D&D 5E Buying Adventures

[DM Howard]

How many Adventures have you bought in your RPG lifetime? The reason I'm polling the EN World community is that is seems like WotC is looking to sell a lot of adventures with D&D 5th Edition. I found that clashing with my own experience as I have, maybe, bought two adventures in my entire 15+ run with the RPG hobby. Do you think this is a gamble for WotC to do, or do you think they see it as a safe bet due to the market segment that Paizo serves with their adventure paths?

Edit: The first poll option is "0" but for some reason the poll made it blank when it published.

 

[Umbran]

Back in my early days, I bought lots of adventures - 1e, Marvel Superheroes, 1e and 2e Shadowrun mostly.

Later 2e and 3e, I was working homebrew mostly.

Now, for Deadlands, I am finding adventure *seeds* to have been crucial to the development of the campaign. Some stats for NPCs and monsters, and a situation. The Deadlands rulebook is chock full of such stuff, and it formed the underpinnings of the thing that developed, though the adventures as a whole are still homebrewed. A city or nation setting of similar would be awesome for other games.

Now, as I look to running some 5e Shadowrun, I again find that prepared adventures may be a very good way to go.

If I pick up 5e D&D, I wouldn't be surprised if I find either seeds or published adventures a pretty solid sell.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I purchansed 11+ adventures in my RPG lifetime, more like trice. I like using published adventures for mining ideas or outright shamelessly stealing plotlines, traps etc...

 

[Agamon]

I have 2 magazine boxes full of B/X, 1e, 2e, 3e, and 4e adventures. So, the poll looks to me like this:

How old are you?

1-2
3-4
5-6
7+



Funny thing is, these days, I tend to make stuff up as I go, but I still use adventure material for ideas. So I'm not sure how many 5e adventures I'll buy.

 

[the Jester]

How many Adventures have you bought in your RPG lifetime? The reason I'm polling the EN World community is that is seems like WotC is looking to sell a lot of adventures with D&D 5th Edition. I found that clashing with my own experience as I have, maybe, bought two adventures in my entire 15+ run with the RPG hobby. Do you think this is a gamble for WotC to do, or do you think they see it as a safe bet due to the market segment that Paizo serves with their adventure paths?

It's definitely a gamble. I love published adventures, even if I often never use them for more than inspiration and adventure design tips, but I don't anticipate buying these early 5e releases. Why?

Because they are tied far too tightly to a setting. More specifically, to a setting I have an intense, visceral dislike for.

This tie is a feature for many people, and it allows the adventure to make use of a lot of well-developed lore; but on the other hand, it makes it hard to ignore the setting details. Personally, I am hoping we see some awesome adventures that are either setting-neutral or are tied lightly enough to their setting that you can strip it out and stick it in (f'rexample) a homebrewed campaign with a very different social setup and world background than the one in the adventure. A good example of "light enough on ties to the world" would be something like King of the Trollhaunt Warrens (Nentir Vale) or the Secret of Bone Hill (GH), each of which doesn't have what I feel to be intrusive levels of setting tie.

Like I said, I'm very inclined to buy adventures (assuming that I have the money), but less so if they heavily feature stuff that just doesn't fit in my game.

 

[delericho]

How many Adventures have you bought in your RPG lifetime?

Depends. Do you count my Pathfinder subscription? Do you count Dungeon magazine (when that was running)? What about DDI subscriptions (and does it matter if you really subscribe for the tools, but get eDungeon as an added bonus)?

Actually, based on the poll answers, I'm in the 11+ category either way. But without the various subscriptions I'm probably in the high teens or low 20s; including them, I'm in the hundreds.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

That's like asking me to rate something I like on a scale of 1-100 and then setting the top option as 11+

 

[DM Howard]

Depends. Do you count my Pathfinder subscription? Do you count Dungeon magazine (when that was running)? What about DDI subscriptions (and does it matter if you really subscribe for the tools, but get eDungeon as an added bonus)?

Actually, based on the poll answers, I'm in the 11+ category either way. But without the various subscriptions I'm probably in the high teens or low 20s; including them, I'm in the hundreds.

Yes, I'd count Pathfinder subscriptions. Why not? You're buying the adventures, you just have a plan for buying them. As far as DDI and Dungeon are concerned, I wouldn't count those for the purpose of the poll simply because they aren't purely adventure products.

The main purpose of the poll is really to see if there are a huge amount of people that buy a large amount of adventures. It really ended up being the best way to formulate the poll without having a thousand options.

 

[Olfan]

I only bought my first adventure, a third party megadungeon, just the other week. I've been playing since late 2E. After DMing a massive 1-20 campaign over several years, most of it made from scratch using established settings, I came to the conclusion that that is a LOT of work. And I don't have the time for it. So I've decided I'm going to only run purchased adventures from now on. My answer is only one so far, but as fifth edition ramps up I'm going to buy almost everything I see.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I've bought modules from every edition of the game, dozen of issues of Dungeon Magazine (if not more), and was a DDI subscriber for the entirety of its existence through 4E. I much prefer using modules for the backbone of my campaigns because the authors tend to be much better writers and more creative than I could be (as often as I'd need to be.)

And I'll be picking up Hoard and Tiamat when both those modules are made available.