What does well designed mean?

[Hussar]

There is a point here though. There is a world of difference between detailing your car and overhauling the engine. I might do the first one, I HAVE to do the second.

To me, a module that presumes that the DM is going to tinker, alter, fold, spindle and maul it before it sees play is a poorly designed module. A well designed one should need to be rewritten in order to be playable. The best designed module should be one that I can read, open the covers and play. That should be the bar we expect from adventure design.

 

[Akrasia]

Lost Abbey... was one of two adventure modules published by Phoenix Games, an all-too-brief line from a small press. I looked for but never found a copy of the second adventure, Mines of Keridav....

Thanks for the overview of the 'Lost Abbey'.

However, I'm quite sure that the 'Mines of Keridav' was published by Gamelords (the company that published 'Thieves Guild' and 'Free City of Haven'). It tied into the 'Demon Pits of Caeldo' [sp?] to form a mini-campaign setting.

 

[Maggan]

What I look for in adventurers is, in no particular order:

- Structure. Is the adventure logically structured, is it easy to find my way around it?
- Clarity. Are the ideas clearly articulated. Do I understand what the adventure is about?
- Balance between rules and story. Is the story appropriate for the rules intended to be used?
- Self containment. I want an adventure to be largely self contained. I don't like adventures that basically have twenty or so "here's a portal to something you might want to develop yourself". If it's in the aventure, I want it to be described in the adventure. That's why I bought the adventure, after all.
- Brevity. I like adventures that can convey information in short and still atmospheric text.

Ummmmm ... well, to me the main thing is structure. It doesn't matter to me if the module has the way coolest encounter ever if I can't find it.

/M

 

[Precelius]

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

One of my favorite modules for any genre is Lost Abbey of Calthonwey. It is a classic site-based adventure, a (seemingly) abandoned abbey and an associated dungeon. There is a brief adventure background for the dungeon master, and a room by room description of the abbey and its inhabitants, including the monks who escaped the massacre that befell their brothers and the lich and its minions that caused it.

And that's it.

No description of what the different NPCs will do when the adventurers arrive, no flowchart of relations between the NPCs, no series of events building to a final encounter with the lich in its lair, no plot or story at all beyond the initial set-up. All of that is left to the dungeon master to create. The adventure presents the inhabitants and their environs, and the dungeon master supplies the rest. The beauty of it lies in the fact that the game master has so much to work with - the orcs living in the abandoned abbey, the lich and his minions, the monks who are sworn to destroy him (and have been granted immortality for that purpose), various monsters living in different portions of the abbey and its underchambers in a reasonable fantasy ecology, other adventurers who visited the abbey before the player characters arrive. It's brilliant, and it's exactly what I look for in an adventure as a referee: it inspires my imagination to discover what happens next, instead of laying it out for me.

The Lost Abbey of Calthonwey was the first AD&D-esque module that I ever went through. It was nothing less than amazing!

I was a 1st level C/R/MU, under the patronage of a 6th level Ranger. I remember that the higher level PCs (including my patron) were killed in an ambush in a hallway, and I had to be "held by the hand" by the NPCs through much of the module. We spent most of the time going around in circles, falling into one ambush or trap after another. ----- It doesn't sound like much, but it was the most memorable, well thought out module that I ever went through. I "retired" that particular character after that module, but I never forgot the experience.

I went on to play an Elvish F/MU for many years, and eventually became knowledgeable enough of the game to be a DM. I was pretty good at it, so the PCs told me, but never as good as the DM under whom I learned the game.

I consider myself fortunate to have learned the game under this excellent DM. Of course, this was many moons ago...back in high school.

I was also fortunate enough to convince my former DM to let me make a photocopy (relatively new technology back then) of Lost Abbey of Calthonwey. At some point, every person (for which I was DM) went through it. Some made it further through than others (1-2 even made it through to the end), but everyone came out of the experience remembering it as fondly as I did.

I read your comments from 2006, as well as those from a few other forums, and I see that this module affected others in about the same way that it did for me.

Every once in a while, I go back through my old dusty boxes of AD&D materials. I may not go through everything in detail, but I invariably pick up that copy of Lost Abbey of Calthonwey and go through it from cover to cover.

It was probably one of the best modules that ever came out of the game.

 

[Precelius]

I quite agree.



I've never heard of this module. Any additional info?

You had asked a while back about Lost Abbey of Calthonwey. Another Member gave a pretty good synopsis, but I'll try to elaborate a little more. Keep in mind, this information is available mostly to the DM only. A more abbreviated form is available to the PCs.

