D&D 5E Adventures not Adventure Paths

[GameOgre]

I have bought every adventure path to come out for 5E but I have not played any of them. It's not that they couldn't be good/fun but we just don't have fun playing those long drawn out games. I still use them all though just not for what they were originally intended. I break them apart and use sections reflavored as something else or as something unconnected to it's background.

I make adventures up that last a single session about 60% of the time. They last two sessions 25% of the time and only about 15% do they stretch out to three sessions long. None last more than that.

Now we do tend to play a long time each time. Six to eight ours each session is our average.

I really like the little adventures I get with In5ider and can buy from rpgnow. I wish they would hurry up with the ogl or whatever so that I could get more adventures premade.

Do you guys tend to run the long adventure parths or like me do you run shorter games?

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Just (more or less) wound up LMOP, and striking out into adapted and converted module territory. There came a point where I very clearly thought "I just want to make up my own s---". That point has come, but I'm not averse to lifting chunks out and refitting them in a new context.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I've tried in the past, but I have yet to successfully finish or really have fun with an AP. Savage Tide burned out. And HotDQ was just a horrible adventure. I'm going to try OotA since its very sandboxy and I can't resist all those demons.

My preference is nice 24-32 page modules with maps that are easy to photocopy and hand outs. D&D is about big multi platform branded stuff all tying together so I think we may be done with stuff that really doesn't tie into the current company storyline though.

 

[Morrus]

We've done a few 18-month APs. We enjoy the long term character advancement of it.

 

[GameOgre]

The only AP I have ever wanted to try was War of The Burning Sky. I have a feeling that we would just mess it up though.

 

[discosoc]

I enjoy AP's, but I could never run one straight out of the book. I generally read through it, and then rewrite the whole thing as a more cohesive story and flesh it out where needed. HotDQ is a great example of a story that didn't take much tweaking to make for a very fun campaign; one that we're still going through.

I do think the biggest reason to pick an AP is for a solid long-term "quest" style experience, rather than an episodic 'what danger do we face this week?' campaign.

 

[Jester David]

I've run a Pathfinder version of the Dragonlance campaign, Rise of the Runelords and am 5/6ths of the way through Skull & Shackles. Most of those took a little over a year to 18 months.
Given the smaller size and faster play of the 5e adventures, I can imagine blasting through one of those in six to eight months.

I'm okay with longer APs. They're easy enough to steal for ideas and most have chapters that can be pulled out and run as smaller adventures that last a session or two. The big storyline volumes can serve smaller games easily, but smaller one-shot adventures are much harder to turn into longer campaigns.
And storylines have the advantage of encouraging people to keep playing. They play one or two sessions and the story continues; after a one-shot things are done and it's easier to quit.

 

[Guest 6801328]

My biggest gripe with adventure paths is that they all end with saving the world.

 

[DEFCON 1]

My biggest gripe with adventure paths is that they all end with saving the world.

That's because the characters at the highest levels are built with the implication they either should be saving the world or traversing the planes. 16th+ level characters really are no longer meant to be fixing run-of-the-mill townwide issues.

 

[hbarsquared]

... I still use them all though just not for what they were originally intended. I break them apart and use sections reflavored as something else or as something unconnected to it's background....

Then, IMHO, I would say you are using them as intended. Yes, you can, and many do, use the 5e Adventure Paths as one long campaign. But they are designed to be sandboxy, and it is incredibly easy to lift portions wholesale from the books.