D&D 5E Hoard of the Dragon Queen: As it Turns out, it's Pretty Good (so far)

[dd.stevenson]

That said, a well designed AP should not require intervention to be playable and enjoyable. It should merely benefit from it.

There is much that can be said about the relative strengths of AP vs ad libbed sandbox settings, but I was referring to "commercial success" in the quote you mentioned.


While I appreciate that many players (including yours) have different preferences, I think the market has indicated that the Pathfinder AP approach is the more commercially successful of the two in recent years.

To be clear, I'm only asking about the commercial success of story-driven APs, and how this success is affected by the level of detail provided/vs. what is left for the GM to fill in. (Leaving completely aside the question of plot-free sandboxes.) It's not completely clear to me that Paizo has struck the most profitable balance between detail (good) and linearity (bad), based simply on my own play experiences, and my excitement levels as I read the APs. However, it's likely you know something about this that I don't, if you've concluded categorically that DM intervention shouldn't be required.

Note, I haven't got my copy of HotDQ yet, so I'm limited as to how far I can pursue this conversation. If they really don't give any more encounter detail than "six cultists attack the characters on the road", then that sounds pretty bad, and I suppose makes the point moot.

I'd be curious what your group's reaction to EN Publishing's ZEITGEIST adventure path would be. We have a series of adventures, and the links between them are fairly linear, but within each I think players get a lot of flexibility. I wish I could convert them to 5e.

I'm afraid there's very little chance of me ever running Pathfinder again (though--moods change; never say never!) so I will have to wait on some robust 5E conversion tools to even begin contemplating that. However, I can tell you from listening to my players, that the thing that irked them most, was the linear progression from module to module. It really highlighted to them that they had no real say in the direction the adventure was going, and all of the minor niggling doubts that had been built up over the module sort of re-emerged all at once in acute frustration and disengagement.

 

[Tony Semana]

Generally, I think that an AP -- any AP -- benefits from experienced GMs making changes as are required for their particular group. I recommend it often.

That said, a well designed AP should not require intervention to be playable and enjoyable. It should merely benefit from it.

Given [MENTION=20741]Steel_Wind[/MENTION]'s experience was actually positive, his DM is obviously an experienced DM as he's mentioned. So, what would be very informative is how much intervention he/she [MENTION=20741]Steel_Wind[/MENTION]'s DM) felt was required based on this definition of a good AP. In short, whether the DM felt ToD as written really is as bad as the negative opinions in this thread.

 

[sgtscott658]

Hi-

The encounters are detailed enough in Dragon Queen and wants to run this module right out of the box, it is very doable. I just wanted to take a more wargame like approach with the first chapter and also acclimate the players to their surrounding environment. That was my choice as the DM as well as getting the players to 3rd level at the start of the DQ campaign. Once more my choice and nothing against the module as written. And it is a very well written module I have always enjoyed Wolfgangs designs. His demon web pits module is awesome.


Scott

 

[Steel_Wind]

Given @Steel_Wind 's experience was actually positive, his DM is obviously an experienced DM as he's mentioned. So, what would be very informative is how much intervention he/she @Steel_Wind 's DM) felt was required based on this definition of a good AP. In short, whether the DM felt ToD as written really is as bad as the negative opinions in this thread.

I agree.

I would also want to compare the text in the D&D Adventurer's League PDF of Tyranny of Dragons with the text in the hardcover. They may well be identical - I just don't know if they are or not. If I am going to slag the encounter as written, it seems only fair to get that fact established - first.

However, comparing what Azmyth ran to the list obscured by the spoilers posted by Mad Zagyg above, I could clearly see most of what I played in his spoiler notes. Azmyth told me he created the first part before we got to Greenest on his own - and tht part did not appear in those notes. Whether those notes were pasted in from the PDF or not, I don't know. I know that Azmyth was running his game session based upon the D&D Adventurer's League PDF.

I have asked Azmyth to post here but he has lost his password and seems disinclined to remedy that. I have ordered the hardcover and should receive it by Thursday - so I will look at the hardcover text and at the least confirm if the summary posted by Mad Zagyg is repeated in the hardcover as well.

Assuming that is probably is, I guess that we can see what the problems are and how it is that they happened. They are the product of the OP program getting in the way of the needs of home play. Still I prefer not to judge the text of a work I have not carefully read based upon guesses and assumptions. That's not being fair.

I do know that what I played I liked. It seems that was largely as a result of some inspired DMing, but, that doesn't change the fact I liked it; I really did.

Mind you, I never experienced the full list of all of those tasks without resting or leveling! If that grind Mad Zagygg noted had transpired at my table, I can well expect that my Topic Header would have been very different.

I want to wait and verify all of this and form a judgement myself based on the paper product I know people will buy -- not simply the game session I had the fortune of playing, or the PDF playtest that may or may not be the final version.

 

[jbear]

The point to take away is not that you cannot save money off of the retail price of these books by buying online. Of course you can. You can also save on the price of Pathfinder in the same (or similar) manner. That is assuming you have a credit card or way of paying for these products online. Not everybody does and it limits your market.

