I'm playing Dark Chateau, by Rob Kuntz. I really love reading it. It's full of great details that makes the place come alive as a living environment. In play it doesn't translate as well as I would like it to though. I think it's mostly because of my rusty DM skills, and because some of the elements in it are hard to translate to 3.x rules, as well as me chopping some elements out due to time limits. Also, maybe I got too excited about it, since I was really looking forward to DM'ing again, and I put to much expectation into it. We're still having a great time playing it, but not as much fun as I had reading it.
Looking back, I remember reading Isle of the Ape, and thinking it wouldn't be that fun, but we ended up having a blast playing it.
As I look over at my boxed set of Castle Zagyg Upper Works, I wonder how it will play once I insert it into the campaign.
It seems hard to tell what makes a module a great one ahead of time. You guys ever have these experiences? What's your personal test to determine in advance if the module will be a great one in play, and is the test accurate for you?
I can attest to this. Many modules that seem fairly boring to read have played magnificently, and vice-versa. The G and D modules Gygax wrote are good examples. They aren't much to read, but are pretty whoop-ass in play.
I think you're exactly right about Dark Chateau; I had the same experience, and I've heard others express similar opinions. Dark Chateau is packed with cool ideas and some interesting twists, but it didn't play as good as it read. If I remember correctly, it kind of bogged down during the exploration of the manse. I doubt that it was playtested. If that's the case, it's too bad, because I bet the actual play issues could have been ironed out in playtest.
I have no idea if it was playtested. I've read the module, liked it, and intend to run it in my Dunfalcon campaign, though. Hence my following question:
What are the issues you guys see with Dark Chateau in actual play, and how would you fix them?
Play dragged in certain sections. Normally, I'd hesitate to attribute that to the module, since "dragging" can happen for all sorts of reasons, but it was a pretty common observation. I don't recall which sections dragged, for certain, but I know it was inside the house -- maybe the upper part of the mansion? There were some threads on the TLG forums where it was discussed. I'll see if I can find them.
Anyway, it's far from a fatal flaw (especially if you're aware of that tendency). And Dark Chateau has some good ideas in it (I was especially interested in the possibilities for expanding the adventure). When I was at the BBQ at the North TX RPG Con, I talked to Rob about it a little bit. He had the seeds planted for a whole underdark-type environment that would also link up with Castle Zagyg. I thought his plan was good, and would have loved to see it come to fruition. Oh well.
(Incidentally, I think his ideas for Castle Zagyg were solid, too -- he basically wanted to give the gamers what we wanted, which was the original dungeon levels, perhaps annotated with commentary and historical info. His Bottle City module is a good example. I'd have loved to see that kind of treatment for the rest of the original Greyhawk dungeons.)
I didn't find much. There used to be dedicated forums for Castle Zagyg, but they're not on the TLG forums any more, as far as I could tell. All I found was this thread (http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1658&highlight=dark+chateau&mforum=trolllordgames), which is not what I remember. I know there were some more in depth discussions, at one time.
Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;323295I didn't find much. There used to be dedicated forums for Castle Zagyg, but they're not on the TLG forums any more, as far as I could tell. All I found was this thread (http://www.freeyabb.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1658&highlight=dark+chateau&mforum=trolllordgames), which is not what I remember. I know there were some more in depth discussions, at one time.
I think the cool parts of the module when reading it were all of the things that were going to link to the later adventures in town and castle. There was one plot hook after another. Lots of detail. Makes for a great read. As I'm playing it though, I realize that they are too specific to the setting, and that it doesn't make sense to include a bunch of them. I add some of my own in for what I am doing, but it takes away from the flavor of the module if you take out all the setting specific stuff.
We just finished running through Dark Chateau and our entire group was underwhelmed. There are a couple of things in the module that really play like the writer did not like Players and was taking out some long distance revenge with the module.
Frequently.
Oh, heck yeah.
My favorite example was a Call of Cthulhu RPGA module that I got handed once - this was far enough back that it's from when people would photocopy the modules to hand them out, instead of sending over pdfs.
This module didn't seem very playable. The basic idea was that the players were playing a mix of roleplayers, who themselves were going to an all-you-can-eat chinese buffet for dinner and a rousing game of Call of Cthulhu. Of course, there was something very wrong at the buffet, and things eventually would land the roleplayed roleplayers into a bucket of chtulhu.
I thought it would be too confusing, I thought playing a character playing a character sounded like it would be too weird and difficult to pull off, and I didn't think there was enough there. Instead, the entire session was a riot of fun with lots of great roleplaying followed up by more fun, to the point where when another DM had to bow out and asked me to fill in for him in a later session, I eagerly accepted and had just as much fun the second time.
I think a large chunk of D&D modules in the 90s and maybe even the late 80s were decent reads but were too railroady for me to run. I can't name names as it's been too long.
Quote from: Nicephorus;323481I think a large chunk of D&D modules in the 90s and maybe even the late 80s were decent reads but were too railroady for me to run. I can't name names as it's been too long.
FWIW a former editor at TSR recently confirmed (http://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=70641) that pretty much none of that stuff was playtested at all.
Generally speaking, any module that tells a complete story with a predefined beginning, middle, and end is likely to read better than it plays -- if the players "follow the script" they'll probably be bored, if they don't then the GM has to either force them to or abandon big chunks of the module. OTOH, modules that just detail a location (and, perhaps, a few characters that live there) and leaves it up to the GM and players to create a "story" from those ingredients through actual play and interaction tend to play better than they read (although not always -- with a bad or experienced GM these sorts of modules can play really terribly too -- see most folks' experience with "The Keep on the Borderlands" when they were 11).
Quote from: ColonelHardisson;322931I can attest to this. Many modules that seem fairly boring to read have played magnificently, and vice-versa. The G and D modules Gygax wrote are good examples. They aren't much to read, but are pretty whoop-ass in play.
