Adventures don't Sell? Do you agree? Redman Article

[KnowTheToe]

I used to love buying adventures but they all see the same and have little creativity. I would like to see more plot driven with very little to no dungeons. I am tired of delving into dungeons. I am looking forward to Oblivion by Fiery Dragon.

I understand they are hard to sell, but they may be a critical support piece for the industry. New players and DMs require adventures unless they are joining an established group, even then most new GMs are more comfortable using a published adventure.

 

[Wombat]

The shared experience of the classic D&D and AD&D modules is a sore thing to lose, and we'd better hope what's gained in return makes up for it. Scenario support is important to the health of games far beyond the money they make directly.

Interesting notion, but I, for one, do not agree.

I don't care if I play in a scenario that everyone else has played in and I don't care of other gaming groups have gone through the same adventure my group has. What would be the point? Our worlds would be (and ought to be) vastly different.

If I want a shared experience, I'll pick up a book or a movie. I enjoy rpgs for the individual experiences, not the commonality of gamers in general.

Guess that's also why I dislike 99.9% of game-based novels.

 

[KnowTheToe]

Does anyone know when Gates of Oblivion is going to be releasd. Fiery Dragon has it listed as Sep and Nov.

 

[Desdichado]

See, for me it's because 99.9% of game based novels are poorly written. I don't mind the fact that the setting is something folks already know really well from games. In fact, I don't care much about that at all. Of course, when the writers fall into the trap of letting game mechanics dictate plot resoluation and the like, that leads to the poorly written scenario I described earlier. What makes a good novel and what makes a good game are not the same things. However, what makes a good setting for either one is, IMO, identical.

 

[Wraith Form]

Hey, thanks. I can always use a spare rat's ass. Anyhoo, color me confused.

Me too. Let's chalk it up to TOO MUCH COFFEE.

(Although if a d20 adventure "fit" into the criteria I posted, I'd buy it in a heartbeat because I'm a fanboy d20 insomnia junkie with a spending habit worse than a heroin addict. The Freeport adventures were god, for example, as was Grey Citadel.)

[Or "good"--although "god" is probably applicable, heh heh heh.]

 

[bret]

So someone has finally figured out what SJGames has been saying for years?

Settings can sell. Worldbooks can sell. Adventures are a tough sale for any number of reasons. Best to put the effort into the first two instead.

 

[Mark Chance]

I think it's time to show all the naysayers that they are wrong. Right now, I want everyone within the sound of my voice to go to RPGNow and buy five, yes five, copies of the PDF module The Office & Affairs of Love. That'll show 'em!

 

[d4]

Thus, the main competition the adventure writers face is from the DMs themselves.

this is my feeling as well. it seems more GMs make their own adventures than buy them.

i've bought exactly two adventures since 3e came out: Sunless Citadel and Speaker in Dreams. i only ended up running Sunless Citadel. it took me more time to convert the adventure to my campaign world than it normally takes me to write my own adventures. and i had to pay for it.

until people start marketing adventures set in my own personal homebrew world (which changes every 9 months to a year ), i'm not going to be buying modules.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Personally, adventures are my favorite D&D publication, and I wish there were more of them -- long, short, generic, specific, low-level, high level. I don't care too much about setting -- I've found that I can adapt *most* adventures to *most* settings. I find it quicker to start with a module, and tweak story and contents to my needs, than to work entirely from scratch.

But I buy the economics. Does anyone really think that if a lot of money were to be made in adventures WOTC wouldn't be publishing them?

 

[barsoomcore]

Two adventure sources I happily pay for:

Dungeon Magazine
Dire Kobold -- the pdf adventure publisher

I don't buy many adventures on their own because there's too much crap out there. It's impossible to know from looking if something is any good or if you're going to get a list of statblocks and some cheesy map stolen from The Village of Hommlet or something. But both Dungeon and Dire Kobold have proven themselves worth my dollar -- so I trust the filtering process they in effect provide.

The G, D, S and A series -- I remember them all with great fondness. I agree with those who are saying that too few adventures nowadays meet the high standards set early on in the industry.

The problem is a signal-to-noise ratio problem -- which is why I pay for "filtering" services where some editorial system picks adventures for me.