NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="knightofround" data-source="post: 5217448" data-attributes="member: 27884">This thread is great, even though I've only read the first 5 pages.I haven't read too much of the 4E adventure path because I didn't want to spoil the story just in-case I participated in it. However I can re-emphasize points already made in this thread.1. Variety is key. I think a big reason why WotC adventures are so unpopular is that they are all so vanilla. I'm sure that many people out there enjoy the PoL heavy combat grindfest, and that's great. But you need more ideas, you need try new stuff instead of recycling old stuff that worked. You need one-shot modules, and you also need mega-adventures that cover an entire tier. With the 3E and 4E paths you try to do both, and end up doing both poorly.2. Ditch the delve in the printed edition. Focus on making the story better, the NPCs better, descriptive text better, the enemy tactics better. WotC adventures tend to be very heavy on the stat blocks and sheer quantity of encounters, rather than quality. 3. Market the author. Open up Dungeon to fan submissions, and ask for specific themes. Use that as a tool to fish for freelancers. You can get a lot of really good content that with very little cost. I want Monte Cooks, I want Keith Bakers, I don't want a generic project built by an editor from a couple different authors.4. More text, less dead space. Again, cut out the stat blocks. Cut out the artwork. I would much, much rather purchase an incredibly well-fleshed out module with brilliant ideas, characters, and combat situations, than have pretty maps, pictures, and handouts. Focus more on encounter quality and less on encounter quantity. Make fights dynamic depending upon the player's previous decisions, use terrain, use tactics, provide noncombat solutions, use waves of attackers...etc etc5. Open up to the fan base. Use the DDI to Wikify or make a forum each product, so players can submit additional material. Use it to showcase additional material that didn't make the cut in the editing. Provide stat block chunks organized by product so people who like the delve can print them out as need. All this will increase subscription to DDI, which is really the only advantage WotC adventures have over 3PP adventures now. And it gets you folks extra revenue. Find writers that are willing to participate with the community. My favorite WotC adventure module was Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, not so much because of the adventure itself...but because it had a very strong community behind it. Those fan submissions gave the module a TON of added value at 0 extra cost to the publisher. Some of the stuff the fans put out is absolutely crazy; full edition conversions, "hard modes" or "easy modes" of encounters, updated material from WotC supplements produced *after* the adventure was published, updated material from official errata, beautiful handouts, alternate ways to run NPCs, alternate endings, alternate storylines, the whole works.Grow your product by growing the community!</blockquote>

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