D&D 5E (2024) Heroes of the Borderlands

[wicked cool]

Or you could just write it yourself. You don’t need a professional writer if you like your D&D bare bones simplistic.

I guess we can disagree-i enjoy the classics better but that’s me. I also enjoy the simple shadowdark adventures or drivetgroughrog adventures over for the most part giant books with crap plots like storm kings thunder that take a lot of work to run and a big price tag and honestly the payoff isn’t that great (my opinion and I was their editor i would have said it)
The exception is curse of strahd which took a 12 years old classic and built on it. In fact wotc seems to be releasing lots of these as compilations probably due to them selling better than storm kings, Dragonlance, icewind dale etc
But that’s me

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I guess we can disagree-i enjoy the classics better but that’s me. I also enjoy the simple shadowdark adventures or drivetgroughrog adventures over for the most part giant books with crap plots like storm kings thunder that take a lot of work to run and a big price tag and honestly the payoff isn’t that great (my opinion and I was their editor i would have said it)
The exception is curse of strahd which took a 12 years old classic and built on it. In fact wotc seems to be releasing lots of these as compilations probably due to them selling better than storm kings, Dragonlance, icewind dale etc
But that’s me

There were some great classic adventures. But Keep on the Boarderlands was not amongst them.

Its just BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS. It took no skill to write whatsoever. And it is full of nonsensical stuff - the NPCs are all ridiculously high level, and have no need of the pathetic PCs. The caves are far to close together, there is no way to feed all those humanoids and it is stupid that none of them react when their neighbours are being murdered.

At least the new version tackles some of the stupidity in the original.

 

[mamba]

What’s scary is this is still probably one of the best d&d adventures and the formula is very simple and yet none of the new writers can come close to it. 46 years!!!

eh, it’s more my example for what not to do in an adventure, never liked it… it is nowhere near the best adventures, quite the opposite.

There is a reason why new adventures are not anything like it, and it is not that they cannot manage to match its greatness…

 

[sevenbastard]

I only did the 20 minute demo to see it in action. Was a simple bandit encounter in the woods, nothing too exciting. But the player cards were easy to read and the monster ones are well layed out. All in all it felt like playing D&D, just made more accessible.

Was it simplified? For example did it still have Weapon Mastery?

 

[wicked cool]

eh, it’s more my example for what not to do in an adventure, never liked it… it is nowhere near the best adventures, quite the opposite.

There is a reason why new adventures are not anything like it, and it is not that they cannot manage to match its greatness…

So what is it that you don’t like?

 

[GarrettKP]

Was it simplified? For example did it still have Weapon Mastery?

IIRC it had Weapon Masteries. We didn’t play long enough for them to really come up but I’m pretty sure the weapon cards listed masteries on them

 

[mamba]

So what is it that you don’t like?

the monster hotel approach, just having everyone live next to each other with no rhyme or reason, the lack of more of a storyline.

A mediocre random dungeon generator could have created that one

 

[Micah Sweet]

I guess we can disagree-i enjoy the classics better but that’s me. I also enjoy the simple shadowdark adventures or drivetgroughrog adventures over for the most part giant books with crap plots like storm kings thunder that take a lot of work to run and a big price tag and honestly the payoff isn’t that great (my opinion and I was their editor i would have said it)
The exception is curse of strahd which took a 12 years old classic and built on it. In fact wotc seems to be releasing lots of these as compilations probably due to them selling better than storm kings, Dragonlance, icewind dale etc
But that’s me

I've always assumed a big part of that price tag is paying for all the flashy art many companies seem to feel is necessary.

 

[Micah Sweet]

eh, it’s more my example for what not to do in an adventure, never liked it… it is nowhere near the best adventures, quite the opposite.

There is a reason why new adventures are not anything like it, and it is not that they cannot manage to match its greatness…

If the adventure is so obsolete and "bottom of the barrel" compared to WotC's current crop, why is it being resurrected?

 

[mamba]

If the adventure is so obsolete and "bottom of the barrel" compared to WotC's current crop, why is it being resurrected?

I have no idea, wondered about that too when they announced it… to me it represents everything modern D&D is not, so it does not even work as a good introduction (assuming they did not make drastic changes to it).

I can see two reasons, they finally want to fix this adventure (unlikely), they hope rose-colored nostalgia gets people to buy it for their kids / grandkids