D&D General How Important Is The "Shared Experience" To You?

[timbannock]

I didn't run published D&D adventures for the first 20 odd years I've been gaming, just stole the maps or a plot point here or there. Didn't miss it then.

I then spent about 10 years solely trying to run published D&D adventures. It was extremely difficult to change my ways (significantly changing them), but illuminating when I did. Unfortunately, most of what I learned was that when I ran the same adventure for multiple groups, almost no published adventures were great. They often had boring settings, boring set piece encounters, poor balance, and either not enough background to fill gaping plot holes, or so much background that I spent too much game time flipping through paragraphs of text to find important motivations or past activities that mattered. It was awful, with very few exceptions (Curse of Strahd, Caverns of Thracia, Goodman Games Into the Borderlands take on B1 and B2, and some of the Rolled & Told adventures stood out as mostly working).

Because of that, the shared experience thing matters zero to me EXCEPT for Curse of Strahd because of it's built in replayable random placement aspect. I also discovered that most of the highest rated adventures are nostalgia based and don't stand on their own at all: Tomb of Horrors is the worst offender, but Temple of Elemental Evil and so many more are just trash. Yes they were pillars at the time, understandably, and deserve praise for that, but they are not good adventures after 40 years of improving game play, layout, etc. So I can't even trust recommendations. :: shrug::

 

[Burnside]

I hear this about WOTC stuff and its too bad. I did play in a 5E adventure and thought it sucked, but also the GM did a poor job bringing it to life.

FWIW I have pretty much the opposite opinion. With the caveat that I have never played or read a 4E adventure, 5E is the first edition with official adventures that I actually enjoy playing and running. I will also grant that I am not that familiar with magazine adventures from 1e-3e, which I sometimes hear are the best ones. I consider the store-published modules and adventures from those eras to range from "terrible" to "okay", with the 2E ones particularly poor.

EDIT: On second thought, let me not derail this thread.

 

[Vaalingrade]

A literal negative amount.

I'm here to 'share the experience' with my group. I basically only play modules at cons, and if I want a big shared experience, I'll watch whatever boring/terminally depressing thing everyone loves on streaming while they're sleeping on The Great Pretender and Scorpion.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’d agree that I appreciate the shared experience when it’s a good experience. Comparing with other groups how our respective Curse of Strahd games went is fun. Talking with tons of other playtesters about how Keep on the Borderlands went for our groups was a blast during D&D Next. But, like, dishing on how railroady and broken Hoard of the Dragon Queen was with other players/DMs? Maybe mildly cathartic at best, but mostly not very satisfying, and certainly not important to the D&D experience.

 

[iserith]

I’d agree that I appreciate the shared experience when it’s a good experience. Comparing with other groups how our respective Curse of Strahd games went is fun. Talking with tons of other playtesters about how Keep on the Borderlands went for our groups was a blast during D&D Next. But, like, dishing on how railroady and broken Hoard of the Dragon Queen was with other players/DMs? Maybe mildly cathartic at best, but mostly not very satisfying, and certainly not important to the D&D experience.

Yeah, I don't mind the complaints, but complaints without possible solutions aren't a good look in my view.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, I don't mind the complaints, but complaints without possible solutions aren't a good look in my view.

Suggestions for how to improve a module are definitely useful, but that feels like a different thing than the “shared experience” the OP was asking about to me.

 

[Blue]

The shared experience has little meaning to me outside those I play with. I do everything homebrew when I run, it's not there. When I play in other games that do use common material, I have much better experiences when the DM customizes it to the group, and I've seen arguments that they are never meant to be played straight and always customized. When I play in a game that runs it straight, it often doesn't have the appeal to me that I care about comparing it. And when I do, I will often find that other's DMs have customized it.

At best it's useful for talking about it on ENworld, but that's more of having a common context for discussion than revelling that the shared experience exists.

Basically, "shared experience" in this context isn't important to me at all.

 

[payn]

Can you give an example of a non-spoiler-y player's guide for a published adventure? I don't think I've really seen this for 5E.

I'll do you one better and link to a free PDF one from Paizo. I see them as a trailer for a movie (a really good one tho!).

 

[Guest 7034872]

I'm with Blue: the only experience-sharing that matters to me is the one around the table. I don't care how many other people have been on the same or similar adventures as my group.

 

[el-remmen]

If I like it? Yes
Is it important? Kind of…
Is it a selling point for me? No

@Laurefindel kinda hit the nail on the head for me. . . though when I think about it, as a DM what is interesting to me is not so much what we "shared" but how we diverged, either through DM modification of the adventure or player choice in-game - but either way I enjoy that kind of conversation. However, I wouldn't call it "a selling point."