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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7989122" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>Here? And on the 5E subreddit. Like, repeatedly. But that said, it's a squeaky wheel that gets the grease, people who were happy with the adventure would be less likely to write threads about how great it was or to ask for help/suggestions in "fixing" it (but equally I didn't see the same sort of "omg pls help fix" stuff with, say, Strahd).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yeah, this whole trend towards increasing railroad-y-ness or linearity or whatever one wants to call it is a big part of why I stopped enjoying using modules in my campaigns, and moved to homebrew stuff. I don't really do a sandbox campaign by my own understanding of that term, but I always prefer what I used to call "scenarios" rather than "adventures". I don't think this terminology is widely use anymore (I heard it a bit in the '90s), but what I mean is, with a scenario, you set all the pieces in place, and let the PCs wander into it and interact with it, and probably they do one thing, but you set it up so a whole lot of different things could potentially happen, and few, if any, specific things have to happen (unless they happened before the PCs got there) for the scenario to tell a fun story in which the PCs are involved. Whereas an adventure, to me, tended to mean, A happens, then B needs to happen, then C, then D, and so on, and sometimes you maybe skip C or have a choice E-(i) or E-(ii) but it still fairly linear. A mid-point between the two would the "Bioware"-style of adventure design (now common in many CRPGs), where you have like a number of major, separate things (areas, planets, storylines, whatever) that need to be done before you advance to the next stage of the adventure (which is often more linear). I understand Odyssey of the Dragonlords takes this "Bioware" approach, understandably given it was literally written by three Bioware dudes (now WotC dudes! Yay!).</p><p></p><p>Anyway, point is, older design tended to go more scenario, even if it was a bit dungeon-y, and in the '90s, it was sort of often scenario-y, as it transitioned into more linear and directed adventures as a matter of being the norm (they always existed a bit, well, since the early '80s at least). And I'm just not personally keen on how linear at lot of the APs I've seen are.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 7989122, member: 18"] Here? And on the 5E subreddit. Like, repeatedly. But that said, it's a squeaky wheel that gets the grease, people who were happy with the adventure would be less likely to write threads about how great it was or to ask for help/suggestions in "fixing" it (but equally I didn't see the same sort of "omg pls help fix" stuff with, say, Strahd). Yeah, this whole trend towards increasing railroad-y-ness or linearity or whatever one wants to call it is a big part of why I stopped enjoying using modules in my campaigns, and moved to homebrew stuff. I don't really do a sandbox campaign by my own understanding of that term, but I always prefer what I used to call "scenarios" rather than "adventures". I don't think this terminology is widely use anymore (I heard it a bit in the '90s), but what I mean is, with a scenario, you set all the pieces in place, and let the PCs wander into it and interact with it, and probably they do one thing, but you set it up so a whole lot of different things could potentially happen, and few, if any, specific things have to happen (unless they happened before the PCs got there) for the scenario to tell a fun story in which the PCs are involved. Whereas an adventure, to me, tended to mean, A happens, then B needs to happen, then C, then D, and so on, and sometimes you maybe skip C or have a choice E-(i) or E-(ii) but it still fairly linear. A mid-point between the two would the "Bioware"-style of adventure design (now common in many CRPGs), where you have like a number of major, separate things (areas, planets, storylines, whatever) that need to be done before you advance to the next stage of the adventure (which is often more linear). I understand Odyssey of the Dragonlords takes this "Bioware" approach, understandably given it was literally written by three Bioware dudes (now WotC dudes! Yay!). Anyway, point is, older design tended to go more scenario, even if it was a bit dungeon-y, and in the '90s, it was sort of often scenario-y, as it transitioned into more linear and directed adventures as a matter of being the norm (they always existed a bit, well, since the early '80s at least). And I'm just not personally keen on how linear at lot of the APs I've seen are. [/QUOTE]
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