Dungeon #187 - first issue with 0 adventures?

[delericho]

Well, that formula and Paizo's pretty high quality adventures with tons of custom art and maps I'm sure helped. I still wonder how they would've done with 4e adventure design...if we had something on the quality of their AP's for 4e that would be fantastic...

I've heard "War of the Burning Sky" is pretty good.

 

[delericho]

In all seriousness, while the quality of Paizo's offering was (and is) extremely high, there's nothing magical about it.

WotC have some of the best designers in the business. They have access to a wider pool of freelancers, some of whom are exceptional (including some of the same ones used by Paizo). And they (should) have greater resources than Paizo.

So, there's really no reason WotC couldn't match (or better) any standard Paizo set.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Sure there is.

Consistency.

WoTC has failed to provide consistant Dungeon crawling adventure paths since, well, they took over.

I'm not saying every AP Paizo puts out is high art or something. But every month if you want it, since Pathfinder started coming out, you could go to the store and get an adventure that would increase in level till it reached its climax.

WoTC seems unwilling to flap beyond the safe shores of Heroic, flounding in Paragon, and retreating to the low end again instead of actually providing support for Epic.

 

[Chronosome]

This is a disappointment to learn, since I just renewed. Hmm.
Oh well -- at least the next issue of Dragon looks promising.

 

[gorckat]

Now that I'm finally looking at running Paragon tier adventures in the near future (level 10 now), I have come face to face with the fact levels 7-13 really lack significant adventures in Dragon.

And really, just from reading the adventure list, it looks worse after that if you're not on the adventure path. There's a few, but man, that's something that should be addressed. I may not use adventures whole sale, but I do like to look at individual encounters to help spark ideas.

Also, I don't know what to say about Dungeon going a month without an adventure.

Maybe WoTC isn't getting many submissions?

edit note: Just saw new Dungeon has 2 paragon tier adventures listed, so that's a good start.

I have seen people talk about the lack of adventures at a certain level, and I don't get it. The first group I am running 4e for is only 2nd level, but I've already scaled Keep on the Shadowfell up for a level 2 start (and will be scaling the back end up again since I found a way to drop Dead by Dawn into the next session to bump them to level 3) and have started looking at taking Reavers of Harkenwold from the DM kit up to a level 5 starting point.

Tools like the Monster Builder and Masterplan make it somewhat trivial to adjust power levels.

If an adventure or set of encounters from several is 'right' but for the level, why not just bump it up or bring it down?

 

[Goonalan]

I have seen people talk about the lack of adventures at a certain level, and I don't get it. The first group I am running 4e for is only 2nd level, but I've already scaled Keep on the Shadowfell up for a level 2 start (and will be scaling the back end up again since I found a way to drop Dead by Dawn into the next session to bump them to level 3) and have started looking at taking Reavers of Harkenwold from the DM kit up to a level 5 starting point.

Tools like the Monster Builder and Masterplan make it somewhat trivial to adjust power levels.

If an adventure or set of encounters from several is 'right' but for the level, why not just bump it up or bring it down?

Of course it's doable but people buy/subscribe whatever to Dungeon because historically it has always provided a variety of adventure types and levels- see my post on page one of this thread. The irony is the editor of Dungeon said that himself in his editorial (on the month they provided no scenarios), WOTC have a product in the market and are clearly not doing enough to promote/support that product.

Besides it takes much longer to work out how to a twist a Paragon Level party in to the Keep of the Shadowfell (not impossible I know), but at Paragon and Epic I want my PCs to be off-plane and battling... well whatever- I can do the work myself but I've been subscribing to Dungeon magazine since issue #1 because I have a massively busy life and am happy (sorry 'was' happy) for WOTC (Paizo) to take the strain.

Don't get me wrong, you're right to an extent, the problem is WOTC are IMHO, and here's my Cassandra moment running down Dungeon and Dragon for a reason, just a thought. If they're not then they're just very bad at their job- you chose.

Cheers Goonalan

 

[JoeGKushner]

I have seen people talk about the lack of adventures at a certain level, and I don't get it. The first group I am running 4e for is only 2nd level, but I've already scaled Keep on the Shadowfell up for a level 2 start (and will be scaling the back end up again since I found a way to drop Dead by Dawn into the next session to bump them to level 3) and have started looking at taking Reavers of Harkenwold from the DM kit up to a level 5 starting point.

Tools like the Monster Builder and Masterplan make it somewhat trivial to adjust power levels.

If an adventure or set of encounters from several is 'right' but for the level, why not just bump it up or bring it down?

let us know how that works when you start hitting the upper level of paragon and epic.

It becomes more than just bumping hit points and damage capacity as the options of the players don't only scale up, but increase in versitility as well.

There's also supposed to be the whole 'thematic' bits of what paragon and epic are.

Apparently so byzantium that even WoTC is baffled and support it very little despite making it part of the core from the get go.

 

[Neverfate]

In all seriousness, while the quality of Paizo's offering was (and is) extremely high, there's nothing magical about it.

WotC have some of the best designers in the business. They have access to a wider pool of freelancers, some of whom are exceptional (including some of the same ones used by Paizo). And they (should) have greater resources than Paizo.

So, there's really no reason WotC couldn't match (or better) any standard Paizo set.

I'm mostly avoiding this thread. Just not my deal, but I think the reason WotC is failing lately is poor management. I like a lot of the designers of 4th Edition. I like the guys in charge of mechanics. However, WotC is part of a larger company and large companies are caught in a turbulent market where no single plan of action is ever allowed to run its course.

This is by no means an excuse for WotC. It's just how that scenario works. Stop everything you're working on to work on this new plan. It's why we see lapses in consistency. Nature of the business at that level. It's at best a double edge sword.

 

[renau1g]

I've heard "War of the Burning Sky" is pretty good.

Oh it is, but that's 1 AP and it's a bit specialized for some campaign worlds. The nice thing about the Paizo ones is that they were set in Greyhawk (I think) before PF, and post PF in Golarian. Both areas are very generic fantasy worlds so I found the AP's very easy to transplant to the Forgotten Realms. I've found it much more work to convert WotBS. Also, as that AP was originally written for 3.xe some of the encounters suffer from too small encounter areas for 4e.

I am very interested in Zeitgeist, that one may be interesting to convert to Eberron with the focus on high magic/technology...

 

[gorckat]

Besides it takes much longer to work out how to a twist a Paragon Level party in to the Keep of the Shadowfell (not impossible I know), but at Paragon and Epic I want my PCs to be off-plane and battling... well whatever- I can do the work myself but I've been subscribing to Dungeon magazine since issue #1 because I have a massively busy life and am happy (sorry 'was' happy) for WOTC (Paizo) to take the strain.

let us know how that works when you start hitting the upper level of paragon and epic.

It becomes more than just bumping hit points and damage capacity as the options of the players don't only scale up, but increase in versitility as well.

Good points. There is a lot of ground I have yet to cover as a DM and a player.

Thanks.