D&D General Matt Colville on adventure length

[mamba]

I don't know, man. Why do we worry about anyone who has the same interests or hobby as us? If there's a population of players out there who find running a big hardcover campaign intimidating and beyond their skills, I think it's an unfortunate thing if they don't know about smaller options.

if they do not use Google or YT, they will neither find this discussion nor Matt’s video however…

 

[LesserThan]

if they do not use Google or YT, they will neither find this discussion nor Matt’s video however…

Oddly, the same with all D&D and other game surveys. Nobody cares about the offline players opinions?

 

[Clint_L]

Coming into this conversation 9 pages in, so maybe this has been suggested already, but I feel like the ideal compromise solution would be books focused on a largish geographical area and include a bunch of small, self-contained adventures you can run within that area, spanning a wide level range.

Totally agree! This is why I think Explorer's Guide to Wildemount is such a good source book: it includes four mini-campaigns set in different regions to give you a flavour of the world. They're not spanning a wide level range, unfortunately.

I would love an entire book of such adventures. I know Tales from the Yawning Portal and other such compilations are sort of like that, but they don't really have the same cohesion.

 

[Charlaquin]

Totally agree! This is why I think Explorer's Guide to Wildemount is such a good source book: it includes four mini-campaigns set in different regions to give you a flavour of the world. They're not spanning a wide level range, unfortunately.

I would love an entire book of such adventures. I know Tales from the Yawning Portal and other such compilations are sort of like that, but they don't really have the same cohesion.

Yeah, adventure anthologies are also a good alternative to the epic adventure hardcovers. But the added cohesion of location would be really nice.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I don't know, man. Why do we worry about anyone who has the same interests or hobby as us? If there's a population of players out there who find running a big hardcover campaign intimidating and beyond their skills, I think it's an unfortunate thing if they don't know about smaller options.

But they are, by definition, unreachable, or we could tell them all about the awesome 5e short-form adventures from other companies. I think there’s actually few RPG enthusiasts who don’t search Google, YouTube or Reddit to find info and learn through those sources about the wider world of RPGs. Sure, many may stick to D&D but that might just be their choice.

Third party publishers are publishing good, short adventures nowadays. I guess maybe some of us just want to see more of them? Is this just a reference to the module Matt is holding in the video, which some viewers will remember him talking about in previous videos?

Actually Castle Amber is a good example of a point someone made above about the expandability of shorter modules. The second half (Averoigne Quest) of that thing begs to be fleshed out more.

I wish Matt had highlighted some of those instead of a 40 year old module. I know he mentioned the adventure lookup but there are a lot of great examples he could have pointed people to.

 

[el-remmen]

I think there’s actually few RPG enthusiasts who don’t search Google, YouTube or Reddit to find info and learn through those sources about the wider world of RPGs.

I think it is possible to imagine that someone newish to D&D trying to google for more info and being inundated with info that can be hard to comb through. In fact, it is really easy to imagine someone immediately turned off by the actual obnoxious bombastic clickbait garbage out there (as opposed to the folks on these forums who seem to think anything passionately expressed on YouTube is automatically clickbait) and giving up looking. So sure, they might be unreachable, but that is no reason to not try to reach them.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I think it is possible to imagine that someone newish to D&D trying to google for more info and being inundated with info that can be hard to comb through. In fact, it is really easy to imagine someone immediately turned off by the actual obnoxious bombastic clickbait garbage out there (as opposed to the folks on these forums who seem to think anything passionately expressed on YouTube is automatically clickbait) and giving up looking. So sure, they might be unreachable, but that is no reason to not try to reach them.

Which is why we should advocate for mandatory Enworld membership for all new DMs! This way, we could guide them towards high quality D&D play.

 

[el-remmen]

Which is why we should advocate for mandatory Enworld membership for all new DMs! This way, we could guide them towards high quality D&D play.

Ha!

There is plenty on here to drive them off too (speaking as someone who took a decade long break from ENWorld).

 

[tetrasodium]

A couple people have commented about why we need to worry about players who don't know.... I generally build my non-AL campaigns from short adventures made here & there as it develops rather than one monolithic thing I need to staple the PCs to. I've literally had a player who started with 5e tell me "I don't think it's fair that you won't tell us what adventure this campaign is running because it keeps us from being able to lookup how to be prepared and what we need to win". After failing to explain the concept of making adventures I eventually told one of my players that the friend they brought to the group needs to find some other table. This video might have simplified the process

 

[jayoungr]

I would love an entire book of such adventures. I know Tales from the Yawning Portal and other such compilations are sort of like that, but they don't really have the same cohesion.

Yeah, adventure anthologies are also a good alternative to the epic adventure hardcovers. But the added cohesion of location would be really nice.

The AL seasons that go with the various published adventure books mimic this structure. They usually have two or three mini-arcs, each with its own "on-ramp," and are set in a limited location. Admittedly, the adventures vary widely in quality, but there are enough good ones to make the project worthwhile. It's kind of sad how neglected they are.