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

[Parmandur]

Thanks. So, who takes the hit from the Amazon discount? Is that the retailer or the distributor getting cut out?

That's the entire secret to Amazon's business model: they are both a distributor and a retailer, so they can offer end customers similar prices thst distributors traditionally offer retailers. So Amazon is taking the distributors cut and passing the retailer cut on to the customer directly.

So, Diamond (say) buys a book from WotC for $12.50, then goes and sells ot to @FitzTheRuke at roughly Amazon prices.

Amazon buys a book from WotC for $12.50, then turns around and sells it to a customer for the same price Diamond would charge the retailer.

So WotC gets the same cut either way, and Amazon gets a similar cut to a distributor. But retailers cannot compete on price.

 

[Parmandur]

Not here!

I miss the days of TSRUK, when products didn't have to travel thousands of miles.


(Okay, for the geography geeks, I think the USA is closer than China).

I'm only 6 time zones from you, so yes.

Where were your books printed, out of curiosity?

 

[TiQuinn]

I really do feel that not violating the central conceits of a setting (e.g. "it's hard as hell to get out of Ravenloft") just to have that setting make a cameo that could, frankly, be replaced by any other setting without that conceit is a preeetty low bar to pass over.

To be fair, most Ravenloft modules let the players out of the demiplane at the conclusion, hence the “weekend of horror” tag for 2e RL modules.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm only 6 time zones from you, so yes.

Where were your books printed, out of curiosity?

TBH I don't know. I know TSRUK produced a bunch of stuff I had (best known, the Fiend Folio), it seemed easier to obtain "UK" modules than others, but I don't know where it was printed.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I really do feel that not violating the central conceits of a setting (e.g. "it's hard as hell to get out of Ravenloft") just to have that setting make a cameo that could, frankly, be replaced by any other setting without that conceit is a preeetty low bar to pass over.

In the case of Eve of Ruin, we visit Ravenloft for no particular reason. There is no reason that that piece of the Rod couldn't be on Krynn, or Mystara, or be a second piece on Faerun or Greyhawk. There is no plot-related reason for it to be where, by all rights, the pcs should end up in a five-level diversion of trying to survive the horrors of Ravenloft instead of it being a one- or two-session drop-in in a campaign setting that can accommodate such things without breaking one of its main setting rules.

I'm really a bit baffled at the choice. I get that Ravenloft, and especially Barovia, is popular; but it's not a suitable choice for the adventure if you're trying to maintain the Ravenloft feel, and it's pointless to misuse it this way if you're not.

It would be like if they spelled it "Strawd" in five places in the book- it's a pretty bad error, in my judgement.

The new Death House is a a do-over of the frankly rubbish CoS appendix, and a vast improvement. It would work very well as a stand-alone Ravenloft adventure. And the point of including it here is to showcase the widest variety of D&D settings possible. There wouldn't be any point in going back to generic fantasyland. Been there, done that, bought the tee shirt.

 

[Remathilis]

That last sentence is deeply subjective, of course.

Exactly. There is 2e lore that is much worse than what 5e put out, just as there is 2e lore that is better. There is no correlation that lore has gotten worse since 2e.

 

[Remathilis]

2nd Edition wasn't a golden age for adventure design, either. There's a reason those "best adventures of all time" are overwhelmingly dominated by adventures from 1st Ed and older - for all of their flaws, that's as good as it gets. Each edition since has had one or two classics (which were themselves often remakes), a bare handful of good adventures, and then a load of... other adventures.

At the risk of blasphemy, I wonder if some of those classics are classics for being the best or for being the first. Against the Giants is really not all that impressive by modern standards, but it does hold the place as one of the first linked set of adventures. (The Drow and Demonweb parts are likewise not particularly well designed or easy to use, but did the underdark first). Likewise, I can think of a dozen better designed deathtraps than the Tomb of Horrors, but ToH has the rep for getting there first.

 

[Reynard]

At the risk of blasphemy, I wonder if some of those classics are classics for being the best or for being the first. Against the Giants is really not all that impressive by modern standards, but it does hold the place as one of the first linked set of adventures. (The Drow and Demonweb parts are likewise not particularly well designed or easy to use, but did the underdark first). Likewise, I can think of a dozen better designed deathtraps than the Tomb of Horrors, but ToH has the rep for getting there first.

Isn't that true of D&D generally, though?

 

[wicked cool]

If I was wotc release the adventure league 1 shots in a book.

 

[Remathilis]

I really do feel that not violating the central conceits of a setting (e.g. "it's hard as hell to get out of Ravenloft") just to have that setting make a cameo that could, frankly, be replaced by any other setting without that conceit is a preeetty low bar to pass over.

In the case of Eve of Ruin, we visit Ravenloft for no particular reason. There is no reason that that piece of the Rod couldn't be on Krynn, or Mystara, or be a second piece on Faerun or Greyhawk. There is no plot-related reason for it to be where, by all rights, the pcs should end up in a five-level diversion of trying to survive the horrors of Ravenloft instead of it being a one- or two-session drop-in in a campaign setting that can accommodate such things without breaking one of its main setting rules.

I'm really a bit baffled at the choice. I get that Ravenloft, and especially Barovia, is popular; but it's not a suitable choice for the adventure if you're trying to maintain the Ravenloft feel, and it's pointless to misuse it this way if you're not.

It would be like if they spelled it "Strawd" in five places in the book- it's a pretty bad error, in my judgement.

Spoilers

Spoiler

The Dark Powers are helping Kas in his plan. He's a dark lord after all, and they explicitly allow him to go on probation to face his rival. They TOLD him about Venca's plan! So when the Ro7P part shows up in Barovia, the Dark Powers allow the PCs easy entrance and egress because it is furthering Kas's plan. The PCs don't know that, of course.

Speculation: why would the Dark Powers allow Kas out in the first place? Because they love to torment those they hold, and letting Kas go to torment Venca (who is the only dark lord to ever escape) and then, once Vecna is defeated, to snatch Kas back before he had a chance to remake reality, sounds like a really great twofer in the torment department. Of course, the PCs stop Kas sooner, but the fact he got so far into his plan and then failed to stop Vecna before being banished to the Mists is sufficient enough punishment for now.