D&D 5E (2014) Mike Mearls interview - states that they may be getting off of the 2 AP/year train.

bmfrosty · Apr 4, 2017

http://shaneplays.com/dnd-mike-mearls-tales-from-the-yawning-portal-radio-show-podcast-ep-94/

guachi · Apr 4, 2017

I would not object to this considering I have purchased zero APs so far, though I might get the latest when it arrives at my FLGS.

Zaukrie · Apr 4, 2017

Putting multiple adventures in one book isn't what some are looking for either. And certainly not at hardcover prices.

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Jester David · Apr 4, 2017

Do you have a quote? Or time stamp of the relevant statement?

jasper · Apr 4, 2017

Please a timestamp I not listening to 53 minutes to find the quote.

discosoc · Apr 4, 2017

The podcast doesn't have a transcript, so I can only go off of the thread title, but...

I wouldn't mind the bi-yearly AP's if they were of higher quality, or at least not marketed as something you would run out of the book. Everything that's been released requires more time to prep or fix stuff than if I had just wrote my own adventure based on a few high-concept ideas. They really need to have better quality control, or maybe just reevaluate what an AP should be these days. Maybe AP's should cover a single tier of gameplay, rather than a rough 1-15 levels. Tier 1 AP's are basically the starter adventures that get characters up to 5 over the course of a single story thread. Tier 2 AP's get them them up to 11, Tier 3 get's them to 17, and Tier 4 stuff is everything higher. Not only would it better highlight the whole Tier concept, but it would be modular enough to work with all kinds of campaign groups without require the group to dedicate 6 to 12 months solid to a single adventure "theme." I was burned out of cultists by the middle of HotDQ, and didn't even bother with EE because it was just more cultists. The underdark can be fun, but OotA had me wishing I could experience a forest or daylight or something by level 6. CoS is all gothic, all the time, and wore thin after a few months of play. SKT has made me decide that giants are nothing more than Huge orcs, and not really interesting enough to spend 6 months dealing with -- especially when wrapped around an endless sea of random encounters meant to pad out the experience.

So yeah, I think maybe it's time to shift focus, but that's just me.

ccs · Apr 4, 2017

Eh, ok. Whatever route they think will make the $.

Ed Laprade · Apr 4, 2017

I want to get the Yawning Portal book, but I doubt that I'll shell out fifty bucks for it. What's wrong with paperbacks?

Mistwell · Apr 4, 2017

bmfrosty said:
http://shaneplays.com/dnd-mike-mearls-tales-from-the-yawning-portal-radio-show-podcast-ep-94/

Thanks! It's a good interview.

So he mentions some other useful stuff. Here is a brief summary of some of the things I noted:

He says Yawning Portal is about 100 hours of play, and about 14 levels. Woosh that's a lot. Going to take my group a year to get through this one at the rate we play!

He mentions that they take the surveys serious and will change direction based on feedback. He was getting feedback on people wanting shorter adventures. He also was getting feedback that people wanted a good range of adventures, including higher level content.

He mentions 5e is still blowing them away in terms of sales and popularity. It's well beyond even their wildest imaginations when they wrote it and they feel it's really revived D&D in pop culture.

He says they now have a good set of 5-6 complete pre-published campaign adventures and it's time to add more variety. Sounds like maybe they will go to one pre-published complete campaign and then other type of product to deliver content for the year. They want to keep in mind the entire shelf of books at a game store or on your home shelf and the variety of books you'd see there rather than too much of one thing (pre-published campaign adventures from level 1 - 15 for example).

They do not want to duplicate non-adventure products that appeared in prior editions. They wanted to do a monster book, but not a monster manual 2. They want to deliver things that people want, but not what people expect, and in a way to upgrade what people expect.

For Yawning Portal, they thought about including B1: In Search of the Unknown or B2: Keep on the Borderlands or Village of Homlet from Elemental Evil. What did and did not make the cut for Yawning Portal was rough. There could be a "More Tales from the Yawning Portal" in the future theoretically. In fact Mearls says he hopes this sells well enough that he gets to do a second book.

Yawning Portal will be useful in helping people convert other adventures. Things like "How do you deal with this sort of thing that there are just no direct analogous rules in 5e" and "what to do with an ogre that had levels in fighter" and things like that.

Yawning Portal is intended for any setting and not "officially set in Forgotten Realms". They have Eberron, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms guidelines. This includes moving Dead in Thay over from Forgotten Realms. He also says, "Even though we don't have an official Greyhawk yet..." which made me smile that he used the word "yet" though he didn't place any emphasis on it. He mentions they are looking at all the settings, and they are aware people like the classic settings and want them brought back.

Inchoroi · Apr 4, 2017

discosoc said:
The podcast doesn't have a transcript, so I can only go off of the thread title, but...

I wouldn't mind the bi-yearly AP's if they were of higher quality, or at least not marketed as something you would run out of the book. Everything that's been released requires more time to prep or fix stuff than if I had just wrote my own adventure based on a few high-concept ideas. They really need to have better quality control, or maybe just reevaluate what an AP should be these days. Maybe AP's should cover a single tier of gameplay, rather than a rough 1-15 levels. Tier 1 AP's are basically the starter adventures that get characters up to 5 over the course of a single story thread. Tier 2 AP's get them them up to 11, Tier 3 get's them to 17, and Tier 4 stuff is everything higher. Not only would it better highlight the whole Tier concept, but it would be modular enough to work with all kinds of campaign groups without require the group to dedicate 6 to 12 months solid to a single adventure "theme." I was burned out of cultists by the middle of HotDQ, and didn't even bother with EE because it was just more cultists. The underdark can be fun, but OotA had me wishing I could experience a forest or daylight or something by level 6. CoS is all gothic, all the time, and wore thin after a few months of play. SKT has made me decide that giants are nothing more than Huge orcs, and not really interesting enough to spend 6 months dealing with -- especially when wrapped around an endless sea of random encounters meant to pad out the experience.

So yeah, I think maybe it's time to shift focus, but that's just me.

As long as the "Tier" APs are connected enough to be run as one adventure, I'm fine with this. I don't run those adventures, but I do have most of them (except the first, because blegh), and I ran Princes of the Apocalypse mostly because I love Richard Baker's writing and the sandbox nature is right up my alley. Everything I'm running is Sandbox from Frog God Games right now...