Dungeon Deep Cuts #0

— Unknown, 19th century

Dungeon Deep Cuts #1 is already live!

This is the prelude to my new series, Dungeon Deep Cuts. (Thanks to Ty for the name!) I will scour the internet for lesser-known and un-reviewed adventures and highlight my favorites on a weekly-ish basis. If you’ve published an adventure that you’d like to see reviewed, please check out the Submissions page.

Intentions

The process of reading and reviewing submissions to the A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon game jam inspired me to write more reviews. I conceived of this series with the following in mind:

• I often feel uncomfortable writing primarily negative reviews
• Popular adventures garner the lion’s share of reviews
• Hidden gem adventures can be tough to find

Criticism is important; it helps us improve our design skills and elevates the medium as a whole. However, I just don’t have it in me to write a scathing review of someone’s adventure—particularly a free or PWYW publication by a hobbyist. While my game jam writeups did include criticisms, I chose to exclusively write about submissions that I really liked overall. I intend to continue in that vein.

I know some will balk at this, so I want to be clear: I do not mean that I will never write a critical review on this blog, or that I will treat submissions with kid gloves. Rather, the intention of Dungeon Deep Cuts specifically is to highlight un-reviewed adventures and emerging writers. While I don’t have a massive audience, I hope this series can serve as a signal boost for great adventures that haven’t received the attention they deserve.

Submissions

One challenge associated with this series is that I’ll end up reading far more adventures than I actually review. And, unfortunately, I’m not in a position to purchase dozens of adventures every week. I humbly ask that writers consider submitting digital review copies for consideration. To encourage submissions, I will do the following:

• If an adventure impresses me, I will review it in a future installment of Dungeon Deep Cuts
• Otherwise, I will politely inform the author why I did not select their submission for review and offer constructive criticism (on an opt-in basis)
• I will not review an adventure that I dislike, and I will never trash a submission, publicly or privately.

Hierarchy of Needs

To wrap up this post, I’d like to explain how I evaluate adventures. With Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in mind, I suggest that adventures, too, have a hierarchy of needs:

Interactivity is the foundational element of any adventure. Sid Meier once said that “A game is a series of interesting choices,” and I’d argue that’s especially true of adventures. In “The Importance of Choice,” Justin Alexander observes that “choice is the defining quality of roleplaying games.” An adventure should offer dynamic situations, lively characters, fantastic contraptions, vying factions, and other such opportunities for the players to get involved and effect change.

Originality is the next most important element. An adventure should offer novelty, delight, weirdness, horror, mystery, humor—anything other than a drab slurry of stock-standard fantasy trappings and tropes.

Utility is also crucial, as an adventure functions as a reference for the referee. An adventure should facilitate play not only through its content but also through how that content is organized. A good adventure should have thoughtful information design, clear maps, and economical language.

Writing serves an important purpose, as vivid imagery, specific diction, and taut prose all help the referee envision and communicate an adventure’s content. However, I expect most referees can more easily embellish sparsely-described environments and characters than invent complex factions or unique monsters on-the-fly.

Aesthetics elevate an adventure, but no amount of art or graphic design can compensate for a lack or interactivity or originality. However, affordable publishing software, a wealth of public domain art, and online tutorials all make sloppily-produced adventures less forgivable than ever.

That’s All For Now…

Dungeon Deep Cuts #1 is already live! If you’ve published an adventure that you’d like to see reviewed, please check out the Submissions page.