D&D 5E The Audience - Do you feel like you're the target audience?

[Lanefan]

So much this. So many OSR and NuSR products are designed as reference manuals and it makes a huge difference in usability. 4E has similar monster stat block bloat, but at least the adventures were laid out in a usable way.

The "official" 4e adventures I've (converted and) run were terribly laid out; and, sadly, that seemed to be the standard format. Way too much wasted space, way too much bloat, way too many words.

 

[Lanefan]

The other note I want to make - and this has a lot to do with my approach and game style - but I have never found that running an adventure "out of the book" to take me less time in prep than making up my own things through a mosaic of sources + my own secret sauce. That is probably because I am the type to change out treasure hoards, re-skin or rebuild or simply replace monsters and npcs to fit the setting and the ongoing sense of the campaign, and to make sure I add material directly related to character backstory and/or player interest - and also because my brain has an easier time retaining what I have constructed than what I have simply read.

I do a fair bit of that as well and a canned module still takes less prep time than a homebrew.

Why?

Because with a homebrew I have to draw all the bloody maps, and that takes ages. A canned module (in theory) does that work for me.

 

[Hussar]

I mean, if you're happy, be happy.

I don't see how not putting things out at all makes the game better for you, tho. (and I'm sorry if others have already said that & you've answered, perhaps repeatedly.) You could always just not buy whole libraries of setting tomes, no matter how many are offered.
That's what I've always done.

Previously though it wasn’t a choice.

We didn’t have adventure paths. That’s a late 3e invention. Modules were an “also ran”. Most of the material that was released was one and done, never to be referenced again. New classes and mechanics appear one time and are then forgotten.

I find with the campaign in a can approach of 5e, things are just so much more accessible. And because so much of it is modular it’s much easier for me to mix and match.

It might also be an artefact of me playing online with Fantasy Grounds. Everything I buy is in a single database and easily referenced and searched. Which probably does give me a very different perspective.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It might also be an artefact of me playing online with Fantasy Grounds. Everything I buy is in a single database and easily referenced and searched. Which probably does give me a very different perspective.

Pretty much it is this I would suggest.

If you're running online with a VTT, any adventure that is properly and fully set up for that VTT feels like absolute heaven next to trying to run out of a book or the like.

And yes having a really nice searchable database eliminates a lot of the problems too.

I am slightly confused by two things you say though:

We didn’t have adventure paths. That’s a late 3e invention.

I find with the campaign in a can approach of 5e

What would you call things like Dragon Mountain or The Night Below in 2E? Were they also "campaign in a can"? Dragon Mountain certainly seems like it is, albeit it has sandbox elements once you're inside the titular mountain.

 

[mamba]

You know what I really miss? The module.

Most of the adventures sold by WotC are not adventures. They are campaigns.

you can find near infinite numbers on DMsGuild… or you have to stick to the WotC anthologies

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The "official" 4e adventures I've (converted and) run were terribly laid out; and, sadly, that seemed to be the standard format. Way too much wasted space, way too much bloat, way too many words.

Some of the later ones were significantly better laid-out which may be what he's thinking of. But the first few? Ooof. They were absolutely a car crash as you say. Keep on the Shadowfell is an absolutely astonishing "What not to do" piece on virtually every imaginable level. The encounters are completely unbalanced to a hilarious degree. Some of the maps are just wrong (like it has the PCs approaching from the wrong direction in like the first map) or contradicted by the text. The text itself is deeply self-contradictory and confused about what the plot is. Several plot and dungeon elements make absolutely no sense, and not in a fun way, just in a "I wrote this at 4am, what was I thinking?!" kind of way. The overall plot particularly makes very little sense in context. Really the killer, above all this, is that it is appallingly badly organised and formatted.

I've heard people try to excuse this because it was the first adventure for a system.

That might arguably excuse the unbalanced encounters.

It doesn't excuse anything else. Literally everyone involved in designing this was an experienced DM. They knew better. They must have rushed it out in like days to meet a deadline or something, that's the best excuse I can give them. Otherwise it was just slapdash and terrible for no reason.

The two follow-ups are not much better in any regard.

you can find near infinite numbers on DMsGuild…

This is true. The difficulty is discerning quality there.

 

[mamba]

We didn’t have adventure paths. That’s a late 3e invention.

we had adventure paths in 1e already, it just was a sequence of modules rather than one book… Against the Slave Lords, Against the Giants, the Drow series, Desert of Desolation, … not to forget Dragonlance with 12 adventure modules

 

[Clint_L]

Hmmm...I buy most of their books but I get them on sale on DnDBeyond so that is, what 20-30 bucks every few months. And I seldom run the adventures; I mostly get them to have the monsters and magic items added to my DDB index. And to read for inspiration.

In terms of the 5e rules, I am absolutely their target audience. I grew up on 1e, became a very intermittent player, and when I got heavily back into the game it was easy because 5e felt intuitively comfortable for me, like the version of 1e that I always wanted. Recognizable but much more coherent.

But Dwarven Forge and Reaper... now those guys really get me. I spend at least twenty times as much on their product as on anything by WotC.

 

[Hussar]

we had adventure paths in 1e already, it just was a sequence of modules rather than one book… Against the Slave Lords, Against the Giants, the Drow series, Desert of Desolation, … not to forget Dragonlance with 12 adventure modules

Kinda, sorta. GDQ starts at 6th or 7th level. Slave Lords only covers 4th - 8th. These were extended adventures, sure, but, not entire campaigns. And, while you do name those four, they were VERY few and far between. Also, remember, three of those came out before 1985. In the following twenty years, there were few module series like these. Even once Paizo started doing Adventure Paths in Dungeon in the latter days of 3e, it was still a new thing. The idea of Campaign in a Box hasn't been really explored until 5e.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Even once Paizo started doing Adventure Paths in Dungeon in the latter days of 3e, it was still a new thing. The idea of Campaign in a Box hasn't been really explored until 5e.

I don't think this is true.

Again, what do you call The Night Below if not "campaign in a box"? Because that's exactly and precisely what it was.

And the whole notion of a bunch of adventures joining together to form an entire campaign is from the Dragonlance modules in the 1980s.

3.XE was absolutely packed solid with 1-to-high-level campaigns, too, which were often released as parts because it was more profitable that way, before being collected into single units. They absolutely inarguably operate as a "campaign in a box" once the parts has been published.

PF1 obviously also had tons of 1-to-high-level campaigns basically compatible with 3.XE.

The idea that 5E invented or "explored" campaign in a box thus seems on the surface to be inaccurate. Am I missing something important? 5E's official campaigns in some cases actually seem half-arsed compared to The Night Below or 3.XE/PF1 campaigns/APs, as discussed previously in this thread.