Thank Goodness: Moving away from the Delve format

[S'mon]

Sounds like good news.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is of some concern to me an an online DM, because it raises the spectre that I won't be able to use the printed maps for my game (because the resolution is too low to allow it to be magnified to usable size).

Yeah, I'm not sure. They are decent sized maps but you may have to do some work on that. I run a decent amount of stuff on Maptool myself. I'd say this, for that specific adventure you should be able to draw up maps easily, it is very much a dungeon type environment. In general large scale maps like that probably aren't the best option.

OTOH the maps in most modules aren't much use either since they have lots of big markers all over them for starting positions...

 

[Baz King]

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.

My only real experience of Bruce's work has been for 4e. His adventures are... poor. Nightwyrm Fortress? Prince of Undeath? And it wasn't the format that made those modules as bad as they are.

 

[delericho]

My only real experience of Bruce's work has been for 4e. His adventures are... poor. Nightwyrm Fortress? Prince of Undeath? And it wasn't the format that made those modules as bad as they are.

Then do yourself a favour and check out his earlier works. "Gates of Firestorm Peak", "Shattered Circle", "Sunless Citadel", "The Sinister Spire"... There are others, but those are the ones I'm most familiar with, or those that are best-regarded.

He has a reputation for a reason, and it's not undeserved.

 

[superpriest]

There are some fantastic Bruce Cordell adventures. My favorites are Return to the Tomb of Horrors and If Thoughts Could Kill. One that looked great but I didn't get to run was Bastion of Broken Souls.

I get that he's had some crappy ones in 4th Edition -- but most WotC adventures in 4E look crappy to me. I've had more success running adventures from previous editions as 4E adventures (like RttToH).

 

[Windjammer]

My only real experience of Bruce's work has been for 4e. His adventures are... poor. Nightwyrm Fortress? Prince of Undeath? And it wasn't the format that made those modules as bad as they are.

You forgot the Elephant in the room: Cordell wrote the 4E Dark Sun adventure Marauders of the x Sea. I quote from an Amazon review, to show that Cordell doesn't care any longer - he has reached rock bottom.

Like other reviewers, I find it shameful that this adventure was ever deemed worthy of carrying the "Dark Sun" name, let alone the D&D name. In fact, it's just a shame to have carried any name whatsoever, short of "Todd," which I hate anyway. So let's start with that: this adventure should have been named "Todd."

"Todd" was obviously conceived as a generic (or at least non-Dark Sun) adventure. This is not necessarily a bad thing, I've done it myself, and haha let me tell you, there's nothing like the look on a D&D player's face when you put him face to face with Captain Mal and River Tam. I digress.

Minor spoilers ahoy, matey!

As I said, nothing wrong with porting an adventure to a new setting. But when converting an adventure from one setting to another, you actually have to know and understand your destination setting--especially something so radically different as Dark Sun--which Bruce Cordell (no relation to Bruce Campbell, I am told) clearly did not. For example, we know that for most Athasian city-dwellers, literacy is a crime. We know this because the EFFING DARK SUN BOOK TELLS US THIS ON PAGE 14!!!!! Yet the first hook in the adventure is to have House Shom pass out scrolls to everyone carrying a sword. Because House Shom are, apparently, idiots. Literate idiots, I'll give you that. But when the long-dead Athasian Gods were handing out brains, House Shom thought they said "Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you!" (that's right, gentle reader, you've just been textually rick-rolled. You're welcome.)

Then there's the dungeon with the underground river (like, with water and giant sea creatures and stuff) with absolutely no explanation as to how this came to pass on a completely arid world. (How do we know Dark Sun takes place on an arid world? Because the EFFING DARK SUN BOOK TELLS US THIS ON PAGE 4!!!!! AND THE FIRST 3 PAGES ARE THE GORRAM TABLE OF CONTENTS!!!) Seriously, access to the stream would be worth more than all the treasure combined in this module and the next 10 Dark Sun adventures combined. In fact, your players could be excused for just stopping at the river room, and pretty much setting up shop to be the richest bastards on the planet.

Finally we have a mysterious dungeon which nobody on the planet seems to be able to locate. Which is understandable considering that the entrance only has a 100 foot gigantic frowny face made of rock, or that it's within a 6 day walk of Tyr, surrounded by a giant sand vortex that should be viewable for miles and miles, populated by some creatures with no visible means of sustaining themselves. Oh, except the river. I forgot about the river. Which the cave denizens presumably use for snorkeling, water skiing, and playing water polo with Team Kuo Toa when they're not using it for raising their gigantic and completely inexplicable water-breathing lobster creature. On Athas. The desert planet. Which we know is a desert planet because of page 4 of the goddamned Dark Sun book.

As somebody else pointed out, the table maps are kinda handy, but obviously produced from a non-Dark Sun source as it shows horses and oxen, two creatures that don't even exist on Athas. (maybe they are metal sculptures of these mythical-to-Athas beasts? Yeah, I'm gonna go with "metal sculptures" because hell why not, rivers and metal statues of horses for everyone!) The other side of the map is--bizarrely--dedicated to a relatively minor encounter that has nothing to do with the main focus of the adventure other than to wear the players down a bit. (side trek: the author missed a golden opportunity here, and instead of spiders that spin glass webs should have placed a magic fairy forest where the PCs have to fight Clerics and Paladins.)

And it's not just the world inconsistencies that make this such a dog. I paid $12 for this thing. TWELVE bucks! And for that I get a lame setup ("hey how about some dude sticks a scroll in your hands saying to wander out into the desert with no idea where you're going, and find this, you know, face dungeon place"), a yawn-worthy and pretty short dungeon crawl (except for the river, holy crap your PCs are going to be rich beyond their wildest dreams!!!!), and a conclusion that basically amounts to, "um...you know...whatever works for you is how you should end it because hey we already have your twelve goddam dollars so you know, there's that."

