D&D 5E Adventures

[Iosue]

It's been my contention for a while that D&D Next's raison d'etre is not to be some Super Edition that will make all players happy, but rather to be a highly customizable game system that can be configured to emulate the play of various editions and thus revitalize the whole history of D&D. So adventures released for Next could be easily used for B/X, 1e, 2e, 3e, or 4e. Initially it was largely speculation on my part, based on my interpretation of some of the things they've said. However, I think we're starting to see just this kind of movement.

First, of course the playtest already includes Next versions of Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread.

Soon, they'll be releasing a new original module for AD&D - Danger at Darkshelf Quarry. But not only is it written for AD&D, but a Next version was run at Winter Fantasy and PAX East.

But it's not only B/X and AD&D. The latest playtest includes conversion notes for 4e Encounters games Against the Cult of Chaos and Storm Over Neverwinter.

But most interesting is this. Steve Winter, former member of TSR and one of the 2e design team, wrote the adventure Blood of Gruumsh for Dungeon #210 (January). Winter wrote on his blog,

Though the adventure is written for 4E, it isn't dependent on 4E to work. You could run it with minor alterations in any edition of D&D or whatever other fantasy RPG you favor.

Even more interesting, he writes:

The second project was a Forgotten Realms adventure that will be published as a standalone product as well as being used as a D&D Encounters season and as the basis for the D&D Game Day adventure. It's called "Murder in Baldur's Gate," and it's very different from anything that's been published for 4E. The characters arrive in Baldur's Gate just as the fuse gets lit on some really bad business, and it continues burning no matter what the characters do. They can get involved in the unfolding catastrophe to whatever extent they choose. There are events they can prevent, events they can interfere with, and events that are simply too big for them to alter significantly, even if they choose to get involved.

The schedule on this was grueling, and the only way I got through it was by bringing in my son Alexander as a co-writer. Aside from the obvious gain in having four hands pounding out words at the keyboard instead of two, it was invaluable to have another head that was intimately wrapped up in this complex plot so we could kick ideas back and forth. I can't think of any adventure, for any edition or game, that's structured quite like Murder in Baldur's Gate. It's not exactly a sandbox adventure -- there is some essential structure and there are scheduled events -- but it takes a unique approach to the setup, as far as I know. That uniqueness was a problem during writing, because we experienced several false starts before the pieces clicked together.


If you're a fan of film noir, the mob, and hardboiled detective action, you'll probably find a lot to like in MiBG. We packed as much corruption, crime, decadence, and duplicity into Baldur's Gate as could fit in one Medieval city.


The writing process was further complicated by the fact that the adventure is meant to be equally playable with the 3rd, 4th, or upcoming 5th editions of D&D. Since no one even knows what form D&D Next will finally take, we wound up writing in a way that was largely edition-agnostic. In some ways, that made the writing easier, but in others, it made the writing much more difficult. In the end, I'd say that the total amount of work was substantially more than it would have been if the adventure was for just one edition, because doing it this way demanded so much mental overhead. And that doesn't account for the couple of weeks that were "lost" to just figuring out how this idea could be put into action. In the end, the solution we adopted was not ideal -- that is, I'm sure a better solution could have been devised if we had another six weeks to experiment and putter and rewrite again -- but as we always said at TSR, "a writing project never gets finished, it just gets done."

This indicates to me that there is an explicit move towards adventures that can be used with any or many editions, not just Next. That there is an explicit expectation that some players will not move on to Next, but that adventures, and perhaps other materials, will be designed so that those players can still play them in their preferred edition.

My impression is that some adventures might be wholly generic -- fairly adaptable with any system. Blood of Gruumsh seems to be an example of that. Others might favor a particular era of D&D, like Murder at Baldur's being aimed towards WotC-era D&D, and Danger at Darkshelf Quarry being aimed more towards TSR-era D&D.

More and more I'm convinced that while people have been pooh-poohing Next and saying WotC should just support all editions, WotC has been intending to do just that. But while simply reprinting the different editions and releasing adventures meant only for those edition wold create another "many buckets" situation, doing this through Next allows them to hit a wider range of D&D demographics with each product.

 

[jadrax]

Interesting.

 

[the Jester]

Awesome observations. I like the sound of this, although to be frank, I've found it's pretty easy to convert almost any adventure to almost any edition on the fly; I've run B4 in 4e, Gates of Firestorm Peak in 3e, etc. But I love the idea of adventures that have inherent multi-edition support. Kudos for posting this- I probably would have never seen it otherwise.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Less focus on the mechanical aspect of the game and more focus on the adventures is a really big win in my opinion. I do hope that they put some effort into creating new adventures that can be looked back on as "classics" or create an environment that encourages third party developers to create them.

 

[darjr]

I wonder if this the way forward with third parties. if an adventure written for sword and wizardry is essentially also a Next adventure than the old ogl could stand in for a Next one for a variety of play styles and editions

 

[Iosue]

This is way late, I thought I'd bump this to note that the S-series Dungeons of Dread is also now converted to D&D Next.

 

[SirAntoine]

A great post, no doubt. I would mention that making adventures "compatible with other editions" or even other RPG's is nothing new. In my opinion, this could be a step in the right direction, but there is a big difference between a module that says it's compatible and a module that actually is. The difference is a matter of convenience. If it's even a little hard to convert a module, that would be a failure in this respect in my opinion. I think the writing of a professionally-produced module shouldn't be filled with fluff and other rule-specific technical information, and much more on providing for "a bigger event" in your home game. "Murder in Baldur's Gate" sounds like it offers us a lot, to be really useful no matter your edition, just because its authors take the time to write out a complex scenario and make that manageable and compelling. Murder-mysteries, in any detail, are rare for D&D, and if the module provides for even a good fraction of the total, imagineable possibilities for interactions in a city as big as Baldur's Gate, you have something there.

A module in the future may deliver much more than a few sets of encounters and stat blocks. It may take the first steps to being a truly immersive RPG experience. If so, it would be worth the money, and it would also help DM's do the DMing that can be so hard sometimes. I am intrigued, personally, at the potential of this because I've always wanted to sell my own adventures, but not thinking there would be much of a market because of edition clashes, even with the OGL's, I never devoted the resources to it. I have hope the market will be more friendly to modules from third parties, even individuals who haven't started a company yet.

 

[Weather Report]

Less focus on the mechanical aspect of the game and more focus on the adventures is a really big win in my opinion.

The 2nd Ed Al-Qadim adventures were very much like that (Golden Voyages by David Zeb Cook is fantastic).

 

[DonAdam]

Murder in Baldur's Gate sounds very cool.

I'm very happy for the focus to switch back to adventures rather than splat books. But the million dollar question is whether adventures will work well with different rules modules.

 

[dd.stevenson]

More and more I'm convinced that while people have been pooh-poohing Next and saying WotC should just support all editions, WotC has been intending to do just that. But while simply reprinting the different editions and releasing adventures meant only for those edition wold create another "many buckets" situation, doing this through Next allows them to hit a wider range of D&D demographics with each product.

And as has been noted before, this works both ways: a person can use older adventures with 5E. Among other things, this makes it well possible for those burnt out on 3E to continue playing Paizo adventures with little or no conversion overhead. (Just ran a Smuggler's Shiv DDN playtest today, and it worked great.)

It really warms my heart to see backwards compatibility back on the agenda.