Has WotC saturated the published adventure market or are the two latest adventures not very popular?

pukunui said:

It’s also a poorly written adventure outline more than anything else. I thought part of the reason for the slower release schedule was so WotC could focus on quality, but I’m beginning to think that’s corporate spin, cos the quality of the last few releases has been a pretty mixed bag. 5e is a fantastic game, but WotC’s support of it leaves a lot to be desired.

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This is the bit that's puzzling me also. I really expected these adventures to be master classes of design with tons of clever techniques that would reveal insights in how to make an adventure exciting and memorable. Instead they seem quite random and illogical and barely follow the adventure design approaches outlined in the DMG (the adventures vary in this regard but I don't think any of them come close to nailing it, even Curse of Strahd). Dragon Heist is one of the worst in that regard.

I'm starting to think that adventure writing is actually very hard and no one knows how to do it...

robus said:

I'm starting to think that adventure writing is actually very hard and no one knows how to do it...

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Adventure writing is very hard. Writing an adventure that is also of sufficient mass appeal to sell 100,000 units and both reads well and plays well and does so in the format of a 256-page book is much harder still.

Also, writing a set of adventure design guidelines is a different challenge again...

Enevhar Aldarion said:

And I am sort of laughing at the whole "4 whole books in a couple of months" thing, seeing as how many people have posted here over the past four years that 3 or 4 books a year is nowhere near enough releases and they wanted a book every month or two. I am surprised that none of them have popped in here to say this is great and they want more.

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I think it is the type of books being released, not that they have released 4 books in 6 months. Most of the people I recall asking for more releases per year are wanting options books, not adventures. Stuff like new classes/subclasses, races/subraces, spells, feats, monsters, etc. The books released this year are 2 adventures, a race/monster book, and a setting book. Of these 4 books, the one with the most talked about was MToF, the option book. Many people have no use or desire for the Ravnica book, and there's the adventures which have a bit of a niche audience, as not everyone likes urban adventures (or the premise behind WDH), nor like mega-dungeons.

TLDR: I don't think it is the number of books, but the type of books that people aren't happy with.

delericho said:

Adventure writing is very hard. Writing an adventure that is also of sufficient mass appeal to sell 100,000 units and both reads well and plays well and does so in the format of a 256-page book is much harder still.

Also, writing a set of adventure design guidelines is a different challenge again...

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I guess so, and I guess I need to stop buying them and being disappointed each time. So I think I'm done with Dragon Heist; as others have mentioned I have more adventures in queue than I can probably ever run...

Keep in mind this might very, very easily be a perception and sample size issue.

Dragon Heist reached #18 on the Amazon books sales chart while Dungeon of the Mad Mage reached #72. Tomb of Annihilation hit 53 but the next highest I can see was Curse of Strahd at #174. And Dragon Heist spawned a wave of best selling products on the DMsGuild.

So they're still selling very, very well. And are very popular. Just less so here.

What [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] said. Let's not confuse outspoken forumites with the sum total of D&D fans.

I honestly don't get the complaints waged on Mad Mage - that it is a series of disconnected dungeon crawls, which can be used as a group or separately. What a great resource to have! You can A) Play the entire thing, as written, B) slot a level into your homebrew campaign as needed, C) Use it as a "Let's take a break from our usual campaign and dungeon-crawl for a session," or D) use it as fun bathroom reading. Etc.

What I really see happening is variations on "WotC is not publishing exactly what I want, so I'm going to be grumpy about it." The problem is, this is inevitable.

As for 4 books a year being too much...really? That's one book every three months. I don't think 4 books a year is an issue, but maybe they need to try to spread them out more evenly rather than having nothing for almost the first five months of the year, then a book, then nothing for a few months, then 3 books in a few months time.

Finally, I would suggest this basic formula, if 4 per year: Two adventures, one setting, one supplement (rules, monsters, etc).

Oh yeah, for those who haven't bought either yet, they're on a crazy sale right now on Amazon for less than $23.

Mercurius said:

What [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] said. Let's not confuse outspoken forumites with the sum total of D&D fans.

I honestly don't get the complaints waged on Mad Mage - that it is a series of disconnected dungeon crawls, which can be used as a group or separately. What a great resource to have! You can A) Play the entire thing, as written, B) slot a level into your homebrew campaign as needed, C) Use it as a "Let's take a break from our usual campaign and dungeon-crawl for a session," or D) use it as fun bathroom reading. Etc.