Essentially, there is an abbey (the Abbey of Calthonwey) that appears & disappears every 100 years or so. What led to its original disappearance, no one exactly knows. It was, though, a few years after a dark and stormy night, when a very young boy was dumped by persons (or beings) unknown, right on the abbey's doorstep. The boy was raised by the Monks & Clerics within the abbey, and eventually worked his way up through the ranks...eventually becoming a prime candidate for the head of the abbey. Around the time of the "election" is when the abbey originally disappeared. It has reappeared periodically, and adventurers have dared to enter it; however, no one has ever come out of it to explain what happened those many years ago, or to the many parties of adventurers that entered to discover its secret.

Spoiler

: THE BOY IN QUESTION WAS PLACED THERE BY THE POWERS OF DARKNESS TO DESTROY THE ABBEY, WHOSE MONKS & CLERICS WERE THE PROTECTORS OF THE TOWN BELOW. THE "ELECTION" BECAME A CIVIL WAR WITHIN THE ABBEY. SOME ALLIED WITH THE BOY, WHO PRACTICED BLACK MAGIC ON THE SIDE AND BECAME A LICH, WHILE OTHERS WENT INTO HIDING TO WAIT THEIR TIME TO OVERTHROW HIM AND HIS DARK MINIONS. THE LICH FILLED THE ABBEY WITH ALL FORMS OF EVIL CREATURES (FROM ORCS TO DEMONS). TO EVEN THE ODDS, THE PATRON DEITY/DEITIES OF THE ABBEY CAUSED THE ABBEY TO DISAPPEAR EVERY 100 YEARS OR SO (INTO A SORT OF LIMBO) AND THEN RETURNED IT PERIODICALLY BACK TO THE PRIME MATERIAL PLANE IN HOPES THAT ADVENTURERS WOULD ENTER IT AND AID THE "GOOD" MONKS & CLERICS IN THEIR REVOLT TO RECLAIM THE ABBEY.

That's really a Reader's Digest version of the suggested plot. As mentioned already, the DM has a lot of latitude to alter the plot as needed to keep things moving or maintain the aire of mystery that comes with this module.

I've read on some other forums that this module is engrained in a lot of people's memories, but it's very difficult to get one's hands on it in this day and age. My old DM from back in high school let me make a photocopy of it, which I used quite often over the next 4-6 years when I was a DM myself.

It was a tough module from the standpoint of the PCs going through it, but it was also one of the more memorable ones.

 

[MerricB]

What I look for in adventurers is, in no particular order:

- Structure. Is the adventure logically structured, is it easy to find my way around it?
- Clarity. Are the ideas clearly articulated. Do I understand what the adventure is about?
- Balance between rules and story. Is the story appropriate for the rules intended to be used?
- Self containment. I want an adventure to be largely self contained. I don't like adventures that basically have twenty or so "here's a portal to something you might want to develop yourself". If it's in the aventure, I want it to be described in the adventure. That's why I bought the adventure, after all.
- Brevity. I like adventures that can convey information in short and still atmospheric text.

Ummmmm ... well, to me the main thing is structure. It doesn't matter to me if the module has the way coolest encounter ever if I can't find it.

/M

Hmm. I'm going to agree with the first three, and say the last two depend very much on the adventure and personal preferences.

I was recently running the third adventure in the Shackled City AP - Flood Season. It has a great set-up, and a few good initial encounters, and then runs into one of the pitfalls of design.

[sblock]
The PCs must recover 8 wands from an underground complex with several cultists. The complex is quite large, and the wands are scattered around it. To make things tenser, the PCs are on a time limit.
[/sblock]

The problem? The dungeon is too large. There is no way your average party can go in and out in one shot. Thus, the inhabitants of the dungeon (who are intelligent) should have time to prepare for the second attack... and, let's face it, they should flee. Why do they stay in the same area when they know their secret lair has been found? There are no notes (IIRC) detailing what the inhabitants will do once they know the place is under attack.

It's a problem that you've got to look out for in adventure designs: padding. I don't mind larger dungeons, but they've got to fit within the structure of the adventure.

I've just had a lot of fun with The Sea Wyvern's Wake because the adventure has a structure that allows me to play with things a lot. My players really, really enjoyed the last session (which was very role-playing heavy) because the adventure sets up a lot of hooks and details for gaming without dictating that the DM must use all of it.

Cheers!

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

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.

