D&D General What makes a good Adventure

[DEFCON 1]

While I love the idea of the Guild, I will admit is very hard to determine what is good content and can be a bit overwhelming. I think the concept and function is great. It fills a need WotC isn't willing to explore; however, I do wish there was a more dedicated system of ranking or reviews to filter through all the material. It can be daunting.

That is totally fair. But if the alternative is just waiting a full 12 months for WotC to publish another adventure anthology from which you are paying $60 but might only want a couple of the modules within... dropping $5 here or there on DMs Guild and taking your chances on some random adventure you've heard some good things about is probably going to give you the same sort of success rate, plus you get adventures all year long. Double your chances if you also couple your purchases with getting info off of adventurelookup.com to make sure the locations/themes/monsters/levels are the kinds of things you want/need as well.

 

[dave2008]

That is totally fair. But if the alternative is just waiting a full 12 months for WotC to publish another adventure anthology from which you are paying $60 but might only want a couple of the modules within... dropping $5 here or there on DMs Guild and taking your chances on some random adventure you've heard some good things about is probably going to give you the same sort of success rate, plus you get adventures all year long. Double your chances if you also couple your purchases with getting info off of adventurelookup.com to make sure the locations/themes/monsters/levels are the kinds of things you want/need as well.

That is definitely not the only alternative. However, I personally am more likely to buy a $50 book for one small item I know I want (I bought the original 5e AP just for Tiamat's statblock!) than blindly buy a random $5 adventure. Money is not the issue for me, it is time.

I have bought a lot of things on the Guild over the years, but more likely monsters or setting information, not adventures. Of course, if I buy a WotC adventure, I am usually buying it for something else as well. I am just not interested in running published adventures. I am interested in taking bits from them and using them in my games. In that way, buying one book with many adventures / encounters in it saves me time, even if I don't use most of it.

 

[Distracted DM]

While I love the idea of the Guild, I will admit is very hard to determine what is good content and can be a bit overwhelming. I think the concept and function is great. It fills a need WotC isn't willing to explore; however, I do wish there was a more dedicated system of ranking or reviews to filter through all the material. It can be daunting.

I think the ones with decent previews and off-site reviews are what to look for.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

It's a shame more players still have a "3rd Party Material is unplaytested and unbalanced!" mindset... because there are large numbers of small adventures available to buy off of DMs Guild for those that want them. But then they don't. And instead just sit on their hands fuming at WotC for not doing it often enough and complaining about the adventures they do do.

I do not think it is that third party is unplaytested and unbalance but that these adventures are relatively unpublicised. Everything WoTC publishes is dissected here and on YouTube at length. There are blogs ranting or raving about them and there are fixing threads here. There also not a lot of them so it is easy to find out about them

On DMsGuild there are a mass of modules and the reviews are often not all that helpful. There is a real issue with discovery and i am not sure of the solution.

 

[overgeeked]

On DMsGuild there are a mass of modules and the reviews are often not all that helpful. There is a real issue with discovery and i am not sure of the solution.

Exactly. There’s a mountain of stuff there. Which is great in the abstract but makes it hard to actually find the good stuff in the mountain.

 

[Quickleaf]

Adventure writers I've enjoyed include Kelsey Dionne (Arcane Library), M.T. Black, Jeremy Forbing, and Will Doyle. Each of them have stuff on DMs Guild / Drivethrurpg as well as their own sites.

Kelsey is great at terse prose that gets to the point. I find her stuff very accessible (from a time-harried GM standpoint) in a way not many adventure writers accomplish.

M.T. Black is really good at holding the big concept of the adventure, being able to focus and follow through on that, without getting distracted by stuff that doesn't reinforce that concept.

Jeremy has some really ambitious work, the Masque of the Red Death stands out, and his adventures are wonderfully evocative and creative.

Will Doyle is one of the more innovative adventure designers I've encountered. He's known for his blend of beautiful cartography & writing, but he's also taking risks and doing things I haven't seen done in adventures before. I need to find more of Will's recent material (e.g. I know he worked on the Tomb of Annihilation team), but his 4th edition Tears of the Crocodile God (online post-Paizo Dungeon #209) was truly a stroke of genius with how the "sacrifice victims" & "big bad" move through the dungeon. Would be a great adventure to update to 5e.

Another good one was Cat & Mouse (Richard Pett & Greg Marks; Kobold Press), which is a solid introductory adventure in an atmospheric city. Nothing really innovative, just a very well done classic feeling urban adventure. IIRC it was converted from 3e.

Speaking of Kobold Press, I would love to try out Wrath of the River King (Wolfgang Baur & Robert Fairbanks), which has a very evocative fey theme. The discontinued "Warlock Adventures" vignettes/locations were also good from the ones I looked at (e.g. WL 16 - Lammasu's Secret). Again, nothing that you couldn't do yourself, but very solid concise clear locations built around monsters from the Tome of Beasts.

Mike Shea's Fantastic Locations fits a kind of similar niche as the "Warlock Adventuress", just more fleshed out and with better art/layout to match the higher price point of the compilation.

 

[Robert F]

Adventure writers I've enjoyed include Kelsey Dionne (Arcane Library), M.T. Black, Jeremy Forbing, and Will Doyle. Each of them have stuff on DMs Guild / Drivethrurpg as well as their own sites.

Kelsey is great at terse prose that gets to the point. I find her stuff very accessible (from a time-harried GM standpoint) in a way not many adventure writers accomplish.

M.T. Black is really good at holding the big concept of the adventure, being able to focus and follow through on that, without getting distracted by stuff that doesn't reinforce that concept.

Jeremy has some really ambitious work, the Masque of the Red Death stands out, and his adventures are wonderfully evocative and creative.

Will Doyle is one of the more innovative adventure designers I've encountered. He's known for his blend of beautiful cartography & writing, but he's also taking risks and doing things I haven't seen done in adventures before. I need to find more of Will's recent material (e.g. I know he worked on the Tomb of Annihilation team), but his 4th edition Tears of the Crocodile God (online post-Paizo Dungeon #209) was truly a stroke of genius with how the "sacrifice victims" & "big bad" move through the dungeon. Would be a great adventure to update to 5e.

Another good one was Cat & Mouse (Richard Pett & Greg Marks; Kobold Press), which is a solid introductory adventure in an atmospheric city. Nothing really innovative, just a very well done classic feeling urban adventure. IIRC it was converted from 3e.

Speaking of Kobold Press, I would love to try out Wrath of the River King (Wolfgang Baur & Robert Fairbanks), which has a very evocative fey theme. The discontinued "Warlock Adventures" vignettes/locations were also good from the ones I looked at (e.g. WL 16 - Lammasu's Secret). Again, nothing that you couldn't do yourself, but very solid concise clear locations built around monsters from the Tome of Beasts.

Mike Shea's Fantastic Locations fits a kind of similar niche as the "Warlock Adventuress", just more fleshed out and with better art/layout to match the higher price point of the compilation.

 

[Older Beholder]

You know what makes a good adventure?
Good players.

 

[payn]

You know what makes a good adventure?
Good players.

That really helps!

 

[Lanefan]

A good adventure is one that you can run several times and never have it play anywhere close to the same way twice. Non-sequentiality, loops, different possible enemy moves, mazes and confusion - all of these elements and more can help meet this goal. Jacquays it to hell, in other words.

Oh, and the adventure has to have enough rooms/encouters/etc. to make the non-sequentiality and loops etc. matter. A ten-room dungeon simply can't be big enough to fulfill this function.