I agree with you with the exception of D1, which inverts the trend: it reads great (fantastically evocative descriptions of the kuo-toan shrine), but plays poorly (it's so easy for PCs to either bypass or quickly move through the shrine that I've never had a party actually engage any of the evocative coolness).
I had an issue with the Slavers (A1-A4) series of modules. In order to fit the modules into my campaing I had to do some modifications (players were hired to find members of the Royal family from the Principality of Ulek set during the Grayhawk wars just after the Pormarj offensive). The problems I had was with the maps. A number of the layouts of the dungeons especially in Modules A1 and A2 didn't make sense. I understand these modules were developed for tournament play, but in the dungeon layer of A2 there was no way to get the slaves into the slave pens unless you trooped them through the Boss NPC's private chambers. I don't know how much of this was due to the "on the fly" style of developing tournement adventures, but if I ever ran this Module series again I would likely re-draw the maps.
I always wondered how the Temple of Elemental Evil played out. I never ran the entire series, but I did purchase and read through the collected edition. I always wondered if running through Elemental Evil would have the same epic feeling as running through Against the Giants, Descent, Vault, and finally Demon Web Pits.
I was hoping to run this series in the same campaign when the characters hit level 10-ish. One of the things I was really looking forward to was having the characters complete Demon Web pits but then be trapped in Lloth's layer in the Abyss. At this point the characters should be around 20th level and having your players fight their way out of the Abyss at 20th level looked like exactly where the campaign should continue. It also seemed a great way to introduce the outer planes into the campaign. Unfortunately the group broke up first.
Quote from: T. Foster;323503FWIW a former editor at TSR recently confirmed (http://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=70641) that pretty much none of that stuff was playtested at all.
At times I wonder if any of 4E D&D modules have had much playtesting. The WotC 4E modules released so far seem kind of lackluster.
Quote from: ggroy;323622At times I wonder if any of 4E D&D modules have had much playtesting.
They have math for that, these days.
Quote from: Nicephorus;323481I think a large chunk of D&D modules in the 90s and maybe even the late 80s were decent reads but were too railroady for me to run. I can't name names as it's been too long.
A lot of Paizo's Pathfinder adventure paths and modules can be a good read. Each of the adventure path books are almost like reading a short story or a "novella" with some rpg style encounters. If one stripped out the combat encounter mechanics and compiled an adventure path's story texts into a book, they can probably pass for a full length fantasy novel.
Though running them as is, may be a different matter. I haven't tried running any of them as written. They way they are structured, they can be kind of on the railroady side. I've only taken some of the storylines and encounters for my sandbox 4E game.
Designing game modules is far and away my favorite part of RPG game design. Settings are fun too, but modules are like the meat to the sauce. It's what everyone showed up for.
Most modules I've read in the past 20 years have been pretty horribly designed. Simplified ones with spare rules like those from Goodman Games at least don't get in the way of themselves. And the Dungeon adventures from the 90's were pretty good too in terms of inventiveness. But lately everything seems to want to be a novel with predetermined choices for the players to follow a plot or, worse, no game modules whatsoever. But the last are really a different design of games where players gather to create a story (why buy one then, right?) rather than be tested in their abilities against one.
My best advice for testing is to score everything in the module according to the game design you are using, add up the points, and make sure everything is even based on all opposing factions involved. In D&D this is based on the two opposing alignments. BTW, I don't count neutral parties as full opponents. They are really just potential resources for both sides anyways. So, as long as opposing sides are equal in total point value BEFORE the player-characters are taken into account the module should be balanced. This allows the players' actions to be the deciding factors to the starting state of equilibrium.
However, seeing as how things stand in relation to each other, not just in terms of points, but also based on positioning, knowledge held by NPCs, etc., I test run the modules myself with different parties. If it's a convention game or 1-shot essentially, I use a good mix of PCs and stick with the one pre-selected party the players can pick from before game time. If it's my normal homebrew campaign, then I test it with the current PC party and few variants on that depending on the holes in the party based on race, class, highly potential equipment, etc. Once I feel it's pretty tightly designed I plot out the potential scenario script for the NPCs.
So really, balancing based on a complete point total and then dry running the module a few times to look for potential problems: the difficulty of the game being too high or too low, errors in scenario design, overlooked unbalances based on mapped relationships, all sorts of stuff that can ruin a game.
Oh, and my personal opinion is modules that are fun to read were sold to people so they could read them, not play them. Meaning they read like a good script for the PCs and not an RPG module. In other word railroad "adventures" written by people who want write stories rather than design a module for a game.
Quote from: Hunter_Rose;323576I always wondered how the Temple of Elemental Evil played out. I never ran the entire series, but I did purchase and read through the collected edition. I always wondered if running through Elemental Evil would have the same epic feeling as running through Against the Giants, Descent, Vault, and finally Demon Web Pits.
Its interesting you should say that. I have run ToEE three times and never made it past level 4. Just too many rooms and too many fights. People had fun while it lasted but it was simply too much.
In that sense, TOEE has been my most disapointing module expereicne. Postivie ones have been:
I6 Ravenloft. Reads well, plays even better. I ran this one with 3.5.
C1 Lost Tamoachan. Easily the best 1 session module you could run.
I3-5 Desert of Desolation series. Again ran with 3.5. Pretty solid, especially I4 Oasis of the White Palm.
B10 Night's Dark Terror. The best module I have ever run. Ran it twice, once with classic rules, once with 1E/2E.
The Sunless Citadel. A surprisingly good module. Very good introduction to 3E. If only KotS could have been of similar quality.
None of the above modules try telling a story (Ravenloft comes closet), perhaps that is why they worked so well.