Has WotC saturated the published adventure market or are the two latest adventures not very popular?

Enevhar Aldarion · Nov 27, 2018

pukunui said:
FWIW Dragon Heist is currently polling at 58.5% here on EN World. Of all the official 5e hardcover adventures, only Hoard of the Dragon Queen has a lower score and not by much (52.5%). Granted DH is still one review short of being certified; nevertheless, I think it is fairly telling that it is currently the second least-popular hardcover adventure.

But is that score because there is not much actual adventure in the book or because it is a bad adventure? It is basically the same shortish adventure that can be played in each of the four seasons and with a choice from four different BBEGs at the end. And from what I hear, you do not actually fight any of the BBEGs because your group is level 5 at the most when you get to the end. Just that alone could get a lot of people to give it a poorer score than it deserves because they cannot just go in and kill everything that gets in their way. Which is also true about Waterdeep in general. That must frustrate a lot of gamers out there who are not used to controlling and restricting what their characters do. So maybe what is "fairly telling" is that a lot of the reviewers play murder hobos.

pukunui · Nov 27, 2018

I would argue that it’s a bad adventure. Then again, I would also argue that Hoard of the Dragon Queen is actually pretty decent. YMMV.

That said, I really don’t think murder hoboism is a factor. There’s lots of disappointment that the name and tagline are misleading (it’s more about stopping a heist than perpetrating one, and the hoard isn’t really “yours for the taking”), though.

It’s also a poorly written adventure outline more than anything else. I thought part of the reason for the slower release schedule was so WotC could focus on quality, but I’m beginning to think that’s corporate spin, cos the quality of the last few releases has been a pretty mixed bag. 5e is a fantastic game, but WotC’s support of it leaves a lot to be desired.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but it really does feel like they’re all spending way too much time on Twitch to bother with any quality control these days.

ccs · Nov 27, 2018

TheSword said:
I’ll be honest I got mine two days ago, and wasn’t blown away to be honest. What Undermountain really needed was the campaign arcs, interaction with factions in the city above, roleplay and help challenging high level parties. What it turned out to be was 22 loosely connected dungeons with a page talking about particularly interesting denizens on each level. The plot links between levels are tenuous at best and there is next to no ‘out of dungeon’ support. It is effectively 300 odd pages of rooms. I’m a bit gutted to be honest. I was really looking forward to Undermountain getting the Curse of Strahd/Out of the Abyss treatment.

So pretty much a rehash of the original 2e stuff. Wich, as I said in another thread, I wasn't impressed with way back then.
When my friend gets around to running it I'll still play it though. He'll (probably) craft a decent adventure out of it.

Morrus · Nov 27, 2018

Enevhar Aldarion said:
And I am sort of laughing at the whole "4 whole books in a couple of months" thing, seeing as how many people have posted here over the past four years that 3 or 4 books a year is nowhere near enough releases and they wanted a book every month or two. I am surprised that none of them have popped in here to say this is great and they want more.

It does feel like a sudden genera narrative reversal from fans! 2 books wasn’t enough, but 4 is too much. I guess the target is very specifically 3 books then?

TheSword · Nov 27, 2018

I’m not so bothered about the 4 books thing as I feel the books themselves are for very different audiences or topics.

Dragon Heist and Dungeon otMM are linked (though feel totally different)

Ravnica has a particular niche and won’t be of interest to a lot of people

MtoF was effectively a race supplement and monster book. I don’t see how these books compete with each other at all.

Rya.Reisender · Nov 27, 2018

robus said:
Has anyone else noticed an apparent lack of interest in discussing the content in the latest pair of adventures?

Since I play-by-post, it takes around 8 years to finish a big adventure path (Lost Mine of Phandelver took 2 years) and I already know which one I want to play next (Curse of Strahd), so my interest in anything that's released now is very low.

hejtmane · Nov 27, 2018

Call me old school oh wait I am darn but I only run custom campaigns. Maybe because when I first started there where very few if any campaigns. That was just how we played back in the day drawing out large dungeons on grid paper etc etc.

I never get hyped for new adventure release

jasper · Nov 27, 2018

Morrus said:
It does feel like a sudden genera narrative reversal from fans! 2 books wasn’t enough, but 4 is too much. I guess the target is very specifically 3 books then?

The Holy Number shall be 3. 2 is right out unless followed by 3. Thou shall pull forth thy billfold and count on to Wotc the number of 49 dollars for it is a holy number. Then thou shall raid thy neighbors piggy bag for the holy number of 4 pennies, 3 quarters, 2 nickels, and 1 dime.
Thou shall enjoy thy hardcover or thou shall be banished from the community to play Candyland with thou younger cousins for the rest of thy holidays.

delericho · Nov 27, 2018

Enevhar Aldarion said:
And I am sort of laughing at the whole "4 whole books in a couple of months" thing, seeing as how many people have posted here over the past four years that 3 or 4 books a year is nowhere near enough releases and they wanted a book every month or two. I am surprised that none of them have popped in here to say this is great and they want more.

WotC actually did me a huge favour. If they had followed the 3e/4e release model of a book a month, I would now have multiple shelves containing thousands of dollars' worth of 5e books that don't see any actual use.

As it is, I'm averaging a book a year - I gave up on the storylines after "Storm King's Thunder", and don't have any interest in buying into another new setting. And I'm more likely to reduce my consumption next year than increase it.

So, yeah, I'll hold my hand up to being... less right on that one.

Parmandur · Nov 27, 2018

Morrus said:
It does feel like a sudden genera narrative reversal from fans! 2 books wasn’t enough, but 4 is too much. I guess the target is very specifically 3 books then?

It makes sense in light of WotC previous statements that three a year was chosen because their market research showed it to be ideal for customers. Given that, it isn't odd that people who are happy with that pace might get weary of a faster pace.

Has WotC saturated the published adventure market or are the two latest adventures not very popular?

Enevhar Aldarion

Hero

pukunui

Legend

ccs

41st lv DM

Morrus

Well, that was fun

TheSword

Legend

Rya.Reisender

Explorer

hejtmane

Explorer

jasper

Rotten DM

delericho

Legend

Parmandur

Book-Friend

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