What does well designed mean?

[Hussar]

Agreed.

In fact, I've started at least one thread around here to try to begin identifying & naming the different things different people want from modules, but they didn't go anywhere.

While I think it would be possible to come pretty close to an "all things to all people" sort of module, I'm not sure how practical it would be. At the least, though, it'd be nice if we had even a rough classification system so modules could have something on the cover that would give you a rough idea of whether it is aimed at your needs or someone else's.

I could certainly get on board with that. For example, some modules, particularly early ones, served a pedagogical function (or attempted to) and tried to teach new DM's how to make adventures. Others served as story boards to further particular campaign setting plots (Time of Troubles for example). Others were straight up dungeon crawls and so on.

I notice that Paizo's new line of designators for the Game Mastery Line is a step in this direction:

These alphanumeric designators hearken back to the old way of numbering modules from the earliest days of RPGs. With a few exceptions (the A, D, G, and Q series, for example) the older module lines used their alphanumeric designators to denote adventures of a similar nature that aren't related. Don't think of any series designator we've announced so far as being a set of sequels you can run one after another. Consider each adventure separately unless it specifically calls itself a sequel to an earlier adventure. The designator is just there to tell you what kind of adventure to expect, with the number telling you the order in which we published it.

What, then, do the designators mean?

D is for Dungeon. These adventures take place primarily in a dungeon, whether that means an underground complex or some other kind of self-contained area for PCs to explore.

E is for Event. These adventures focus on some kind of event you can place anywhere you want, such a jousting tournament, a royal wedding, or (as in the example of E1) a carnival. Although all E adventures will be set somewhere in our campaign setting, they are the easiest to place anywhere you want or need them.

J is for Journey. These adventures either focus on a journey to some exotic locale or else deal with what you find once you get to such an interesting place. (J1 takes place in Osirion, the Egypt analog of Golarion.)

U is for Urban. These adventures take place in cities and focus on the kinds of adventures you can only have when surrounded by thousands of other people. (U1 occurs in a wealthy district of Absalom, one of the largest cities on Golarion.)

W is for Wilderness. These adventures occur in the wild places of the world. You might have a hint of civilization in a W adventure, but the main focus is on the untamed areas. (PCs in W1 attempt to civilize Bloodsworn Vale.)

I wonder if a further classification system would be useful as well - designations denoting difficulty for example - both in encounters and in running the module. You might get a W module ranked 8 (out of 10) for lethality and 4 (out of 10) for difficulty of use. Something like that.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

IMO art-heirophants should just take science classes or logic classes to get their desire for rigour out of their system. The nature of intelligence, beauty, clarity, elegence, etc - are just simply not understood in an objective way. It seems very common on this board for folks to take their opinions and want to make them facts - I suppose it's a way of gaining validity.

So you don't think that there are reliable ways of generating quality in module writing, discovered by innovators and pioneers, that could be written down and emulated by aspiring module writers? I think that the structural elements mentioned by some of the other posters are good examples of exactly that process.

The rules of English are pretty well formalized, so it's well-defined and useful to tell me that such-and-such a module uses poor grammar. But an overall assessment (ex. "that module is poorly-designed") without the specifics is useless to me.

It seems to me that the point of the thread was to figure out the specifics so that they can be discussed and evaluated.

 

[Janx]

Yes, but every one of your specific examples would/could be rated differently by individuals depending on their priorities. And that, for me, is the crux of the issue. Because when someone wants to say "that's a poorly/well designed module" their making a value judgement, not only about the factors of what's good or not, but by the degree to which those factors are important. I, for instance, don't care at all about artwork and yet I see it crop up time and time again in reviews. So how does one come up with an over-all, universal assessment of quality when people have different priorities? The only way I can see to do it is to tell everyone else what their priorities should be.

This line of thought is being expressed by a number of folks:
The point of view that quality is subjective and you can't quantitatively define it such that a majority of people will agree something is quality.

I argue that pursuing this line of thought is fruitless. Since the extreme outcome of it is "nobody can agree on anything because beauty is in the eye of the beholder", you can't get a useful set of tips on how to make a module a better design. Therefore, any train of thought that eliminates the ability to codify the problem isn't useful (in the context of actually trying to solve the problem in a reasonable fashion).

It is a true that no two people will value and compare 2 modules the same way. It is also true that if there were a set of "module design rules", somebody could defy those rules and produce the world's best module.

However, I suspect that for most modules, if there module design guidelines existed and were followed, the module would be better designed than not following them. In all processes, there must exist rule 0, which is "ignore the other rules if they impede a better solution".

