What Would You Like To see In a d20/D&D Supplement or Adventure?

[jeff37923]

I'm just curious, here. There is a lot of talk about what is good and what is bad in published adventures and supplements, but I haven't seen a lot of attempts to ask the people what they want to see. So here it is.

What would you like to see in a D&D/d20 supplement or adventure? Should it be long or short? Have lots of fluff or lots of crunch? New prestige classes? New monsters? What would you like to see?

For myself, I'd like to see more of what used to appear in the WEG Star Wars Adventure Journal. A short story for fluff with a few adventure seeds placed in sidebars and game stats for the main characters, settings, and equipment in the story. If this could be done in a format similar to the Legends & Lairs Instant Adventures where the final printed product has a similar price range to a comic book, then that would be even better (I'd rather skip a fast food meal if I can spend the money on a useful game module). Maybe something with about 16 pages or so for $1.95 or $2.95, have the price ceiling be $5.00 for a 48 page B&W interior saddle-stitched book.

So, what would you all like to see?

 

[Li Shenron]

What would you like to see in a D&D/d20 supplement or adventure? Should it be long or short? Have lots of fluff or lots of crunch? New prestige classes? New monsters? What would you like to see?

I'd like a very good plot, more than anything else, as for me it is the most difficult thing to provide myself. Probably a long adventure with several side quests which can be done in any order (as the PC decide to do), and plot intricacies would be the best.

Secondarily, I prefer fluff. Buying books of crunch and then again finding more crunch in adventure books isn't very nice IMHO, and that's the last thing I want to see in an adventure. Having a few unique spells for the BBEG or a single new monster is ok, but not more (otherwise I buy those kinds of books): best to have adventures which put uncommon MM creatures and PHB spells on the spotlight for instance. Instead, put a lot of fluff about locales, people and events. The adventure doesn't need to be full of fluff, as I can add my own as much as I want, but some cool ideas can help me out or give inspiration.
[obviously some important NPC stats are useful, but that doesn't count as "crunch"}

Finally, some flexibility would be greatly appreciated. It usually isn't a big deal to modify an encounter if I e.g. don't like the kind of creature, but for example each encounter could have a sidebar to scale it to other levels, which isn't always so straightforward.

 

[Turanil]

What Would You Like To see In a d20/D&D Supplement or Adventure?

Something re-usable in other adventures, like a village or fully detailed castle, or a bunch of NPCs.

 

[jeff37923]

Do you guys think that having the adventure be scaleable to different levels is important?

 

[shilsen]

Do you guys think that having the adventure be scaleable to different levels is important?

I think having a sidebar or small section with suggestions for how to modify the adventure for larger/smaller parties or groups which are somewhat higher/lower level is quite useful, especially for inexperienced DMs.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

My Random Encounters Series is an attempt to meet the adventure needs of DMs. They are short, easily modifiable and can be added to an existing game, or even used to launch a whole new campaign,

I don't know if that's what a lot of other DMs want, but its something I'd be interested in if I wer e looking for material to supplement my DMing.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

A short story for fluff with a few adventure seeds placed in sidebars and game stats for the main characters, settings, and equipment in the story.... 16 pages or so for $1.95 or $2.95

I think this is a great idea -- perhaps because it's one Behemoth3 has had on the drawing board for a while now -- but these price points sound way too low to me. Comic books and WEG's old Star Wars tie-ins both have big audiences, so that they could take advantage of the economy of scale from big print runs and have it be worth their while to make a small profit margin per unit. $2 or 3 for a 16 page PDF, maybe, but the print edition would have to cost more. What's the most y'all would pay for something like this - and would you pay extra to see it in print and not just in PDF?

Some more market research questions:

- Would you rather see new fiction by relatively unknown authors, or reprints of stories by "name" authors that had previously appeared in magazines like Fantasy and Science Fiction? (Either way, the game stats would be new.)

- Would you be interested in only fantasy stories, or in other genres like SF and horror? And within fantasy, would you prefer standard D&D-esque fiction or stuff that went further afield (modern fantasy, exotic settings, etc.?)

- What ratio of story to stats would you like to see? Would you prefer shorter stories, or be open to longer novellas?

- For reprinted stories, are there favorites you'd especially like to have game stats for, or ones you thought "that'd be great to use in a campaign"?