D&D 5E Are DMs getting lazy?

[Sacrosanct]

Even if they never put out any 5e adventures, and even if I never created my own, I don't think I could possibly run out of adventures to play.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

I think DMs are just getting older.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think DMs are just getting older.

For me it is more like design some D&D or play Europa Unversalis IV on Ironman (no reloads) as an OPM (tiny country) like Ragusa (which has a tech penalty) and try and do something silly like take down France. Or Crusader Kings 2 or an MMO.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

For me it is more like design some D&D or play Europa Unversalis IV on Ironman (no reloads) as an OPM (tiny country) like Ragusa (which has a tech penalty) and try and do something silly like take down France. Or Crusader Kings 2 or an MMO.

For me it's like play some D&D or take care of my newborn son.

 

[DaveDash]

"Back in the day" I was a teenager with oodles of spare time. In my 20s when I was running home brew I also had probably more spare time than being a teenager.

Now, I have a family, and all the spare time I have goes on converting content to 5e and creating maps for roll20. Once you get higher level converting 5e stuff becomes a lot less plug and play.
Besides that, the last thing I want to do at night is sit down and reverse engineer encounter tables, monsters that don't exist in 5e, monsters with class levels, combat NPCs, traps, and loot from older modules. Not to mention most really old stuff would require me to make digital maps from scratch.

I will happily pay people to do that for me, gladly. WoTC don't seem to want my money, so where is that OGL again?

 

[DaveDash]

For me it is more like design some D&D or play Europa Unversalis IV on Ironman (no reloads) as an OPM (tiny country) like Ragusa (which has a tech penalty) and try and do something silly like take down France. Or Crusader Kings 2 or an MMO.

I've had to give up on EUV since 5e came out. It's either spend hours converting content to 5e or play EU4, at the moment I am choosing D&D.

 

[Celtavian]

It seems that in a number of threads, a certain subset of folks are very upset at the lack of adventures and such for 5E, to the point of suggesting they will "run out" of things to do with 5E in a year or so. While I would certainly like to see a more robust release schedule with both standalone modules and setting books (not to mention Dungeon and a Dragon back in publication) the idea that you would "run out" of stuff to do with D&D is just plain weird. It's D&D. One of the core conceits is that you, the DM, will be creating most of the game content (usually in conjunction with your players). Need a new and interesting magic item? Create it. Need a monster that the PCs have not faced before? Create it. Need to know what it costs and how long it takes to create a magic item? Decide. These aren't the burden of the DM, they are the joys!

For fear of of sounding like an in-my-day curmudgeon, are DMs these days just too lazy to make the game their own?

Lazy? You mean don't feel like taking the time to write up an adventure after working a full time job, spending time with their family, exercising, managing their other activities and commitments whether a sports league, child, or girlfriend/wife, and the like?
Pre-written adventures have been popular in every edition of D&D. That's why they make them. They make it easy to play the game for those that either don't have the time or don't want to spend the time to make adventures.

In your day? I've been playing since red basic, the most popular adventures to this day were the ones created by game designers like White Plume Mountain, Against the Giants, and Assault on the Aerie of the Slavelords. When your job is to write adventures, you can generally do a better job than a guy that has to work his regular job while making adventures in his spare time. I'm not saying no one makes great home adventures. Some homebrew campaigns like Sepulchrave or Piratecat's sound amazing. We all choose to put our time into different activities, while still wanting to enjoy D&D. Pre-made adventures allow us to do so. It has nothing to do with being lazy.

 

[Zardnaar]

I've had to give up on EUV since 5e came out. It's either spend hours converting content to 5e or play EU4, at the moment I am choosing D&D.

It is addictive. A "quick" EUIV game is around 20 hours. My steam account tells me I have spent 1100 hours on EUIV and 500+ on CKII.

 

[Aenghus]

I think there's the issue that standards for plot and presentation for adventures has gone up over the years, not uniformly but there is a trend. A lot of early D&D modules were quite primitive and/or random in content and presentation. Modules for other popular games e.g. Call of Cthulhu illustrate the quality of handouts and plot that are possible. People compare new adventures to the best of what they've seen in the past, which is a constantly increasing number of excellent adventures. This can be intimidating.

IMO writing and producing adventures that are of acceptable quality compared to 40 years of back catalogue gets increasingly difficult as acceptable standards rise (or at least evolve). It can actually more difficult for experienced referees to produce an original adventure because they've already used the storylines most appealing to them or they are burned out.

Comparing self-written adventures to the best of professional modules is probably unfair to yourself, I realise, there's an element of serendipity to classic adventures that can't be bottled.

 

[PnPgamer]

An interesting implication of this is that younger folk -- teens and 20s -- aren't playing D&D, or at least not complaining about the lack of content on EN World.

Im in my mid 20s and i dont complain.