D&D General Is WotC's 5E D&D easy? Trust me this isn't what you think... maybe

[Stormonu]

I do think this is a big part of it. The only people playing modules straight out of the box will be new players who need an easy adventure. If you are experienced and want something harder, you're probably homebrewing anyways.

On top of that, I would bet that most people purchasing adventure modules don't even plan to ever play them, so balance is completely irrelevant to them. In my completely anecdotal first-hand experience, most of the book purchases come from a small handful of collectors who are going to buy every single product because they enjoy holding the books, reading the stories, being immersed in the artistic imagery, but then never actually playing any of the modules. I would wager that the percentage of people who even CARE about whether the adventures are easy or difficult is rather low.

The crap-ton of adventures I've bought over the years have been for me "how-to" manuals (or "how-not-to" in some cases), places to plunder encounters and "I'll run this one of these days" material. When it comes to 5E books, I've only been buying the ones I have plans to run (ran selections from Tales from the Yawning Portal, Curse of Strahd & Ghosts of Saltmarsh - was going to run Rime & Tyranny until another DM in my group beat me to it, planning to run Shadows of the Dragon Queen next chance I get).

I very much doubt that majority are simply collectors, those books are not cheap and they don't have to be used wholesale to be useful.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

I very much doubt that majority are simply collectors, those books are not cheap and they don't have to be used wholesale to be useful.

One correction I actually meant to say majority of purchases are from collectors, not majority of people purchasing products are collectors. Someone who is collecting all the books will obviously buy many more books per person, so that distinction matters quite a bit

 

[tetrasodium]

One correction I actually meant to say majority of purchases are from collectors, not majority of people purchasing products are collectors. Someone who is collecting all the books will obviously buy many more books per person, so that distinction matters quite a bit

Majority of purchases of what? Books? Minis? Sapphire(?) studded anniversary dice? This hypothetical world, what color is the sky there?

 

[Scott Christian]

Yeah, the real problem is the WotC-published adventures, which mostly suck if run as-written. They’re good sources of ideas, and can serve as a solid basis to build on if you want to do the work to improve them, but they don’t really work as playable-out-of-the-box experiences, except Lost Mine of Phandelver, which they don’t even sell in its original form anymore (and the Shattered Obelisk version has a lot of issues).

I think this is a one-sided view of these adventures. It frames these adventures from years and years of experience. It frames them from years and years of reading fantasy books/rulebooks/digesting fantasy movies/etc. It does nothing to frame these adventures as the same ones my friends and I picked up to play when we were in our teens or early twenties. The Keep on the Borderlands, Sinister Secrets of Saltmarsh, White Plume Mountain, Secrets of Bone Hill, Against the Giants, Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Isle of Dread are probably more poorly written than any of the 5e published adventures. Yet, we loved playing them. We learned how to play through them. We learned how to DM through them.
To state the new ones mostly "suck" as written just seems very short sighted. It discounts players and DMs that aren't reading and posting on forums daily about D&D. You have read so much fantasy material, as is evidence from your extensive posts, that you seem to have forgotten that there is a very large swath of gamers out there that don't have the knowledge and experience that you do.

 

[Gus L]

Miss understood question as "Are official 5E adventures EASY to run" rather than "EASY to succeed at."

Answer was no ... and it makes me sort of sad.

 

[tetrasodium]

Quite a few of the comments refuting 5e's adventures being too easy suggest that the GM simply rework them or use them as inspiration for a whole new adventure the GM builds from it. In that respect I came across this interesting Lovecraftian adventure that seemed like it might be a good challenge for 5e PCs.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think this is a one-sided view of these adventures. It frames these adventures from years and years of experience. It frames them from years and years of reading fantasy books/rulebooks/digesting fantasy movies/etc. It does nothing to frame these adventures as the same ones my friends and I picked up to play when we were in our teens or early twenties. The Keep on the Borderlands, Sinister Secrets of Saltmarsh, White Plume Mountain, Secrets of Bone Hill, Against the Giants, Against the Cult of the Reptile God, Isle of Dread are probably more poorly written than any of the 5e published adventures.

