D&D 5E (2024) No 5.5 AP Yet?

[Paul Farquhar]

not generic enough

Why ever would you need someone to write a generic plot for you?! If you can't do it yourself you could lift one from pretty much anywhere!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

When I read AP, I see Adventure Path. That's a Paizo 'thing' and that pretty much stopped for D&D when Paizo moved to PF.

Er, no. Paizo invented the term, but the concept has been around since Against the Giants, Against the Slave Lords, and Dragonlance.

Paizo found a way to milk it by combining it with a serialised magazine format.

 

[Distracted DM]

Why ever would you need someone to write a generic plot for you?! If you can't do it yourself you could lift one from pretty much anywhere!

Yeah honestly I like stuff that's very specific and knows what it's about. Make me something with a lot of flavor, then let me adapt it to my own needs/genericize it when necessary.

 

[Zardnaar]

Er, no. Paizo invented the term, but the concept has been around since Against the Giants, Against the Slave Lords, and Dragonlance.

Paizo found a way to milk it by combining it with a serialised magazine format.

They were linked adventures.

Paizo was 1-20 campaign. That was new.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

They were linked adventures.

Paizo was 1-20 campaign. That was new.

The concept that the game ran from levels 1-20 was new. 1st and 2nd edition were open ended. And 3rd edition had epic levels, so didn't really end at 20 either. So "1" and "20" are just numbers, without any particular significance.

 

[Zardnaar]

The concept that the game ran from levels 1-20 was new. 1st and 2nd edition were open ended. And 3rd edition had epic levels, so didn't really end at 20 either. So "1" and "20" are just numbers, without any particular significance.

Back in the day that was a big part oof it. I own those magazines. And the first one.

 

[jdrakeh]

Well my own hope would be that it means the days of the WotC "big dumb campaign book" are just over, because they're frankly poor products.

I generally agree. I think many of them have good parts, but almost all of them have poorly conceived parts or other design issues. Even Curse of Strahd, which I have both run and played through, was a mixed bag. The Amber Temple, for example, was awful all the way around, IMO, and whoever wrote the room descriptions for Castle Ravenloft should've been sacked (despite having multiple points of entry, many rooms had wall of text descriptions written from a single POV, which made running the castle very frustrating).

The only pre-published official adventure that I thought was great from beginning to end was The Lost Mines of Phandelver (but since I wasn't the one running it, I have no idea how many adjustments our DM made). And that wasn't technically a campaign-length adventure (although it kept our group busy for quite a while). I wish they'd stuck more to smaller adventures like this or the adventure anthology books (although those still had some weak entries, they weren't nearly as problematic as the full campaign books).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Back in the day that was a big part oof it. I own those magazines. And the first one.

The day being Jonny-come-lately day.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I generally agree. I think many of them have good parts, but almost all of them have poorly conceived parts or other design issues. Even Curse of Strahd, which I have both run and played through, was a mixed bag. The Amber Temple, for example, was awful all the way around, IMO, and whoever wrote the room descriptions for Castle Ravenloft should've been sacked (despite having multiple points of entry, many rooms had wall of text descriptions written from a single POV, which made running the castle very frustrating).

The only pre-published official adventure that I thought was great from beginning to end was The Lost Mines of Phandelver (but since I wasn't the one running it, I have no idea how many adjustments our DM made). And that wasn't technically a campaign-length adventure (although it kept our group busy for quite a while). I wish they'd stuck more to smaller adventures like this or the adventure anthology books (although those still had some weak entries, they weren't nearly as problematic as the full campaign books).

I've run Lost Mines 3 and a half times, and working on getting together a group for yet another time. I think it is the best published campaign for 5e, especially with Icespire Peak available in the same region for the same level with lots of highly modular pieces to insert to the table's tastes.

It's certainly not perfect but it's strength is having the right amount of detail to support the DM but still be wide open to rework, insert, and expand without causing major problems. It's also the right scale for a DM (or me at least) to fully digest without being overwhelmed, and I think because of the limited scale and it being for the starter set it was more thoroughly playtested than most adventures. Also a nice greatest hits album of low level D&D experiences.

 

[Zardnaar]

The day being Jonny-come-lately day.

Well the other part of the APs was a campaign.

Dragonlance maybe. Against the Giants was always higher level iirc.

Mere of Dead Men was also a 5 part proto AP. Did Dragonlance start at 1st lvl?