What does well designed mean?

[TwinBahamut]

Well, a well designed module...

First, I don't think raw exectution matters when discussing the idea of "well designed". Minor typos, flawed stat blocks, bad art, or the like are problems of presentation and editing, not design. However, I consider both mechanical and story elements to be part of design, and thus open to this discussion. It is simply not the (creative) designer's fault if the (technical) printer made a typsetting error, after all, and I prefer to focus on creative elements.

Second, I do believe that ideas of good and bad design are relevant and useful to discuss. After all, it is the goal of a game designer, like any other creative individual, to strife to create a better product, and to improve the artform as a whole. Unlike some people, I do not believe that paint thrown randomly against a blank canvas, with no intellignet control, has any artistic value for either artist or viewer. Further, since I can imagine a truly bad module, it implies the existence of different levels of quality.


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

First, a good module must be robust, with the same usage of the term as in computer programming. It must be able to accept a wide variety of input from the user, without breaking or performing badly. A good module should not be hindered by the party doing something unexpected. Instead, it should put tools in the hands of the DM that allows for either a correction of the PC's course, or altering the module so that it moves to follow the party's course. Similarly, different party make-ups should work equally well with the module.

Robust: Having mutliple end-scenerios, depending on what has happened within the module. If the party kills the BBEG two hours too early, his henchmen are fleshed out enough to carry on without him.

Not robust: Requiring that the party bring a rogue, or else the instant death trap on the macguffin is unpassable.


Second, a module has to be coherent. It must make logical sense as both a game and a narrative. Internal consistency, verismilitude, and consistency with setting are all part of this. Perhaps more importantly, the DM running it should have a clear understanding of how everything operates, with character motivations, location layout, and monster behavior all easily understood.

Coherent: Anything that makes sense, such as a dungeon raid into an underground temple, trying to save a village girl from being sacrificed, and having to fight guardian demons and undead created by the evil cultists.

Incoherent: Going into the fifth basement of an underground labyrinth to save a princess who was kidnapped (for no logical reason) by a dragon (who could not possibly fit through the five floors of narrow passageways). When the dragon dies, the cave collapses, and the cavern collapse can be prevented by ripping out the dead dragon's spleen.


Finally, the last design quality I can figure out is ease of use. The easier it is to keep track of everything, the better. This is heavily influenced by module format and layout. In fact, sometimes I think having a module exist as a hard-bound book is bad design under this guideline, but that is a different thread. at least, the concept of this one is easy to understand.

Easy to use: Monster names are clear, different entries give page numbers of where to find information, the module has different sections for different things with easy to sort tabs, etc.

Not easy to use: Random organization, information buried in paragraphs under unrelated headers, poorly labeled maps, etc.


These ideas overlap a lot, and certainly the best way to optimize these qualities is subject to debate (open-ended vs. rigid plot, character driven vs. generic, geographic vs chronological organization, etc), but I think these qualities are the most important.

Regardless, I do agree that "well designed" is not the same thing as "fun". "Well designed" is a quality of a product, which is not the same thing as "fun", the individual reaction to a product based on personal taste and experience. Still, that doesn't mean good design doesn't matter. After all, there are many supposedly good horror movies out there, but I hate them all since I don't enjoy horror movies, yet I know a horror movie is well designed by watching how fans of horror movies react favorably to it.

I hope my thoughts didn't meander too much in this post...

 

[RFisher]

The one thing that I want from all RPG products is adequate playtesting. This is the one thing I can't really do adequately on my own. While a professional writer's/designer's rules, story, NPCs, locations, &c., &c. may be much better than I can create myself, it really isn't worth much to me if it isn't adequately playtested. I'd rather buy merely adequate rules, story, NPCs, locations, &c., &c. that have been honed through as much trial by fire as possible.

The more work the user is required to do in order to use a product, the worse the design is.

But that varies from user to user. (As we've seen in every thread around here about modules.)

One DM looks at a module & sees all the details taken care of for him; another looks at it & sees a lot of useless details he's got to spend hours slogging through to extract what are the gems for him.

One DM looks at a module sees something he can run immediately, improvising the details; another looks at it & sees a mere skeleton that he's going to have to spend hours fleshing out before he can run it.

Whether a module saves me time or makes me do lots of prep depends a lot on me.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

But that varies from user to user. (As we've seen in every thread around here about modules.)

One DM looks at a module & sees all the details taken care of for him; another looks at it & sees a lot of useless details he's got to spend hours slogging through to extract what are the gems for him.

One DM looks at a module sees something he can run immediately, improvising the details; another looks at it & sees a mere skeleton that he's going to have to spend hours fleshing out before he can run it.

Whether a module saves me time or makes me do lots of prep depends a lot on me.

Perhaps. Perhaps there are ways of designing modules that save time and effort for everyone, and a good designer can identify and implement those strategies. I suppose that the existence of these strategies might be the sort of thing that could be sorted out in a thread like this, given enough responses and the proper analysis.

 

[Ry]

Well designed:

1. The product tells quickly and clearly how to use it, not just in in-game terms (i.e., now roll a Wild Magic conundrum every time a character casts Jakko's Jigantic Jiant) - I want the product to tell me how to introduce it, how to follow through with it. If the product is only adding small details (new spells, etc.) then it had better tell me how the added details makes the game more fun. The product also had better be right - if it tells me to throw a monster at a typical party of 4th level PCs, and that causes a TPK without unusual circumstances, the design is terrible.

