Thoughts on Adventure Design (Part 1)

Most old school adventures had an idea, a map, and 30ish pages of fluff that a GM had to sort through (and often cross-out) before they could use the thing.

All Dead Generations has  post called One Page Dungeon Design that is all about good One Page Dungeon Design. The One Page Dungeon is an interesting concept because in most cases they don't provide enough detail to run right away either, but they basically skip the part where the GM has to hack out the fluff and provide the kernel of good stuff directly so the GM can add in their own details right away (much of which can be improvised) allowing for a bit more usability.

All this got me thinking. Does anyone run modules as written (outside a convention setting that is)? If the answer is no, not really then we should all be doing some thinking on how to fix this. B1 In Search of the Unknown created a starting adventure designed where a GM would populate the dungeon, thus learning how that sort of thing is done. This was a good idea but I don't think it was ever duplicated so maybe it wasn't so good, but I tend to think it was and my mind ran with it, a bit.

Imagine a one-page dungeon with just enough info. Nothing about the encounters, just a bit of history, some notes on the location and traps or dressing or unique challenges. Then imagine 2-3 pages listing the encounter table and contents of each room (with stats). Then imagine another 2-3 pages listing an alternate encounter table and contents of each room (with stats). Then maybe a third for a higher level. The same location could be filled with Orc & Ogres in Option 1, Bandits & Bugbear in Option 2, and Drow & Dueger in Option 3. The GM then picks the option they prefer for their campaign. They might end up using all three options as a campaign goes on over the year. Do it right and you might find half the RPG blogs adding their own option to give a location life again, and again.

Anyway I think that might be a useful way to package adventures.

Note, clearly I'm mostly talking about location type adventures here, anything more than that could be cobbled together out of multiple locations with Encounter Option designed to go together in some way.