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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 6232612" data-attributes="member: 2656">Tastes differ so I don't think that there can be a comprehensive list of necessary qualities for a good adventure module. If there are stated design goals for the adventure we can attempt to assess how well the adventure achieves those goals. My personal constant is that sloppiness annoys me. Glaring logical flaws in the adventure, missing maps, unsound assumptions can torpedo an adventure that otherwise has potential in it's individual components.I find that adventures written to read well can be harder to use in a game, as important information hidden in large tracts of prose, no matter how well written, are much harder to reference on the fly.Adventures which aren't strongly integrated into a setting are easier to adapt and have a larger catchment audience but can suffer from being generic and flat. Tightly integrated adventures can be much more evocative of a setting, but are often difficult to impossible to adapt to other settings and campaigns.Faulty assumptions about possible PC motivations can sabotage an adventure. There are practical limits as to how non-linear adventures can be before most of the printed content risks being skipped. Most printed adventures are horrifyingly linear, as that's the easiest sort of adventure to write, and work ok for passive players and games that suit reactive play. This allows more time to be devoted to the writing of the adventure, props and handouts, rather than making the adventure less linear. Call of Cthulhu adventures have a high writing standard, but do tend to have very linear plots, especially the older ones.Linear plots are also much easier on new referees and new players. Dungeon crawls automatically reduce the number of decisions points presented to the players, which can be very useful to new players learning a game. Conversely, more experienced players generally want more decision points in their games.All of which is problematic, as adventures don't sell well anyway. The more targetted an adventure is the smaller it's prospective audience.</blockquote>

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