D&D 5E Adventures not Adventure Paths

[Psikerlord#]

I don't like AP's at all, have never played one, and never intend to play one. It's far too much "railroad" for me (in the broadest sense).

I only want short adventures like the OP suggests. I want the freedom for the players to go wherever they want, and carve a story out of that. Yes, there could be some overarching stuff in the background - but it wont necessarily come to fruition or dominate the story. It depends on what the players want to pursue. But I very much prefer episodic campaigns with the freedom to change things up easily every couple of sessions.

 

[Slamm-O]

I like the APs but I wouldn't mind if they made 3 or 4 shorter adventures that can be linked together with gaps for DM created content. Then you could run them as an AP or just use one when you cant think of what to put your players through.

 

[RangerWickett]

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.

Just try the abridged version, then, which runs adventures one through four. Less obligation, and if somehow the game is going great, you can shift gears and run the partial version (one through nine) or full version (all twelve).

 

[MerricB]

These days, I DM my homebrew campaign (which occasionally uses content from published adventures), a bunch of short-form D&D Expeditions adventures, and one Adventure Path, currently Princes of the Apocalypse.

Short adventures are terribly difficult to sell in print these days. Frog God packages its short adventures together to form longer hardcover/pdf bundles (such as the recently released Quests of DOom 2) because it makes more financial sense, and I'm not sure what the distribution is like for the Goodman Games adventures.

There are a lot of short adventures in electronic form, although (as with most adventures) only a few can really be called "good". In some ways, they're even harder to sell than the APs! You buy an AP to get a campaign - and a lot of people find that convenient - but there aren't likely to be that many of them about. When there are a lot of short adventures, the competition makes it harder for one to distinguish itself.

Cheers!

 

[Wuzzard]

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

I'm kind of the opposite. If I don't get to save the world after all these months, what was the point?

 

[Shiroiken]

While I don't enjoy APs, I accept that I'm probably in the minority. They obviously sell well, and it would make sense for WotC to continue making the most profitable product.

 

[MerricB]

While I don't enjoy APs, I accept that I'm probably in the minority.

I'm not sure you're in the minority... but rather that of people who buy adventures, people tend to buy more APs than stand-alones.

Cheers!

 

[Celtavian]

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

This. I prefer the higher level game level 12+. Though one of our players prefers levels 7 to 12. He mostly plays martials and they peak at about that level. I prefer casters. They continue to gain interesting powers the higher level you go.

 

[Celtavian]

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

I don't like this all the time either. Sometimes I prefer explorer campaigns where the focus is on discovering new areas. I think you could do a high level explorer campaign that ends with players exploring the planes. I also like power for power's sake campaigns where the accumulation of power for personal reasons is the sole purpose of the campaign. Or the battle against other powerful individuals that aren't necessarily world threatening. I like a solid mix of reasons to adventure even at the highest levels.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I prefer playing official modules, but I wish there were much shorter official adventures. Like, just one dungeon to play through.