The "module design guidelines" are what I believe the OP is asking for ideas on. Arguing that you can't create such guidelines is not what the OP asked for (and thus is off-topic).

Earlier in this thread, Jmuchicelo brought up some great points on where a module goes bad (bad logic, bad balance, inconsistency, etc). Rycanda's got a great thread going on encounter design (his thesis being, adopt a format that makes sure you have enough components for a well designed encounter).

Turning these ideas into well written design tips will most likely help people writing modules (or adventures for their home game) do a better, consistent job. It will certainly reduce the number of bugs in a module. I suspect more than a few people could learn something about how to design a good module/adventure, just by considering the ideas in this thread, and refining their own methods.

 

[Raven Crowking]

A well-designed adventure module sets the stage, and that's all.

I'd go a bit farther.

The Crucible of Freya, from Necromancer Games, is a great module. It has a lot of pieces you can use. You can take it apart to use it, or you can use it as it is. It offers a plot, but can be used without a plot. It is not so detailed that you cannot easily fit it into your home campaign, yet not so lacking in detail as to be boring.

Maiden Voyage is a plot based adventure, which cannot easily be used without using the events described, but the events themselves are really just a skeleton that the DM can lay the flesh onto as he sees fit. There is enough detail to run it without a lot of additional prep, yet not so much detail that you need to massively rework it for your home game.

Lion In The Ropes is both location and plot based, and requires more work than either of the two aforementioned modules to use it in a home game, but nonetheless rewards that effort well. Like the others, it has neither so much detail as to get in the way of customization, nor so little as to make it bland and flavourless.

In fact, in terms of flavour, amount of detail, and ability to work into a home campaign, I like those three modules even more than the DCC line by Goodman Games.

I can live with the occasional typo, and the world won't come to an end if a +7 should have been +8. If the artwork is mediocre, well, I can deal with that too. What I want is something that can be grasped quickly in an initial read-through, that offers detail and interesting things, and that is not so overladen with campaign-specific details that it is hard to rework into an existing game.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

So, on to what I think good design is...

I can agree with all that.

RC

 

[gizmo33]

To take this discussion outside the realm of gaming for a moment, try comparing two imaginary cars. In most respects, the two cars are mostly identical, except one is much safer to drive, has better gas mileage, and is cheaper for the manufacturer to make. By your argument, I would be foolish to say that the safer and cheaper car is better, because that is an "opinion" and "not objective" because it is a quality judgement, and that is equally valid for a car to be expensive and unsafe. Yet, I think it is plain that saying "a cheaper and safer car is better" is perfectly reasonable.

Yes, of course you think it's plain. All of my opinions are plainly obvious to me as well. I agree with some of what you're saying, and probably with the important points.

What I'm basically saying is to be more specific about what is good, or even why those specific elements are good. Then, if you want to say according to the "TwinBahamut car rating guidelines" that car X is better than car Y, I know that the reasoning was based on "cheaper and safer" out ranks gas mileage.

To be more specific, I (nor, I suspect the industry) could make any sense out of "safer". What "safer" actually means in car terminology are the results of specific tests (a crash at a certain angle and a certain speed measured against trauma on a dummy with a standard design). In this case safety is not a matter of someone's opinion - at least not at that level.

A good map to me is a black-and-white line drawing that clearly shows me the objects. Apparently a good map to WotC is a pseudo-photograph in various shades of gray and brown with a grid overlaying it. Now either one of us is insane, or the issue of what's a good map is subjective. It seems obvious to me that the people that design WotC's maps are insane, but through some indirect reasoning I rationally believe that is very unlikely. At this point I'm forced to conclude that this must be a matter of opinion.

So a review standard that's useful to me would say "a 'good map' is defined as a readable diagram with contrasting colors (ex. black and white) and that helps the eye to easily discern objects, walls, etc." No matter how you feel about maps then, telling me "good maps" in that context has some objective value. From a couple other posts it seems that folks are saying that the purpose of this thread is to define those standards.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

A good map to me is a black-and-white line drawing that clearly shows me the objects. Apparently a good map to WotC is a pseudo-photograph in various shades of gray and brown with a grid overlaying it. Now either one of us is insane, or the issue of what's a good map is subjective.

I hardly think that those are the only two options. Perhaps the sort of maps they use look good to most people at first glance against the type of coloured backgrounds they use in their books, and so make a browser more likely to buy the book if he picks it up and leafs through it at the store. In that case, using maps that have this effect instead of maps that are more clearly schematic would be a rational decision. There's no need to jump to conclusions about the sanity of people who might have different goals than you do.

