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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jmucchiello" data-source="post: 2945905" data-attributes="member: 813">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.</blockquote>

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