Spinning off from WotC discussion, I was thinking about design of published adventure modules.

I tried some of the early big adventures for 5th ed like Princes of the Apocalypse and Out of the Abyss, along with Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak. I didn't like them, and found them to be largely flavorless and even tedious. At least from reading, I've enjoyed much more the recent approach of having an anthology of short 10-15 page adventures. I think there's a strong tendency in longer adventures to have padding to space out material.

That mostly holds for earlier editions as well. Some of my favorite modules are I6 (original Ravenloft), Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, and Sunless Citadel for 3E, which are all shorter format. The adventures have a tight focus and theme.

Some of the bigger old series were ones like Against the Giants and Temple of Elemental Evil, which I played, but I also found them to get bogged down and less flavorful compared to my favorite short modules.


Does anyone else feel this way? Is there a way that bigger modules or series have tighter focus and flavor? Conversely, how do you tie together shorter modules if you want to use them in a campaign?

Quote from: jhkim on October 19, 2022, 11:01:42 PM
Spinning off from WotC discussion, I was thinking about design of published adventure modules.

I tried some of the early big adventures for 5th ed like Princes of the Apocalypse and Out of the Abyss, along with Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak. I didn't like them, and found them to be largely flavorless and even tedious. At least from reading, I've enjoyed much more the recent approach of having an anthology of short 10-15 page adventures. I think there's a strong tendency in longer adventures to have padding to space out material.

That mostly holds for earlier editions as well. Some of my favorite modules are I6 (original Ravenloft), Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, and Sunless Citadel for 3E, which are all shorter format. The adventures have a tight focus and theme.

Some of the bigger old series were ones like Against the Giants and Temple of Elemental Evil, which I played, but I also found them to get bogged down and less flavorful compared to my favorite short modules.


Does anyone else feel this way? Is there a way that bigger modules or series have tighter focus and flavor? Conversely, how do you tie together shorter modules if you want to use them in a campaign?

I tend to prefer shorter 3rd party modules over anything official. While 3rd party adventures tend to be slightly less developed they usually have more personality and room for the DM to expand elements to fit their style. Some years ago I Ran through the Complete Adventures of M.T. Black and managed to create a fairly cohesive campaign. The trick was to scatter breadcrumbs throughout and develop the details they engaged in while shifting the stuff they missed to new places.

As for official anthologies Tales from the Yawning Portal was a good collection of classics, but Unfortunately both Candlekeep and Radiant citadel have been handed to complete amateurs and talentless hacks who seem to be hired based largely on identity politics and nearly all the adventures in the anthology have glaring issues as a result.

As for bigger official modules the open world sandboxes in an inherently evocative setting like Curse of Strahd, Waterdeep Dragon Heist, & Descent into Avernus tend to be more interesting than the more linear ones IMO.

I just ended an online campaign that started in January playing through Candlekeep after 10th level; game-related reasons were because I found so many of the adventures poorly done or uninspiring, the focus on very short adventures and not sites or worlds made them all feel contextless and consequence-free, and because I didn't want to spend months playing at higher levels. I _set up_ side quests and alternate campaign paths and consequences, but the players knew the campaign premise was "adventure of the week" and focused on that. Although the page count compares to many early modules, the writing is far less dense, and so there's just a lot less to work with.

We skipped over some of the worst-written adventures, but then the characters were underdeveloped - e.g. a 10th level rogue with no magic weapons is really ineffectual fighting ghosts, elementals, and an archmage with stoneskin during the 10th-level adventure.

I've avoided Radiant Citadel because I find the premise uninspiring, as well as playing into this "string of disconnected adventures" pattern. We're kicking off a new in-person campaign next week set in a large quasi-sandbox; I'll see how that goes by comparison - can I train these players to track & follow rumours or interesting map details?

With few exceptions, I have not played a module straight since maybe the 90's. Notable exceptions are some of the shorter LotFP ones like Tales from the Scarecrow—a must have October/fall one-shot, and some pamphlet modules such as A Hole in the Oak.

I ran Horde of the Dragon Queen for 5e and my table absolutely loved it. But I made changes. I slowed the pace of it down, and really zoomed in on the Cult of the Dragon. The elements were there, but the timeline was altered and we often spent several sessions away from the printed material.

For anthologies, I find that I have to also make additions, but they are more targeted between the modules. You need something to link them together. A magical tavern or library is lazy.