I guess it depends on what you mean by “poorly written.” I would argue that those examples are better adventures than most of the WotC-published 5e adventures. But it’s hard to argue they’re “better written” given that they have relatively little writing even in them. But I think that’s part of what makes them better as adventures for a TTRPG. Part of what makes most 5e adventures not great in my opinion is that they have pretty rigid, linear narratives, which leads to problems if the players don’t follow the script. I would rather a module with well-designed adventuring environments and little to no plot.

Yet, we loved playing them. We learned how to play through them. We learned how to DM through them.
To state the new ones mostly "suck" as written just seems very short sighted. It discounts players and DMs that aren't reading and posting on forums daily about D&D. You have read so much fantasy material, as is evidence from your extensive posts, that you seem to have forgotten that there is a very large swath of gamers out there that don't have the knowledge and experience that you do.

I don’t think having less experience with fantasy fiction and running RPGs would make the 5e modules better. It would just make it more difficult to make changes to improve them. Which I certainly empathize with! While I think 5e’s official adventures are mostly pretty bad as written, I’m fairly confident in my own ability to adapt them to my tastes, whereas a less experienced DM probably wouldn’t be. And I think it’s a shame that they even need to. A good adventure should be good right out of the box, but LMoP is the only one I’ve read that I think really is, and again, they don’t even sell that one any more.

 

[Hussar]

Miss understood question as "Are official 5E adventures EASY to run" rather than "EASY to succeed at."

Answer was no ... and it makes me sort of sad.

What makes them difficult to run?

I'm currently running PHandelver and it's a breeze. Candlekeep Mysteries was more work, but, mostly that was because I wanted to do the work. The modules work as written, but, they'Re pretty bare bones. So, I expanded the ones I liked. But, the ones I ran more or less as written weren't particularly difficult to run.

I ran Dragonheist as well. Had no issues with that one. At least, not in the running part. Same with Ghosts of Saltmarsh. The adventures run pretty solidly. I mean, GoS is a reprint of existing adventures, so, they were all pretty solid adventures. About the only one I really struggled with (and didn't like at all) was Danger at Dunwater. Mostly because it's not really an adventure - it's a setting guide to lizardfolk.

 

[O-Castitatis-Lilium]

In my opinion, the modules are poorly written these days and are rather easy to just blow through. The modules from back in the day were paperback and at most a total of 24 pages. In those pages they had all the important information you needed to either run the module as it was, or expand on it. It had history bites, maps you could quickly jot out properly, monster lists, the bare bones of how the adventure should go, ect.. Depending on how your DM wanted to run it, you could run it as a one-shot, a two day weekend event, or a whole month's long adventure. DM's had everything at their disposal with just a couple books and the module itself, no need for really anything else. Now, you have modules that are ONLY sold in hardcover or digital where you have to print it yourself, that have hundreds of pages full of nothing. No history, no backstory, no easily accessible maps to quickly draw out properly, nothing really. There's nothing in them for DMs to work with outside of small little text blocks that they have to read from and very short descriptions of what's in dungeon rooms. Overall, from a cursory glance the modules are poorly written from back in the day.

Though, there are reasons modules from back in the day were written better, and reasons why modules today are poorly written. Older editions of DnD, my own experience being mainly original, was that there were rules and monsters that were far more powerful than they are now, spells that were far more powerful and imposing than they are now, history was far more rich than it seems to be now. For example, if you were in a dungeon and you got to a room with a wraith, that wraith back in the day meant serious trouble, having one was an issue, having 2 or 3 of them were pretty much a death sentence without a cleric or paladin. Now, you can have a room of just one and it means nothing, have a room of 2 or 3 and it still means nothing, but it only just starts to get a little on the edge. Everything can be slept off and there are even certain effects that only hit once where they use to be a DOT. This is jus tone example of what I'm tying to convey, there are more of them, such as with diseases, poisons and such. Monsters today don't have anything to really fear, nothing to truly make them feel like fighting them would be a challenge. Sure, they have a CR rating but, that really doesn't mean much of anything.