It may not be the case in the US or Canada, but in New Zealand for example you can get a visa bank card which is not a credit card for example, but which can be used to make online purchases from your bank account as long as you account has money in it.

It's true, I'm not 20 and a struggling student anymore. But if I was and I did not have the banking system that I have in my country that made online purchase accessible to anyone with a bank account, I would still find a way to pay the online price and not the in store price somehow i.e. parents fronting up and making the purchase and then paying them back.

Having said that, after looking online for the Players Handbook on the Book Depository which offers free shipping world wide, the cost in $US is $40, which is not $50, but it is not the $30 other people are talking about either.

And looking on amazon.uk for example the price is 30 pounds which is practically $50 US. US amazon does have the $30 offer, but I would have to pay shipping on that for sure. So there seems to be quite a bit of variation of prices you can actually get the books at depending on where you are in the world.

 

[MerricB]

I have both the adventure and the D&D Encounters version. The texts are identical except that the D&D Encounters version gives suggestions for breaking up the adventure into 2-hour blocks. Note that Encounters is only concerned with the first three episodes.

The first episode consists of a number of missions, which the Encounters version rates in a sidebar of being short or long. An Encounters session will probably fit in one one long mission or two short missions.

The second episode has a couple of encounters that fit into one session, then the rest goes very freeform and might take 1-2 sessions, or even less than 1 session!

The third episode which has a dungeon delve) has suggestions for the lengths of encounters, and also suggests extra "random" encounters if necessary to fill out a session (because a short + long encounter would take too long for the time allotted).

I'm not really seeing much of the original text being "made for Encounters". Encounters DMs need to do some fiddling to make it all work.

It is really, really worth having a look at the Tiamat Tuesdays articles by the Kobold Press design team, particularly this one about the first four episodes and this one about how later episodes are more open-ended with regard to the players' approach to them.

Cheers!

 

[Steel_Wind]

I have both the adventure and the D&D Encounters version. The texts are identical except that the D&D Encounters version gives suggestions for breaking up the adventure into 2-hour blocks. Note that Encounters is only concerned with the first three episodes.

Well, ok. So that's that then. *nods*

I'm not really seeing much of the original text being "made for Encounters". Encounters DMs need to do some fiddling to make it all work.

I think the issue arises due to the timing requirements that a whole shopping list of encounters be completed without the benefit of a long rest or leveling, as Mad Zagyg noted in his post here:

My main gripe with Hoard of the Dragon Queen is that it seems VERY obvious to me that it was written specifically for D&D Encounters and/or Adventurer's League play. After all, the first three episodes of the adventure are pretty much verbatim as they appear in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen Encounters PDF. Why is this obvious? Well, if you run the adventure as written, and your players are trying to complete all the missions that the adventure throws at them in Episode 1, it seems extremely likely that they will fail, and probably TPK (as my group did). When you play D&D Encounters at your FLGS, characters come fully refreshed to every session, as tables can change from week to week.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?358341-Hoard-of-the-Dragon-Queen-As-it-Turns-out-it-s-Pretty-Good-(so-far)#ixzz3AvblwVFJ
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His identification of the underlying "refresh" of PC resources that happens due to player changes during Encounters sessions every week seemed spot on to me and explains the problem.

That's the design issue that appears to lead to an unplayable TPK when the adventure is run as written for Home play. That should have been caught in development and the text of the hardcover changed or a sidebar written to explain it.

 

[Thaumaturge]

**Spoilers**

9. Dragon Attack encounter: If you are kind to your players, as I was, you won't have the dragon attack them as they fire at it from the battlements. If you do choose to attack them with the adult blue dragon, you will kill them for sure. This leaves you a little torn, because having the dragon choose NOT to attack the party (basically the only ones doing any damage to the creature at all) interferes enormously with the game's necessary verisimilitude. Why wouldn't the dragon attack the only creatures hurting it? Ridiculous.

This is addressed in the adventure. The dragon doesn't really want to be there. The dragon doesn't want a confrontation with adventurers. The dragon is doing the bare minimum because of an obligation. Fighting adventurers rises above "bare minimum".

I think it's a little like going to a company picnic, and sitting in an anthill. Could you wipe out the ants after they bite you? Sure, but it's easier to use the ants as an excuse to just leave. You've got cold beer in the fridge, anyway. And it's hot out.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Gundark]

As I've been reading on in later chapter of HotDQ the adventures do seem to improve. Yes the first episode is written poorly, but the later chapters do seem better and seem to be on par with what I've seen with Paizo's AP offerings.

 

[carmachu]

The point to take away is not that you cannot save money off of the retail price of these books by buying online. Of course you can. You can also save on the price of Pathfinder in the same (or similar) manner. That is assuming you have a credit card or way of paying for these products online. Not everybody does and it limits your market.

Go to walmart. Sign up for a walmart prepaid visa card. For $3, you can load any amount of money onto the card, and it acts just like a visa card for online transactions.

I know, I had to get one to pick up some paizo items 3 years back or so- who only take credit cards and not paypal.