I'm not sure that I have a preference, other than to say that I prefer to always alter the material. With large campaigns, the bookends stay the same(ish), and I expand the middle. With anthologies, I have to expand the bookends and work to link them into the world.

The things I find most helpful in any adventure are the thoughtfully selected inspiring details, organized well.  The longer the adventure, the less likely I am to get thought, inspiring details, or organization, but I think that's more of a side effect than anything else.  Probably more a consequence of how people get published and paid than what the authors would do left to their own devices.  Plenty of shorter adventures are lacking in those departments as well.  It's just much more likely that someone writing a shorter adventure has started at the beginning, told it to the end, then stopped.

It's difficult to write a good adventure for the general public, and even more difficult to write one that will be useful to me.   In fact, it's the parts that get counted as the "adventure" now that I find least useful.  Give me some interesting locations, NPCs with goals and personality, monsters with the same, interesting treasure, etc., I can spin multiple adventures out of all that.  The background, plot, events, and other stuff always seem insipid, and something I have to wade through to get to the good stuff.

Quote from: jhkim on October 19, 2022, 11:01:42 PM
Spinning off from WotC discussion, I was thinking about design of published adventure modules.

I tried some of the early big adventures for 5th ed like Princes of the Apocalypse and Out of the Abyss, along with Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak. I didn't like them, and found them to be largely flavorless and even tedious. At least from reading, I've enjoyed much more the recent approach of having an anthology of short 10-15 page adventures. I think there's a strong tendency in longer adventures to have padding to space out material.

That mostly holds for earlier editions as well. Some of my favorite modules are I6 (original Ravenloft), Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, and Sunless Citadel for 3E, which are all shorter format. The adventures have a tight focus and theme.

Some of the bigger old series were ones like Against the Giants and Temple of Elemental Evil, which I played, but I also found them to get bogged down and less flavorful compared to my favorite short modules.


Does anyone else feel this way? Is there a way that bigger modules or series have tighter focus and flavor? Conversely, how do you tie together shorter modules if you want to use them in a campaign?

I was very into the Ravenloft line when I first started GMing. That had a mixture of 32 page adventures, 96 page, and of adventure boxed sets that were much more elaborate. I think generally speaking the 32 page adventures were often quite reliable (Night of the Walking Dead and The Created were two I really liked running: obviously the original Ravenloft adventure was great and why the line existed in the first place). The 96 page adventures could be amazing when they were successful, because they were crammed with so much content and had room to explore things there isn't space for in a 32 page. But if they were bad they could be a misery to read, a huge challenge to run, and a mess where things didn't line up properly. And boxed sets, often had a similar level of risk but generally were much better than the 96 page adventures (I think because so much effort went into them). For me a highlight 96 page adventure was Feast of Goblyns. This was an amazing adventure that was my introduction to running the game and it had so much setting content, so many interesting locations to explore and scenarios. That couldn't be done in 32 pages the way they did it. But then you also had Roots of Evil, which I wasn't too into. For boxed sets you had Castles Forlorn by Lisa Smedman (who wrote a lot of material for the Ravenloft adventure line). I haven't run it in years, but I just picked up again on Drivethru. I remember loving it as a GM when it first came out because it had a 96 page source book (which covered everything in Forlorn). This to me was amazing because Forlorn was so bare bones in the original description (all the entries in the original set were bare bones but I found Forlorn especially difficult to grasp compared with other domains). I especially loved how it got into the groups of Goblyns who dwell in the area. It also came with two other books, a 32 page adventure set in Castle Tristenoira, and a 32 page encounter book (which I think is one of the cooler components of the set). And it had a bunch of fold out maps as well. People either love or hate this but I loved it. It was a wonderful location that existed in different periods of time, with a threat who changes depending on the time in question because he is so old. The 32 page encounter book is more than just encounters on the road, they are often more like little adventures. And it is just great having something like this to draw on if the players go to the domain for any reason (in a lot of ways its the most useful book in the box, because you can squeeze so much play out of it).

