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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 2945651" data-attributes="member: 697">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.</blockquote>

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