D&D General Matt Colville on adventure length

Parmandur said:

You see, that's the thing, we don't know any data about how people might fit into these categories.

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Parmandur said:

But again, if WotC data showed groups 1 or 3 were significant, I am sure they would have addressed it. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that 2 and 4 are the predominant, maybe even overwhelmingly predominant, experience of D&D.

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mamba said:

agreed


I am not sure what data they have there, but I would not simply assume that them doing anything always means that their data shows it is the right / popular thing to do, they could simply lack data too

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jayoungr said:

One clue about WotC's attitutde toward the adventuring day would be how often they build their published adventures to adhere to it.

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Parmandur said:

I mean, I have no idea how many do or do not, or if there is a significant resistance to the concept across the player base.

Logically, there are going to be four groups:

1. People who follow the Adventure Day, and hate it (probably doesn't exist much in the real world, but for logical completeness there it is)
2. People who follow the Adventure Day and love it
3. People who don't follow the Adventure Day and are frustrated at the balance being out of whack and hence unhappy
4. People who don't follow the Adventure Day and ate blissfully unaware of any issues and hence happy

Now, we have no data on what percentage of the player base might plot along these lines. But if 2 and 4 predominate, WotC would have no reason to change anything.

WotC has data on player activities and satisfaction.

WotC is not changing anything about Adventure Day balance in the revision.

Ergo, I surmise that there is not likely to be a significant resistance to the Adventure Day in the player base.

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Parmandur said:

They have enough data for that, I am certain.

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jayoungr said:

One clue about WotC's attitutde toward the adventuring day would be how often they build their published adventures to adhere to it.

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Vael said:

Well, there's the other question ... is it worth revamping the current model given that there is a design goal of staying close to 5e? There looked to be an effort to push all classes to a more Long Rest model, given the first UA Warlock, but it was rejected ... now we see a shift in the other direction, most classes have some sort of short rest recovery. We do know that the 2024 Core books will have a new method of determining combat encounters, so I guess I'm saying it's too early to say exactly how things are going to change.

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Staffan said:

Sure, that's a discussion to be had. But the 5e XP table is designed in a very particular way in order to speed up and slow down at various intervals in order to create a particular experience across a full campaign. I know I've seen devs mention this online (I think Mearls mentioned it back when he was allowed to communicate), but there's nothing about it in the DMG.

I can't be hedgehogged to look it up, but I think it went something like:

• Levels 1 and 2 are tutorial levels intended to last about a session each.
• Level 3 slows down a little but is still pretty fast.
• Levels 4 through 9 are kinda slow, because that's where the game works best so let's stay in the sweet spot.
• Level 10 is a little slower, just before hitting the awesome stuff at level 11.
• Level 11+ are fast because at that point the game itself slows down with all the crazy stuff that's going on.

I found a spreadsheet I had made that calculates how many medium and hard encounters you need to level up* (going by the DMG guidelines). At levels 1 and 2, you need 4 hard encounters. 3 takes 8, and then it's about 10 per level until level 9. Level 10 takes 11, and after that it's about 6-7 hard encounters per level. This kind of back and forth implies that someone actually designed it to be this way, unlike say 3e which has a pretty static formula of 13 1/3 equal-EL encounters to level up.

* Assuming the actual XP awarded are the same as the "encounter difficulty XP". I never understood why an encounter with many weaker opponents gets treated as more XP for the purposes of calculating difficulty but not for actual awards, but that's a discussion for another time.

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• One adventuring day of XP each for levels 1 and 2.
• Three to four adventuring days each for levels 3-5.
• About five or six adventuring days of XP per level up to level 10. These levels are considered the "core gameplay experience" for 5e.
• Getting to level 11 from 10 takes six or seven adventuring days.
• And then after you hit 11, now it only takes roughly ONE adventuring day of XP to level you per level all the way to 20. The designers said that they basically wanted players to "experience high level play, but not spend a long time in it" so they could hit 20 in a "reasonable" time and start anew.

Clint_L said:

I'm in category 4, all the way! I don't even think about the "adventuring day" - that is not a concept that comes into my head outside of discussions on these forums. I just think in terms of narrative structure.

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