Chris Perkins now Senior Producer, D&D RPG

[Starfox]

Considering the last round of firings was 7 people, the list of people he provides is fitfully short. Was half the DnD staff laid off?

 

[Dannager]

I completely agree, the "adventure separated from encounters" format is the main reason i stopped bying any adventures from WOTC. It can be better to use in encounters but is annoying to read them in the first place.

As a gamer who used to enjoy reading adventures, it was a disappointment.

At least we have paizo for traditional adventures.

Actually, I wish Paizo would go with the Delve format. It encourages dynamic encounter design with varied elements, and I think that encounter design is one of the few areas that the Paizo adventures I've read could improve on. I love the Delve format, because I buy adventures to run them. How well they "read" is of secondary importance to how well they run, and the Delve format makes running them easier on me as a DM.

 

[Sammael]

The delve format limits adventure design too much. I agree that Paizo's combat encounters could be improved a bit (particularly compared to their absolutely superb NPCs, background information, and overall adventure structure), but I really don't think the delve is the way to go.

 

[Maggan]

Each box contains an envelope with a Power Card. "It's the cereal with crunch."

They could make special towels with printed campaign informatin, such as maps, or locations ... even battlemats on towels.

It'd be towels with extra fluff ...

/M

 

[Teemu]

I disagree with the notion that the 'official' 4e adventure design sucks. The advice in the DMGs is superb, IMO, but it hasn't translated into great modules for whatever reason. If only they'd use those books as guidelines.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

I'm with Darrin and Firesnakearies. Bruce knows how to write an adventure; they're just not letting him. I hope that Chris can change the writers' guidelines (and the whole direction of 4e, for that matter).

The splitting of the D&D team into an RPG group and a non-RPG group might help here. This might allow the RPG group to bring D&D back to a role-playing focus as opposed to the combat- and minis-focus that many, including me, perceive in 4e.

I doubt that will happen, though, because Mearls is still in the RPG section. I think he, the game, and the fans would have been better served if he had moved to the non-RPG group (the caveat being that, since we don't know exactly what the other group is doing, I might be way off).

 

[Starfox]

I've been going over old issues of Dungeon Magazine and checking out the authors, and its interesting to see what scenarios the big names have written.

Mearls have made adventures for 3.5 that are very much like those for 4E; very linear plots, maps with prepositioned enemies marked on them; basically a tactical wargame.

Perkins has made elaborate plots that end in relatively simple dungeons.

I must say I by far prefer Perkins' approach.

 

[Derren]

Chris is a great guy and a talented designer. I wish he were even higher up the ladder.

Be careful with what you wish for. The higher he is on the ladder, the less design work he will do.

See Peter Principle

 

[Windjammer]

Don't put that on Bruce Cordell. I think it's wildly unfair to blame the sucktasticness of the published WotC 4E modules on him. He wrote some amazing modules back in the day. I think it's the fact that everyone writing published WotC adventures for 4E now are forced into writing them a certain way, and that way is crap.

Blame the format, the encounter and adventure design assumptions which are built into "official" 4E.

The Gates of Firestorm Peak is my favorite D&D module of all time, and Bruce Cordell's illithid trilogy was really cool, as well. He's more than capable of writing great adventures. I think he's just constrained now by "it must be in the space-eating delve format, must contain X number of combat encounters built according to X encounter budgets, and fit on a map this small, in this page count, and it has to be written according to a default, codified 4E adventure style".

I bought "Gates of Firestorm Peak" just last week (because of PHB 3 referencing the Far Realm, which in turn cropped up in an article in Dragon 330...referencing that module) and I was struck by how very similar "Gates" actually is to a 4E module. You get a folder with two battle maps working on 1 inch squares (even a sheet with paper minis), and the adventure itself is an extra booklet inside the folder. Beyond product presentation, I also noticed occasional, though less pronounced, similarities in layout (e.g. font choice) and content - for instance, I was surprised how strongly the module sometimes has the DM think in terms of encounters and encounter pacing (I distinctly thought that type of thing was what 3.5/4E brought to D&D). Even the introductory "background" info doesn't really span more than a couple of pages, and the module doesn't really end in a section explaining what happens now that everything is done... it breaks off rather sudden. These are characteristics I strongly associate with 4E modules by WotC and wouldn't have thought would occur in 2e stuff. So there.

And yet there's a world of difference here - from the get go I felt the module didn't place heavy assumptions on player behaviour. It's a site-based adventure with a time line of events that will unfold regardless of what the PCs do. That's the antithesis of 4E modules, all of which are premised on the idea that nothing is really interesting unless the module author predicts the PCs come in direct contact with it. Given module authors' limits to predict player behaviour, I find the end point of that "premise" rather unsatisfactory. I either end up writing missing bits to fill in stuff for my players to interact with, or modify heavily stuff that the author thinks the players will interact with very specifically. Obviously, most modules suffer from this problem, but a simple look at "Gates" will tell anyone that there are various (and variously successful) ways to address the issue.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

First, Chris Perkins is a machine and will kick a$$ at what ever he works on. Glad to see him movin' up.

Second, Orc Bacon. Apparently there was Orc Bacon sold in Germany at one point. This needs to make a comeback