D&D 5E Thinking about 5E releases...

[Parmandur]

Given 3 of the 3 adventures were written by non-WotC studios, I think it's very likely they ARE producing something else.

Tyranny of Dragons being a different company. That made sense, as they were waist deep in the Core Rulebooks. Elemental Evil, sure as they likely wanted some work done while the DMG was still in flux. But Rage of Demons? At this point they have to be doing something else to justify another company making the book.

Given what Chris Perkins has been tweeting, I am rooting for Fiend Folio/Creature Catalog/MM2 or something.

 

[Mistwell]

Do you guys think that WOTC's use of their AP hardbacks in the triple roles of multi-media tie-in, Adventure League material and traditional RPG product might be holding back their adventures from being better?

I'm not meaning this as a slam against WOTC, merely that it occurs to me that there may be conceptual and structural flaws in 5E's presentation methodology.
For example, is WOTC focusing on the Realms and on the Sword Coast in particualr because its central to any of their stories? Or are they choosing the locale for ease of linkages with Neverwinter and Sword Coast Legends?
Have their hardback adventures been stories that you couldn't tell elsewhere? Are they adventures DMs could set anywhere?
If they are so generic why are they using the Realms? Name-recognition alone?
If storyline is so important why aren't there tie-in novels?
Why aren't their narrative connections between the adventures?

Another concern I have is that the design of the adventures so far seems to be driven in part by the need to also use the hardbacks in Adventurer's League as organized play material. I'm not sure, honestly, that this has been to any benefit of the two storylines thus far. Writing for organized play puts resctrictions on writers and game designers that if they wer just trying to write the best adventuers they could they wouldn't have to mess with. Not saying that organized play is bad, merely that it might be better to have that stuff specially written (as some of it already is) to tie into the storyline but not utilize the adventure path material.

Basically, I think they are using their adventures to do too much. Having to serve in more than one capacity seems to be bringing down their storytelling, making the adventures feel fairly bland and designed by committee.

I'm not saying that I have any magic answer to this problem but there does seem to be one here.
Is WOTc aware of this you think?

I would say overall work on 5e adventures has been superb, with only really one dud. The list (not including Adventurers League, which are also mostly excellent) is:

Murder in Baldur’s Gate
Legacy of the Crystal Shard
Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle
Scourge of the Sword Coast
Dead in Thay
Lost Mine of Phandelver
Tyranny of Dragons
Elemental Evil

Of those, really only Tyranny is not so good.

Now maybe you don't like counting the playtest adventures. OK then, you can't have it both ways. Either you start counting from the playtest, in which case you count the playtest adventures, or you start counting from the release of the final core book, in which case we have two, one of which was good. Not really a good sample size to discuss from.

I'd also like to join the chorus of "too many threads on this topic".

 

[Corpsetaker]

Of course, a lot of those were just republished tournament modules. TSR was just recycling content, often unchanged with the scoring still included.
And one 256-page adventure has the same page-count as 8 32-page modules. So, this year alone, WotC is publishing the equivalent of 16 adventures plus Adventurer's League.

You aren't comparing like for like.

Having 8 different short term modules, each with it's own plot, is a lot better than having one 200 plus page AP with only one plot.

You can't sit there and say Wizards is publishing the equivalent of 16 adventures. An AP is one adventure no matter how many pages it has.

 

[Corpsetaker]

But the inverse of that is 'Produce Thirty Products That Are The Answer To Thirty Different Things'.

I keep seeing this strawman a lot in these discussions and I believe it's exaggerating a bit.

They can support the Forgotten Realms and still work on other things. They are trying to force people into AL, their AP's, and the video games. I don't believe this strategy has anything to do with the whole "produced too many books" thing. They claim to have all this data so they could use that data and see what books actually did sell well, which I think is a lot of them, and then go from there.

They are trying to herd us into a specific direction by producing these specific products and basically starving us from the rest.

You don't have to to cater to "thirty somethings" in order to still have variety.