I am also running the adventure anthology Book of Crypts right now, using the old 2E system. I quite like the anthology structure. This is an early 90s module so it has some railroady bits and there are things about how it is done that don't match my style these days, but I am running it as written and have explained to the players the style issues (for example the last adventure imposed an entire backstory on a PC about him investigating a town being attacked by skeletons and encountering a necromancer months before the present campaign). The book is basically monster of the week, though you don't have to run it that way. And each adventure is about 10 pages or so (with some being longer or shorter). They are really easy to read each week, they are a good mix of monsters and themes, they function a lot like an anthology book or movie, in that the art to it is in the overall mixture balance. It is a good introduction to many of the mechanics in Ravenloft (the first adventure for example makes a point of giving opportunity for the Horror Check to come up). The good thing about an anthology structure is there is bound to be something in there you like (there are three adventures in there in particular I remember running all the time). But if you go through them in order, it is an interesting ride and has a structure to it that makes sense. I think we are on the 5th or 6th adventure at the moment

My experience with the long adventures was that the players almost always went off track.  I had to i corporate ofher short adventures to give them stuff to do. 

Of the 5e published campaigns, Ghosts of Saltmarsh was my favorite because if gave you handful of adventures that had gaps in between them regarding the levels that they were meant to be played.  So you had to fill in the blanks.  Which is what I am good at doing. 

The issue with 5e adventures is once the PC's hit level 5, they are nigh unstoppable.  I ran the 5e version of G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and they beat the snot out of my poor hill giants. 

When I think of my favorite modules, I'm all over the map.

Keep on the Borderlands is probably my original favorite. Very succinct module. But you can easily get 6 months of play time out of it. Zero prep. Maximum bang-to-buck ratio.

Tomb of Horrors, short and tight. Nearly zero prep. Great atmosphere. Brains over stats.

Grimfens Low Road Trilogy (Lejendary Road, Dance of the Fairie Rings, Mouth of the Marsh). 3 mid-length modules adds up to one beefy in length adventure. A lot of fresh takes and originality. Recurring villain. Final installment does link several mini adventures into the whole.

The Adlerweg Series (The Sentinel, The Gauntlet). Short to mid-length despite being a 2-parter. Dungeony parts are zero prep. Non-dungeony parts are sparse. If you're good at running investigations, the room to breathe is great and the end result is a linear/sandbox hybrid reminiscent of the adventure video games of the mid 80's.

The Forest Oracle. Short and tight. Heralded as the worst module ever because it doesn't make sense. But I found there is more to it than that. There is one key that makes it all make sense, but the module doesn't give it. For that, I find it interesting, and so it makes my favorites list.

Midnight on Dagger Alley. Short and tight. But good replay value. Solo adventure. But I did it with 3 players simultaneous. That was a blast!

The Veiled Society. Short and tight. Decent mystery with enough mechanisms built-in to the module to keep PCs on track. Though there is indication that some free form investigation should be required by the DM. As with the Adlerweg series, it helps if you're good at running investigation style adventures.

Hall of Many Panes. All time favorite. Long adventure. Provides 8-12 months of play. I think this fits what you're asking for. Consists of over 50 small adventures that range in length. Most are single-session adventures. Some are so short you can bang out 2 in a single session. A few might take a couple of sessions. There is one lengthy dungeon crawl that IIRC took my group 6 weeks to complete. Great backstory. GM has breathing room in terms of how PCs learn about that backstory. You can actually learn to be a better gamer from this module.

I like short adventures, but meaty sandbox campaigns like Arden Vul. Long linear campaigns tend to lose momentum.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on October 20, 2022, 07:31:51 AM
The things I find most helpful in any adventure are the thoughtfully selected inspiring details, organized well.  The longer the adventure, the less likely I am to get thought, inspiring details, or organization, but I think that's more of a side effect than anything else.  Probably more a consequence of how people get published and paid than what the authors would do left to their own devices.  Plenty of shorter adventures are lacking in those departments as well.  It's just much more likely that someone writing a shorter adventure has started at the beginning, told it to the end, then stopped.

It's difficult to write a good adventure for the general public, and even more difficult to write one that will be useful to me.