Anyway, to use your own example, do you think that there might perhaps be better or worse black-and-white line drawings that clearly show you objects? Perhaps using a certain weight of line or a certain way of indicating distances between things might enhance the utility of these maps, and perhaps other techniques would actually decrease their utility.

I think there's some confusion here between style and quality. You might prefer a certain style of map over another, for entirely arbitrary reasons. But both styles can encompass maps of better or worse quality.

 

[howandwhy99]

Like Shaman was saying in the beginning of the thread, I prefer modules without too many details on future events, strategies, tactics, etc. This is not because I have so much time to work out the specifics. I want specifics like in the Abbey adventure he suggested. What I don't want is a module my players can read and then understand what will happen when I DM it. A really great module, for me, is one I can run again and again and it will be different every time. Not just because the module changes as the campaign advances, but because it can be used in completely new and interesting ways repeatedly. Than I can both run and play in it repeatedly and potentially enjoy every experience.

 

[Dan Bell]

To me, 'well-designed' means internally consistant, like HarnWorld. It also helps when subjects are balenced so that parts of adventures/places/organizations/etc. can be used in my home brew or other worlds without overpowering everything else.

 

[Hussar]

Yes, of course you think it's plain. All of my opinions are plainly obvious to me as well. I agree with some of what you're saying, and probably with the important points.

What I'm basically saying is to be more specific about what is good, or even why those specific elements are good. Then, if you want to say according to the "TwinBahamut car rating guidelines" that car X is better than car Y, I know that the reasoning was based on "cheaper and safer" out ranks gas mileage.

To be more specific, I (nor, I suspect the industry) could make any sense out of "safer". What "safer" actually means in car terminology are the results of specific tests (a crash at a certain angle and a certain speed measured against trauma on a dummy with a standard design). In this case safety is not a matter of someone's opinion - at least not at that level.

A good map to me is a black-and-white line drawing that clearly shows me the objects. Apparently a good map to WotC is a pseudo-photograph in various shades of gray and brown with a grid overlaying it. Now either one of us is insane, or the issue of what's a good map is subjective. It seems obvious to me that the people that design WotC's maps are insane, but through some indirect reasoning I rationally believe that is very unlikely. At this point I'm forced to conclude that this must be a matter of opinion.

So a review standard that's useful to me would say "a 'good map' is defined as a readable diagram with contrasting colors (ex. black and white) and that helps the eye to easily discern objects, walls, etc." No matter how you feel about maps then, telling me "good maps" in that context has some objective value. From a couple other posts it seems that folks are saying that the purpose of this thread is to define those standards.

Sorry, but Gizmo you are defining Good as "things I like" and Bad as "Things I don't like." Your personal preference does not define what a good map is. A good map should contain a number of elements:

• Easily readable
• Properly labeled
• Works in play (ie. the map probably shouldn't be an MC Escher painting ((Unless, of course there is a reason why it is))
• Scaled properly
• Fits with the encounters contained on the room (no Huge monsters in a 10x10 room for example)

All of those are objective criteria with which we can judge a map. Is the use of color by WOTC making the map easier or harder to use? Are plain black and white maps better or worse in the sense of ease of readability and play? These are all objective standards.

"I like it" or "I don't like it" is a perfectly valid reaction but it doesn't tell me anything. I'm not you. However, simply trying to state that any standardization of design is "elitist" ignores a rather large amount of work that is done out there that does exactly that.

Just to go on for a second. Star Wars was mentioned a while back. I'm going to say it here that Star Wars is a terrible movie. It is. The acting is laughable, the story is cliche and blatantly ripped off from Kurosawa, and the plot has more holes than a volleyball net. OTOH, it is hugely popular. However, hugely popular (as someone likes to point out) is not the same as quality. I remember years back when the Stallone movie Cliffhanger was the top grossing movie of the year. I don't think anyone would try to claim quality in that movie.

Just because something is popular doesn't make it good. RC, I'm surprised you haven't chimed in here with that yet. We have a huge body of modules now to look at. Some modules are good and some are bad. There's nothing wrong with liking a bad module, just as there is nothing wrong with hating a good one. I know for a fact that Mozart is better than Linkin Park, but, I know which one I'm listening to right now.

What I'd like to see is some attempt to set out criteria by which we can judge modules other than "Hey, I like it." We judge pretty much any artistic form with objective standards, why should modules be immune? There's a reason there's a technical component to figure skating.