Then there is the history bit. A perfect example of this is Tyranny of Dragons and chapter 4 where the characters are traveling from Baldur's Gate to Waterdeep. It says it takes 2 months to get from one to the other, but if you look at the map there is nothing between Baldur's Gate to Waterdeep aside from Dragonspear and Daggerford. Now, new players to the game will just run it and go, this is fun and I can just tweak things here, do this, add that, and they are fine with it. People that have access to the history of the Sword Coast and history from back in the day, they would know that road is FULL of little towns and outposts that help make that journey. It says that every 7th day is a day for resting of the animals, but if you know the history, you know that on roughly every 7th day, the caravan would hit a small rest-stop town that they can either get fresh horses or let their horses rest properly for the day. With that, a lot of the newer players go into Dragonspear and Daggerford and don't realize the significance of these places and just wander through and make stuff up, no realizing their history is massively rich and there is a ton more you could do with it. The module doesn't give you any of that, despite the hundreds of pages it has to go with, they would rather write about nothing of importance to the DM such as said history. A lot of people think chapter 4 is boring and either skip it completely or mod it so heavily that it's not even the same place. If the people at WoTC had even decided to dig into their own archives for it, they could have made that chapter better from the get-go instead of having people have to heavily mod it themselves. If newer, or even older, DMs wanted to mod the chapter still, then that's completely fine, but they should have made that far more interesting from the ground up. I mean, all this said, the history is out there, it just comes down to if the newer players are willing to put in the work or not to look for it, and unfortunately it seems not considering how many people I read that have skipped it.

These are just two examples of what I'm trying to convey. I still think modules for 5th are garbage and poorly written, but I also understand why they are. Monsters have changes greatly, rules have changed greatly, it's not the same game as it was back in the day; but, that still isn't a complete excuse for why the modules are poorly written, but it does explain some of it. WoTC had options to make them great and had a chance to offer newer DMs to have much needed information at had, instead of assuming every DM just knew all the history of the game they are playing. They added fluff and nonsense in the modules that wasn't needed and gave them a very bare minimum to get the game started, and that's barely. DM's really shouldn't have to go too far to get important information to make a module great, it should already be there, and then it's up to the DM to choose whether or not they want to use what's in the book or not.

In short, yes I do think DnD 5E is very much easier than other editions and does lead to some boring games, with WoTC to blame, but that doesn't mean DMs can't add mechanics or monster powers back into it from older editions to make it a little bit more exciting to play.

 

[Scott Christian]

I guess it depends on what you mean by “poorly written.” I would argue that those examples are better adventures than most of the WotC-published 5e adventures. But it’s hard to argue they’re “better written” given that they have relatively little writing even in them. But I think that’s part of what makes them better as adventures for a TTRPG. Part of what makes most 5e adventures not great in my opinion is that they have pretty rigid, linear narratives, which leads to problems if the players don’t follow the script. I would rather a module with well-designed adventuring environments and little to no plot.

But you used the word "suck." As in they are terrible. I used the word poorly written because the concepts and ideas behind the old adventures are less clear than the newer ones. For example, combat is much more dynamic in these newer adventures; environment, skill checks, and objectives are more clearly laid out for the DM than a room with 100 skeletons for absolutely no reason. Heck, even the ecosystem's ecology makes more sense in modern adventures.

I don’t think having less experience with fantasy fiction and running RPGs would make the 5e modules better. It would just make it more difficult to make changes to improve them. Which I certainly empathize with! While I think 5e’s official adventures are mostly pretty bad as written, I’m fairly confident in my own ability to adapt them to my tastes, whereas a less experienced DM probably wouldn’t be. And I think it’s a shame that they even need to. A good adventure should be good right out of the box, but LMoP is the only one I’ve read that I think really is, and again, they don’t even sell that one any more.

That is the point I am making. You, because of your vast experience and incredibly deep knowledge of D&D, feel the need to improve them. This might be for you as DM or for your very experienced players at the table. But give an inexperienced or even slightly experienced 19-year-old, with a passion for learning how to DM, Rime of the Frostmaiden, and there is no need to change it. It runs fine for them and their players. I watch this happen all the time. They learn from these adventures. They also have a lot of fun!

And that is my point. You think they "suck" because they don't fit your vast experience. You have seen or read it all, so you need to change it. Or your players have seen it all, so you need to change it. Or they didn't quite get the plot just right, so you need to change it. Or they didn't leave the plot open-ended enough, so you need to change it. Or they didn't include your players' character arcs well enough, so you had to change it. Whatever it is, there is no Goldilocks's Zone for you because your experience wants more than a 200-300 page book can deliver.

But for that 19-year-old...