What turns you off in a purchased adventure?

[Herpes Cineplex]

1. Real world names. Verisimilitude is too important just to get lazy and wimp out on this. Even my favourite module publishers, NecGames, does this a bit.

I'm surprised so many people find this annoying. Me, I'm with the people who feel exactly the opposite way: bad fantasy-ish names turn me right off. Especially if they put in a lot of useless apostrophes, and throw in tons of nearly-unpronounceable syllables.

I mean, for god's sake, just call the guy "John." It's not like naming him "Kaaern T'aermiglisq Ba'urodyqslt" is really making me or anyone else in our game think that we've been transported to the game setting; all it's doing is making us say "that guy who asked us to do this" when referring to him, just so we don't have to choke on our tongue trying to call him by name.

Please, just keep the names memorable and easy to say, and screw whatever verisimilitude you're trying to create by giving every other person in the module a name that sounds like their parents were in the process of being murdered by a hairball with a severe stuttering problem. It's not cute, it's not cool, and it's not making me want to run your module.


I'm also peeved by modules that skimp on helpful details (particularly motivations and general tactics for NPCs), modules that depend heavily on specific NPCs or places in a specific setting, modules that insist the PCs must be a polite and silent audience to the things done by NPCs, and modules which use a weird (non-core) monster or spell or PrC but don't actually include any information about it.

Then there are the modules which infuriate me because they have what I consider to be blatant screw-job tricks in them. These are the ones where there's one thing the party can do to solve a particular problem, but since there are no clues anywhere in the module about the problem or how it should be solved, it's basically just telling the players to guess the one correct move out of three dozen possibilities. That's just lame: I don't mind if the clues are hard to find, but the module should never just drop a "guess right or DIE" puzzle in without any in-character means of solving it. That's no fun for the players, and no fun for the GM.

But even those aren't so bad when compared to the worst thing imaginable: modules which are WRONG. You know, the ones that have two rooms connected by a secret passage, but this is only mentioned in the notes for the second room. The ones that list a doorway on the north wall, when by the map there's no door, and even if there were, there's nothing north of that room anyway. Spell effects that cannot actually be created by the spells they claim were used for it. I'm already going to be converting most of a module to fit it into my setting and my game, so it would be nice if I didn't have to fix all their mistakes at the same time.

--
i want to use the module as a shortcut as well as an idea mine, so less work = good
ryan

 

[Sir Elton]

As far as dislikes go:

1)Background that the players are never going to find out. Makes some nice DM reading... but at worst can end up with an adventure that is a lot cooler from the DMs side of the screen than the players. That sucks.

Actually, all that background is the Myth of the adventure. DMs can find a way to release this myth to the player characters, if they want to know the story behind the story.

 

[Ranes]

Please, just keep the names memorable and easy to say, and screw whatever verisimilitude you're trying to create by giving every other person in the module a name that sounds like their parents were in the process of being murdered by a hairball with a severe stuttering problem.

It's not as if they're creating verisimilitude when writers do give characters wingding names. I've met people from all over the world with whom I haven't shared a common language. Without exception, we have been able to pronounce each other's names with little or no effort. For any fantasy setting to be accessible, never mind having verisimilitude, this has to hold for its characters as well. Unless...

The DM encourages all the players to use the same unintelligible naming conventions the NPCs suffer and then lets the NPCs nickname the PCs.

The world is one in which names have power and the easier it is for someone to pronounce your real name, the tougher life's going to be.

I may or may not be entirely serious but interested parties could check out a recent Dragon article on names as sources of power or any number of novels that exploit the idea, such Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away and The Magic May Return.

Anyway, Herpes, I'm with you.

I always knew that would be the case one day.

 

[Arnwyn]

I'm surprised so many people find this annoying. Me, I'm with the people who feel exactly the opposite way: bad fantasy-ish names turn me right off. Especially if they put in a lot of useless apostrophes, and throw in tons of nearly-unpronounceable syllables.

Well, obviously there's a middle ground.

I despise both real-world names, and I really despise names that have apostophes. Apostrophes in names are bad.

 

[ecliptic]

Uh elven last names like "Treeshadow", "Dawnwillow" and such are all just english
meanings of their real last names which are usually difficult to pronounce and a headache to come up with.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Uh elven last names like "Treeshadow", "Dawnwillow" and such are all just english
meanings of their real last names which are usually difficult to pronounce and a headache to come up with.

Yup, and I'd give writers leeway with that. I mean, if some fellow is having problems with the difference between "their," "there," and "they're," how in the Hell are they supposed to quickly and easily pronounce Lathilandandorien?

