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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 704663" data-attributes="member: 4937">If I imagine myself a publisher that has to choose between thousands of modules, I compose for my a check list to kinda narrow down the field.  It might not be the same as your check list, and it might not be the same as the dungeon checklist, but I'd want a check list of 'basic features' I'd expect from any worthy professional module.1) Good story:  A good module is like a short story.  Remember the scene in 6th sense?  No, not the one with the twist, the one in which the kid says, "In order to have to tell a good story, you have to have a twist."  There has to be at least one moment in the story of paradigm shift.  There has to be a moment when the reader/player is stunned by the fact that his previous conception of the situation was wildly and completely wrong.  IMO, The mark of a good DM is the ability to hit those moments full force.  It is that moment when the old wizard reaches his hand out to the child and says 'Come here, Cutter'.   It is the moment when you open the newspaper just because it is something that IC your character would do, and the headline reads 'Summit of World Leaders to Commence Tommorrow' and you suddenly realize that you aren't trying to solve a murder; you are trying to save the world.      No paradigm shift; No sale.2) Evocative Situations: At some point in the module there have to be poignant scenes for the DM to describe and to 'attach' the players to the environment.  These scenes make the players 'care' about the game.  They make it seem to matter whether they defeat the villian, save the child, or otherwise act heroically.  As a DM you sense it the moment the player stops playing in order to get XP or the +5 hackmaster, and starts playing because he starts caring about these fictional characters you've created.  There comes a point in good story in which the player is not trying to kill the villian because that is the point of the game, but because he really hates the villian.  It I can't find some scenes like that in the story I'm not going to buy it.3) Fresh and Original: Ideally, we aren't just dealing with a good story, we are dealing with a story I would have probably not come up with on my own.  It is outside my standard bag of tricks.  It uses some technique of hiding the twist that I haven't seen before.  It has a really good hook.  It has a cast of characters that is memorable.  It has NPC's who are so fully fleshed that the players will remember thier names long after the events are concluded.4) A good map: I can't over emphasize how important map craftmanship is to a good professional module.  In my opinion, map craftsmanship is one of the rarest talents among DM's.  I've known plenty of good DM's that couldn't draw an interesting map if thier life depended on it.  The map is the most important character in the plot of almost any module.  The map is the visual texture of the imagination.  A good map is the foundation good module, and most of the professional modules out today fail for me on the map test.      To me, the paragon of all published maps, the one that every adventure should strive toward is I6.  You don't have to have as big of a map as I6, but you should have as interesting of a map as I6.   Castle Ravenloft is filled with evocative settings for things to happen in.  It's 3D maze of towers and levels and traps which lead the party back in bewildering circles, separate them, confuse them, and _SCARE_ them is a perfect marriage with the mood of the setting and the nature of the villain.  Every professional module should be striving for the same harmony of effect.     In short, the map needs to appear as if it was made by someone with professional architechtural training, or your module just doesn't strike me as being all that professional.  First edition, especially the Hickman modules, had that mastery of map technique in spades and noone since has rivaled it in my opinion.     Mind you, the map doesn't have to be a spatial one, and the dungeon crawl itself should mostly be a servant of the story.  An  interesting event map is just as intriguing as a dungeon.5) Good dungeoneering: This is the point which I think sales most modules to most publishers, and of all the aspects of making a good module I think it is probably the most common talent among DM's.  This is the ability to play with the rules to invent the cunning overvillian, the original minion, the interesting synergy of two creatures not normally encountered together, the diverse set of challenges (tactical, RP, problem solving), the cunningly trapped room, the simple logic puzzle, the new monster with an unusual ability, and so forth.  Some folks do it better than others, but I've scarsely met an experienced DM who can't do this.  A DM who can't do this doesn't keep a party together for long, and for someone like me this is dime a dozen.  It takes a module just stuffed with original dungeoneering to even perk my interest (RttToEE), and a module otherwise featuring original dungeoneering can fall flat for me (HoKS) because it is lacking so much elsewhere.      If I am a good indication of the average DM, the problem a publisher has with trying to sell a module based on dungeoneering alone is that I typically don't bother to buy modules like this because I don't really want to run the whole thing.  Instead, I browse through them for the best ideas for traps, foes, and problems that I want to steal and incorporate in my own stories, and that is the last time I pick them up.</blockquote>

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