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Message: <blockquote data-quote="R_J_K75" data-source="post: 8010890" data-attributes="member: 6921294">I agree with a lot of what other people have said here from the posts Ive read.  I do think that a lot depends on the DM and the group of players how an adventure plays and most of the time even a mediocre adventure can be somewhat salvaged.  What I look for in an adventure is brevity, one that covers 1-2 levels of character advancement and something I can complete in 1-2 four hour sessions, give or take, roughly 32 pages.  Much more than this I consider a mini-campaign at the least.  I don't want a sandbox because if that were the case I would just start and run my own campaign, which is what I normally do now.  I want a straight forward plot that doesn't force me to railroad the players but has a little leeway with a few options so the players can make their own decisions.  It shouldn't take too long to set the stage and get the adventure on its way.  There should be a clear cut objective and the hook not be contrived.  It has to make sense as to why the party is undertaking the task.  I also want it to be linear, to move things along at a steady pace, but again there should be decision points for the party along the way. It must be challenging and perhaps even have a few player deaths, while the objective still being obtainable.  Minimal window dressing is all I need, maybe a tavern, a few NPCs and one or two unique monsters.  I can fill in the rest.  When gauging an adventure, I'll read it front to back, look at the maps, monsters NPCs, new spells and magical items and then decide if its something I want to run.  One of my main considerations is how is the module laid out?  If its pretty linear then its good, if its all over the place where I'm going to do constant page flipping then its not worth my trouble.  The later 3.5 and 4E formats were ridiculous the one page layout that forced you to flip from the descriptive page to the mechanics page to run an encounter.  I generally don't want phone book size entries for rooms, areas, histories or NPC backgrounds, again a solid foundation is all I need and I can fill in the rest.  Same thing goes for town or wilderness map locations, less is more. When it comes to new rules I consider it on a case by case basis.  A short new rule for s specific circumstance is OK if not welcome but I don't want new races, classes, subclasses or backgrounds, I don't use them.  Rule sub-systems as well, for instance the seafaring rules in Ghosts of Saltmarsh, while they rightly belong in that book, a free download off WotC site would be nice with just the mechanics so I don't have drag out the book every time I need to reference them. Finally the more an adventure is self contained the better.  When an NPC has a spell or there's a monster from another source outside of the 3 core books it just makes it that more cumbersome to run.  9 out of 10 times if I've taken the time to read the adventure I run it, but I'll probably modify it somewhat to suit my needs if its relatively easy to do so.</blockquote>

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