D&D 5E WotC Is Designing Adventures With Shorter Content Chunks

In a recent interview, WotC’s Jeremy Crawford talked about how WotC’s D&D design accommodates streaming and busier adult gamers by dividing adventures into shorter, bite-sized content. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/07/dds-lead-rule-designer-explains-why-actual-play-has-influenced-the-game “So you’ll notice that around the time we came out with the Essentials Kit and then continued on...

In a recent interview, WotC’s Jeremy Crawford talked about how WotC’s D&D design accommodates streaming and busier adult gamers by dividing adventures into shorter, bite-sized content.


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“So you’ll notice that around the time we came out with the Essentials Kit and then continued on with a lot of our adventure content — even when it’s a large, epic campaign, like last year’s Rime of the Frostmaiden —they’re much easier to divide up into digestible segments that where … if the DM wants to just read a part of this big book, or just run one of these little quests, we’re making that easier to do. Not only to make things less arduous for a brand new Dungeon Master, and with new groups of players coming to D&D for the first time, but also because of that format of play, also suits streamed games better.

“We know streamed games, with the exception of maybe Critical Role, tend to be shorter than a lot of [traditional] tabletop games. You know, in the old days and even today, a lot of people’s tabletop games [sessions] might range between three and four hours, although we’re seeing the average length go down — most streamed games are often sometimes as short as two hours, or even 90 minutes.”
 

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Kurotowa

Legend
Well, it's good to know it's not just my group. Between jobs and kids cutting into everyone's life we've definitely fallen into the 90 minutes to 2 hours of actual playtime demographic. So it's not just livestreamers who need those more bite sized adventure chunks.

If this recognition of actual play habits is changing adventure design, I have to wonder how it would change system design if they had the chance. The question of how long your play sessions are probably has an unrecognized impact on the whole "Does your party get enough short rests?" issue. I mean, some people have said outright that they don't like having to track resources between sessions, which for some people is a longer gap than just a week, so they try to maneuver to end a session on a long rest. If you session is on the shorter side that just doesn't allow for enough time to have many encounters.
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend
Well, it's good to know it's not just my group. Between jobs and kids cutting into everyone's life we've definitely fallen into the 90 minutes to 2 hours of actual playtime demographic. So it's not just livestreamers who need those more bite sized adventure chunks.

If this recognition of actual play habits is changing adventure design, I have to wonder how it would change system design if they had the chance. The question of how long your play sessions are probably has an unrecognized impact on the whole "Does your party get enough short rests?" issue. I mean, some people have said outright that they don't like having to track resources between sessions, which for some people is a longer gap than just a week, so they try to maneuver to end a session on a long rest. If you session is on the shorter side that just doesn't allow for enough time to have many encounters.
We are seeing more abilities keyed to Proficiency than to Short Rest these days.
 

Kurotowa

Legend
We are seeing more abilities keyed to Proficiency than to Short Rest these days.
Yeah, that's certainly a thing they're doing to sidestep the issue with new material. And it's probably the best solution if we're committed to not wholesale revising anything in the PHB. I'm just commenting because I hadn't traced the root cause of "not enough short rests" all the way back to "because most people are running shorter play sessions than in the old days". While the actual game devs obviously had, and were taking further ranging design choices to handle it than I'd realized.

So good on them, and that's why I'm happy to keep giving WotC my money for their work.
 

Zardnaar

Legend
No big surprise I've suspected for a while the 6-8 encounter thing isn't done and large adventures often don't get played or completed.

Makes sense basically.
 

Levistus's_Leviathan

5e Freelancer
‘Not only to make things less arduous for a brand new Dungeon Master’ - Frostmaiden? Seriously 😒?
Yeah. When running Rime, I kept thinking "Okay, there are all of these starter quests (a lot of them are really cool, too), but how the heck am I supposed to get them out of Sandbox mode and into Linear-Story mode? The book doesn't tell me how to do that!"

It's kind of like Tomb of Annihilation, where it expects you to just wander around Chult long enough to level up high enough and then miraculously wander into the place you're supposed to go to, but Rime of the Frostmaiden is even worse at this than ToA, IMO.
 
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