D&D 5E Rank the Official 5e Adventures (Updated)

[Burnside]

I mean, they do playtest. But I have spoken to people who have playtested some of the hardcovers and asked stuff, like, "How did two years of these insane frozen wasteland lifeless climate conditions in Rime of the Frostmaiden not get flagged as an issue during playtesting?" and have been told, "Yeah, my group DID flag that, but they published it that way anyway."

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist has a point at which the adventure will grind to a halt unless the adventurers decide, apropos of nothing, to investigate where a key they found was manufactured.

I have no idea how that made it through playtesting without a whole bunch of DMs saying, "Yeah, I'm gonna fix this part real quick."

I have run Dragon Heist twice and I don't even remember this part.

You assume they playtest?

 

[Yora]

Playtesters can be as influential on a work as historical advisors on movies.

 

[Retreater]

Sorry. Just not buying that groups actually playtested the adventures. They may be focus groups. They may try out certain encounters. But to actually play the whole thing, comment on it as a whole, and have their opinions be listened to - I don't believe that.

 

[Malmuria]

Sure. I can give a few examples of ones better than what WotC produces.
First, I'm currently running "Glimmering Crypt of the Ioun King" by Planet X Games. It's a simple dungeon crawl - traps, combats, with enough of a background that it can be dropped into many campaigns. It's around 30 pages, for levels 6-8. You can tell that the writer was focused on this kind of adventure, and the theme is clear. It's a better dungeon than anything in Rime of the Frost Maiden.
Looking at a megadungeon, compare Dungeon of the Mad Mage with Barrowmaze, which comes with a town, NPCs, small "satellite" dungeons, a few compelling villains, traps, backstory.
Look at something like "Hole in the Oak" by Gavin Norman instead of some of the early level dungeons by WotC - and see how formatting and presentation can make something easier to run by new DMs.

Yeah - OSR adventures have a much more focused and limited scope. Part of that is that they tend to be location-based, and another part is that OSR games are built around a specific type of play. I think that can basically be reproduced in 5e over the scope of a few levels, especially early levels. But for the grand 1-13 adventure path styles, it seems like you run into the problem of having to assume a basically linear path. I never played the paizo adventure paths but people seemed to like them. I'm wondering if it's the AP style that's difficult to pull off or just wotc's execution of that style.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Sorry. Just not buying that groups actually playtested the adventures. They may be focus groups. They may try out certain encounters. But to actually play the whole thing, comment on it as a whole, and have their opinions be listened to - I don't believe that.

I mean, they do? This isn't exactly a secret, people comment after the book is revealed that they've playtested these.

Now, how much feedback they actually take seriously and incorporate from playtesters is one thing, but they definitely playtest these a lot, a lot more than most small publishers ever can.

 

[Retreater]

Yeah - OSR adventures have a much more focused and limited scope. Part of that is that they tend to be location-based, and another part is that OSR games are built around a specific type of play. I think that can basically be reproduced in 5e over the scope of a few levels, especially early levels. But for the grand 1-13 adventure path styles, it seems like you run into the problem of having to assume a basically linear path. I never played the paizo adventure paths but people seemed to like them. I'm wondering if it's the AP style that's difficult to pull off or just wotc's execution of that style.

I agree that the 1-13 level mega-campaign is a big undertaking. Even the best examples of official adventures I can think of span 3-5 levels. For that matter, I'm not a fan of the Paizo Adventure Paths either.
How WotC should make adventures to my preference would be tangential to this thread, and I'm not sure if it would even be a worthwhile exercise since I'm clearly outside their target audience.

 

[BigZebra]

Incidentally, if you want an amazing Eberron adventure convert Rise of the Runelords to Eberron. It works so well. I’ve been running it for about a year now and the party are currently exploring a demon-powered giant-built dam in the mountains of Xen’drik.

This sounds amazing. Is it in 5e or PF1?

 

[Bolares]

This sounds amazing. Is it in 5e or PF1?

Searching the forum, the sword made quite a big post about it:

D&D 5E - The Runelords Trilogy in 5E Eberron *Spoilers* Discussion, Conversion Notes and Adventure Log

[Edit: Apologies if this is in the wrong place] I’ve been wanting to do this project for a while but the right conjunction of players, time and resources never came about. With the release of Exploring Eberron I decided it was time. The premise is a mash up of the Sihedron Trilogy of Paizo...

www.enworld.org

 

[Parmandur]

Sorry. Just not buying that groups actually playtested the adventures. They may be focus groups. They may try out certain encounters. But to actually play the whole thing, comment on it as a whole, and have their opinions be listened to - I don't believe that.

They've pretty extensively spoken about the process, actually.

I think the matter is more one of differing playstyles than content: for how WotC expects people to use the books based on extensive playtesting, they work. YMMV.