What I really see happening is variations on "WotC is not publishing exactly what I want, so I'm going to be grumpy about it." The problem is, this is inevitable.

As for 4 books a year being too much...really? That's one book every three months. I don't think 4 books a year is an issue, but maybe they need to try to spread them out more evenly rather than having nothing for almost the first five months of the year, then a book, then nothing for a few months, then 3 books in a few months time.

Finally, I would suggest this basic formula, if 4 per year: Two adventures, one setting, one supplement (rules, monsters, etc).

Oh yeah, for those who haven't bought either yet, they're on a crazy sale right now on Amazon for less than $23.

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For me, one book a fiscal quarter would be about right. I had all of three days to amuse myself with Dungeon of the Mad Mage before my Ravnica preorder arrived at my FLGS. Still absorbing both of them, really.

I think you are on to something there structurally, but I'd put this spin on it:

- 1 book of plotless adventure material, ala TftYP or DotMM
- 1 generic D&D fluff/crunch supplement, ala VGtM, MToF or XGtE
- 1 plotted AP for themed shennanigans
- 1 setting book, ala GGtR

One of these every three months or so would be pretty fun.

Parmandur said:

For me, one book a fiscal quarter would be about right. I had all of three days to amuse myself with Dungeon of the Mad Mage before my Ravnica preorder arrived at my FLGS. Still absorbing both of them, really.

I think you are on to something there structurally, but I'd put this spin on it:

- 1 book of plotless adventure material, ala TftYP or DotMM
- 1 generic D&D fluff/crunch supplement, ala VGtM, MToF or XGtE
- 1 plotted AP for themed shennanigans
- 1 setting book, ala GGtR

One of these every three months or so would be pretty fun.

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Yes, exactly my thoughts - although I think they'll be flexible on how they do the two adventure books, depending upon the year.

I also wouldn't be surprised if the story arc is directly tied to the setting.

I have come to the hard realization that published hardcover adventures are just not for me. I own PoTA, COS, SKT, OOTA, DH, and DOMM. I have never run any of them until Dragon Heist because I just didn't like the scale of them and the amount of work needed to run them well. I don't see any of them as adventures to just pickup and run as written. I like the stories of them all and in the future hope to mine parts of them to use, but I doubt I will every run any of them as is. I am wrapping up Dragon Heist here in a couple sessions. I ended up adding 2 DMs guild adventures to my Waterdeep campaign as well as made all of their faction quests into smaller encounters instead of skill checks and full "heists" to get each of the 3 vault keys.

Before running Waterdeep I had preordered DOMM and now that I am wrapping up DH I really don't think I will be running DOMM as a mega dungeon. Instead it will be a bunch of forays into Undermountain to retrieve items or complete quests. Harpers need help retrieving this macguffin or Emerald Enclave needs help rescuing a member stuck on level x. I am pretty sure that I am don't collecting adventure books.

On top of that I am struggling with all of the "source" books that they keep putting out. I have them all and I find most of them fairly worthless. I didn't find much use for SCAG, rarely open Volos. I just bought MToF and haven't even looked at the book yet. The only one I have actually used so far has been XGtE. That is $200 of books at retail that I find little use for. The player options they add to the books are generally available through Unearthed Arcana. The monsters I enjoy but I hate that they sprinkle player and DM materials through all of those books forcing me to buy them all if I want it. I am getting fatigued. I love to collect books but unlike my 1E and 2E collections, I am not finding much use for many of the 5E ones I have bought.

On a side note, I think WOTC could make a killing if they focused a little resources into some more 1-5 level adventures similar to Lost Mines of Phandelver. I thought that was an excellent starting adventure and a lot of fun to run. Had a good mix of small encounters, dungeons, some wilderness/outdoors, roleplaying, and even factions. While DragonHeist is a 1-5 Adventure they went overboard with the scale. The adventure itself is much smaller but they charge a premium for a hardcover that is more a sourcebook on Waterdeep than anything.

Would love to see the return of small scale modules. Small level range, softcover, able to drop into any adventure, with a price to reflect that ($15). Guess that's why I am thankful for companies like Kobold Press.