Better modules please.

[DMKastmaria]

And fewer combats. Combat takes forever. Combat will always take forever. I am sure one of 5e's goals will be to reduce the length of combat. I am sure it will see some very modest success in that area, and then combat will still take forever. If a group is good at running combat efficiently, then it still takes forever. Interesting RP encounters, stretches of exploration, and not 30 combat encounters strong together, alright?

There's more than one edition of the game, where combat doesn't take forever. There's no reason that 5e can't be one of them.

 

[Wormwood]

Gardmore Abbey is an amazing adventure in a box. It's huge, engaging, chock full of good props for the players.

Sorry, but if wizards plans more like this going forward, I'll be happy.

(also some excellent short adventures in Dungeon Magazine.)

 

[Guest 85555]

In
Interesting. It may well be a setting thing - some settings had better modules than others. Either that, or I have reverse-nostalgia working - forgetting the good and remembering only the bad.

I think reverse nostalgia is often at work with 1e and 2e. People tend to overplay their faults and downplay their advantages (particularly when making 3e comparisons). When I ran ravenloft last year, I only had nostalgia to set my assumptions. I remembered loving the setting but felt 2e would run clunky and wierd. It actually worked much better with tge Ravenloft setting than my 3e campaigns (and I ran d20 ravenloft for years). For all its flaws a lot of those quirky elements to the system just ended up proeucing a better experience than d20.

With the railroading, it wasn't all that bad in the modules I ran. The Created was the worst offender, but still very useable and a lot of fun. Not a fan of railroading but i would take any 1e or 2e module over a wotc module.

 

[mhensley]

how to fix the adventure situation-

1. Bring back the d20 license. Most of the good 3e modules were 3rd party and was a big reason for why 3e was the success it was.

2. Bring back Dungeon and don't just limit it to their favorite few writers. The best adventures of the 2e era were found in Dungeon and there a big variety of adventures to chose from.

3. Turn your staff writers loose to write what they want rather than what some market survey says they should do. Cook should be writing a version of waterdeep like his ptolus work. Mearls needs to get back to writing stuff like he did for wfrp. Fear the Wurst was way better than anything he's done for wotc.

 

[grimslade]

Adventures

The OGL and the farming out of module creation is one of the worst sins WotC did. The focus of the game went from the iconic shared adventure to the splat rules bloat. It shaped 3.5 and 4E into the encounter format. 4E did not spawn that 3.5 releases became very formulaic. There were some great 3rd party mods, but there were a tremendous amount of really bad mods produced.
Paizo success stems from excellent editing and a wide net for authors. The Adventure path was novel but is just a railroaded campaign. I would like to see looser connected adventures or shorter paths.
Dungeon needs to return to a submission based magazine with rock solid editing. WotC needs to release adventures to keep their design and development grounded in what the game is about, the 3 pillars, combat, social, and exploration.
I want to see evocative settings like The Kingdom of the Ghouls or The Styes. I want to see adventures that require problem solving and not the Gordian knot cutting of All combat, All the Time. I want to see combat encounters that feel epic and challenging with options for innovation. I want to see great adventures to be in the lexicon of D&D players again.

 

[teachamath]

I remember one Dungeon adventure which was a murder mystery at an inn along a road during a storm. It was exceptional due to it being a locked room but a murder scenario. The culprit was a grey ooze or black ooze that came up through the piping or the well and was extremely hard to find due to puddles all over the place. It was an incredible open ended adventure that had my players guessing for a couple gaming sessions. We do need more of that.

As to the current state of 4th edition adventures I have run most of the post essentials stuff and must say that they are good. Slaying Stone was overall good, Harkenwold was a disguised linear adventure with enough subplots to give some flexibility. Cairn of the Winter King was a classic dungeon crawl with some room to freeform. Finally, Gardmore Abbey is an excellent adventure with lots of nonlinear elements. There are about 20 individual quests that can be acquired from numerous sources. The adventure can be played as a dungeon crawl assault or it can be played as a political game of faction manipulation.

 

[Guest 85555]

The OGL and the farming out of module creation is one of the worst sins WotC did. The focus of the game went from the iconic shared adventure to the splat rules bloat. It shaped 3.5 and 4E into the encounter format. 4E did not spawn that 3.5 releases became very formulaic. There were some great 3rd party mods, but there were a tremendous amount of really bad mods produced.
Paizo success stems from excellent editing and a wide net for authors. The Adventure path was novel but is just a railroaded campaign. I would like to see looser connected adventures or shorter paths.
Dungeon needs to return to a submission based magazine with rock solid editing. WotC needs to release adventures to keep their design and development grounded in what the game is about, the 3 pillars, combat, social, and exploration.
I want to see evocative settings like The Kingdom of the Ghouls or The Styes. I want to see adventures that require problem solving and not the Gordian knot cutting of All combat, All the Time. I want to see combat encounters that feel epic and challenging with options for innovation. I want to see great adventures to be in the lexicon of D&D players again.

I agree with much of this. Nothing against adventure paths as I know a lot of people love them, but they just don't do it for me personally. One of the reasons I think i really like what much of what came out prior to 3e (despite the issues i aliready brought up) is the variety. I do think the social, combat and exploration is a good base to start, but they should also keep personal preference in mind. Some folks like dungeon crawls, others like urban adventures or investigations. For me, characters, setting and situation are important, as is player freedom.

One thing that really turned me off during 3E (and you raise this point) was that so many adventures just seemed like they were draped over a series of encounters. That approafh simply doesn't appeal to me.

 

[mhensley]

I remember one Dungeon adventure which was a murder mystery at an inn along a road during a storm. It was exceptional due to it being a locked room but a murder scenario. The culprit was a grey ooze or black ooze that came up through the piping or the well and was extremely hard to find due to puddles all over the place. It was an incredible open ended adventure that had my players guessing for a couple gaming sessions. We do need more of that.

Yep, that's a good example of what is needed- creative adventures that don't follow the tired formula of fight, fight, skill test, fight. I ran that adventure back in the day- tpk without any combats, it killed them while they foolishly tried to sleep in the inn.