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

[Sir Whiskers]

A couple points:

1. While I purchase the occasional adventure for ideas, if I'm running a homebrew campaign, even generic modules can be too much work to adapt. By the time I've finished, I usually have dozens of pages of notes and begin to wonder why I didn't write the adventure myself.

2. Am I the only one who remembers going through the old modules outside of an established campaign? I played through Against the Giants as a completely stand-alone adventure. Same with Desert of Desolation. Same with Descent into the Depths and the Demonweb. The GM's didn't focus on elaborate campaign worlds, intricate npc's, pc motivations, etc. Players expected the modules to be linear to a certain extent - after defeating the hill giants, *of course* we would go after the frost giants, then the fire giants, then the Underdark, and so on.
I may be wrong, but I suspect most GM's and players no longer play in that way - now characters are expected to be tied to a specific world, closely involved with npc's possessing detailed personalities and quirks. Some may see this as a sign that the hobby has "matured" (whatever that means), but it also seems to be a major problem with the entire concept of packaged adventures. The closest I've personally experienced of something similar to the old modules is RttToEE, where the module was the campaign (over a year's worth for us).

Bottom line: I don't think modules will ever have much impact if most gaming groups concentrate on their campaign worlds - they work best for one-shot adventures, or linear mini-campaigns. If true, then it would seem that the market for adventures is even smaller than we've suggested already.

 

[rounser]

In brief:

1) Publishers enjoy designing the same things DMs do (settings and deities and house rules) and would much rather buoy their egos by releasing an entire setting than "just" an adventure. This is the opposite of the service they should, ideally, be providing; if DMs love statting deities and creating homebrews, leave that fun stuff to them.

2) There's a D&D publishing culture that says adventures should almost always be small, and rules and settings books huge. Release megamodules which weren't &*^&&% megadungeons and they may well sell, because they have more than one dimension (rather than just dungeon crawling) and they are the campaign, rather than 32 pages with little to no chance of fitting into an existing campaign without extensive conversion.

Imagine what a product with the page count of the FRCS which focused on just the Eveningstar region could do - fully fleshed out status quo dungeons, lairs and towns to explore, fully statted NPCs with personalities and adventure hooks, and enough mini-adventures to fuel a campaign. It might not even include campaign story arcs, leaving them for the DM to construct for their favourite villains and themes. I'd trade my FRCS in for such a product any day. Oh well.

 

[Beretta]

I am primarily a DM. I can scarce remember the times I've been a player - they have been few. I can understand this - being a DM requires a significant amount of work (for me at least - I like to prpare ahead).

Since I'm not that creative at coming up with adventure plots, and nor do I have the time to flesh them out should one spring to mind, I fall back on published material when it comes to running my campaign(s). It's why I have a subscription to Dungeon. Sure, not every adventure is usable by me, but a lot are and for me that's worth the price of admission.

There's not a lot of 'good*' adventure material out there at the moment, and it's why I'm trying to hunt down a lot of 1st Ed adventures that I can convert to 3.5 for use.

Wraith Form's first post was pretty accurate for me, in that I want plots that make sense and fewer half-this/half-that templates. If they're there I want a valid reason why such an outlandish creature exists.

More sensible plots and believable villains that don't need to resort to a bizarre heritage would be great, as well as ones that don't belabour a theme (I and my players very much dislike extended 'dungeon-bashes' that consist of myriads of passages and rooms. B10 Night's Dark Terror is my favourite module for the reason that it mixes city, wilderness and dungeon encounters [the latter in palatably small caves or ruins]. More adventures in that vein would be fantastic).

* good being subjective of course. I find many to be unsuitable to the style of campaign I run or else to the likes/dislikes of myself or my players (such as Rappan Athuk 1/2/3).

 

[Mucknuggle]

Tzor has a point. The old adventures really followed a story path. The A, G, and D series rocked. However, adventures started dying down once we got campaign specific modules like the horrible Dragonlance adventure that forced you to follow the novel.

I'm pretty sure that the novels were based on the modules.

 

[Storminator]

But don't you see why that's frustrating? They're Dungeon mags you've collected over time...in other words, they're "old". Where is the current d20 adventures for DMs?

