D&D 5E (2014) Do You Tinker with Adventures to Make Them "Winnable"?

[Paul Farquhar]

In the spoiler tags: Rime of the Frostmaiden: Cave of the Berserkers

In that one, my players didn't kill him, they strung him up with his own meat hooks.

 

[cmad1977]

Did I already say…
Play with the rules not by the rules?

Well… there it is.

Maybe it should be../
Play with the books, not by the book.

 

[jasper]

In the spoiler tags: Rime of the Frostmaiden: Cave of the Berserkers

Page 9 Chapter 2 Adventures power level 4+
Page 124-126 Q5 Dispel Magic on flame turns off for an hour. Q6 1 one CR 4 berserker
Outside 3 are returning from a hunt. I

Again party can run away. I had the dudes just chase them to entrance giving them a clue. But then again I have 299 AL sessions under my belt and 102 Kills.
My group was a group of six mixture of level 4 and level 5.

Nameless berserker, “That does not hurt anymore.” Andy hits in the face. “You can’t hurt me anymore!” Sandoval pumps four bolts into him. “I said that is not going to work. Time to die. And my friends have snuck behind you!”

(DM notes. Ok. I did draw the map badly. I can not do justice to fight. But smart move on shoving the enemy down the fissures. Good move on the sanctuary spell.) The fight is long. The group flees but both Andy and Gold Fine do not escape. They are killed. The rest of gang flees to Caer-Dineval. Andy and Gold Fine bodies are recovered by the Adventure League Body Snatchers team. The Group goes to the house of Morninglord in Bryn Shander to raise them.

 

[Retreater]

Again party can run away.

I can appreciate that. It just always seems like they're always running away, not getting closure on any of the adventures.

 

[jasper]

I can appreciate that. It just always seems like they're always running away, not getting closure on any of the adventures.

As the guy with a bad mustache said, "Revenge is a dish best served cold. It is very cold in ICEWIND DALE." Evil grin.

 

[Retreater]

I finally got direct feedback from my players. I was making assumptions about how they were feeling about the adventure. As it turns out, I was completely correct.
They explained that the one-shot quests felt unfair, but worse of all, pointless and only there as an XP grind. The treasure is worthless, the few pieces of gold can't be spent anywhere (and there's nothing to spend money on anyway). There's no motivation to do any of the quests.
Sounds like I've got some bigger problems to work on....

 

[Reynard]

I finally got direct feedback from my players. I was making assumptions about how they were feeling about the adventure. As it turns out, I was completely correct.
They explained that the one-shot quests felt unfair, but worse of all, pointless and only there as an XP grind. The treasure is worthless, the few pieces of gold can't be spent anywhere (and there's nothing to spend money on anyway). There's no motivation to do any of the quests.
Sounds like I've got some bigger problems to work on....

I always feel like WotC has the worst on-boarding and so with Rime I made my PCs a "peacekeeping" force of the Council of Speakers. Their job is to wander around the 10 Towns making folks feel safe mostly to keep up the appearance that the Speakers can do something about the unending winter. Of course they find problems and have to solve them.

I also had the PCs roll randomly to see which town they came from (unless like the barbarian PC it was self evident in their background) and made sure when they went to that town to tie whatever quest was there to them personally. I didn't throw out the hunt for chwingas or the serial killer, I just didn't make either one of those quests central to the party motivation.

Avernus was equally poorly done. I have never met a group of players who would respond positively to their PCs being pressed into service by the town guard. I just had them have history in Elturel and a reason to follow breadcrumbs back to Baldur's Gate.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I finally got direct feedback from my players. I was making assumptions about how they were feeling about the adventure. As it turns out, I was completely correct.
They explained that the one-shot quests felt unfair, but worse of all, pointless and only there as an XP grind. The treasure is worthless, the few pieces of gold can't be spent anywhere (and there's nothing to spend money on anyway). There's no motivation to do any of the quests.
Sounds like I've got some bigger problems to work on....

It's important to understand what motivates your players, and tailoring your hook, and indeed your adventure selection. In particular, when it comes to using milestone levelling, it should be invisible. Players shouldn't think "I need to do this to level up" because they don't know what the trigger is. It's for players who want to go round being generally heroic, and be periodically told "you have gained a level". I used it because my players voted unanimously in favour of that system, but it sounds like your players should be using traditional xp.

For me, I developed the characters in the villages, so the players felt like they wanted to help those people, even though they where poor. Even so, one of the quests Lake Monster they just looked at each other, said "nope" and moved on. But that's my players, who tend not to be interested in vast piles of gold (which can itself be a pain sometimes).

I did tweak the treasure a bit, specifically in The White Moose I made a bow from one of the tombs +1 when repaired (using appropriate toolset or mending spell), and replaced the pet mummy with a Moon Sycle +1 and a scroll of Moonbeam (as a hint, although my players didn't need it). However, note that increasing the treasure makes the fights in chapters 3 and 4 rather easy, and you might need to buff the creatures involved or run the chapters at a level lower than recommended. I also made +1 weapons and armour available to buy at outrageous prices from The Dwarven Valley after chapter 4.