2. The product doesn't unbalance my game: Note that even if everyone has the same amount of power but one character has a lot more complex mechanical detail, I count it as unbalanced for this reason: Balance is about sharing who gets our attention - where the game's collective camera points. If people are paying attention to one player too often, or the game's camera only cares about the actions of one player, it's not balanced. If the camera moves from player to player and we care about each player's contribution to the game, then it's very well balanced.

 

[Jupp]

well designed means to me:

- I know from the beginning at what level this module should be played. Because it is written on the cover of the book or it is written in large letters on the first page

- If there are certain classes and races required then that should be writting at the very beginning, possibly in the same spot where I see the level requirement of the module

- Should I need certain source books then I would like to know about this beforehand. So it should be written at the very beginning which book I should use together with this module

- I have a synopsis of the adventure at the very beginning of the module

- you read it, you understand it. The module is written in a way that makes you understand it without having to reread it all the time just to figure out what the heck is going on

- You have the maps where you need them. Either as a separate booklet or at the same page where it is really needed. Nothing worse than having to flip between several pages just because you have to switch between encounter, map and monster stat for a a certain encounter.

- Monster and NPC stats have all the relevant information. I hate it when I see "please look up splat book X for spell Y and MM 2 for monster stat Z. Once you are in-game you just dont have the time to look things up in 3 different books.

- It is clearly defined and marked which part of the text in a module is meant for the DM and what is meant for reading out loud.

- I can always see what amount of XP I have to give out for monster X or magic item Y. If the author wants me to give out XP at a certain point it should be clearly visible at that part of the module text

- If there is a possible fork in the module it should be clearly visible and I want to have the page number where I have to read up to continue with the module

- no typos

- an index where I see at which page I find area Y

- and index that shows me on which pages I can find the most important monsters and NPCs

 

[Janx]

I would suspect that most people would say that the purpose of a module is to entertain. Yet the "good design" threads have explicitly ruled out certain types of answers to the question.

Yes, fun/entertainment is the goal of the module. However, the design of the module determines how easy it is to get fun out of the product.

A poorly designed module will be difficult to run, and that impacts fun.
-If it's difficult to run, the GM will do a poor job of presenting it
-if it's unbalanced (too hard) the PCs will die, usually not fun
-if it's too easy, the PCs will face no challenge and get bored

Factors that contribute to bad design:
-too much treasure, unbalances party
-too hard for the targeted party level
-inconsistent formatting (making it hard for GM to find stuff)
-missing information (making GM have to pause to make it up/find)
-too much information (making it hard for GM to wade through material)
-no allowance for alternative solutions by players


Designing a dungeon (and documenting it) is pretty easy. The format's been tweaked over the years, but everyone has the same general method. Provide a map. Number each location. Provide documentation for each room number. Each room has a general description, monster stat block, and treasure list. GM knows what room the party is in (maybe because they have a hand-drawn copy of the map), and simply flips pages to the right room number. It's not to hard designing that kind of thing.

What's harder is non-location based encounters. Documenting them, tying them together, having a method that makes it easy for the GM to be aware of "what's related/what's next". Poor layout and writing can easily contribute to a poorly designed module of this style.

 

[gizmo33]

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.

Because as long as there have been creative, artistic fields, there has been people wanting to be the high priesthood of those fields. People that want to dictate to other people what is good and what is bad about things that entertain them. Star Wars is a bad movie, comic books are bad literature, and rock-and-roll is bad music, etc. You know - that sort of thing. Of course once the crushing weight of popular interest makes something like rock-and-roll a musical form that it's impossible to ignore, then the same personality types form a priesthood within that genre. That same mental mistake seems capable of perpetuating itself for generation after generation, and I can't figure out why some folks haven't gotten that yet.

If "quality" is so self-evident and logical then it ought to speak for itself and I don't need some art-heirophant to tell me about it. Some people on this thread say that Tomb of Horrors is a bad module, and yet I think it wound up on Dungeon Magazine's top list of modules of all time. If quality were an objective issue, then the only reason that the two groups would disagree would be if one of them were making a mistake.

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.

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.

 

[gizmo33]

Yes, fun/entertainment is the goal of the module. However, the design of the module determines how easy it is to get fun out of the product.

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.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Because as long as there have been creative, artistic fields, there has been people wanting to be the high priesthood of those fields. People that want to dictate to other people what is good and what is bad about things that entertain them. Star Wars is a bad movie, comic books are bad literature, and rock-and-roll is bad music, etc. You know - that sort of thing. Of course once the crushing weight of popular interest makes something like rock-and-roll a musical form that it's impossible to ignore, then the same personality types form a priesthood within that genre. That same mental mistake seems capable of perpetuating itself for generation after generation, and I can't figure out why some folks haven't gotten that yet.

If "quality" is so self-evident and logical then it ought to speak for itself and I don't need some art-heirophant to tell me about it. Some people on this thread say that Tomb of Horrors is a bad module, and yet I think it wound up on Dungeon Magazine's top list of modules of all time. If quality were an objective issue, then the only reason that the two groups would disagree would be if one of them were making a mistake.

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.

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.

I think you are making a lot of mistakes with your logic here...

Primarily, why are you assigning reviewers and other posters in this thread to be the same as groups of people who arbitrarily assign the title of "bad" to popular things for elitist reasons? The two groups are very different, in methods and intentions.

Regardless, I completely disagree with your main conclusion in many respects. Useful judgements can be made about the quality of something, independant of variables that are determined solely by personal preference and opinion.

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.

 

[RFisher]

Perhaps there are ways of designing modules that save time and effort for everyone, and a good designer can identify and implement those strategies. I suppose that the existence of these strategies might be the sort of thing that could be sorted out in a thread like this, given enough responses and the proper analysis.

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.