D&D 5E Why is WoTc still pushing AP's when the majority of gamers want something else?

[OB1]

Episodic games full of casual death and high turnover are the very roots of D&D. If you want to grab casual players, start there.

They do. Sounds exactly like Wednesday night Adventure League at your Friendly Neighborhood Gaming Store. You can also now download those quick adventures from the DMs guild.

The APs are the next level. For a first time DM who want's to do a campaign for her friends but isn't ready to build one from scratch yet.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Look people... this is all YOUR FAULT. @Corpsetaker keeps goading you all into commenting on his threads and you eat it up with a spoon!

Hell, the last thread he created even said IN THE DAMN TITLE to "please stop", and you all managed to keep that one going for 84 fricking pages! He flat out TOLD YOU to cut it out, but you all couldn't leave well enough alone and you went on and on and on arguing about his points.

Isn't it time you all just admit that as much as @Corpsetaker needs to create the same repetitive, inane threads... you all NEED to comment and debate him about it? He's no longer creating threads in order to generate true change at Wizards of the Coast, he's creating threads to do you all a favor and give you people something to get all huffy about.

He's giving the people what they truly want. You might say he's a service industry, actually. But don't worry, people... admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery. And once you stop trying to argue with him and his threads eventually start running fallow... he might even stop creating more of them.

Are you under the impression that anyone doesn't know this?
@Corpsetaker is that kid in grade school who ate bugs to gross people out because he couldn't (or didn't care to) differentiate positive and negative attention*. Guess what, we're giving him that attention because everyone loves having someone to which they can feel superior. It's immature of him and immature of us and everyone is getting what they want out of the situation (except the overall maturity of the board, and those who want that can simply steer clear of his threads).

*He might even originally been serious in his motives. After all, WotC-isn't-meeting-my-preferences, is a rational position. It is only the and-that's-more-than-just-unfortunate-but-instead-malfeasance/them-not-listening-to-their-customers bit that requires spurious logic.

 

[BookBarbarian]

I run a homebrew setting. I also buy APs, or at least LMoP, HotDQ, OotA, and CoS. I'm actually going to pull elements of OotA and CoS into my Adventures in Middle-Earth campaign.

I find APs far more useful than campaign settings for homebrew. In fact I think they are the most valuable books for a home-brew DM that WotC could produce, except perhaps shorter adventures that I could more easily mix and match...

OK. Now I want that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think at this point Mike & Co. are deliberately choosing things to design that Corpsetaker doesn't like.

And understandable reaction to his attitude, that.

 

[Hussar]

I wonder what WotC could do to make DmsGuild stuff more trustworthy at tables.

And, people do realize that there is a LOT of WotC material on DM'sGuild right? Thirty or forty short modules worth no? Exactly what @Corspetaker seems to be asking for.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I wonder what WotC could do to make DmsGuild stuff more trustworthy at tables.

Hm, you mean something like picking out a few of the better ones each month or so and highlighting them in an article on their website or in Dragon+?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm still absolutely baffled that anyone could bitch about the lack of material for 5e while posting online. Good grief, there's a frigging MOUNTAIN of stuff on DMsGuild.

It's like a slush pile, that way, yes.

AND IT'S ALL D&D.

All of it. And none of it.

Just a quick perusal over there and there are just shy of three THOUSAND titles available. Even if 90% of it is crap, you still have HUNDREDS of books to suit your needs.

One obvious problem is finding the non-crap bits. Once you have, if you're the DM, fine - otherwise, the second insurmountable problem is getting some DM, somewhere, to even consider using the non-crap thing you found...

Not if WotC is serious about that 100k minimum sales for every title.

Seems like a low enough bar.

So, you have two choices, [MENTION=6776548]Corpsetaker[/MENTION]. Either start looking at the other stuff being put out, or be disappointed. That's it. That's your choices, right now.

And, if you do start combing through the slush pile, you're very likely to be disappointed, anyway - just also with very slightly fewer $$s & more eye-strain. ;P

But, hey, you could get lucky.

I wonder what WotC could do to make DmsGuild stuff more trustworthy at tables.

Edit, playtest & compile some of the less awful stuff into a book and sacrifice the lives of a few trees to it.

 

[Jer]

I wonder what WotC could do to make DmsGuild stuff more trustworthy at tables.

Pay people to playtest it? And maybe hire an editor to clean a lot of it up?

Or for some people, stamp the word "OFFICIAL" on it and do little to nothing else. There are DM's who really don't actually want their players to use anything but the PHB at their table because they want to understand all of the character class rules and feel like they have some understanding of the PC's capabilities. They really would prefer not to allow anything extra at their table but will bend for OFFICIAL product because they feel forced into it. I'm not like that as a DM - I'll go with whatever as long as the player understands that if their new character class is killing the fun for other people at the table it will get nerfed - but I know DMs who don't like to nerf PCs after the fact and would rather say no up front and not cause disappointment later.

And, people do realize that there is a LOT of WotC material on DM'sGuild right? Thirty or forty short modules worth no? Exactly what @Corspetaker seems to be asking for.

It suffers from the same problem - a lot of the WotC stuff on DM's Guild is the kind of stuff they used to throw into Dragon magazine or crank out as supplement-of-the-month but with 99% less money devoted to editing. It's not playtested for the most part - where it is its because the author decided to playtest it himself not because any rigorous playtesting has been applied. A lot of the AL adventures that I've looked through have good ideas, but look like first drafts - or if you're lucky second drafts - of things that would have previously gone through the Dungeon Magazine editorial process and been cleaned up.

I'm not saying that DM's Guild is garbage - there's a lot of good stuff there - but if you want to be able to use something at your table without putting effort into correcting and adjusting it, or doing a lot of research to figure out what the high quality products are that won't need correcting and adjusting, then DM's Guild is not the greatest resource.

 

[pemerton]

Actually there is something that wasn't considered. I remember Perkin's stating that he had stories planned for the next X number of years. There could be a contract in place with various other companies that they may not be able to pull back on. It could also be that if Perkin's pulled back then it shows he was wrong.

This is the most bizarre thing I've read yet today.

[MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] already dissected it, probably in more detail then is warranted - I'll just say that the idea that WotC would sacrifice its business to stop Chris Perkins having to eat humble pie is so ludicrous its funny!

 

[Jester David]

Jester David already dissected it, probably in more detail then is warranted

This should probably be my motto...