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Your Criteria for Selecting Great Published Adventures

by Mike on 19 May 2025

Before you read further, write down some of your criteria for determining whether a published adventure is right for you. What do you look for? What are warning signs an adventure won't work for you?

There's no perfect adventure for everyone. Ask 100 GMs what their favorite adventures are and you'll get 100 different lists. Some adventures at the top of one GM's list are at the bottom of another's.

There's no single right answer to define a perfect adventure. There are many right answers.

But we can, collectively, discuss adventures and define our own criteria for what makes an adventure work for us. Building this list helps us better evaluate the adventures we buy, read, prepare, and run for our group.

Choosing What to Buy

$60 may be cheap for the hours of fun you'll have with your players but it's not nothing. What can we do to see if an adventure might be for us before we buy it?

Read reviews from good reviewers.
Read previews when they're available.
Consider the previous work an author or publisher put out.
Ask about the adventure from those who bought it. Ask questions based on your own typical criteria.
Read forums and blog posts that discuss the adventure.

Up front you might be able to tell if an adventure is for you or not before you buy it. Even if you do buy it, though, that doesn't mean it's worth running it.

The True Cost and Value of a Published Adventure

The true cost and value of a published adventure isn't just its monetary cost. When you think about the number of hours you and your players spend with an adventure, even $60 is cheap.

The time you spend with your friends around the table is invaluable. That time is precious – you'll never get it back and we get too few hours with our friends in our lives. Why spend that time on an adventure we don't dig?

That's why it's important to clarify your own criteria to determine if the adventure is right for you. You and your friends are going to spend a lot of potential time with it. Even if you already bought it, that doesn't mean you should run it.

My Own Criteria

Here are some of my criteria for determining if an adventure is for me – and thus something I want to run for my group.

What I Look For

A clear structure for the adventure I can understand quickly.
Clear character motivation to go through the adventure.
Meaningful choices for the characters to steer the adventure's direction.
An easy to use layout that's easy to reference at the table.
Random lists that make my life easier as a GM.
Not too weird, not too mundane.
The clear flexibility to make it my own.
Economical writing – give me what I need and nothing else.
Lots of character agency in the story.
Easy to implement ways to make the world feel alive (rival groups and villainous quests).
Fantastic locations and dungeon designs.
Set ups for situations instead of plot-driven scenes.
A theme I can resonate with and get excited about.

What I Avoid

Plots and storylines built around betraying the trust of the characters (and players).
No clear structure.
No clear character motivation.
Too many words.
Too linear a structure or plot.
Broken connections between the story and the motivations of the characters. No, my paladin would not like to throw people's souls into a war machine to drive 10 miles further.

Just One View

Those aspects are my criteria. They are not your criteria. When you think back to adventures you've loved – what made you love them? When you think back to adventures that didn't work out for you – what sins did they commit?

Even if you've already bought an adventure, it's ok to take a deep look and say "yeah, this one isn't for me" and set it aside. Strip it for parts instead.

Of course, you can skip all of this analysis and build your own adventures. I think homebrew adventures in published settings is a much better way to get exactly what you want.

Whatever you choose, remember that your time with your friends around the gaming table is invaluable. Pick the right material to make that time awesome.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

The Intimacy and Focus of One-on-One Games

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Free TTRPG Markdown Documents for Obsidian and Notion and Court of Winter's Love – Dragon Empire Prep Session 23.

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