go into as much detail as the encounter needs to make it feel right, rather than sticking in stat blocks, tactical map, and box text, and then seeing how much space they had left on the two-page spread to actually "fluff up" the encounter.

In which case, I approve. What I don't want to see is the problem that a lot of the Dungeon mag adventures have of putting all of the story framework up front and then making you flip 20 pages to find the encounter information in the back. It breaks flow for me something fierce.

 

[Zaran]

I'd be all about the 2-page format if it was say 4 pages and meant I didn't have to flip back and forth through the book between the encounters and the map/outline/NPC info.