D&D 5E Anyone else feeling "meh" about recent 5e releases?

[S'mon]

The big difference is that the Pathfinder...paths...are serialized and sequential, while the WotC books have really not been that: more scattershot toolboxes and sandboxes. They don't provide the same serialized storytelling experience, but they do provide the tools to build an experience.

Yeah, my experience running a WoTC adventure (Princes of the Apocalypse) is that it is more a toolset than a scripted adventure, I never feel constrained/railroaded and I have to put a good amount of effort in, especially at the start, to build the adventure & present good choices. With the Paizo APs it's more about tearing down the scripted linear experience - pretty much every room I'm thinking "how can I do this better? How can I open it up?"

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm using the 1st 2 dungeons of the Mummy's Mask subbing in 5E critters and traps. Changing the metaplot

Early Age of Worms, Savage Tide, Kingmaker are all good. Rise of the Runelords is great, Skull and Shackles Alo interesting.

Paizo hit the high notes more often at least early on.

 

[S'mon]

What kind of adventures do you like? What kinds of players are running games for?

I'm currently running:
Primeval Thule sandbox, high level (10-13) PCs in an antediluvian swords & sorcery world.
Princes of the Apocalypse, level 7 FR PCs fighting Elemental Evil.
Runelords of the Shattered Star, epic level 20 PCs battling the Risen Runelords and other Horrors from Beyond Time.
Red Hand of Doom, level 7 PCs fighting the Hobgoblin legions of Azar Kul.

My main need I'd say is for high level (10+) adventures that I can drop into an ongoing campaign or use to continue completed mid-level campaign adventures. Next year I plan to run a Phandalin sandbox with the starter set & essentials kit adventures, so some Tier 2 (5-10) adventures to use after the stuff in those would be good. Preferably location based stuff without heavy railroading.

My players vary from total newbies (2 players yesterday had their first ever session, and the Bard saved the party from TPK - twice!) to guys who have been playing since the mid '70s. They are all over the place but I'd say a common theme is an interest in social & exploration encounters as opposed to just combat, though I have my share of combat-oriented players too.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As @Hussar notes, there are lots of reviews of modules. There are entire blogs like tenfootpole.org that do nothing but review adventures.

Yes, but in this internet age any idiot can publish a review. Without knowing the reviewer there is no way of knowing if they are any more reliable than the blurb.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Yes, but in this internet age any idiot can publish a review. Without knowing the reviewer there is no way of knowing if they are any more reliable than the blurb.

So you don't trust an idiot on the internet so you want the opinions of... an idiot on the internet...?

 

[Coroc]

I don't know why they need additional starter sets, they should promote the ones they already got instead.
Ravnica, I can see the potential, otoh MtG is huge, if some one would want to set his campaign into MtG universe being, a magic player eventually, he could probably convert the setting without much help.
Someone new to MtG would need much more than one setting book to get into the setting.

Saltmarsh seems to be ok, but it is out there, any decent DM can convert the old adventure. so like the starter sets, it is wasting energy on reprints.

What I would want are some official rules, not much, but some rules how they think on how to do DS or DL special mechanics with 5e. I do not need lore for the other settings, the stuff out there is totally sufficient, a lore freak can stay with FR, I do not wish sundering spellplague and such to reach out to other settings.

I doubt that there are many developers today who can capture the feel of the old settings for 5e well enough, so I just would need some mechanics cleared.

 

[Xenonnonex]

IMO
Rise of the Runelords is very good. Of other APs I've run/am running, Curse of the Crimson Throne and Shattered Star both suffer from the 6 book format. It leads to excessive padding by authors writing to the page count, and weak middle books - CoCT books 3 4 & (somewhat) 5, Shattered Star book 4, are pretty bad and mostly seem more geared to meeting the page count and leveling up the PCs than doing anything interesting. CoCT book 4 is so pointless I just skipped the whole thing, while SS 4 is a boring grind with a static villain.
But there is good stuff too - SS 1 and especially 2 were lots of fun, SS 5 & 6 feel suitably epic, and with 5 it helped a lot that big chunks can be skipped. Running SS6 currently, I find the main thing is turning lots of the given combat encounters into potential roleplay encounters. Luckily I have a really engaged player with a PC whose background as the de-stasised 11,000 year old Herald of Xin makes this easy.

Compared to WoTC stuff, the APs probably do contain more interesting stuff, a 6 book AP certainly will have more interesting stuff in among the padding than a single WoTC hardback. Neither are easy to use IME, though Rise of the Runelords hardback comes closest.

Edit: Mostly I find with the APs that mashing them up and using them as sources of ideas & NPCs works best. Paizo APs have tons of incredibly detailed NPCs with multi-paragraph backstories who sit in a room and "attack immediately... fights to the death". I like to get them out of those rooms doing stuff! The biggest issue with Paizo APs is that they are written primarily for non-playing readers. Adapting them to something good usually takes a fair bit of work, but is doable. The WoTC hardbacks seem written much more with the GM in mind, although they also tend to suffer from poor presentation and excess complexity in places.

Definitely this, Paizo's mash up of writers can sometimes mean little connection and little coherency with the adventures within the same AP.
The middle ground of some of their APs is precisely filler and is basically a waste of pages.
When this happens, it is extremely difficult getting anything useful out of them. Tremendously more difficult than WotC's adventures.


What Paizo are good at is coming up with new ideas, fresh takes on old ideas or having amazing ideas. And they are not afraid to take risks, well the old APs were not risk adverse, the newer APs seem clinically safe.
Rise of the Runelords especially has content that would not fly nowadays.

 

[CapnZapp]

And they are not afraid to take risks, well the old APs were not risk adverse, the newer APs seem clinically safe.
Rise of the Runelords especially has content that would not fly nowadays.

Consider my interest piqued. Piqued, I say.

 

[Zardnaar]

Late 3.5/early Pathfinder was aimed at adults.

Wouldnt really fly now, they had a Queen of the Succubi throne room Roman orgy style.

 

[CapnZapp]

Let's remember that a lot of the "Paizo is better than WotC" (at writing stories) is a hold-over from before 5E.

Especially 4E was a god-awful period. Something about that ruleset really brought out the worst in its adventure writers, much like how (somehow) WFRP 3e managed to evoke true howlers of scenarios.

So if Paizo's quality has declined (quite natural for such a venerable edition), it's a significant difference if we compare early energized PF1 with late tired 3E products (or worse, most of the early 4E modules I looked at) or if we compare late era Paizo with the considerably improved 5E efforts.