More about H2 (and mentions H3: Pyramid of Shadows)

[Zaukrie]

So they should publish adventures that are scalable across 10 levels? How many pages would that require to put all different kinds of stat blocks and info in there then? That just isn't realistic at all.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

No argument there. Although the point I'm trying to make is that designing a game in a way that divides the customer base is a big mistake.

Let's say you have 100 customers. They play the game spread over thirty levels. For simplicity's sake let's assume they are spread evenly. If you publish a module designed for three levels of play only 10% will feel the need to purchase the module. So you have 10 customers. Stupid?

Oh well then mister smarty-pants, what should they have done?

They should have designed the game around heroic, paragon, and epic levels. As in "This is a heroic adventure", "this is a paragon adventure", or "this is an epic adventure".

That way they would have 33 customers per published adventure.

For example: Heroic adventures lack flying, scrying, and planar travel. Paragon adventures lack scrying and flying. Epic adventures lack travel and interviews.

We'll have to wait and see, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it turns out that you can easily scale the adventures in their respective tiers around. But they didn't do it yet, because a customer playing a character from levels 1-30 is probably not really interested in playing the same adventure five times in his career (Adventure H1: Scaled for level 1-2, Adventure H1: Scaled for level 3-4, Adventure H1: Scaled for level 5-6...)

No matter what you do, you will need a range of adventures that cover the full amount of levels. People don't play level 1-4 and then jump to level 10. At least, not usually.

 

[Jhaelen]

Let's say you have 100 customers. They play the game spread over thirty levels. For simplicity's sake let's assume they are spread evenly. If you publish a module designed for three levels of play only 10% will feel the need to purchase the module.

For some reason I cannot follow your argument:
I'd see your point if the adventure was designed for levels 28-30. The percentage of potential buyers would then probably be a lot lower than 10%.

You don't seem to take into account that most campaigns start at level one and end well before level 20 (well, maybe they'll last a bit longer in 4E, we'll see...). I think the H1 adventure will have 100% potential buyers and H2 slightly less.

 

[green slime]

Why, oh why this nomenclature "H#"?!?

Did they run out of letters in the alphabet suddenly, so they needed to rehash old ones?

Strange, I hadn't noticed...

 

[Rechan]

Why, oh why this nomenclature "H#"?!?

The tiers, I believe, are
Heroic
Paragon
Epic

H1 stands for Heroic 1.

So I'm willing to bet that we'll see P1 and E1 etc.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Let's say you have 100 customers. They play the game spread over thirty levels. For simplicity's sake let's assume they are spread evenly. If you publish a module designed for three levels of play only 10% will feel the need to purchase the module. So you have 10 customers. Stupid?

It's not 10%, it's 100%. Because every group will pass through those three levels in the course of playing from 1-30. And if they're at 15th level now (which is only possible if they converted) they'll be at level 4-6 for a while in their next campaign.

It's not possible to write adventures for all levels without genericising them into non-existence. At low levels you save the village from orcs. At high levels you save the universe from Orcus.

A completely generic adventure would have to be written thusly -
The PCs are approached by the village chief/mayor of Greyhawk/deva of Ehlonna who says there is a trouble at Ben's farm/the merchants quarter/alternate material plane Theta. While walking/flying/plane shifting there the PCs are ambushed by bandits/umber hulks/advanced half-fiendish cloud giants.

 

[SteveC]

I have to disagree with the "100%" notion for first level. In 3X I haven't run or played in a campaign that started at first level in years. I think I'm going to try one of them in 4E, but likely I'll be starting in games at either ~5th level or ~10th, just like now.

--Steve

 

[Festivus]

I think modules linked to levels makes more sense than asking a DM to scale it across 10 levels. Also, as the 2nd module released for a new game, wouldn't you expect it to follow the first one in level? I would.

Player handouts, that's like quest cards or something, right?

Or perhaps item cards, similar to what Paizo is doing with Rise of the Runelords item cards?

 

[Doug McCrae]

I have to disagree with the "100%" notion for first level. In 3X I haven't run or played in a campaign that started at first level in years.

One of the aims of 4e is to extend the sweet spot from 3-12 or so to 1-30. If that's successful, we should see a lot more groups using the full level track. It's certainly something I'm looking forward to.