I've got every TSR adventure (and I mean that literally) published between 1995-1998, as well as every Dungeon mag from 1997 - today. In order to get adventure ideas, I need to sift through the "old stuff" to find an adventure germ that I can cultivate in my own mind into a full-scale, full-blown adventure. Or, I have to convert every stat into a D20 version. Why is that? Why do I need to do that? Why isn't there d20 support for DMs?

<SNIP>

Ahem.

OK, enough coffee for one afternoon. Sorry.

I've only got the Dungeons from the start of 3e. I missed 2e entirely, only becoming aware of its existance about 6 months before 3e came out.

So while I don't have anything like your collection, I've got a pretty fair batch of 3e adventures. But every time I've needed an adventure, it's been there. Now I do make up a lot of my own adventures, and I've got a couple games going (both as DM and player) that are exclusively homebrew mods. I don't need a constant stream of adventures, just a few "filler" pieces.

On the other hand, about a year ago I started a pretty good thread about the "classic" modules of 3e (perhaps some Community Supporter can search for it...), and that thread convinced me to send a group of newbies thru Sunless Citadel. I felt they should have that "shared experience" I had with all the 1e adventures. That thread had a lot of great suggestions for modules, incidently. So naturally they befriended the goblins and married into the kobold tribe, thereby guaranteeing that they share an experience with no one!

PS

 

[JeffB]

I read the article, but I haven't read through this entire thread, sorry.

I LOVE modules. Unfortunately IMO only a handful of companies out there know how to write them. IMO about 90% of the D20 mods are not very good, and most of those are just plain awful.

Redman says the Adventure Path mods didn't sell for WOTC . That's a no-brainer , All but 2 or 3 of them were terrible! IMO of course.

 

[ToddSchumacher]

But did anyone else find an adventure like "Life's Bazaar" to be *TOO* over-the-top?

SNIP

I'll buy adventures with plots that *work*, not this half-baked monster-fest they've been feeding us.

Ahem.

OK, enough coffee for one afternoon. Sorry.

Spoilers man!!! , some of us are still running this MOD ..on these very boards!

 

[Desdichado]

1) Publishers enjoy designing the same things DMs do (settings and deities and house rules) and would much rather buoy their egos by releasing an entire setting than "just" an adventure. This is the opposite of the service they should, ideally, be providing; if DMs love statting deities and creating homebrews, leave that fun stuff to them.

I doubt it. If so, adventures would still be what is mostly produced these days. I think most gamers would rather by setting, personally.

I like making settings. I'm a die-hard homebrewer. But even I have more use for campaign setting books than for adventures.

 

[eryndel]

I'm pretty sure that the novels were based on the modules.

Actually, the modules came out quite a bit after I read the novels. I do remember reading something that the novels were loosely based off of a game that Weis and Hickman were in (or maybe the main characters were once D&D characters) but I could easily be wrong on that. I am 99% certain that the mods were based on the novel.

Now, my take on modules as a whole. I agree with the author. I used to by adventures all the time, but I really don't any more. The reason is because I don't use them. I run much better games by making up my own adventures.

Back in the day, I would love to pick up the old B and X series (or later S, G, or A) [How come these are sounding like stellar classifications?]. I'd pour through them and run them with my group. This was a time when D&D was relatively new, and I didn't really know how to make up my own stuff. Dungeon design was very rough and each of these adventures would give me ideas on how to challenge my characters and to weave a good plot.

Then came a time when I'd learned it all. Well, not really, but I learned about all that a module could teach me. Later adventures just didn't teach me anything more. I let two years of Dungeon sit unread.

I think adventures sold back then because the hobby was new and it gave a great way to showcase running a scenario. The hobby doesn't need that anymore. That doesn't mean there isn't a demand for adventures, but many of us GMs have instead turned to independent creation. So take a sizeable percentage of the potential module market away because GMs are doing their own thing, another percentage who are satisfied with adventure ideas from Dungeon and like, and you don't have much of a market base left.

Just my thoughts,

Werner Hager

 

[talinthas]

as an aside, the dragonlance series was conceived as being a combined module/novel thing. the first novel followed the first four modules, but the second and third novels diverged, and the modules were based on them.