This adventure is a real insult to Dark Sun fans, and the fact that it's the first 4e adventure out of the gate makes the insult even more insulty. The only positive thing I can say about it is that the adventure (such as it is) is well organized, typos are relatively few, and the encounters are presented in an easy to DM manner, if you were to actually run this disaster. Which you will not. Oh no, no, no. You will not buy this steaming pile, you will not incorporate it into your Dark Sun campaign, and you will most definitely not subject your poor players to it. Not if you don't want that game night to be know forever as "the night [insert your name here] sucked the soul out of the universe and destroyed all love and double rainbows forever and ever oh my god I hate [insert your name here] SO MUCH!!!!!"

Another reviewer recommended "The Vault of Darom Madar" from Dungeon 181 instead of this 32 page hate on paper. I heartily concur. In fact, if it came down to running this adventure or running the editorial section of the Wall Street Journal, I'd say you should bone up on how to read a PNL statement before embarking on your journey to "Temple of the Fiscally Irresponsible Elves."

In summary: One star because hey, nice font.

 

[Ramius613]

As a DM, I kind of liked the delve format. However, it could have been improved upon. I was running an SoW campaign, so all of my adventures were in digital format. If they had made the PDFs have links to the Encounters, along with a link back to your place in the story line, I think it would have worked well.

I did like the smaller images of the encounter areas, since I was able to scale them up for use in Maptools, and they usually put out the maps in Dungeon both with, and without the Monster tags (I just wish they would have hidden the traps and secret doors.)

I am interested in seeing this new format.

 

[Obryn]

My only real experience of Bruce's work has been for 4e. His adventures are... poor. Nightwyrm Fortress? Prince of Undeath? And it wasn't the format that made those modules as bad as they are.

Well... I think it was part of it, having run (part of) Nightwyrm Fortress.

If your adventure needs to be broken into distinct encounters, you lose a lot of chances for diplomacy and intrigue. Also, it becomes a big railroad - you can't waste two pages on a fight the PCs will never get into. While P2 partially solved this, P3 was abominable.

I'd like to think that, given Bruce's earlier work like the modern classic, Sunless Citadel, P3 could have been a lot better. With more pages to develop motivations and factions, with room devoted into exploring the Fortress, and with more NPCs to interact with, it could have been a much better module.

-O

 

[Windjammer]

If your adventure needs to be broken into distinct encounters, you lose a lot of chances for diplomacy and intrigue. Also, it becomes a big railroad - you can't waste two pages on a fight the PCs will never get into.

Exactly. As Rob Schwalb put it a couple of months ago:

I eventually warmed to the new [sc. Delve] format. Tactical encounters made the whole enterprise easier. Features, creatures, setup, and all the important content were in their sections. A DM could run the fight cold, without having to mark up the adventure to highlight key elements. Fights became more interesting and far more engaging. In the end, I embraced the tactical encounter format (not that I had much of a choice).

Years later, I’m still chewing on them and their implementation in the game. When writing adventures using this format, there’s less room to develop story content because every expected combat must fall in the one or two page encounter spread. If I put three fights in a 10-page adventure, I only have 4 pages left to frame in the plot. That’s pretty damned tough. Furthermore, devoting 6 pages to combat encounters in the adventure suggests they really shouldn’t be option. Skip one fight and you’ve lost 20% of the adventure content.


What I’ve found (and I’m sure some folks have done the same) is that the tactical encounters have come to define the adventures. Exploration, unconventional thinking, and problem solving have taken a back seat to tactics and optimization. For dungeon delves, this is awesome. For ongoing campaigns?

 

[delericho]

Tactical encounters made the whole enterprise easier. Features, creatures, setup, and all the important content were in their sections. A DM could run the fight cold, without having to mark up the adventure to highlight key elements. Fights became more interesting and far more engaging.

Absolutely. That is exactly the strength of the Delve format. (It's also why I don't think it's wise to abandon it totally. I mentioned the possibility of the "emergency adventure" in a previous post - a short zero-prep Delve to be run in a single session. I feel this format is ideal for that.)

When writing adventures using this format, there’s less room to develop story content because every expected combat must fall in the one or two page encounter spread. If I put three fights in a 10-page adventure, I only have 4 pages left to frame in the plot.

Here's a thought: did every encounter need to be a 1-page spread? Would it have been possible to encapsulate a simple encounter in half a page? Alternately, if you have four encounters that all share the same environmental conditions and most of the same monsters, could those be combined into a single 2-page spread?

(I would have thought that something like "Sons of Grummsh" could be done in this way.)

That way, you get the tactical spreads without eating up so much space.

(Also, electronic publishing should mean that this isn't the same issue as in print. It should be possible to drag-and-drop large parts of the 2-page spreads into place, after having written the "story" part of the adventure. After all, they're going to be reusing a lot of stat blocks, environmental conditions, and so on. And who really cares if a PDF runs to 41 pages instead of 40?)

Furthermore, devoting 6 pages to combat encounters in the adventure suggests they really shouldn’t be option. Skip one fight and you’ve lost 20% of the adventure content.

I can see possible conclusions from this:

1) They're putting the cart before the horse. The format should not dictate the structure of the adventure, and groups missing 20% of the content shouldn't be an issue. Better to use 80% of a good adventure than 100% of a poor one - especially since it's more likely that groups will instead use 0% of the poor one.

Alternately:

2) If it's really not acceptable to skip the encounter and miss the content, then the Delve format is unusable, except for the "emergency adventure"/Dungeon Delve style game.