D&D 5E Campaigns or adventure anthologies?

[Lanefan]

"Campaign" is the word WotC uses to describe their hardcover "long continuous adventure spanning many levels" D&D books.

"Adventure Path" I assume is a Pathfinder or perhaps 3E/4E term since I haven't seen it used on any WotC product since I returned to D&D in 2017 after a 20+ year break, and also was not a term I encountered prior to that break when playing from '86-'94. It has definitely never been used by WotC in the 5E era, and I can't recall it ever being used in the 1E or 2E eras, when we used the word "campaign" in the same way that 5E uses it.

In days of old "campaign" usually meant something considerably bigger than a single string of related adventures. Such strings could certainly be embedded into a campaign, but most times a single string wasn't the whole game.

Over time, "adventure path" informally became a useful term for this string-of-related-adventures idea within a campaign, and later, for a string of related adventures that was itself the whole campaign. Then Pathfinder came along and kinda stole that term for its own use, meaning WotC couldn't really use it anymore for competitive/marketing reasons. And so WotC have since been trying to co-opt the term "campaign" for their own purposes, which is rather annoying.

 

[Tonguez]

In days of old "campaign" usually meant something considerably bigger than a single string of related adventures. Such strings could certainly be embedded into a campaign, but most times a single string wasn't the whole game.

so can you give an example of what you do consider to be a Campaign rather than an adventure path?

 

[Parmandur]

In days of old "campaign" usually meant something considerably bigger than a single string of related adventures. Such strings could certainly be embedded into a campaign, but most times a single string wasn't the whole game.

Over time, "adventure path" informally became a useful term for this string-of-related-adventures idea within a campaign, and later, for a string of related adventures that was itself the whole campaign. Then Pathfinder came along and kinda stole that term for its own use, meaning WotC couldn't really use it anymore for competitive/marketing reasons. And so WotC have since been trying to co-opt the term "campaign" for their own purposes, which is rather annoying.

The WotC books are a lot more loosely strung together than the Pathfinder "path" plotlines.

They call them Campaigns because they were designed to facilitate people creating characters just for them...and finishing that Campaign within about an academic year of play (based on expected High School or College student plan based on their surveys). Longer Campaigns happen...but that's not the target audience for the campaign books: it's people whose campaign will be just that book, or people who want to take it apart for parts.

 

[Parmandur]

so can you give an example of what you do consider to be a Campaign rather than an adventure path?

He's referring to a long-term running game over years: but that's far from typical in actual play.

 

[Helldritch]

One of the best campaign ever written was the Sunless Citadel, ending in the Bastion of Broken Souls. It had few weaknesses and really strong and fun adventures. Players would find the link between them all only relatively late in the serie but it was really fun to play and to run as a DM. I ran it twice to completion and once about half through.

 

[Lanefan]

so can you give an example of what you do consider to be a Campaign rather than an adventure path?

Take the famous 1e adventure series.

A1-A2-A3-A4 is an adventure path. G1-G2-G3-D1-D2-D3-Q1 is an adventure path. Both of these series were, if run as the series they are, most often run as part of bigger campaigns. Adventure paths might not always have a clear start point but they almost always have a clear end point.

B1-L1-xx-A1-2-3-4-UK1-2-WGA4-xx-S1-G1-2-3-??? is a campaign with two small APs baked into it plus a two-adventure series. ('xx' shows where a homebrew or non-TSR adventure might go). Campaigns often have neither a clear start point (other than the simple start of play) nor a clear end point, being more open-ended in nature.

 

[Guest 7034872]

I think that these days I find adventure anthologies more to my taste than long campaigns -- easy to pick up and drop in, even if you don't like them all you'll probably like some of them, and you get to mix things up a bit in terms of genre or tone.

I guess I'm in the camp of liking both. Sometimes I want that big, sweeping, tightly unified story arc and sometimes I don't. You know--kind of like Almond Joy vs. Mounds.

 

[Azzy]

I'm fairly indifferent. I rarely buy adventures, and when I do, it's because of something about the book intrigues me rather than whether it's a campaign or anthology. Abstractly, I think there should be both and glad that WotC concurs.

 

[billd91]

I buy both if they interest me. And I’m willing to run both if players are interested. So I didn’t vote for one over another.

 

[Malmuria]

Ghosts of salt marsh appeals to me because it’s the way I would design a “campaign.” It has a starting town, factions and various specific threats, a region with some keyed locations, and some additional threats at the edges in case you want to build out the world in one direction or another.