D&D 5E Dwindling Basic Rules Support for WotC/Partnered Adventures

[TheWriterFantastic™]

More an observation than a complaint:
After the statement from Mike Mearls that the supplement for Out of the Abyss was "lost in the shuffle" and noticing that Curse of Strahd refers DMs to the Monster Manual for creatures not in the appendix in the adventure, I looked back at Out of the Abyss and Princes of the Apocalypse -- neither even mention the Basic Rules in the text, referring the DM to the Core Rulebooks. I'm wondering if WotC is abandoning the policy for their published adventures to just be playable with the Basic Rules, and has been passively taking that approach in policy since publishing Princes of the Apocalypse?

 

[DEFCON 1]

I would imagine it comes down to what players have been clamoring for.

They only have so many hours in the day to do all the various things that need to get done... so they prioritize based upon what people have been communicating with them with what they need. If very few (if any) people have been emailing or tweeting to them asking where the additional monster pack documents are to run the adventures with the Basic Rules... they figure it's because the people already bought a Monster Manual and no one needs it.

I'll make note at this time that the "promised" prior-edition-to-5E conversion documents finally only arrive a couple months ago when there was a large thread about them here (and people then tweeted Mike about them.) At that point they probably realized it had been pushed back too long and Mike told Jeremy to go ahead and get on it. And they then were announced and released within a couple weeks. So if anyone out there is really only playing D&D Out of the Abyss still with only the Basic Rules and is finding that they are missing too many monsters... they should probably put up a stink about it so that Mike is reminded that people still want and need them. Otherwise they're libel to just think every DM out there has already bought themselves a Monster Manual (which, to be honest... is not a bad supposition.)

 

[jayoungr]

I have a Monster Manual, but I'd still like a supplement with the adventure. It's much easier to have all the monsters I need in one place than to page through a large book.

If this thread gets big enough, maybe that will prompt them to work on it!

ETA: I will be finishing Rise of Tiamat soon, so this will shortly become an actual issue at my table.

 

[flametitan]

Don't forget the SRD exists. It's not a complete replacement for the MM, but it has most of the monsters in it. It's probable that wotc might not consider a free supplement worth it with that in mind.

 

[TheWriterFantastic™]

I would imagine it comes down to what players have been clamoring for.

They only have so many hours in the day to do all the various things that need to get done... so they prioritize based upon what people have been communicating with them with what they need. If very few (if any) people have been emailing or tweeting to them asking where the additional monster pack documents are to run the adventures with the Basic Rules... they figure it's because the people already bought a Monster Manual and no one needs it.

I'll make note at this time that the "promised" prior-edition-to-5E conversion documents finally only arrive a couple months ago when there was a large thread about them here (and people then tweeted Mike about them.) At that point they probably realized it had been pushed back too long and Mike told Jeremy to go ahead and get on it. And they then were announced and released within a couple weeks. So if anyone out there is really only playing D&D Out of the Abyss still with only the Basic Rules and is finding that they are missing too many monsters... they should probably put up a stink about it so that Mike is reminded that people still want and need them. Otherwise they're libel to just think every DM out there has already bought themselves a Monster Manual (which, to be honest... is not a bad supposition.)

To an extent, I can agree with that -- but one of the ideas behind the story first push was to allow anyone to jump in from any of their adventure products without the core books -- while, yes, it may be a stretch to assume that any average joe off the street might see the latest adventure off the shelf of the FLGS and decide "Hey, I'm going to try running D&D with this adventure I have little understanding of, with absolutely no experience playing any version of the game." However, a lapsed player that hasn't played in over a decade, might really dig a new adventure picked up of the shelf, consider it, but put it back, because, "Hey, this looks cool, but I don't want to invest $200 (Core books + adventure) in a new system I might not like," when the free Basic rules (a huge selling point at 5E's release) aren't even mentioned in the new adventure, allowing it to be run for just the cost of the adventure itself. While these Basic adventure supplements are "free" to the public online, the production cost should be inherent in the production of the adventure, as it's a selling point of the product, obvious or not.

 

[Jester David]

It is a little unfortunate. But I imagine it's a lot of work for little gains.

I wonder if there's enough of the monsters, between the SRD and other free Basic expansions. Maybe those could be compiled into something for the DMs Guild.

 

[lkj]

It's probably worth noting a recent tweet from Mearls on the subject of online supplements:

Question: "Will we ever get an online supplement for OotA like we did for the previous adventures? What about CoS?"

Mearls' Answer: "not in the form we've done them. we're looking at how we can deliver something more useful"


This strikes me as there being one of those surprise plans behind the scenes. I could speculate. But, instead, I'm going to go eat lunch.

AD

 

[DEFCON 1]

I wonder if there's enough of the monsters, between the SRD and other free Basic expansions. Maybe those could be compiled into something for the DMs Guild.

I actually did compile all the "free monsters" (prior to the release of the SRD) by Capturing the individual blocks from the PDFs and then pasting them into Word in alphabetical order so that I could have all the monsters that have been made available online in one place easy to find. This has allowed me when creating encounters to copy-paste the monster blocks I need into a single Word doc page all together. It's been quite helpful to me and makes things much easier to run. Although there are a LOT of monsters that have been released through the Basic Rules, the Tyranny supplement, and the Princes supplement. And I shutter to think how much more cutting and pasting I'll need to do if I decide to add the monsters from the SRD into my alphabetical list as well.

 

[jayoungr]

Question: "Will we ever get an online supplement for OotA like we did for the previous adventures? What about CoS?"

Mearls' Answer: "not in the form we've done them. we're looking at how we can deliver something more useful"

I hadn't heard about that, since I don't do Twitter. That's disappointing. What could be "more useful"? I hope it's not an app.

This strikes me as there being one of those surprise plans behind the scenes. I could speculate. But, instead, I'm going to go eat lunch.

Speculate away!

 

[Sunseeker]

Don't forget the SRD exists. It's not a complete replacement for the MM, but it has most of the monsters in it. It's probable that wotc might not consider a free supplement worth it with that in mind.

I would tend to agree and think that; with a little spit and hard work, one could reasonably assemble the "supplement" for any adventure fairly easily.