Do official adventures follow DMG advice?

[malraux]

Thanks for all the advice.




Out of curisoity, what is the "best company for providing modules?"

Thanks.

Personally, I'd say Paizo, the company that used to make Dungeon and Dragon magazines. But they are creating their own version of the rules, based on the 3.5 rules.

 

[meomwt]

Thanks for all the advice.




Out of curisoity, what is the "best company for providing modules?"

Thanks.

Personally, I'd say Paizo, the company that used to make Dungeon and Dragon magazines. But they are creating their own version of the rules, based on the 3.5 rules.

Given their tie-in, you might also lump Necromancer Games in there. When third-party support for Paizo's version of 3.5E rules (Pathfinder) goes live, Necro will be supporting them

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Most published adventures didn't used to suck, IMO (although I just got Lost Caverns of Tsojacanth off ebay and was disappointed it seemed little more than an interminable hackfest). The sheer amount of effort that went into most TSR modules in the late 70s and early-mid 80s was impressive; with carefully hand drawn dungeon maps, well crafted text, and a huge amount of gameplay packed into 32pp.

Re not following DM advice, I run 3.5e and I've never seen an adventure's listed party levels correspond to the spread of Encounter Levels. The Party Level seems to be commonly treated as a 'floor' for EL, not the median, with typical encounters 2-3 over. This can easily make every battle a gruelling slog and require powergaming to survive.

All true. Except that I've felt that way about the suggested party level advice since 1E! Fortunately, many people think that converting 1E-2E modules to 4E isn't that difficult, so you ought to look around for some. (There are other threads that give advice for doing so, look around.)

 

[S'mon]

All true. Except that I've felt that way about the suggested party level advice since 1E!

I never had the experience of published modules feeling too tough, until 3e. That said, I had some proficient powergamer players. And there are some old modules that I've seen more recently where the 'real' level is several higher than listed - notably the BECM module Horror on the Hill, says it's for 1st-3rd Basic PCs the pregens are 1st level, but I'd say that in that ruleset it needed a ca 4th level group to have much chance of survival. By contrast the 1e Lankhmar modules were listed as 10-15th but were really more like 7th-10th, in line with the supplied pregens.

Anyway, it's unfortunately true that WoTC has not had a good record with modules. Why this is, I don't understand - they pay well enough to hire the best writers in the industry.

 

[The Ghost]

Anyway, it's unfortunately true that WoTC has not had a good record with modules. Why this is, I don't understand - they pay well enough to hire the best writers in the industry.

I have always wondered about this as well. I always felt that WotC's style to adventure writing was kind of all over the place. It is almost like they were trying to please everybody which, in turn, pleases nobody. With Paizo and Goodman I always knew what I was getting. Their style seemed more defined.

Back to the OP, the advice I would give you is to slowly add in your own ideas to the adventures. When your players express an interest in something, play with it. See where it goes. Don't let the adventure force your hand. You can always save the encounters to add back in when appropriate. Eventually, you will get to the point where you are writing your own adventures and tailoring them specifically to how you guys play. It just takes a little time to find what is right for you and your group.

 

[caudor]

Adventures are like fine meals. The end result depends not only on your presentation, but also the tastes and preferences of your players.

Different players enjoy different play styles; the challenge is getting to know your players and altering your presentation to match those tastes.

In my experience, the WotC 4e adventures are great. We had a blast.

Good luck

 

[Celebrim]

I don't know much about published 4e adventures, but I do know that published 1e adventures at least in some respects did not at all follow DMG advice.

In particular, 1e 'adventure path' type modules (GDQ series, ToEE, etc.) frequently gave vastly more treasure than the 1st edition DMG recommended and generally vastly more than would result from using the MM treasure tables (particularly given that the results from the treasure table were supposed to be scaled downward if the number encountered was less than normal, see page 91). I recognize that this large amount of treasure was necessary if the characters were to advance enough levels to meet the challenges of the next module in the adventure path (provided of course that you also at times ignored the advice on page 84-85 of scaling the XP awarded to the challenge presented), but it most certainly did present a standard of adventure design that was radically different than that advised by the DMG.

Likewise, I'll concur with others that say that the suggested party level in published 1e modules tended to turn them into slaughter fests were TPK's abounded - which is also at odds with the advice in the 1e DMG. For example, speaking as a DM (and player) I think that 'Tomb of Horrors' is a far more survivable module than 'Ravenloft', if you play both straight up (no plot protection for the PCs) at the suggested character levels. I personally think 'Ravenloft' is unsurvivable with a starting party that might vary from a 5th level Paladin to a 7th level thief. Only if you assumed 10-12 players might they even have a chance, and even then I wonder. Strahd's combination of formidable powers of evasion, rapid regeneration, and level draining makes him more than capable of winning any battle of attrition.

 

[catsclaw227]

I've changed some of the re3ward amounts in the first Scales of War adventure, which my group finished earlier tonight.

I am considering asking the group if they want to continue down the path or sandbox a bit with a mix of some homebrew and some published adventures (goodman, Dungeon, maybe some conversions).

We'll see what the group wants. We played out Rivenroar as a hack-n-slash to get used to 4e at low levels (our first foray was our Age of Worms converted, so they started 4e at 11th level) but there wasn't much RP - and that was fine for the first adventure. We'll see what they say...

I'm running Sceptre Tower of Spellgard right now, though you would never know it by a play session.

How is this adventure, BTW, out of the box?

 

[catsclaw227]

They are right that WotC has a long history of writing... not well-reviewed modules and the best company for providing modules stayed in third edition. The second best adventure-writing company, however, went fourth edition. So go check out Goodman Games.

I dig goodman, but I believe the second best adventure writing company is tied with your first.

I think Necro's adventures for 3.x were fantastic, and I consider them my favorite 3.x adventure writing company. (Green Ronin's were pretty dang good too.)

 

[Vayden]

The published adventures are limited, true. But I can understand if you feel nervous tweaking your own stuff up - when you're first starting out, you can definitely be worried about "doing it wrong" and "ruining it for everyone". However, you're on the right track already by listening to your players. Take Thunderspire, find what you like in there (and what you think they'll like), and twist it for your own purposes. If you're getting nervous going off the beaten path at first, Thunderspire is a great place to get your feet wet - take some of the NPCs and side-plot hooks that they mention and expand them out a little - if you're looking at building your first encounter from scratch out of the monster manual, stick it in as a random encounter in the labyrinth. The more you do on your own, the better you'll get at it and the more comfortable you'll be with it. And it really doesn't take a ton of time - I brainstorm up ideas for the games I DM during the week, then actually sit down and pick out my monsters and stat things up in the half hour before the players show up.

In summation, because I started to ramble a bit - the published modules do not live up to the DMG's advice - you need to inject your own personality and flavor into the game to be truly great, and no one knows your group better than you do. That being said, you don't have to jump straight into the deep end - use the published stuff as a framework and build off of it, or if you're free-styling, rip chunks out of the published stuff and slide it in. And steal ideas from everywhere - no one's going to be offended that you're stealing a piece of your plot from Star Wars or Naruto, because they're the main characters, so it won't turn out the same way that it did in whatever you're stealing from.