Yeah, this is closest to my view. I rarely like published adventures, whether short or long. It's certainly possible for longer modules to be good, but the odds are against it. In other genres, I've liked some campaign modules - like John Tynes' The Golden Dawn for Call of Cthulhu, but even that has a bunch of poor execution. I do have a feeling that with longer modules that the writer feel contracted to fill out the space, so they come up with stuff to make sure the dungeon is filled out, or that there are enough side quests, say. Whereas with a short module, everything can be more tightly connected to the premise.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on October 20, 2022, 07:31:51 AM
In fact, it's the parts that get counted as the "adventure" now that I find least useful.  Give me some interesting locations, NPCs with goals and personality, monsters with the same, interesting treasure, etc., I can spin multiple adventures out of all that.  The background, plot, events, and other stuff always seem insipid, and something I have to wade through to get to the good stuff.

Yes, I agree with this, too. Plot and events are stuff that I can wing, and usually do even if the module provides them.

Quote from: Naburimannu on October 20, 2022, 04:24:57 AM
I just ended an online campaign that started in January playing through Candlekeep after 10th level; game-related reasons were because I found so many of the adventures poorly done or uninspiring, the focus on very short adventures and not sites or worlds made them all feel contextless and consequence-free, and because I didn't want to spend months playing at higher levels. I _set up_ side quests and alternate campaign paths and consequences, but the players knew the campaign premise was "adventure of the week" and focused on that.

This is a good point. Having "adventure of the week" without a framing device contributes to a lack of context and consequence. In my campaigns, I've usually had a larger campaign context that I came up with myself, and I adapted adventures to fit in - rather than doing "adventure of the week". For example, I did my "Dawn of Fire" campaign which was post-apocalyptic. The main overarching plot was surviving in a collapsing world, but dungeons featured as a part of that. I adapted Dragon's Demand (from Paizo), Sunless Citadel, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, and Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth into the game - but there was a lot of interim action that I came up with on my own.

I've done similarly in campaigns for other systems, like Call of Cthulhu - where I strung together a number of short adventures from different sources into a framing context that I borrowed from John Tynes' "The Golden Dawn" campaign, even though I skipped most of the adventures from that book.

Candlekeep Mysteries and Radiant Citadel both have a central location, but they don't have good suggestions for framing the adventures to give context and consequence. I don't have Tales from the Yawning Portal, but I wonder if it is similar (?). The lack of a good framing context was my top criticism in a recent review I did of Radiant Citadel. My leaning was to toss out the citadel entirely and replace it with a different plot device. Here's my review - one can skip to the appendix for my suggested replacement.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NE9f7P35te1m-t4lTGuBx6GPV2vPLUhnc1CMDtA_BVk/edit#

I like RuneQuest modules Borderlands and Griffon Mountain.
Both are sandbox campaigns with a number of mini-adventures.
Borderlands has the mini-adventures in a bit of a railroading setup of one after another.
Griffon Mountain is just pure sandbox.

I think some of the 5e campaign modules are very hit and miss. Some very miss in odd ways. Like how a chunk of both Castle Ravenloft and Tomb of Annihilation are just too "random stuff happens!" at points and then veer back on course. At times it feels like the random feeling parts were possibly added in later. But they have a tendency to break up the flow.

This carries over into the Neverwinter Online adaptions. They often feel even more random than the modules they are based on and lack nearly any connecting plot to make you care why you are trudging from point A to point B.

Some of the old 2e campaign modules were pretty good. Others not. Par for the course really. I particularly liked the Darkness Gathering set.

But this was a problem not just for D&D. While I really like Mutiny on the Elanor Moraes module for Star Frontiers. The other modules in the Face of the Enemy set were underwhelming.

YMMV as ever.

I like Cos and ToA despite the terrible organization. They have BOTH a coherent "narrative" and a sandbox setting, (mostly) railroad-free.

They are, however, too verbose and extensive (and flawed); I ran the entirety of Tales of the Demon Lord, each adventure is about 2-4 pages, it work well, but it lacks some coherence and the sandbox aspect.

I've been looking for good OSR adventures but TBH all I could find is rooms and rooms full of orcs, skeletons and giant bees in succession, with little rime or reason (yes, I'd like recommendations, especially if free).

I've read some decent DCC adventures, maybe I should read more...

I would really love to find some middle ground between these approaches...

Try BX and some BECMI modules. They tend to have better cohesion.

Examples like Keep on the Borderland. The areas of the caves are laid out in a certain progression and the areas have some interaction and backstory even. Same for Isle of dread.

Oddly it feels like while BX/CMI was the lesser of the two D&D lines. It got the better of the two lines modules by far for overall quality. AD&D has its gems. But it has alot of so-so modules too.