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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8532924" data-attributes="member: 29398">That's all I want from a published adventure: an adventure site.  From an AP book a la the WotC hardcovers, I want a series of adventure sites; I'll connect them together myself.All of what's in points 1, 2, and 3 above is stuff that I (or the players) will be providing in whatever context the adventure (or AP) is set, so I don't need any of that in the book.Point 5 is absolutely vital.What I really would like to see more of in published adventures is at least some consideration for obvious "what if"s.  Far too many adventure writers make the mistake of assuming the PCs will do or not do certain things, go in certain directions, and so forth; and when the players/PCs do something different the DM is left with no choice but to wing it - which would be fine except whatever she dreams up has to be consistent with the written module, and this can be damn hard to pull off.A made-up example might be an adventure where the party is supposed to explore a castle.  The author assumes the party will find a way in on the ground floor - the front door, a window, a postern door, whatever - and writes accordingly; never once considering that even the lowest-level of parties probably have some means of accessing the roof and going in that way. (even worse; though the module might mention guards on the roof as the PCs approach there's no means of interior access shown on the map, thus when the PCs get up there and start looking for a way inside - those guards got up here somehow! - the DM is hung out to twist)A very common result of this type of thinking is boxed text that assumes (without saying so) the party will come in to a room or area through a particular entrance even though there are two other doors and a window they could come through via outside-the-box thinking and-or navigation.  Any time you see descriptive boxed text referring to "left", "right", "ahead", and-or "behind" rather than compass directions you'll know you've hit one of these.Another obvious what-if that's all too commonly overlooked is "what if the PCs fail?", either at a key moment within the adventure or at the overall mission.  What happens next? In some cases it's fairly obvious: failure to beat the Giants means the Giants just go on with their lives and maybe have some tasty tasty characters for the cookpot tonight.But in some cases it's not, and for this one I have a poster-child example: H1 Keep on the Shadowfell.  In that one the whole thing revolves around the final encounter, which is a typical-for-4e-D&D big set-piece battle* with lots of moving parts; yet there's no guidance given as to what happens should the PCs interact with some of those moving parts (e.g. what if, like some of my players' PCs, they attack the thing being summoned instead of those doing the summoning?  or, is there any way they can shut it down via stealth rather than combat?), nor to what happens should the PCs lose that battle (very relevant should some of them survive and be able to retreat).  I've run many a canned module and none has left me pulling my hair out the way the end of that one did. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />* - big set-piece battle scenes are IME and IMO a real strong point of 4e's adventure modules.</blockquote>

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