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What do you want in a published adventure? / Adventure design best practices?
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<blockquote data-quote="hastur_nz" data-source="post: 7157681" data-attributes="member: 40592"><p>Unfortunately "Best Practice" seems, since 3.5 days, to be Adventures that read really well as a type of book, but are actually quite difficult to use at the table. For example, in the Paizo days of Dungeon magazine, there were heaps of great adventures published, but the style was way too much "wall of text", and the key information for running encounters was spread all over the place (stuff like NPC Motives hidden early on in the background etc). The 5e book-adventures, for the most part, suffer exactly the same problems (Curse of Strahd is a prime example; Storm King's Thunder is slightly better but not much).</p><p></p><p>The other main things missing are usually:</p><p>1) Motives for NPC's, 'monsters' etc - mostly all we really get are bags of hit points waiting to get killed or ambushing the PC's so it's always 'kill or be killed'</p><p>2) Time-based and/or 'flowchart' plots - mostly the adventure is 100% static</p><p></p><p>So what I'm looking for, is mostly two things:</p><p>1) an adventure that is actually giving me all the key information I might need to run an Encounter, in a nice format that is in one place. For example, if the players are in a Town: who are the main NPC's, what might they be doing, what are their goals, flaws, etc; also any key time-based events, possible plot lines, etc. all in a page or two</p><p>2) an adventure that has lots of Great Ideas - I don't mind rough edges, but if I can get 80% of what I need, I'm happy to flesh out the missing bits, tweak it for my group, etc.</p><p></p><p>Bonus points for giving us some kind of Dynamic plot points - harder to write, and harder to DM, but ultimately these are often the best adventures. But to be honest, it's not essential as the players only ever see the plot that happens in the game, so even if it's a full-on railroad no-one has to know or care, if it's well written and well run.</p><p></p><p>I do run published adventures, mostly because I can find ones with loads of cool ideas, pre-made encounters, maps, etc, so I only have to round off the rough edges, flesh out motives and so on. Unfortunately, it's just more like 40% my work, not 20%.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="hastur_nz, post: 7157681, member: 40592"] Unfortunately "Best Practice" seems, since 3.5 days, to be Adventures that read really well as a type of book, but are actually quite difficult to use at the table. For example, in the Paizo days of Dungeon magazine, there were heaps of great adventures published, but the style was way too much "wall of text", and the key information for running encounters was spread all over the place (stuff like NPC Motives hidden early on in the background etc). The 5e book-adventures, for the most part, suffer exactly the same problems (Curse of Strahd is a prime example; Storm King's Thunder is slightly better but not much). The other main things missing are usually: 1) Motives for NPC's, 'monsters' etc - mostly all we really get are bags of hit points waiting to get killed or ambushing the PC's so it's always 'kill or be killed' 2) Time-based and/or 'flowchart' plots - mostly the adventure is 100% static So what I'm looking for, is mostly two things: 1) an adventure that is actually giving me all the key information I might need to run an Encounter, in a nice format that is in one place. For example, if the players are in a Town: who are the main NPC's, what might they be doing, what are their goals, flaws, etc; also any key time-based events, possible plot lines, etc. all in a page or two 2) an adventure that has lots of Great Ideas - I don't mind rough edges, but if I can get 80% of what I need, I'm happy to flesh out the missing bits, tweak it for my group, etc. Bonus points for giving us some kind of Dynamic plot points - harder to write, and harder to DM, but ultimately these are often the best adventures. But to be honest, it's not essential as the players only ever see the plot that happens in the game, so even if it's a full-on railroad no-one has to know or care, if it's well written and well run. I do run published adventures, mostly because I can find ones with loads of cool ideas, pre-made encounters, maps, etc, so I only have to round off the rough edges, flesh out motives and so on. Unfortunately, it's just more like 40% my work, not 20%. [/QUOTE]
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