Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Hoard of the Dragon Queen - a solid D effort.
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 6377763" data-attributes="member: 3586"><p>Both of which are also true of Lost Mine of Phandelver.</p><p></p><p>There is a huge difference between "designed for" and "playable in". </p><p></p><p>D&D Encounters was originally designed as a 4E program where there would typically be one combat encounter per week. This was largely due to a single combat encounter in D&D 4E taking about an hour, so running a 60-90 minute session each week with one combat rather worked. Every group would do exactly the same encounter each week, no matter where you played.</p><p></p><p>D&D 5E is a different beast: combats no longer take anywhere that long. As a result, you can do a lot more in a session. Over the past year, Wizards also decided to relax the "every store does the same thing each week". And with Hoard, they've even got the stores starting and ending them at different times! </p><p></p><p>So, what are the constraints on designing an Encounters adventure these days? Well, no encounter can go over 2 hours in length. That's about it, really. Given that there's pretty much no encounter in all of D&D 5E that is likely to go above 2 hours in length, that's not much of a design constraint.</p><p></p><p>When you actually read the notes on adapting Hoard to Encounters, it becomes quite clear that the adventure isn't written for Encounters. The way the adaptation works is that each encounter is rated as "short" or "long" and that you should run either one long or two short encounters each session. In the first episode, the DM will likely order the potential missions so that this occurs. What happens in Episode 3, though, which is a dungeon crawl? What happens if the players go from a short encounter to a long one... oh, the DM needs to put in wandering monsters to create another short encounter before they get to the long one, which is then delayed to next session. Which is just a bit clunky.</p><p></p><p>Hoard isn't designed for Encounters. You have to fiddle with it to make it work.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MerricB, post: 6377763, member: 3586"] Both of which are also true of Lost Mine of Phandelver. There is a huge difference between "designed for" and "playable in". D&D Encounters was originally designed as a 4E program where there would typically be one combat encounter per week. This was largely due to a single combat encounter in D&D 4E taking about an hour, so running a 60-90 minute session each week with one combat rather worked. Every group would do exactly the same encounter each week, no matter where you played. D&D 5E is a different beast: combats no longer take anywhere that long. As a result, you can do a lot more in a session. Over the past year, Wizards also decided to relax the "every store does the same thing each week". And with Hoard, they've even got the stores starting and ending them at different times! So, what are the constraints on designing an Encounters adventure these days? Well, no encounter can go over 2 hours in length. That's about it, really. Given that there's pretty much no encounter in all of D&D 5E that is likely to go above 2 hours in length, that's not much of a design constraint. When you actually read the notes on adapting Hoard to Encounters, it becomes quite clear that the adventure isn't written for Encounters. The way the adaptation works is that each encounter is rated as "short" or "long" and that you should run either one long or two short encounters each session. In the first episode, the DM will likely order the potential missions so that this occurs. What happens in Episode 3, though, which is a dungeon crawl? What happens if the players go from a short encounter to a long one... oh, the DM needs to put in wandering monsters to create another short encounter before they get to the long one, which is then delayed to next session. Which is just a bit clunky. Hoard isn't designed for Encounters. You have to fiddle with it to make it work. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Hoard of the Dragon Queen - a solid D effort.
Top