D&D General (SPOILERS for Vecna: Eve of Ruin) Are My Standards Too High for Adventures?

[Reynard]

You do not own anything on Beyond. You are renting it. That's predatory. And no, being able to print out a janky, ugly AF pdf does not make up for it.

And I already said I understand why WotC doesn't sell short adventures. I wasn't even saying that they should. I was saying that it is reasonable for people to want that and big anthologies are not the same thing.

 

[wicked cool]

Right now, there is a wonderful discussion of old Ravenloft adventures going on here, and it's a vastly different opinion than what you're suggesting here. Specifically, the fact many of those Ravenloft adventures are absolute railroads with the PCs having little agency, lots of prescripted things that just happen because the plot demands (IE: NPCs die and that cannot be stopped by anything the PCs do) and a fair amount of "this character's actions don't make any sense" all crammed together to make an adventure that is a great read, but a terrible play-through. Suffice to say, there is a lot of discussion about how to fix or at least make sense of those adventures, and much of it is tantamount to "take the basic idea and write around it".

Those old modules wavered in quality all over the place. For every Ravenloft, there is a Forest Oracle. I can't count how many 2nd edition modules effectively played themselves and the PCs only existed to move the plot along. There were a lot of salvaged modules only made good by a good DM and some clever writing. This has been true for decades, regardless of if the module is published by TSR, WotC, Goodman, Paizo, or any other company.

True but yet they were easier to run , some tied together and they were truly memorable . Yes there were clunkers but they were cheaper to buy and most of the time word of mouth you knew they were bad

Vecna is literally villians from the 80’s.
Phandelver/the villian is the spider and there is no personailty. The entire module he’s mentioned!
Giants adventure-no idea
Rime-an owl thing. Cool idea but honestly lacking


There isn’t a strahd in any of the new stuff

 

[Faolyn]

You simple go the all sources folder and the basic rules are there. Similarly, anything with the “basic” tag is from the basic rules and free to anyone. So if you look up the orc it’s “source” is listed as basic - that means anyone can look at / use it.

Not sure how this will be handled with the 2024 / 25 updates

OK, cool, thanks.

(Doesn't help with adventures, though)

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

OK, cool, thanks.

(Doesn't help with adventures, though)

I have no idea what you mean. You have to buy adventures of course.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There's always En5ider! Have bangin' content drops on the regular for less a burger a week!!

The material in EN5ider is exactly the sort of content I want for "adventures": useful bits to drop into my homebrew.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In almost 40 years of gaming I have never run a published adventure. I was making a comment based on the context of the general conversation. It seems like a lot of people were commenting that published adventures require a lot of work to use. If that's ok with you then enjoy your purchase. My standards of what makes a game good or fun are likely different than yours and to that again I say, play the game the way that brings you joy.

I have not read this adventure so I have no opinion on it at all. I hope everyone that comes into contact with it gets hours of enjoyment from it.

This is how I feel as well. Never run published adventures as one piece, and have not read this new one (not willing to pay $60 for the privilege).

 

[Micah Sweet]

If you are the customer, don't you think they are at least partly at fault if you think they have missed the brief or if you feel the final product is poor in quality? If they don't hear you voice your complaint, how will they ever change?

I think the claim here is that if you don't like what WotC makes, it's your problem and not theirs, and you should just get over it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Right now, there is a wonderful discussion of old Ravenloft adventures going on here, and it's a vastly different opinion than what you're suggesting here. Specifically, the fact many of those Ravenloft adventures are absolute railroads with the PCs having little agency, lots of prescripted things that just happen because the plot demands (IE: NPCs die and that cannot be stopped by anything the PCs do) and a fair amount of "this character's actions don't make any sense" all crammed together to make an adventure that is a great read, but a terrible play-through. Suffice to say, there is a lot of discussion about how to fix or at least make sense of those adventures, and much of it is tantamount to "take the basic idea and write around it".

Those old modules wavered in quality all over the place. For every Ravenloft, there is a Forest Oracle. I can't count how many 2nd edition modules effectively played themselves and the PCs only existed to move the plot along. There were a lot of salvaged modules only made good by a good DM and some clever writing. This has been true for decades, regardless of if the module is published by TSR, WotC, Goodman, Paizo, or any other company.

Makes sense. I bought all those adventures for the lore anyway. For me, most of 2e was for reading and inspiration. And it was fantastic for that, and I miss it terribly.

 

[Remathilis]

Makes sense. I bought all those adventures for the lore anyway. For me, most of 2e was for reading and inspiration. And it was fantastic for that, and I miss it terribly.

As the thread linked points out, there were a lot of interesting short stories ruined by the injection of the player characters and all the stuff needed to keep them in the parameters of the story. There was a lot of good lore (there was a lot of bad lore too) but much of it was no better than what we're getting now.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I don't think it's a manner of standards but of priorities. WOTC adventures are designed for certain things. The OP wants different things in their adventures. Instead of trying to force WOTC to cater solely to one set of priorities, why not simply buy adventures from someone with the same priorities as you??