Are Published Adventures Too Long?

[Jack Colby]

I think they are too long, and generally always have been. But I tend to like published materials as a basis for inspiration and then deviate or rewrite them almost completely. I've always found them a chore to read and run, and the new encounter-centric format is, for me, not an improvement.

 

[Slander]

Does anyone produce plot hooks books? Shadowrun had entire books of those sourcebooks descirbing a major event, with a lot of small bits that basically outlined an adventure each without any details - perfect to adapt to any group.

Atlas Games has their En Route series of books for Penumbra. I've gotten a couple of side good quests from that. The seeds in here are fairly fleshed out, almost mini adventures unto themselves. But most can be resolved in either an hour or a session at most.

PostMortem has their "100 (Fantasy/Horror/etc) Adventure Seeds" line. The fantasy one is more of an idea factory. Each is a page and lists some sample twists to the main theme you might include. I've gotten some decent use of of this one as well.

I think Expeditious Retreat had a line of seed books as well, but I never got a hold of one.

 

[Arnwyn]

Too short, for me and my particular group.

We like 'em as long as possible - we far prefer APs and mega-modules compared to most other adventure types.

 

[doctorhook]

I'm a little shocked anyone would suggest that published adventures should be shorter, (why would you want less material?), but after reading this, perhaps the answer is for adventures to start being marketed as either "slow-paced" or "fast-paced", with "slow"- (normal-) paced adventures geared towards weekly groups. "Fast paced" could be geared towards groups that can't get together as often, and could default to a higher XP progression. (Double, maybe?)

Just an idea.

 

[Tervin]

In general, I think published adventures have too many pointless and uninspired combat encounters. Combat is there to be exciting and fun, and I feel that there are just so many uninspired rooms with boring critters.

Plot on the other hand, is often underdeveloped - and oh so few real RP encounters that are open for several different outcomes that actually have a chance to matter.

 

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I've been running a 3.x game since 2000 which takes place every 4-6 weeks with sessions lasting about five hours. Because of this I've steered away from adventure paths etc - they'd just take too long to finish. Instead, we've done adventures I've written, stuff from Dungeon and shorter series like the original Freeport Trilogy. Currently we're playing Bastion of Broken Souls and have got through 7 sessions so far with 2 more approximately to go. We typically get through three encounters per session plus exploration and RP but the characters are 19th level so combat takes much longer.

Last year, I started running Red Hand of Doom weekly, playing 2-3 hours each Monday night. It look 32 sessions to finish but I think this worked really well as a self-contained campaign.

So, I reckon for a weekly game something like RHoD is great. For a monthly game, adventures spanning up to six sessions is ideal.

I'm not sure where this leaves the Adventure Paths. They're great fun to read but I think they're just too long for me and my players. And, as a few posters have said, they often contain far too many combats which slow the pace down.

Cheers


Richard

 

[Mighty Halfling]

I like shorter adventures too. As a DM, I like building my own meta-plot and finding adventures that suit that plot's needs. I'm not so keen on the Adventure Paths because of that. I want to be more than a referee, I want to be a world-builder and conspiracy-forger. Adventures that play out in about 3 to 12 hours of playing time are what I look for, and that's a pretty wide range.

Additionally, I am entirely weary of the end-of-the-world meta-plots so common in big long adventures. Geez, can't adventurers do something else? Like go dungeon diving just because they heard there's a fabulous treasure there? Or hunting for some rare components? Or because they're chasing a villain?

 

[RangerWickett]

I recall running Sunless Citadel and skipping a lot of the combat because it was boring. Just rooms with monsters. Now sure, I was running the adventure 2 years after 3e came out, so maybe it was more entertaining in the early days, but I much prefer that when there is combat, the combat scenarios are original.

Sometimes this is hard to do in writing, because setting up a cool situation requires a long word count. Case in point, the last Burning Sky adventure (for 20th level) is about winning a war, and we want to provide a strong feel of the heroic final battle to cap off the whole campaign saga, but I've worried about fights being tedious, so I've tried to make sure every combat encounter has either a roleplaying component, puzzle component, or nifty trick.

But one of the earlier adventures, #4 - The Mad King's Banquet - I think had the best mix of narrative options and interesting combat. Aside from one rather throwaway battle in the beginning, the fights are really well paced and they take turns driving the story and leading to resolution.

 

[MerricB]

If you want a campaign heavy on roleplaying and narrative, why are you running a published adventure? Any adventure that relies so much on improvisational roleplaying will tend to depart the railroad of a published adventure pretty quickly, making the idea of this form of published adventure very problematic.

If you want a shorter adventure, why don't you have a look at shorter published adventures, such as many in Dungeon magazine?

I'm not going to disagree that Keep on the Shadowfell is a long adventure - it's taken my group about 24 hours to play through it, and they've still got two encounters to go - but it's not like we weren't aware of such going into it. My group has had a lot of fun with it. Do I think it could have more interesting descriptive text and more roleplaying opportunities? Yes, certainly. However, part of this is also how we've approached the adventure. The module doesn't dictate that the party has to fight the hobgoblins! Surely we could have bribed them, bluffed them or done something else?

With Keep, especially, I almost feel we fall into the trap that "this is presented like a combat encounter, so we have to treat it as a combat encounter".

Cheers!

 

[Nebulous]

With Keep, especially, I almost feel we fall into the trap that "this is presented like a combat encounter, so we have to treat it as a combat encounter".

Cheers!

My group is about to encounter the same thing Merric. We've been through seven sessions, roughly 3 hours apiece, and they're on the cusp of meeting the hobgoblins (of course, now they're following Balgron the Fat down into the caves, so there's going to be some oozing problems first).

But i agree, the hobbers are presented as fights, pretty tough fights too. But in the interest of diversity, maybe i'll introduce some alternatives to combat.

Maybe the hobs don't trust Kalarel and betray him. Maybe the PCs scare them into leaving (i can't imagine how). Or, i just carve out some of the encounters completely.