D&D 5E Which Would You Rather Buy/Use?

[Psikerlord#]

100 percent B. I want short, cool episodic adventures and lots to choose from.

I dislike long 1-15 adventure paths. They feel too locked in. Reminds me of awful megadungeons like Undermoutain.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Shorter adventures would really be nice. The smaller scale you plan, the less mistakes you do and the more descriptive you can be which all the possible events, so in the end it ends up being much easier to use. Plus you can aim more for very short but mysterious stories with a twist.

 

[Kabouter Games]

A.) a campaign setting with enough adventure in it to cover a years' gaming (like what WOTC is currently offering).

Cripes, I can't decide.

I don't DM anymore, thank goodness, but I'd probably go A. I don't have time to world-build and tweak and modify and and and. Having it all in One Big Book is a boon for the time-strapped DM.

At the same time, those can be really railroady. There's not a lot of scope for the players burning down Daggerford, chucking the plotline and striking out toward Kara-Tur. I don't like to be railroaded as a player, and I hate doing it as a DM. I find that the One Big Book adventures are more like a novel, where only the author really has any input on what can possibly happen. I think RPGs should be more collaborative than that. I don't want just Weis and Hickman's story input to command what happens. I want the input of the folks playing Raistlin, Caramon, Tika, Sturm, etc. to also influence where the story goes. In other words, if they do burn down Daggerford and decide to go debauch in Baldur's Gate, I need to be able to work that into the story, while still getting them to seek to end the Tyranny of Dragons. Does that make sense?

So I should probably go with

C.) a series of adventures (covering 1-2 months of gaming) that are loosely tied and set within a single setting? 1 product. 1 years worth of gaming like A but not a single overarching plot, more like episodes.

But that's not ideal, either. I don't like just sauntering vaguely from adventure to adventure; I adore the concept of an overarching plot line a bit too much. There's scope in fantasy gaming for sauntering vaguely - after all, did Conan not saunter vaguely toward the throne of Aquilonia? - but I prefer to adventure and DM in plotlines.

Or maybe it's more like a episode-based TV program with a definite story-arc. Like the latter Star Trek series: Archer's Enterprise is a good example of that. Definitely episodic, each of which can (sort of) stand alone as adventures. But they each are a chapter in the story-arc.

Am I making any sense at all?

 

[halfling rogue]

Does it stay the same if the price is $25, rather than the $7-10 suggested?

Because "Scourge of the Howling Horde" was 32 pages and $15 in 2006, and the costs to produce items of that size have increased at an above-inflation rate since then.

Well, Out of the Abyss is a hardback with 256 pages and costs $50. The Starter Set was sold as adventure+rules+dice for $20. If we're talking a shorter adventure, say 32 pages. Softcover and not in a box set then yeah, I expect it to be under $25 and even under $20. I doubt we'll get it for under $10 though.

 

[HEEGZ]

A.

I'd like to see an update to all the campaign settings that have been getting tossed around for the past two years.

 

[Jester David]

A 40-page adventure would likely be closer to $15-20.

I like the big bundled books. More content for my $$. I'm unlikely to run straight, so its all the same in terms of inspiration. But linked adventures are good for keeping people back to play.

 

[77IM]

At the risk of derailing this thread into hopeless tangents about WotC's abysmal electronic publishing strategy and how real books are way better than e-books...

I greatly prefer to buy adventures in PDF. I like to print them out and re-arrange the pages and take notes right in the margins and give my players printed map hand-outs, etc.

 

[JamieEvan]

I would go with B (a single adventure that covers ~2 months of gaming. 40 pages. $7-$10)

 

[Bawylie]

Hey, I didn't say any of this was from WOTC. So it wouldn't likely be $15-$20.

 

[Sunseeker]

E: I write my own material. I would rather buy setting books than campaign books. Making my own campaign in a established setting is significantly less time-consuming than making my own campaign in a homebrew setting (unless I'm reusing a setting).