NeoGrognard

There’s always quite a bit of chatter about what makes good modules and bad modules in D&D. As a person who has written his share of both (more the former than the latter), and always strives to improve his craft, I’m always interested in what makes a good module. The one thing I’m sure of is that there is no golden formula. One could say a nice mix of story and action, or an adventure where choices matter, and they are lobbing truth bombs. But those are just aspirational statements. Most of us need guideposts or principles to us in the task. I’m always on the lookout for good, common-sense approaches to building a module.

One of my first guideposts as to what makes a good or bad adventure was the work of Tracy Hickman. Before he co-wrote those Dragonlance novels and countless other bits of contemporary pulp fantasy, Tracy Hickman was one of the best adventure writers around. He built his reputation before coming to work at TSR in 1982. His first company (which he and his wife Laura owned), Daystar West, was known for solid and creative adventure writing. It was their critical success that landed Tracy at TSR, and both the Pharaoh and Rahasia into a number of printings and forms. Personally I have great respect for Tracy and his adventure writing skills. I think Ravenloft is one of the best adventures ever written, and there is much to glean about adventure writing among its pages.

But my first contact with Mr. Hickman, though, was a bit rockier. The first Tracy Hickman adventure I ever bought was DL1 Dragons of Despair, the very first Dragonlance adventure. I have a love-hate relationship with this adventure, and that relationship has given me a lot of good practical wisdom on what both makes a good module and what doesn’t.

Some of the fantastic parts of DL1 Dragons of Despair: the art, the graphic design, the maps, and gully dwarves…that’s right, I said gully dwarves!

Even before I broke the shrink-wrap on DL1, I was excited about the adventure. Fantastic graphic design, a Caldwell cover painting, and the promise of fighting dragons all boded well. After I peeled off the module’s prophylactic, my geek was in full salute. DL1 featured a three-panel cover with and a fantastic orthographic dungeon map of a place called Xak Tsaroth and a hex map with places like Darkenwood and Qualinesti. I was ready to go dragon hunting!

It wasn’t until I started actually reading the module that I had some WTF moments. The prologue told me I was some dude name Astinus of Palanthus (later changed to Palanthas) the Lorekeeper of the World. Strange, but whatever. Chapter 1 told me gold had no value, there were no clerics (really, no clerics! In 1e D&D!), and that halflings didn’t exist, instead there were these creatures called kenders, which were basically halflings who wore shoes and their hair in a ponytail (topknot…whatever!). Oh and then there were the songs, but I’ll get to those. But still all of these things I could live with. Sure my players would be pissed that they couldn’t get healing magic until they actually find clerics, but since the adventure centers around finding a cleric, I was hoping that it would make playing one seem more desirable (hey, it could happen). My 13-year-old mind took all of that in stride, and assumed these were the things that made an adventure solid and sophisticated. I talked myself into most of the nagging strangeness I found in the adventure and got ready to run it for my friends.

I should have been a little more discerning.

Much of the actual game play was a disaster. First, Dragonlance had pre-made characters. Now we had seen pre-made characters before in modules, usually as a list of names and basic stats, but we never used those. Few adventures integrated the characters into the story the way DL1 did. There are crucial parts of the adventure that assume that you’re playing the pre-made characters, and its text does not hide its irritation if you and your players don’t get with the program.

However, if you players insist on bringing other characters into this game, review them carefully and keep in mind the differences mentioned in the prologue.

—DL1 Dragons of Despair, page 3 (Note: the prologue is just that Astinus gobbledygook)

I had to run with that limited guidance because there was no way my players were going to use pre-made characters. You know it was only a few years later that some of my players were begging to play Raistlin Majere or some kind of Raistlin clone, but this game; no dice.

In actual play, DL1 is often railroading and has one of the most ham-handed conclusions in module history. Oh, and never, never, never ask a bunch of 13-year-old boys (or even juvenile-acting adults) to sing or read the Song of Goldmoon or the Canticles of the Dragon aloud (the module suggest you do both, having the entire group trade off verse for the canticle one night while their characters are huddled around the fire…wha…what?). Players will make it enjoyable one way or the other, and you’ll be horrified by their methods.

There are plenty of good parts to DL1. I have always liked draconians. I just think they are cool, and I love the diverse ways they die. They are a monster and a puzzle wrapped in the same cloak. While the presentation is lacking some, the module handles encounter and events well, and provides a good structure for exploration of the countryside. That structure, when done well, give the perfect illusion of sandboxing, while giving the DM the tools she needs to advance plot. The use of gully dwarves as both puzzle and comic relief is superb. Some of you may be groan at the mention of gully dwarves, but I really think creatures like them have their place in RPGs. They allow the DM to infuse comic relief, a voice for the unreliable narrator, and foil all at once into the game. Much of the ruins and dungeon of Xak Tsaroth is strong and solid. But even with all those good things, I stopped running Dragonlance with the conclusion of its first adventure. It committed what I believe is the cardinal sin of D&D adventure design—it was too interested in telling a pre-determined story rather than letting players make their own story. That kid of shit may fly in the Final Fantasy franchise, and other computer RPGs (though it shouldn’t, IMO) but because D&D lacks the prison-like restraints of a digital level design, putting it in a D&D adventure is tantamount to asking your players to screw with you.

That’s never a good thing.

I still go back to this adventure quite a bit. I steal structures that I like and I am constantly reminded of what went wrong in game play all those years ago. Both provide excellent lessons on module building.