 

[Gothmog]

Please, just keep the names memorable and easy to say, and screw whatever verisimilitude you're trying to create by giving every other person in the module a name that sounds like their parents were in the process of being murdered by a hairball with a severe stuttering problem. It's not cute, it's not cool, and it's not making me want to run your module.

LOL! This is the funniest thing I've read on these boards (or anywhere) in a long time. Thanks Herpes!

Whoah! Thanking Herpes- the world has indeed become a strange place!

 

[Feathercircle]

4. Unnecessary variations in hit points. Do we really need goblins (hp: 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3)? Just give me an average number for smaller creatures like this. I can understand if there's variation for a few ogres or owlbears though.
.

3. Every little henchman having different stats. (I find it just annoying when the 20 goblins that are meant to do nothing but die on the PCs' swords each have different stats; realism be damned, its just a pain for the DM)

I guess I'm proving Sir Elton's point about what one person looks for in a module is another person's pet peeve, but this is EXACTLY WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR! Because of the way I DM, if I had been creating the encounter myself, I would have statted each of those goblins individually anyway- modules which have them all as clones of each other are a pain for me because I'll then have to go back and stat them myself and that doesn't save me any time. I understand why they don't do it most of the time, but it's part of the reason why I tend to use modules more for idea-fodder than run them out of the box. Could you two please list for me some of the modules that frustrated you like this?

Meanwhile, some of my pet peeves, other than those listed (which I mostly agree with, other than the one I just mentioned), relate mostly to misused monsters. I really hate it when a monster is used as an NPC in a context where having the NPC be a monster makes no coherent sense (Golden Shambler), illegal template use (again, the Golden Shambler), massive overuse of templates on a single creature when it would have been much easier just to make it a unique creature, people refusing to beef up a monster within the rules and just adding extra feats and skills as what amounts to a "because I say so" bonus, and.. well, anything that shows that the designer didn't know anything at all about the monster they were using... (illithids with genders, baatezu and tanar'ri working together without a really REALLY good explanation...)

 

[Kalendraf]

In approximate order, these are the things I dislike most about purchased adventures:

1. Big rules errors. I'm not talking small mistakes like missing a few bonus skill points on an NPC. I'm talking blatant errors that even a casual player can quickly identify as being wrong.

2. Not playtested. Sometimes, I find certain encounters or areas have not been properly playtested, and it can lead to major problems during or after the encounter.

3. Unbalanced for the intended party EL. Sometimes hard to differentiate from #2, but I'll classify it differently. Some authors just seem to like punishing parties with over-the-top encounters. Gee, you're only 1st level? Well, here's an EL7 monster coming at you.

4. Railroading. Nearly always a bad way to steer the plot, though in the right situation it might be tolerable...barely.

5. Monty Haul treasure. If authors follow the guidelines for treasure per encounter and NPC, things are manageable. But there seems to be a temptation to put super-duper items in as rewards which can lead to balance problems later.

6. Poorly drawn/keyed maps. I understand that revisions occur, but I like to have the maps line up with the entries in the module when ever they are referenced.

7. Highly intelligent creatures w/ poor defenses or strategy. It's ok for stupid monsters to have poor tactics or strategy, but highly intelligent ones should come up with elaborate traps, tricks or other tactics to defend themselves.

8. Too highly specialized of a setting. Suppose the adventure absolutely must occur in a huge, ancient coastal city, built on the side of the tallest mountain in the world which is actually a dormant volcano, and just happens to also be at the very intersection of 4 major warring countries consisting of humans, orcs, lizardmen and fey. Just where in the heck can I place that? I may buy it to run as a one-shot, but that's likely my only option.

9. Forgetting to list info. Editting errors happen, but sometimes key information regarding a room, treasure or the occupants is left out, causing a DM to scramble.

10. Making assumptions about party composition and abilities. Not every party consists of fighter,cleric,wizard and rogue. This is bad if a key plot item requires a certain ability the party may not have at all. For example, the only way to escape the final sure-fire-party-killing-death-trap is by using the high-level arcane scroll found in a chest. What if party has no wiz/sor and no one has any ranks in use magic device?

 

[Derulbaskul]

(snip) Please, just keep the names memorable and easy to say, and screw whatever verisimilitude you're trying to create by giving every other person in the module a name that sounds like their parents were in the process of being murdered by a hairball with a severe stuttering problem. It's not cute, it's not cool, and it's not making me want to run your module. (snip)

I have to stress that I find the gratuitous use of apostrophes in a name just as bad as using John, William and Bob as names for villains.

I just want the writer to spend a bit more with simply but appropriate sounding names like (looks at current list of villains) Harrow, Kantler and Ixil. They're easy to pronounce and yet sound suitable for a fantasy world.