"Are the Authors of the Dungeon & Dragons Hardcover Adventures Blind to the Plight of DMs?"

[Tony Vargas]

Telling people the barrier to entry is bigger than they think it is - and they should be thinking anyone literate enough to read the book can pick up the game and get playing it, even if their role during play is the DM - is a way to reduce the number of new hobbyists, not a way to improve anything for anyone.

It's a way to reduce disappointment, frustration, and loss of new hobbyists, too. Always a trade-off.

But I do think the barrier to entry /to DMing/ won't prevent people from trying the game, just prevent them from helping others to have a terrible first experience with it. DM Empowerment makes for a great game, when the DM is ready to be Empowered. Not many are born ready.

Anyway, it's been abundantly clear from earlier threads that we have differing opinions about where the bar for 'enough experience to start DMing' is set, so little point re-hashing it.



Edit: and I only said '3-18' to make the 3d6 joke, read that as 'a couple' or 'a few.'

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

It's a way to reduce disappointment, frustration, and loss of new hobbyists, too. Always a trade-off.

Bag up that opinion and sell it to agriculturalists. There are ways to reduce disappointment, frustration, and loss of new hobbyists that aren't also potential causes of disappointment, frustration, and loss of new hobbyists themselves.

And yeah, we've disagreed in the past... but don't you dare try to act like I'm doing something wrong by stating my disagreement every time you decide to state yours and shut me up with "little point re-hashing it". If there weren't a point to saying things repeatedly, you'd have stopped trying to scare people away from DMing with your gate-keeping fertilizer "have to be a player first" and "it's hard to DM" - and I'd also not have the seeing you try to chase people away that provokes me to say "Don't listen to that guy, you can totally be a DM without jumping through the arbitrary hoops he keeps inventing for no worthwhile reason."

So every time I see you, or anyone else, saying something non-factual about what it takes to start DMing, I'm going to state my disagreement just in case someone that is on the fence about trying to DM comes along and reads the thread so that they see more than just unwelcoming opinions from the people that appear like they should know what they are talking about.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

Which WoC resouces support DMs through providing tools that they might better craft their own content?

I know there's stuff like the Downtime activities in the DMG, the guidelines for making your own race and things like that in the DMG. I guess the setting information and maps included in the various published adventures could be counted?

Just curious. I don't doubt there's a genuine call for pre-packaged content, else WoC wouldn't be knocking it out. I wonder if that call is greater than the need for DM-empowering tools.

Or perhaps such content is finite and cannot be churned out indefinitely? Tho saying this, I can see a series of books based, each based on encounters, npcs and traps being released. Big Bumper Book of NPCs Volume 23!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Which WoC resouces support DMs through providing tools that they might better craft their own content?

The game, itself, really, encourages that throughout. The DMG has specific tools.

And yeah, we've disagreed in the past... but don't you dare try to act like I'm doing something wrong by stating my disagreement every time you decide to state yours and shut me up with "little point re-hashing it".

There's little point in re-hashing it. You said your piece, I said mine. Done.

Repetition won't change the others mind, and the concepts and reasoning involved aren't complicated or obscure.

There are ways to reduce disappointment, frustration, and loss of new hobbyists that aren't also potential causes of disappointment, frustration, and loss of new hobbyists themselves.

That's a tangent, but, sure, yeah, of course there are. Some of them are also potential causes of disappointment, frustration and loss of old hobbyists, though.
Trade-offs, again.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

The game, itself, really, encourages that throughout. The DMG has specific tools.

Aye, as acknowledged, the DMG has some tools.

Personally, I'd appreciate more releases focused on developing the DM toolkit. The game encourages by its nature it and WOC can encourage it through their choice of content released.

 

[Old One Eye]

I rather like the format of 5e adventures. Place settings is what I want, and the hardcovers give them in droves. I will echo the challenge of not having pull-out maps, though. Flipping oages sucks.

If anything, there are too many hooks, and especially too many details.

Never, ever have I had players complain about curb stomping an easy adventure for which they were too high level. Many times have I had players complain about an adventure being too hard.

 

[Eltab]

If anything, there are too many hooks, and especially too many details.

I just read through Tomb of Annihilation with an eye to copying the stuff I like, and returning the hard copy to the library.
It's going to be cheaper to just buy my own book - but I don't want about half the book (the Tomb itself and its immediate environs).

 

[BookBarbarian]

I like the Hard cover's fine. As has been pointed out, the AL adventures are much easier for new DMs I think.

Still on the whole I prefer the way The One Ring and Adventures in Middle-Earth do their adventures, by pairing one Linear (re: railroady) adventure book, with one Regional Sourcebook tied to it.

This way I run the adventure as written if I'm lazy, or delve deep into the sourcebook and craft something unique, or mix and match.

 

[Quickleaf]

Title in quotes, because it's the name of the article.

http://dmdavid.com/tag/are-the-auth...dcover-adventures-blind-to-the-plight-of-dms/

Interesting. I've only run Curse of Strahd, but I didn't experience any real difficulty with that. I think my main problem with prepublished adventures is adventure locations with a lot of described rooms which you have to read (to make sure they're not important) but which don't really add anything. In a house, for example, unless it's important that the broom closet and the bathroom be described, I'd rather they just left that to me. It does add to the prep time. And I've never been fan of "you're on the second floor landing, there's a door to the left and right" style stuff for something like a house -- I'd rather say "This is the second floor; there's a couple of bedrooms, a bathroom, and a locked room. What do you want to do?" rather than reveal each of those details individually. Naturally, I'd do so more flavourfully than that, and hold back anything important.

But I felt Strahd was pretty easy to run. Most APs I've found fairly easy (though our own ZEITGEIST really does require a lot of reading beforehand). Sandboxes require more pre-reading than linear adventures, as the latter you only have to read as far as your PCs will get today, while in a sandbox you have to be familiar with a lot.

I'm running a collection of short loosely-linked wilderness adventures for Adventure in Middle Earth (5E) right now, and that's sitting me great. I only have to read each adventure one at a time, and don't have to read the whole book just in case. Nice bite-sized chunks. That's definitely the easiest format for me. Well, other than just winging it, which is by far the easiest format for me (and usually has the best results).

Dunno. What do you think?

DM David Hartlage is comparing apples-to-avocados. And using that bad comparison to support a faulty hypothesis.

A Pathfinder adventure path is comprised of six 96-page adventures (576 pages total) which sell for $20 each ($120 total).

A D&D hardcover adventure is 260-pages which sells for $50.

Independent of any linear/sandbox discussion, of course there's going to be more detail lightening a DM's load in a Pathfinder adventure – you're paying about twice as much for twice as much material!

There's a time and place for both, but neither is inherently "easier to run."

 

[Old One Eye]

I just read through Tomb of Annihilation with an eye to copying the stuff I like, and returning the hard copy to the library.
It's going to be cheaper to just buy my own book - but I don't want about half the book (the Tomb itself and its immediate environs).

As a read through, it has probably been the most fascinating and entertaining WotC adventure that I have, well worth the money. But if I ever run it at the table, there is no way I will be able to recall all the details with my DMing style.

I do best with bare bones Caves of Chaos adventures where I add detail myself with lots of it on the fly. But that's a quirk of my particular style. WotC probably couldn't sell the bare bones adventures I like to run.