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AMA (Thurs April 30): Wolfgang Baur (Kobold Press, TSR, DUNGEON Magazine, D&D 5E Tyranny of Dragons, Advanced Races Compendium)
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<blockquote data-quote="vandaexpress" data-source="post: 6605345" data-attributes="member: 6790472"><p>Currently running Hoard and prepping to run Rise of Tiamat, love both of them. Thanks for stopping by and producing such great adventures. I have a couple fairly lengthy questions, feel free to address only part or all of each question, I tend to ramble <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p>1. You probably get this one a lot, but how would you recommend one start cracking into the game/monster/adventure design industry? I'm a traditionally published author (though it's definitely not my main source of income), as are my parents; the two of them have branched out into self-publishing on Amazon and do quite well for themselves in that regard. I love D&D and would love to get involved in building for it, but I have no idea how the game publishing industry works compared to traditional publishing/self-publishing. I'm noticing that kickstarter seems to be a big part of this industry with getting products off the ground. Any other key differences I should be aware of, advice, or resources you'd recommend I check out? Obviously I'd like to build out D&D stuff, but given the lack of OGL, I'm guessing that plan is DOA...</p><p></p><p>2. How do you handle building/balancing/playtesting encounters? Do you have general guidelines you follow? Do you just have a bunch of pre-gen characters that you throw into a party and run combat a few rounds to see if it feels right? Or do you run the encounter multiple times with different party builds? I spend a decent chunk of time playtesting my boss fights to make sure they feel right, but I test them using my party's characters. Do you find that there is a massive difference in 5e in regards to what parties can handle based on party composition? Or do you just pretty much test with one party and find the difficulty is about the same regardless, thanks to things like bounded accuracy? </p><p></p><p>3. Has there ever been a time where you built an encounter, and in testing it, found it <strong>surprisingly</strong> more difficult than you initially anticipated? Either due to a particular mechanic being much more powerful in play than on paper, or an environmental effect crippling the party more than you expected?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="vandaexpress, post: 6605345, member: 6790472"] Currently running Hoard and prepping to run Rise of Tiamat, love both of them. Thanks for stopping by and producing such great adventures. I have a couple fairly lengthy questions, feel free to address only part or all of each question, I tend to ramble ;) 1. You probably get this one a lot, but how would you recommend one start cracking into the game/monster/adventure design industry? I'm a traditionally published author (though it's definitely not my main source of income), as are my parents; the two of them have branched out into self-publishing on Amazon and do quite well for themselves in that regard. I love D&D and would love to get involved in building for it, but I have no idea how the game publishing industry works compared to traditional publishing/self-publishing. I'm noticing that kickstarter seems to be a big part of this industry with getting products off the ground. Any other key differences I should be aware of, advice, or resources you'd recommend I check out? Obviously I'd like to build out D&D stuff, but given the lack of OGL, I'm guessing that plan is DOA... 2. How do you handle building/balancing/playtesting encounters? Do you have general guidelines you follow? Do you just have a bunch of pre-gen characters that you throw into a party and run combat a few rounds to see if it feels right? Or do you run the encounter multiple times with different party builds? I spend a decent chunk of time playtesting my boss fights to make sure they feel right, but I test them using my party's characters. Do you find that there is a massive difference in 5e in regards to what parties can handle based on party composition? Or do you just pretty much test with one party and find the difficulty is about the same regardless, thanks to things like bounded accuracy? 3. Has there ever been a time where you built an encounter, and in testing it, found it [B]surprisingly[/B] more difficult than you initially anticipated? Either due to a particular mechanic being much more powerful in play than on paper, or an environmental effect crippling the party more than you expected? [/QUOTE]
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AMA (Thurs April 30): Wolfgang Baur (Kobold Press, TSR, DUNGEON Magazine, D&D 5E Tyranny of Dragons, Advanced Races Compendium)
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