What does well designed mean?

[buzz]

I guess I'm somewhat on Psion's page. Bet it an adventure or any other RPG product, "well-designed" means, to me, that the product achieves its stated goal, and does it with at least a certain level of competence. There is the question of whether the goal of the product is worthwhile, or at least whether it's one in which I have any interest. In the latter case, my interest doesn't necessarily make it a good or poor design.

If we're talking specifically about D&D adventures:

• It should be clear what the PCs are supposed to do. This doesn't mean plot. It just means that, if the adventure is simply an interesting locale for the PCs to plunder, the product should make that clear. Likewise if there is an actual goal or endgame. "The PCs get embrioled in drow plot to conquer the surface world; if they do not stop the high pirestess, here are the consequences."
• The physical product itself should be useable. E.g., if a given encounter focuses on a specific terrain element, that element, and how to use it, should be described as clearly as possible.
• The encounters are tactically interesting.
• The encounters are appropriate for the adventure's stated character level.
• The rewards are appropriate for the adventure's stated character level.
• The players are able to make meaningful choices, and those choices are clearly presented. This can be as simple as choosing which door to take.

 

[mearls]

I've thought about this a bit, and I still don't have a clear, rigid definition. For me, there's two aspects to defining an RPG product as well designed:

1. It makes me want to game, specifically to use it in play.

2. In play, it noticeably improves the experience. We're having more fun because of the product's presence.

Jason Bulmahn's adventure in Dungeon #114, The Mad God's Key, springs to mind. The adventure had a lot of cool scenes that made me want to run it: a chase across a bunch of boats moored at the docks, a fight in a room draped with thick curtains, and a dungeon that was basically one big, cool encounter area.

In play, we had tons of fun with it. I liked the adventure enough to run it a week after I got it, and there were definitely parts that still stand out. We had more fun than normal because the encounters were so well designed. Even better, there were interesting and fun scenes that developed from the set up, when the action deviated from the expected flow of play.

For example, in the final battle the players did some fun stuff with tactics by using the terrain. The way things were arranged made it easy for smart players to come up with good ways to attack the BBEG. Even better, once the battle started the BBEG had resources to turn some of this seeming advantages into drawbacks. There's no way Jason could've predicted what my players would do, but the adventure environment lends itself to improvisation.

 

[Quasqueton]

If it is difficult to define “well designed” or “good design”, how about defining “poorly designed” or “bad design”.

Quasqueton

 

[Faraer]

In actual use, 'good design' and 'bad design' (like 'broken' and other voguish terms) almost always mean nothing more than 'I like it' or 'I don't like it'. Their function is spurious universalizing, and I don't see the point in trying to rationalize such dubious concepts -- there is no single, objective standard of 'good design' or 'bad design', outside the very general 'meets its own intended purposes'.

 

[The Shaman]

In actual use, 'good design' and 'bad design' (like 'broken' and other voguish terms) almost always mean nothing more than 'I like it' or 'I don't like it'. Their function is spurious universalizing, and I don't see the point in trying to rationalize such dubious concepts -- there is no single, objective standard of 'good design' or 'bad design', outside the very general 'meets its own intended purposes'.

And yet when you gather lots and lots of subjective opinions, certain trends or features may arise by consensus.

There doesn't have to be an objective standard to produce meaningful results.

 

[ThirdWizard]

In most subjective-oriented fields, however, there is still "good" and "bad" that can be objectively viewed, so why not modules? You can take a book and tell whether it is well written beyond whether or not you enjoy it or a movie or something like a director's abilities.

They have schools for these things, where people learn technique and build upon contemporary beliefs on what is good and what is poor construction of these mediums. The good should be emulated on more than subject matter. Someone who writes excelent dialogue for plays can explain why their dialogue is good, who they are emulating and why, and regardless of how interesting (or lack thereof) the subject of the play is, the dialogue they write will be well written.

A more relevant example for this might be DMing. There are good techniques for DMing. There are bad techniques for DMing. To boil it all down to "fun" does a disservice, I think, to what really goes into making a good DM. We've had many threads on that, and yes people have differing oppinons over some things, but overall, there are trends.

So, I think it is quite possible to discuss good design and bad design fairly objectively.

 

[jmucchiello]

In actual use, 'good design' and 'bad design' (like 'broken' and other voguish terms) almost always mean nothing more than 'I like it' or 'I don't like it'. Their function is spurious universalizing, and I don't see the point in trying to rationalize such dubious concepts -- there is no single, objective standard of 'good design' or 'bad design', outside the very general 'meets its own intended purposes'.

This is very true. Very little of this thread involves design. Most of the criteria listed so far are examples of good execution, not good design. Well executed production involves few typoes, good writing, easy to use stat blocks. These things have nothing to do with design.

Design involves choices: choice of party level, choice of opponent types and mixture, choice of traps, choice of story elements, choice of NPC interactions. A well designed adventure is one in which all of these choices create a greater whole. Design also requires a goal. The goal of an adventure is not as simple. Some adventures have the goal of providing a framework to facilitate stories created by the gamers. Others feature a well defined story-line for the party to explore and probably derail. And of course there are other possible goals. When discussing the design of the adventure you first need to know the adventure's purpose. Then you can rate how well the designer balanced all of the available design choices in order to reach that goal.

I don't think "Letting players have fun" counts in this regard. It may be a valid design criteria, but I don't think it can be the only criteria. The designer must have something else in mind as his goal beyond or as well as "fun".

Finally, these goals are all on the designer. The DM attempting to run the adventure will have different goals. The players playing the adventure will have different goals. By asking about design, one might guess that the OP is looking for the designer's view of good design. But that assumption could be very wrong. The OP needs to explain his goal in trying to determine the quality of design of an adventure. Because there can be a wide variety of goals here, we are getting a wide range of answers that perhaps do not fit the question based on his original assumptions.

 

[JohnSnow]

Back in good ol' Philosophy 101, we set forth that the virtue of something is determined by how well it performs its function.

An excellent criteria - a module is "well-designed," by definition, if it does well what a module is supposed to do. So that begs another question:

"What is a module supposed to do?" or "What is its purpose?"

While you can answer this with "entertain" or "provide fun," to me, that's only half the scenario. A computer game is well-designed if it's fun and entertaining. But a module isn't a computer game. A module interacts with players by interfacing with a Dungeon Master. So, I would propose the following:

"The purpose of a module is to make it easier for a DM to provide an entertaining adventure."

So, to me the module needs to:

1. Provide decent story hook(s) (not great, just decent...it's a module, not a novel).
2. Include engaging scenes.
3. Provide mechanical details to reduce the GM's workload.
4. Be organized well so that items 1-3 can be found without too much trouble.

That's it. Something that provides all of the above is "well-designed" in my humble opinion.

Mike, you listening?

 

[The Shaman]

In most subjective-oriented fields, however, there is still "good" and "bad" that can be objectively viewed, so why not modules?

ThirdWizard, that was exactly the point I was making - from subjective data we can learn objective truths.

Dismissing subjective opinions was Faraer's deal, not mine.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

to me, well designed means people enjoy using it, and there are little to no complaints. And even if there are complaints, it's trivial

QFT