D&D General Matt Colville on adventure length

grimmgoose said:

I - as a forever DM - agree with Matt, but I've found that with my players, they generally want an Epic.

Both groups have lamented shorter campaigns and adventures. My preference would be a 10-session mini campaign with a direct goal. Then we can move on to a new story, new setting, etc.

My players want multi-year long adventures. One told me, "I feel like I can't get into my character until the 10th session"; almost all have loved the story of that D&D group that's played the same campaign for 40 years .

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Distracted DM said:

Yup. It's a very romantic idea- most people want that, and the promised method is by playing a big ol' adventure book. "Complete THIS, and you'll have been playing for years!"

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EzekielRaiden said:

Well, in at least two of the cases, it was because the DM was throwing encounters at us that were stupidly strong but which gave relatively paltry XP for their level, so even though we'd (barely) survived multiple Deadly encounters, we hadn't yet cracked the XP needed to reach level 2. For example, one campaign folded following session 4 (still at 1st level, mind) after we had an all-but-one-person TPK (the rogue alone escaped) two combats after a previous near-TPK...and said previous fight had only earned us 70 XP apiece due to the "you outnumber the enemy" halving of XP value since it was just one CR 3 creature (a mummy) vs our party of 1st-level characters.

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Charlaquin said:

Well, most of the open playtesting process was done with Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread. And my in my experience, 6-8 encounters of the difficulty that was called “easy” at the time and is now called “medium” between long rests was the norm in those modules.

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Charlaquin said:

Haha yeah, a lot of players want to have been playing for years. But relatively few are willing and able to commit the time required to actually play for years.

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Parmandur said:

Yes, that is by design: the idea is that kids in school playing every week can complete a campaign in an academic year.

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grimmgoose said:

I - as a forever DM - agree with Matt, but I've found that with my players, they generally want an Epic.

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Lanefan said:

The bolded is a bad rule. An opponent should be worth exactly the same number of xp regardless of who or what defeats it, or how. The J-curve in the advancement tables should be enough to reflect the power difference difference e.g. getting 100 xp at 1st level is a big deal while getting 100 xp for the same monster at 10th level should be a drop in the bucket.

Gygax has similar advice in the 1e DMG - to adjust xp up or down depending on the relative strength of party-vs-foe - and I roundly ignore it there too.

That said, as long as one PC survived (in this case, the Rogue) there's no reason the campaign can't continue. The Rogue goes back to town and recruits a new gang of companions, which the rest of you are busy rolling up. Then, off you go into the field again, maybe or maybe not to the same adventure as before, with the Rogue about half a level and some loot ahead of everyone else...for now.

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mamba said:

so we would have a different number now if they had taken a different module in the playtest?

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Lanefan said:

That said, as long as one PC survived (in this case, the Rogue) there's no reason the campaign can't continue. The Rogue goes back to town and recruits a new gang of companions, which the rest of you are busy rolling up. Then, off you go into the field again, maybe or maybe not to the same adventure as before, with the Rogue about half a level and some loot ahead of everyone else...for now.

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