 

[Jester David]

You aren't comparing like for like.

Having 8 different short term modules, each with it's own plot, is a lot better than having one 200 plus page AP with only one plot.

You can't sit there and say Wizards is publishing the equivalent of 16 adventures. An AP is one adventure no matter how many pages it has.

Sure. Just like the GDQ series is all one adventure. Or Rise of the Runelords is all one adventure. Or the Dragonlance Saga is all one adventure.

Princes of the Apocalypse is 13 only slightly connected dungeons that could each be run independently with little conversion. Plus the four unrelated mini-adventures to start the campaign and nine side-treks. You could break it up into several smaller books with ease.

Okay, it's the same amount of adventuring as 16 smaller modules. It took the same amount of time to write and fills the same amount of pages as 16 smaller modules. You'll have the same experience as playing 16 adventures back-2-back.
Only it's significantly cheaper (one $50 book rather than 16 $10 books) and all available at once and you're spared the process of having to connect 16 disparate adventures if that's what you want.

 

[Parmandur]

Sure. Just like the GDQ series is all one adventure. Or Rise of the Runelords is all one adventure. Or the Dragonlance Saga is all one adventure.



Princes of the Apocalypse is 13 only slightly connected dungeons that could each be run independently with little conversion. Plus the four unrelated mini-adventures to start the campaign and nine side-treks. You could break it up into several smaller books with ease.



Okay, it's the same amount of adventuring as 16 smaller modules. It took the same amount of time to write and fills the same amount of pages as 16 smaller modules. You'll have the same experience as playing 16 adventures back-2-back.

Only it's significantly cheaper (one $50 book rather than 16 $10 books) and all available at once and you're spared the process of having to connect 16 disparate adventures if that's what you want.

Honestly, though not as well done, the same is true of Hoards and Rise. Just about all sixteen chapters of Tyranny of Dragons could be removed from the AP context and run as individual modules with little to no work. The frame is more of a railroad, but the principle applies: it's the opposite of the classic modules that could be strung together into a campaign. These are campaign packages of sixteen modules that could be repurposed as standalone adventures.

 

[Mistwell]

You aren't comparing like for like.

Having 8 different short term modules, each with it's own plot, is a lot better than having one 200 plus page AP with only one plot.

It is? Why? That's not self evident. Some like the one big adventure more than the many smaller ones, others like the many smaller ones. One is not clearly better than the other.

You can't sit there and say Wizards is publishing the equivalent of 16 adventures.

Wizards is publishing the equivalent of 16 adventures. And I am sitting right here. I can type it while standing too.

 

[Mistwell]

I keep seeing this strawman a lot in these discussions and I believe it's exaggerating a bit.

They can support the Forgotten Realms and still work on other things. They are trying to force people into AL

Let me see if I understand your thinking. You first accuse someone else of exaggerating, and then immediately follow that will saying WOTC is trying to force you to play an adventure?

Think about that for a moment. See if you can find the irony there.

 

[HobbitFan]

It is? Why? That's not self evident. Some like the one big adventure more than the many smaller ones, others like the many smaller ones. One is not clearly better than the other.



Wizards is publishing the equivalent of 16 adventures. And I am sitting right here. I can type it while standing too.

Mistwell....how do you figure that WOTC is publishing the equivalent of 16 adventures?

 

[Mistwell]

Mistwell....how do you figure that WOTC is publishing the equivalent of 16 adventures?

Because there are roughly that many 1e-era modules within the AP. It's a string of loosely related mini-adventures, with each mini-adventure roughly the equivalent of those 1e modules. The adventures are essentially the same, with the only difference is there is a vague link between them so you can run them together if you wish, and they're all published in one larger hardback book rather than many much smaller soft cover modules. And the price for the big book is much lower than the combined costs for the modules. Therefore, it's the equivalent of 16 adventures.

Have you run either of the two APs HobbitFan? Why DON'T you think they are equivalent?