Dungeon 185 - Bark at the Moon: Dungeons biggest adventure

[Infiniti2000]

Nothing worse then saying Roll initiative! and getting all fired up for a combat, only to wait 2-3 minutes for me to draw a map. Sort of looses the steam.

Actually, this just creates a good excuse to get a refill of your favorite beverage, and more Cheetos.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The use of Dungeon Tiles ends up being a 50/50 proposition for them... half the people will love it, half the people will hate it. I remember how much people were annoyed and complained when Keep on the Shadowfell came out because they weren't able to create the keep's dungeons using Tiles very easily... and here we have the opposite.

The only thing I could suggest to people would be to go into the Map Gallery archives (both the 4E and 3.5E archives) and try and find look-alike maps that you could use to replace the Tile ones in the module. Yeah, it might be a pain in the butt doing it that way, and they probably would only be about 25% to 50% true to the Tile layouts... but I can say from experience that it actually can get to be pretty fun looking through all the old maps and trying to find ones that can be used in new ways for your campaign. Plus, if you find maps that can be replacements for the ones in the module... they might include some extra features that aren't in the module that you can add yourself... thereby making them more your own.

 

[the Jester]

Unfortunately, it is crippled by dungeon tile maps. This tempers my joy at the well written adventure, by torpedoing it right in the side with incredibly crap-tacular dungeon tile maps.

I don't know if I should be immensely disappointed or not.

I am. I hate hate hate hate HATE Dungeon Tile-based maps. A good map is one of those things that I enjoy for its own sake, and Dungeon Tiles make terrible maps. I love that they are available for those that want to use them, but they certainly aren't something that I'd ever buy. And making adventures use the tiles in their maps usually gives you contrived, repetitive maps where, at a certain point, you have seen this exact same room three times already.

An adventure's map should be about the adventure, not about selling secondary products.

 

[the Jester]

Take “Bark at the Moon.” There’s some gnashing of teeth because the adventure uses Dungeon Tiles/maps in place of new cartography. I suppose I understand why some folks would want new maps, but there’s actually a damn good reason why I didn’t. You see, there are limits on how much new art I can include in any article or adventure. Rather than gobble up my art budget on new wilderness maps (which one can easily create using the tools we already have), I used the art to illustrate characters and locations, to help evoke the adventure’s mood and to give the DM something to show the players when they meet the game’s NPCs. Furthermore, using tiles or existing maps lets Dungeon Masters get more mileage out of the tools they already have. If a DM is going to draw a map on a battlegrid, the only thing a new map does is show the monsters’ starting positions and the map isn’t going to resemble what’s in the adventure anyway.

I just thought I'd post the relevant bits here for discussion.

My take is, no matter how much you save on the art budget, using a crappy map seriously detracts from an adventure, and I haven't seen any tile-based maps that weren't just plain crappy. Having to say stuff like, "This sewer pipe here is actually a control panel"- and yes, I've seen this, at least in an Encounters product- really detracts from that map quality I like to see.

I kind of see a parallel to what drove me away from collecting comics- all the crossovers. If you really want to get the most out of comic A [the adventure], you need comic B [the tiles], only the story is a disconnected mess that doesn't mesh well [the map using the tiles].

Yeah, no thanks. The reliance on tiles instead of actual original maps is one of the marks of the declining quality of Dungeon imho.

Edit: I could make an argument that they could get by with re-using old art for atmosphere and npcs and invest in new maps and be served just as well. I recognize that this is a matter of taste, but damn it, I haven't seen a single good map made with tiles. Personally, though I've bitched about re-used art in the past, I'm not sure whether I'd rather see that than tile maps. I know they aren't going to stop using tiles for mapping anytime soon- the tie-in with selling another product is too good- but I don't buy an adventure to be the target of ads that detract from the quality of the product I am actually after.

In fact, it seems like more and more WotC is slipping ads and product promotion into the stuff I really want, and those things are not doing anything to actually increase its utility, but are rather detracting from it. Between the overbearing use of Dungeon Tiles and the preview stuff behind the DDI pay wall, I'm starting to feel like I'm paying to have advertising pushed at me.

