What makes a good module a good module?

Qualities of good adventures:
* A good adventure is any that can survive the players ignoring the plot. -- TristramEvans
* An engaging story. Something the players get invested in seeing through.
* An immediate problem. Something the characters need to do before they can progress.
* A mystery. Some players love mysteries, courtly intrigue, ancient puzzles etc.
* A slowly escalating challenge. The early goons may be a cakewalk. But bu the end the characters may be pretty worn down.
* A theft. Someone took something and you need to get the McGuppin back. -- Omega
* Maps -- evocative with a sense of terrain and interesting features
* Graphics that the GM can use to show the players what is happening
* Handouts (often of the above description) but might also be pages from a tome, etc.
* Motivations for critical NPCs -- you need them to be there to give the players information and clues, but why are they there for their own reasons? Keys into role-playing for the GM

A good adventure is any that can survive the players ignoring the plot.

Quote from: TristramEvans;702712A good adventure is any that can survive the players ignoring the plot.

LOL, can I quote you on that?

That reminds me of a time I was with a new group and did a sort of math --- "We have ships, crew, cannons, supplies, and a wide open sea.... Let's go pirating!", to which the group agreed, much to the dismay of the DM and his planned plot.

Quote from: shawnhartnell;702714LOL, can I quote you on that?

That reminds me of a time I was with a new group and did a sort of math --- "We have ships, crew, cannons, supplies, and a wide open sea.... Let's go pirating!", to which the group agreed, much to the dismay of the DM and his planned plot.

Yeah, but I have the sneaking suspicion that Im paraphrasing something Paul Mason said a decade or so ago...

An enguaging story. Something the players get invested in seeing through.
An immediate problem. Something the characters need to do before they can progress.
A mystery. Some players love mysteries, courtly intrigue, ancient puzzles etc.
A slowly escalating challenge. The early goons may be a cakewalk. But bu the end the characters may be pretty worn down.
A theft. Someone took something and you need to get the McGuppin back.

Mix and match. But an unfolding story is likely the first. Even Tomb of Horrors has a bit of story to learn. If you live long enough.

Two of my personal favorite modules are Ghost Tower of Iverness and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. I also like Queen of the Demonweb Pits for the variety. Then there is the Illithid Trilogy which is one of my favorite 2nd ed module sets for the sheer scope of it. Lots of fun and all sorts of variety to it.

Thanks, I've added it them to the list.

Overall, are you saying that good adventures have a good hook?

Hard to say. Some modules start off kind of slow. The group is in town or passing through and after a while something odd happens. Possibly not anything big. But then another and another. A flexible start point can be a boon to GMs at least. Though some modules are pretty specific for a start off.

Most players will get intrigued and investigate the slow start. The hook is subtle and may not really strike till after a while.

Other times events overtake the characters. Something big happens and then either escalates or leads to a puzzle to be solved.

Keep on the Borderlands is an oddity for me as it is essentially one big clearing action. Fairly mundane. But the way it is structured is fun. No hook, lots of action.

Barrier peaks starts off with weird creatures never before seen and a mystery which deepens the further you get.

The Illithid trilogy starts off fairly subtle. A long winter, relatively harmless cultists on the upswing. Leading to dissapearances, plots that seem mundane but turn into an ever escalating threat.

Module in the sense of a purchased module, I like ways to hook the PCs into it. Unfortunately there's no way a module writer can know what your PCs look like, kind of a limitation of the medium, though perhaps they can offer suggestions. To an extent that a module is written blind could itself be a good thing (no unfairly using all undead against the 3e critical-monster PC ?) I suppose, but I've had some interesting module Oops. (The prize winner for me was running Myriador's D20 conversion of Caverns of the Snow Witch with a centaur PC - in the last bit of the adventure, they visit a healer who is supposed to provide the PCs with pegasi to fly to the top of the mountain as part of the magic healing ritual, and otherwise they die).

I'd also separate 'good published module' from 'good adventure'. A decent GM can write a good scenario themself, but a published module that's good will give resources that add to quality or save large amounts of time - maps, character illustrations of NPCs, big dungeon complex layouts or whatnot. Stuff like Pathfinder I'm guessing is partly useful just since statblocks themselves are slightly unwieldy, so you can save design effort.

Aside from story elements, which have been discussed, for me what makes that book worth buying are:

• Maps -- evocative with a sense of terrain and interesting features
• Graphics that the GM can use to show the players what is happening
• Handouts (often of the above description) but might also be pages from a tome, etc.
• Motivations for critical NPCs -- you need them to be there to give the players information and clues, but why are they there for their own reasons? Keys into role-playing for the GM