(This is the "Dungeon Designs" column from the June 1993 issue of the Eamon Adventurer's Guild newsletter.  Copyright 1993 Eamon Adventurer's Guild, 7625 Hawkhaven Dr., Clemmons, NC 27012-9408.  You may reproduce this freely as long as this credit remains attached to the article.)


In the past year, there has been some difficulty and bad feelings caused by misunderstandings between myself and one or two new Eamon authors.  The problems could have been completely averted if we had each done a better job of communicating our opinions and plans.  So it seems well past time for me to discuss the subject of new adventure evaluation:

1) Sometimes a new author will write me and ask for help in setting up this or that special event that he wants to use in the adventure he is working on.  Usually, the description of the proposed special event is very vague and doesn't begin to give me enough details or even an overview of the play behind the special event.

I can't properly help you unless you give me a detailed description of what you want to do and why.  More often than not, the author's original idea is either extremely difficult to implement or will never be seen by anyone because it requires obscure actions by the player.  But if I have enough details, I can almost always come up with modifications that are reasonably easy to program and will be seen by the player.

For example, I once received an adventure that had an enormous amount of special programming that only kicked in if the player character had a certain name.  I'm sure that you can see that the author hadn't thought this aspect out very rigorously.  It was a rather mundane adventure as originally submitted, but once modified to work for all players it became an excellent play.

Bottom line: be very specific in your requests for help. Always include a disk copy of your incomplete adventure.  I am more than happy to help you work out special programming ideas, if you do all you can to enable me to see what you want.

2) The steps that I follow when working with new adventures are these:

a. A new adventure is submitted for assistance and/or evaluation

b. I look it over and playtest it.  I return an overview of my opinion of how it plays and a critique that lists plusses and minuses of the adventure, and any problems that I see.

Generally the list of minuses is much longer and more detailed than the list of plusses.  Don't get shook by this; it doesn't mean that I think that the adventure stinks. It's because the plusses are already OK, but the minuses need additional work to improve the adventure.

I will answer questions about special programming if I can figure out what the author wants to do.  If I can't figure out what he wants to do, I'll ask for clarification.  If he wants to do something that is very difficult to program, I'll explain the problems and recommend modifications to the idea, or may even recommend that the idea be scrapped.  If a disk was included, I will sometimes go ahead and make the program mods myself and return the disk.

c. After the critique is returned to the author, I sit back and wait for him to respond with comments or a modified disk.  I DON'T DO ANYTHING MORE UNTIL THE AUTHOR RESPONDS.

d. When I get a letter or new disk, I go back to step (b.) above.  If I see more problems or if more modifications are requested/required, I will again wait for a response.

e. Once the author is satisfied with the state of the finished adventure, it is assigned an adventure number and released to the public-domain outlets.

Comment: The bad feelings mentioned at the beginning came about because of mistaken notions about my methods.  I returned a critique listing problems, and never heard from these people ever again.  Meanwhile, they were waiting for me to go ahead and release their adventures.  A year went by.  When I got around to noticing that I had never heard from them, the responses that I got were very hot.  One author assumed that I was ordering him around and refusing to release his adventures unless he rewrote them to my specifications. NOT SO!

Let's set some ground rules here.  If someone sends me a buggy adventure that has loads of bad room connections and database errors that cause fatal crashes, I am not going to spend a lot of time working on your adventure, since the author obviously didn't.  Usually about the fifth time it crashes or sends me to the wrong room, I quit and send a list of the problems that I saw to that point.  But you must understand that I can't in good conscience release an Eamon that crashes every 50 moves.

There's no question that debugging an Eamon adventure gets old real quick. But if the author is too lazy to fix common database errors, I am not going to spend a dozen hours doing it for him.  If you really and truly don't know what you're doing wrong, write and ask for help. I'll be very happy to teach you how to recognize and fix the database errors.

Any time I get an adventure that has lots of badly-written text, full of line-break, grammar and spelling errors, I always point out that such errors seriously detract from the adventure and tend to downrate it by two or three points. You don't have to fix them if you don't want to, but I won't do it, either.  I am willing to release it in this condition if you want me to.  If you are happy with a (4) rating when you might have gotten a (7), who am I to argue?

IT'S OK TO DISAGREE WITH ME.  If you disagree with any of my criticisms, don't hesitate to tell me that I'm all wet. This is your adventure, and we will do it your way.  I only offer suggestions, not orders from On High.

Sam Ruby and I strongly disagree on several aspects of Eamon gaming.  The correspondence that we have exchanged over the years while calling each other idiots probably makes a stack two or three inches high.  But Sam has learned from this, and has evolved his style to accommodate differing tastes in adventuring without compromising his vision.  The result has been that Sam writes the best Eamons we will probably ever see.  "Redemption" is so good that it's scary.  Note that Sam did not cave in to my way of thinking!  He is twice the author that I will ever be and can do things that are way beyond my ability.

Some people think that I have no right to criticize their adventures.  If they feel that way, all they have to do is tell me to butt out and release it "as-is".  I'll do it. But I have been directly involved in the development of 60 or 70 Eamons.  I've played all 224 Eamons plus another half-dozen that were never released.  People send me Eamon ratings and often describe what they like and don't like. I've been involved in numerous arguments about how an Eamon adventure should work and have developed an appreciation for differing tastes.

It used to be that I had a stable of knowledgeable playtesters and we got multiple assessments of new Eamons. But one by one they dropped out, and presently no one is testing Eamons but me.  If you think that my critiques are rough, then you've never seen one from Pat Hurst!  It's a very humbling experience to send a "finished" Eamon to Pat and get back a list of 130 problems, like Pat did with one of my own Eamons.  Pat took no prisoners, but he was always right.  I give him a great deal of credit for the quality of many of the high-rated Eamons, and for much improvement in myself, Sam, and Nate Segerlind, among others.

Bottom Line:  It comes down to this.  We  will offer criticism and suggestions, but we will do things your way. All you have to do is tell us!  We are willing to release Eamon adventures with screwed-up text and plot problems, if you want us to do so.  We will not release Eamons that crash
because of serious database and programming errors. Likewise, I'm not likely to release a 10-room, 2-monster Eamon (yes, I have received such).

I have modified Main Halls coming out of my ears.  There's no market for new Main Halls , but it seems like everybody does one because it is a lot easier than writing a real Eamon adventure.  (NOTE: if you are interested in collecting modified Main Halls, please let me know!  I have a reason for asking.)

It's my experience that the quality of an Eamon adventure is very closely related to the amount of time that the author is willing to put into it, polishing and spiffing until it is right.

This ability comes slow at first but improves with practice. My first adventure is also my highest-rated one, but I spent hundreds of hours over a period of months getting it to that state.  I playtested it more than 100 times, and the MAIN PGM went through over 140 significant revisions before release, with each revision encompassing dozens of modifications and a complete play-through.

I certainly don't expect you to do that.  But it's a truism that the quality of an Eamon is directly related to the amount of playtesting that was done.  Think about it.