D&D 5E How Wotc can improve the adventure books.

[wicked cool]

best adventures are Starter and Curse and curse is an 80's module just repackaged/remade into a better product

rime is a nice adventure with great elements but needs better organization/streamlining and maybe a better guide

I think they need to contact Matt Mercer and have him turn his critical role campaigns into adventures. We already have his sourcebook which sold well. I wouldn't mind if we went back to a starter sized adventure path and the big books are world building supplements

rime is a lot of work to prepare and its much easier to run other adventures on the fly

 

[Wasteland Knight]

...If Gary Gygax did a better job organizing a text than you did, you need to get religion.......
Amen. AMEN AMEN. May the fuzzy dice warm you.

Zingggg! This comment nails it. For how many decades there has been for TTRPGs to develop, we should be in a Golden Age of supplements. Instead, in some ways, publishers have regressed. Particularly the bloat of text in adventures. The old school TSR modules were far from perfect, but they were far more concise and often more organized than modern adventures. I wish modern adventure writers would embrace bullet points, outlines, or some other method to organize critical information for the GM and cut out the long winded bloat.

 

[carmachu]

^^ Ignore the above, Rime is the best D&D/Pathfinder adventure I have seen in a long time, possibly ever.

Ever?

looks across the room at 4 bookshelves and multiple editions of D&D products
Yeah that's a large and dubious claim. Maybe for you, but not all time.

 

[HobbitFan]

This is a good topic, filled with a lot of good points. I wonder if WOTC is aware of any of the common complaints.
I like to think they are trying to improve and make each adventure better than the last but they seem to keep making many of the same mistakes. Which makes me think, they either don't recognize or aren't concerned with the issues.
Some of the issues I see that I'd like changed (in no particular order): 1. stop making the stakes of adventures so big. Adventures can be important on a character level without having to be Realms shatteringly epic. 2. come up with better hooks for introducing characters to the adventure. The justifications given for why people are on the adventures are pretty half-baked in many of the modules, almost as if they were an afterthought. 3. stop making the adventures for the same level range. We basically have a situation here where they assume you are playing one of these modules as a campaign and then moving on. The problem with WOTC trying to write to the sweet spot they identify between 5-10 is that too many of these modules are a similar experience over and over with different details. 4. I recognize the need to make the modules easy to read. However, I think sometimes this makes it hard to use as a DM resource running it. I realize this is a tough balance. 5. Figure out whether the adventure is really an adventure or a sourcebook. Some of these adventures are pulling double-duty it seems. 6. Get out of the Realms. At the very least get away from the Sword Coast. And I say that as a Realms fan. 7. Stop doing Magic tie in books until you have done something else like published a new setting or updated an old one. 8. Come up with a very creative adventure or setting that really wows your audience and steps outside the box. Something like Dark Sun when it first came out. 9. Stop looting the old settings for material and then plugging that down into the Realms. 10. I'm an old school guy going back to OD&D and 1E so I appreciate some revisiting the past but their reprint collections so far are pretty underwhelming and look more like a quick buck for little effort rather than a celebration of the old school modules.

Those are just a few I have been thinking about. There is a final point about the influence of video game design on WOTC adventure design that I think is a conversation worth visiting but I don't have my thoughts quite organized on that front yet.

I hope some of that is of interest,

Monty

 

[robus]

@HobbitFan lot’s of great points there, though disagree on the M:tG settings. I’m not a Magic player, but I’m appreciating the injection of new life into a game that otherwise seems satisfied to keep churning over old ground.

I think this is a reason why people feel the exploration tier is poorly supported. We’re being asked to explore lands that have been thoroughly picked over by generations of players. Hard to get a sense of wonder from yet another trip through the Sword Coast...