R_J_K75
Legend
A recent thread got me thinking about what a good introductory scenario for an RPG should look like.
@Reynard I can tell you what I think it shouldn't look like.start with a small, self-contained location with a very clear motivation, then expand to a wider environment, then expand again to an even wider one, and then bring it to some sort of (hopefully satisfying) conclusion.
I ran "the Fouled Stream" this Monday evening from the 2024 DMG. It's a one-page adventure meant to be banged out in a session, but it is pretty lacking. The adventure is based in a small village that gets 2 small paragraphs in another section of the DMG so there is quite a bit of leg work to be done if you want to continue using the location after the adventure is over. There is no map, and very little detail on anything in the village that is affected by the threat of the scenario. As @delericho commented, I started really small. Grabbed a village map offline and started giving it some detail. The adventure couldn't be bothered to provide any monster stat blocks, or maps outside of the village pertinent to the adventure either, so I had to hunt these down. Could the session have been played just using the one-page write up? Maybe but it would have been a pretty thin plot with little depth and extremely linear with the DM leading the players from point A to point B, and so on. I think a more fleshed out 1st level introductory adventure would have been better than the 5 outline adventures. I understand they were trying to promote the one-hour minimal adventure prep, for one game short sessions but this fell flat as there was more fleshing out required than I thought should have been required. My current impression is that the Greyhawk sample campaign setting, and the 5 mini scenarios could have been detailed more than they were. I liked the 1-page adventure premise, but the execution left something to be desired.