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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FDP Mike" data-source="post: 704493" data-attributes="member: 325">The difficulty with adventures . . .This thread is generating some very intriguing discussion.Most of you are correct in pointing out that publishing adventures does not present as profitable a venture as other sorts of books (i.e., the all-inclusive "sourcebook" -- campaign setting, rules extensions/expansions, class books, and so forth). In particular, with the nature of the d20 market these days, publishing an adventure of 64 pages or less represents something of a risk. To get a decent return on an adventure, a publisher generally needs to go big. This means a high page count and an MSRP that would, at some point down the line, leave a little bit left over for the publisher to put back into . . . well, publishing other stuff.Essentially, this is what you will see in 2003 from FDP: big adventures of the epic sort. Other than our Arcana Unearthed tie-in adventure, which will be 64 pages, the adventures we've planned for release this year will hit 96 pages at a minimum, and they will be more than "just" dungeon crawls. Gates of Oblivion presents a kidnapping plot wrapped up in a wicked planar adventure (oh, if Manual of the Planes would find a home in the SRD! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ), and As of Yet Untitled spans several different locations and finishes off with (admittedly) a huge underwater dungeon. In both, the fate of the world lies in the PCs' hands. (OSM2 is in the works, by the way, and it also will likely reach a minimum of 96 pages.)As well, I think the comparisons to Dungeon quite valid. Excellent adventures do get published in Dungeon, and the magazine costs much less than a single adventure from a d20 publisher. "More bang for the buck," in other words. As well, using Dungeon as a kind of litmus test for quality also seems quite valid: a very fair question is whether or not a published adventure offers something more than a Dungeon adventure, usually something beyond the quality of the adventure itself -- i.e., a setting, crunchy bits (PrCs, new monsters, new magic items, new spells, NPCs, organizations, and so on), play aids such as handouts. In my mind, a published adventure should most definitely give you more than a Dungeon adventure, and not just in page count.What, then, does constitute a "well written" adventure?I can try and speak from my experience at FDP (and from editing some Necromancer stuff along the way). In FDP adventures, we always try to give a little more than strictly the adventure itself, and by this "more" I mean setting, personalities, background(s), and the occasional crunchy goodness (not to mention counters, I suppose). If an adventure can sort of create an atmosphere or mood that transcends the plot, then the plot itself is enhanced greatly. I guess, the matter comes down to one of story. Craft a good story, and the rest should take care of itself; if the story suffers or is uninteresting, then no amount of dextrous fenangling with rules and crunchy stuff will make the adventure necessarily "better."Then again, "well written" can encompass so many facets that pinpointing just one or two feels limiting. The writer's style can be engaging or not; the rules mechanics can be accurate or not; the new crunchy stuff can be balanced or not . . . and so forth. Trying to stand back a bit from my intimate involvement with FDP adventures, I can say that what we've done is pretty much always well written and as good as or better than what you see in Dungeon. Perhaps the quality that I most enjoy about what the FDP guys create is the story, the atmosphere, the mood. They all own a wonderful sense of what makes for good fantasy, for fun and epic adventuring. And these are guys who cut their teeth (and perhaps other body parts) on 1E and 2E D&D.Designing adventures in today's d20 climate, however, presents a host of challenges not seen before in D&D. Beyond the flexibility of just the core rules, designers now face a market teeming with variant rules of all sorts -- and designers get to work almost strictly with just the SRD and whatever new rules/crunch they develop on their own. How does one design an adventure, for instance, and take into account all the race- and class-specific books available? all the PrCs out there? all the new feats? Remember, we're talking about both WotC and 3rd-party products as part of the mix. Granted, the beauty of the OGL allows designers to use OGC from other publishers, but how much of this can be done in an adventure? If a designer does incorporate OGC, she most likely needs to provide the complete rules in the adventure: no sense hoping that the GM might happen to own the specific OGC source.In the end, adventures may be just as popular as ever (which is still not as popular as, say, campaign settings), but the d20 landscape sort of thins them out. Lots of publishers producing lots of adventures greys the skies somewhat, so for a few adventures now to stand out as "classics" means that they have caught on with a large enough segment of gamers to become part of a common experience . . . shared gaming lore, if you will.Anyway, I've rambled on long enough, and my dog is telling me in no uncertain terms that we better get to the park, like, SOON.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Again, this is a great thread!Take care,Mike</blockquote>

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