D&D 5E My biggest hope for 5E

[fredal]

Is that they return the pace of encouters back to something closer to 1E or 2E. I'm ok with the 3 hour final boss battle, but when every battle takes 45-90 minutes, it's almost impossible to stay focused on the storyline. The game descends into a skirmish game instead of a RPG.

IMO, this is the biggest issue with both 3E and 4E, especially at higher levels. I know there are alternatives you can use to speed up combat (more damage, fewer monster hp, more minions, etc) but personally, I believe that the base core engine should do this, not some home brewed hybrid.

If Hasbro were to go back to something where an adventure could be finished in 6-8 hours instead of the extended time it takes now, they would have a much larger market for selling modules and the continuous profit stream that would generate.

 

[mudlock]

I've heard it said many times, that modules were never a good profit stream.

 

[RangerWickett]

But since Dungeon is part of the subscription model, and you really do need some modules to help create a unified fan-base and get people excited, you may as well do them well.

I remember running Forge of Fury, and getting through a huge chunk of dungeon in a few hours. 4e's just complicated. Then again, that was my play style. In 3.5, when a friend ran it, we'd spend hours on a single fight because he had to do everything precisely.

I've never tried running a 4e game with all Essentials, and all striker PCs. Maybe that would go faster. Slayer, Thief, Hexblade, Executioner Assassin?

 

[delericho]

I've heard it said many times, that modules were never a good profit stream.

No, but what they do seem to do is cause the rest of the system to sell well.

A good adventure gets people enthused to play the game. This in turn makes the players more likely to buy supplements/subscriptions to make their characters better for the game. This, in theory, makes them enjoy the game more, so they play more, so the DM buys another good adventures. And repeat.

Removing the supply of adventures (or only producing poor-quality ones as WotC has traditionally done) and you don't automatically make the game suck. But what you do is push the requirement of creating adventure material on to the DM, which means the adventures are going to be of sporadic quality.

Plus, if you don't provide good adventures to help the DM, where is his incentive to play your game, as opposed to Pathfinder, or Black Crusade, or Hunter: the Vigil, or whatever? (And if he's playing other games, the players aren't buying your supplements. Even if the DM does play your game sometimes, but switches systems often, there's much less incentive for the players to invest in supplements, since they won't use them all that often.)

Individual adventures may not sell well, but I believe that a supply of good adventures is a massive boon for the game as a whole - they may not sell, but they help everything else to sell.

(Oh, and see also Adventure is Key.)

 

[delericho]

Is that they return the pace of encouters back to something closer to 1E or 2E. I'm ok with the 3 hour final boss battle, but when every battle takes 45-90 minutes, it's almost impossible to stay focused on the storyline.

Agreed. This is why I won't run 4e again: while I don't agree with the "you can't roleplay in 4e" argument, those long combats (coupled with the duration and frequency of our game sessions) make 4e a poor fit for my group - they make it extremely difficult for me to tell the stories I'm interested in telling.

If Hasbro were to go back to something where an adventure could be finished in 6-8 hours instead of the extended time it takes now, they would have a much larger market for selling modules and the continuous profit stream that would generate.

I don't really agree with this. Between eDungeon and the published modules, there seem to be adventures of many different lengths. Speeding up combat in general will certainly help, but I don't think that's really the fundamental issue.

Basically, I think the fundamental issue is that, with only a few shining exceptions, WotC have just never done good adventures - in 3e or 4e.

 

[Klaus]

But since Dungeon is part of the subscription model, and you really do need some modules to help create a unified fan-base and get people excited, you may as well do them well.

I remember running Forge of Fury, and getting through a huge chunk of dungeon in a few hours. 4e's just complicated. Then again, that was my play style. In 3.5, when a friend ran it, we'd spend hours on a single fight because he had to do everything precisely.

I've never tried running a 4e game with all Essentials, and all striker PCs. Maybe that would go faster. Slayer, Thief, Hexblade, Executioner Assassin?

With 4e, I'd be able to run the entire Forge of Fury in a single session! I love that adventure, for me it's one of the modern classics.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Basically, I think the fundamental issue is that, with only a few shining exceptions, WotC have just never done good adventures - in 3e or 4e.

To be fair, TSR with a few shining exceptions have never done good adventures either. And for all the hype I'd argue the same about Paizo - at least the bits I know.

 

[delericho]

To be fair, TSR with a few shining exceptions have never done good adventures either. And for all the hype I'd argue the same about Paizo - at least the bits I know.

I can't agree with that on either count.

Many of the 2nd Edition adventures were very poor, but TSR also produced a lot of classic adventures - adventures that are still played and fondly remembered today. Indeed, most of the best-received adventures of recent years have been WotC's retreads of these same modules.

As for Paizo... whatever their faults, their reputation for excellent adventures is well deserved. They're now 50+ issue in to the Pathfinder Adventure Path line, and they've had very few poor modules, and a surprisingly large number of good ones. The quality of that line is pretty consistent, and extremely impressive. And that's not even considering all the various stand-alone modules.

 

[fredal]

I'm not sure if Forge of Fury is a good example to use for pacing issues with 4e. We noticed that the pace issues didn't start appearing until middle heroic, when hp bloat, power bloat and larger damage amounts came into effect.

 

[Klaus]

I'm not sure if Forge of Fury is a good example to use for pacing issues with 4e. We noticed that the pace issues didn't start appearing until middle heroic, when hp bloat, power bloat and larger damage amounts came into effect.

The adventure that killed my 3.x campaign was Heart of the Nightfang Spire.