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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9214791" data-attributes="member: 18">&quot;It has to be interesting to read. If I can’t enjoy reading the book first - it ain’t never gonna make it to the table. I’m not looking for a reference book - it’s got to take me on a journey.&quot;So like, I violently disagree with this, and I feel like this standard is one WotC holds its campaigns to, but I think it's also why so many of WotC's campaigns are not very good, and fail in other areas. Because they've been designed to be read, not designed to be run.By all means, have a strong and convincing synopsis of the campaign at the beginning, great, needed, useful. But if you design the entire campaign to read well, as a story, especially if you treat the DM as reader to be surprised by twists or the like, you end up writing a campaign that simply isn't designed primarily to play well, and that damages the product.Quite a few of the very best campaigns I've ever run for anything didn't read excitingly as I went through them, because they had good synopses which outlined the entire campaign in an easy-to-understand way, and gave me context for what I was going on to read, but also meant it wasn't a very exciting read, because I understood what was going on. Whereas I've read campaigns that were exciting to read, even thrilling, and played like absolute trash. Specifically the latter required vastly more effort from me to run - because they were so badly organised, organised like a story not a campaign, there was huge amounts of page-flipping, huge amounts of note-taking, and in general the through-line of the campaign wasn't anywhere near as robust as the campaigns that didn't take that approach.My minimum standard is thus that the campaign is written like a campaign, designed to be run as a campaign, not like a story, to be read. These two things are in conflict.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9214791, member: 18"] "It has to be interesting to read. If I can’t enjoy reading the book first - it ain’t never gonna make it to the table. I’m not looking for a reference book - it’s got to take me on a journey." So like, I violently disagree with this, and I feel like this standard is one WotC holds its campaigns to, but I think it's also why so many of WotC's campaigns are not very good, and fail in other areas. Because they've been designed to be read, not designed to be run. By all means, have a strong and convincing synopsis of the campaign at the beginning, great, needed, useful. But if you design the entire campaign to read well, as a story, especially if you treat the DM as reader to be surprised by twists or the like, you end up writing a campaign that simply isn't designed primarily to play well, and that damages the product. Quite a few of the very best campaigns I've ever run for anything didn't read excitingly as I went through them, because they had good synopses which outlined the entire campaign in an easy-to-understand way, and gave me context for what I was going on to read, but also meant it wasn't a very exciting read, because I understood what was going on. Whereas I've read campaigns that were exciting to read, even thrilling, and played like absolute trash. Specifically the latter required vastly more effort from me to run - because they were so badly organised, organised like a story not a campaign, there was huge amounts of page-flipping, huge amounts of note-taking, and in general the through-line of the campaign wasn't anywhere near as robust as the campaigns that didn't take that approach. My minimum standard is thus that the campaign is written like a campaign, designed to be run as a campaign, not like a story, to be read. These two things are in conflict. [/QUOTE]

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