Boarstorm
First Post
Mines is worth $20 to me.
D&D 5E fifth edition release schedule ... cart before the horse?
Mines is worth $20 to me.
yeah its really annoying these little mini adventures are not on their website for free. That would be helpful.
yeah Dungeon was awesome. Bring back Dungeon devs!
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
I am still not understanding this complaint. They put out a bunch of stuff during the playtest that is for 5e D&D. Converting it from "Next" stats to "5e" stats takes almost no effort - in fact if you don't want to convert it you can just play it as-is without any changes and you will find it works pretty well with, at worst, encounters seeming a tad too easy for your players.
But they put out adventures, they're relatively good ones, why don't you want to give them a look? What exactly is so wrong with Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle; Dreams of the Red Wizards, Dead in Thay; Dreams of the Red Wizards, Scourge of the Sword Coast; and Vault of the Dracolich?
Plus third parties have put out some adventures too, like Glitterdoom and The Fey Sisters Fate and The Mines of Faldhun and Wraith of the Goblinoids and it's follow-up Payback, and Assault on the Southern Horn. I mean come on now, that's a lot of adventures to choose from!
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third party stuff is at present 3.5 stuff that is 'compatible' with the 'latest edition' of the 'world's greatest roleplaying game'. these are not 5 e products(altho they hint at being just that).... there is no ogl(again why not?). the lack of an ogl is actually more understandable than the complete lack of product/website content from wotc. but when you add in the lack of content from wotc the absence of an ogl becomes more glaring.
Iosue
Legend
1000% agreed. If it was something akin to the 4e Red Box (solo adventure for chargen, pared down DM's book with adventure that takes you from level 1 to 2) or even the original Red Box (simplified version of the rules, small mini-adventure), I'd say it would be virtually pointless to buy it after getting the PHB.
As it is, Lost Mine is the meat of the Starter Set. 64-page mini-campaign that takes your characters from 1st level to 5th, and provides a nice Fallcrest-style homebase town. A handy 32 page rule pamphlet that is great for passing around the table if something needs to be checked during the game. A set of pregens that can be given to new players, or used as NPCs. And an awesome set of dice. All for $20.
When the announcements first broke, I quickly pre-ordered the Starter Set and the Big Three. But when I heard that the Basic Rules were going to be available, I considered cancelling my order of the Starter Set, thinking it would be redundant. I'm very happy that I didn't.
And lots of folks are playing and enjoying Lost Mine. It looks like it's going to be this edition's (and this generation's) B2.
Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
Uh, you are wrong. Have you looked at any of them? Click on Glitterdoom, and tell me it's not 5e, and not all new.
There is a 3e OGL, and it's being used to make 5e stuff, by people who know what they are doing and have consulted an attorney to make sure it's on the up and up.
Again, there is a TON of stuff from WOTC...for some reason you keep ignoring the list. What exactly is so wrong with Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle; Dreams of the Red Wizards, Dead in Thay; Dreams of the Red Wizards, Scourge of the Sword Coast; and Vault of the Dracolich?
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i keep ignoring the list because wotc ignores the list. giving me playtest materials (which again wotc isn't promoting at launch) feels like just that-a bunch of playtest materials. so the actual 'official' modules are mines and hoard...that's it. the 3rd party stuff isn't 5th edition-it is 3.5 with some allowances made for 5th (they hope anyways). but...sensible people can agree to disagree. you think there is plenty of material and i think there are two modules.
aramis erak
Legend
There's a world of difference between drafting a decent adventure, and making it ready for print distribution. The hardest part of the process of a print module is the layout. The editing is about #2. The wicked cool module concept? way the •••• down the list of difficulty.
In sharing some stuff I did for my own use, stuff that my players felt really rocked, I discovered a lot of stuff that I just hadn't bothered putting to paper for it. Like "who reacts when a fight happens in location 12" or "how to balance for lacking a wizard"... Not that answering those questions is all that hard, but answering them without being reminded to do so isn't that easy.
And then, the maps. I can draw a decent map. Translating that to a clear, printable map takes time. Not a lot of skill, but a significant chunk of redrawing time. In fact, it's far faster to draw the damn map on the computer from the get go than to remake it from a hand-drawn map.
And, of course, the labeling and keys for the map.
An adventure that took me 20 minutes to write, and 5 hours to run, took me 3 hours to write up to a standard suitable for a playtest copy. (which was fine for my intended audience of 5 people... who wanted copies to run for their own groups.)
Now, reworking it for balance, that would have been harder. Fortunately, I was writing it for T&T, so it wasn't essential to balance things out.
And then there's playtesting. Which said, I didn't have to do, because I wasn't publishing for general consumption. It all adds up to a lot of time
delericho
Legend
Because if they sold it as a standalone product, they would charge at least that for it?
"Lost Mine of Phandelver" is a 64-page adventure, spanning levels 1-5. It's not the same sort of trivial mini-adventure that you typically get with a Starter Set - it's much more akin to "Keep on the Borderlands" or "Isle of Dread" (both of which were bundled with boxed set rules in the past, one with the B/X Basic rules, the other with the BECMI Expert rules), but it's longer than both.
But to put it in context: "Barrow of the Forgotten King" is a 64-page adventure published by Wizards in 2007. The RRP of that adventure is $20 by itself, and prices have gone up since then.
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