Where the heck do people get the idea that there is no such thing as quality? How laissez-faire can we get with relativism? I don't think I'm alone in thinking that Alfred Hitchcock is a better director than, say, Ed Wood, on a spectrum of measurable differences in competence that allowed him to produce films that are actually simply better than those of directors who lack his competence. But as soon as you start to ask questions like "what is it that makes us like or dislike the way a module is put together," the holy host descends to tell us that it's 100% personal opinion, and that The Whispering Cairn is not only not a better module than Orc and Pie, but the very concept of comparing them at all--and figuring out the factors that might make one better than the other--is completely meaningless since quality is entirely subjective. It's like some kind of aesthetic positivism from the bizarro world.

There are modules that are so well-constructed that when you sit down to play them, enjoying yourself is as easy as dropping your dice. There are modules that might be fun, if you can manage to piece them together and squeeze the fun out of the mess of a narrative and scraps of game mechanics that were provided. There are modules that are just simply a drag. If you enjoy rewriting modules from the ground up, you'll probably have more fun with the latter than with the former. However, the former is more like what an ideal module is supposed to be (because if you're paying money for it, you shouldn't have to rewrite it to be able to have fun with it), and there are techniques that can help to make any given module more like that ideal. That's what people mean when they say something is well-designed. It is full-service.

[edit]
I should point out that I don't believe that there is one good way to design adventures. Different approaches work for different people. As mentioned above, one approach is to slap down a bunch of encounter areas, characters, sites, etc., and let the DM piece them together. Another approach is to put together something with the kind of driven coherence that the adventure paths attempt to provide. Either of these methods can produce good modules or bad modules depending on the quality of the design of the modules. The approach is actually irrelevent to the quality of the design. It's a question of how competently the designer puts together the product.

[edit again]
On reflection, it seems to me that being able to come up with multiple approaches to module design may itself be a sign of a competent designer. A designer that can produce multiple effective approaches to module writing has the potential to make an impact on the audience and provide interesting gaming experiences that would not have come about if the designer had just stuck with the same old formulas. If we assume that the two approaches listed in my first edit are two out of many, it seems likely that a skilled designer would have a broader repertoire of approaches than an unskilled designer.

 

[Brazeku]

A well designed adventure module, I don't know. I've never used one. I would assume that it would be something that you could just pick up and play, but the kicker is that I don't think it's possible for a person to write an adventure that I would play as written, ever.

For rules resources, generally I look at them like toolkits. Elements that interest me and enhance play will make me happy. Honestly I look mostly for new ideas to riff off over mechanics. Character options and feats have to be on the 'useful' side.

 

[I'm A Banana]

For me, "well designed" applies directly to the rules.

A novel can't be well designed...a movie can't be well designed. A watch may be well designed. A well designed watch works.

A game is well designed when it accomplishes it's goal in an efficient way. "Roll the dice and move that many spaces" is good design. "Roll the dice and consult this table to see how many spaces you move" is poor design.

Occam's Razor applies to design. If there is a simpler, faster, better way to do it, you have to do it that way.

Game systems that don't work are poor design. The 3e grapple rules are poor design compared to the SAGA system grapple rules.

Good design also has a goal: if the goal is to design something "realistic," some complexity can be tolerated, if it makes the game feel more real. If the goal is "Appropriate EL +0 Construct-type PC race," a lot of weirdness can be tolerated that wouldn't be tolerated in a different goal.

Good design works towards it's goal as quickly and efficiently as possible. Poor design gets in the way of the goal.

 

[Hussar]

Whoa, threadomancy.

I'm still of the opinion that well designed, or to use JMuchellio's definition - well exectute, products are ones that can be used with a minimum of work. The more work the user is required to do in order to use a product, the worse the design is.

An adventure site is not the same thing as a module. An adventure site, like WOTC's Fantastic Locations, are not complete adventures and are not marketed as such. They are simply a place which can be parachuted in by the DM. The expectation is that the DM will have to do some work in order to slot that product into his campaign.

A poorly designed adventure location would be boring, or perhaps cliche.

But, a module is different. It's not a single location (usually). It's an entire "episode" for lack of a better word. Modules are pretty much all the same in form in that they have a pretty defined beginning, middle and end. Even going back to Keep on the Borderland, there is a vaguely defined beginning and end - you start in the kobold caves and end in the evil temple cave. Going too far out of order gets you killed.

That's my big beef with something like KotB or other skeleton modules. They are basically just adventure locations parading as modules. The expectation is that the DM is going to have to sit down and fill in all the bits that were left out. But, IMHO, a module shouldn't have large bits left out. That's why I'm buying a module - so I don't have to do that work.