 

[Aegeri]

Sounds like you've not been one of the voices clamouring that official adventures should support Dungeon Tiles

I am going to say with 100% absolutely genuine feeling, that the greatest mistake I ever did was not fight this decision. I sat back said "Yeah the odd delve style adventure is okay, I don't mind because there will be normal adventures" and now look at the magazine. We are lucky to get an adventure of the quality of Lord of the White fields, while everything else has been obliterated into "phoned in" Dungeon tile maps. The entire magazine has become "Digital Dungeon Delve" and not providing actual adventures.

Say what you will about the Scales of War series, at least they were adventures and they had actual maps. I find it very disappointing this didn't even have a map of the area or the town at least. I'm suspecting the next maps won't even have a map of the area on the other side of the feywild.

I mean, this is Wizards and so I am inherently used to continued disappointment, but for me this was their last chance to keep me as a subscriber.

They blew it.

I am willing to concede I cannot use the Character Builder anymore.

I am willing to concede the MB is incredibly buggy and the latest patch actually removes things.

I am willing to concede there really isn't that great an amount of content in the magazines.

All I wanted was new maps and perhaps one or two great adventures. I'd pulled all my expectations to that and when I saw Lord of the White Fields last month I said "FINALLY, WIZARDS GETS IT".

This month I eagerly anticipated this adventure so much. I finally get it and what's the first thing I see when I skip down to look at the maps? An incoherent looking clearing made out of dungeon tile maps.

No, that's it now. DDI gets no more money from me. I'm through.

 

[Truename]

I pulled my subscription a few months ago, so I haven't seen Bark at the Moon, but isn't this tile rage a little over done? I'm not a fan of DTiles at all--I don't own a one--and I don't like DTile maps, and yet it seems like that would be the last thing I'd be thinking about when evaluating the quality of an adventure. None of my players ever see the maps in the adventure--they see what I draw on the battlemat.

So... how's the writing? The plot? The NPCs? The skill challenges? The players' ability to make meaningful choices? What about the handouts and other art, which benefited from an increased budget? I'm genuinely interested in hearing what the adventure was like.

 

[Aegeri]

For me it's the straw that broke the camels back. I'm looking at having a non-functional monster builder (online CB still hasn't let me make a single character due to crashing/lag/my internet cap - I am not expecting an online MB to do any better), a "patch" that actually just removed stuff from the MB without fixing major issues, terrible articles on a routine basis, dungeon delve garbage on a consistent basis in Dungeon and such forth. I honestly thought they were turning around with Lord of the White Field.

I'm just glad I was proven wrong today so I didn't waste further money. All I wanted at a minimum was new maps from Dungeon that I could use in my games (I run 2 VTT games, which puts me in the unique position of being able to use the maps they publish very effectively). That was my minimum. Of all the things that DDI no longer gives me anymore compared with when I originally signed up or even a year ago, that was a fair thing to ask for. If they're going to treat maps like an unimportant part of an adventure that is a 5 minute thrown together afterthought, then I am going to put my money into buying map collections from pdfs and similar from talented cartographers - not DDI.

 

[UnknownAtThisTime]

Honest question for those who dislike DT based maps: is it difficult to just reimagine the maps that you dislike and free hand them for your game, or are you specifically looking for maps you can "print" that are not DT based?

Personal Opinion: Bring on the DT based maps. If I don't like them for whatever reason, I'll use another tool in the toolbox.

 

[Rydac]

I just don't really understand the complaint. I love cool maps, but there was going to be some kind of a map....doesn't really affect me much if this time it is from the WoTC tile collection.

Reading the author's blog he says using the tiles was a budget consideration, plus there is art of the NPCs and gives flavor of the adventure. Let's not be so hard on the guy especially in a "you can't please all of the people all of the time" type situation.

Though I am with Stoat in that I'd have liked to see an overall area map for the reasons he stated.

 

[Scribble]

Has anyone actually looked through the adventure?