D&D General How would you feel if Official Adventures only covered 3 levels?

[DrJawaPhD]

Would you prefer a whole adventure that just takes you from 3-6? Then another that does 6-8. Etc? There doesn't really seem to be a reason to make these adventures (like the DL one) to have you gain power so quickly aside from "Now you get cool powers bro and can fight the Mega Dragon at the end!"

When I'm playing or DM'ing I ideally want a cohesive campaign from 1-20, or starting later / ending earlier if the group doesn't want to commit to that length of playing time.

For a published adventure, I prefer short lengths that are easy to drop into pre-existing campaigns. My favorites are the single adventure Anthologies, and then next best would be a couple levels like you are describing.

 

[John R Davis]

3 levels. So a compact waffle free 32 page adventure
Yes please

 

[Yaarel]

For me the ideal is tv episodes. A random monster of the session, sotospeak, but with an ongoing and recurring development "arcing" across the levels. Not every session needs to refer to it, but there should be clear progress with a big picture ambition.

Having a longterm goal in mind, and somehow tying shortterm distractions into it, is what I try to aim for.

 

[MerricB]

It’s likely true that printing 32 page modules might not meet WOTC’s financial requirements, but I would imagine that smaller companies could make a reasonable profit. And, PDFs would suffice for many people and the margins on an electronic product would be far greater than paper.

Sadly, physical 32-page modules are pretty much beyond everyone at this stage. You'll see them as part of a Kickstarter from time to time, but they're diabolical in the marketplace.

(Apart from anything else, they don't have spines, which make them horrible to display in game stores).

Troll Lord Games still make them (the one small publisher that have their own printing press!), but I don't know many others. Print-on-demand is a thing, but the cost of that can be prohibitive.

Paizo cut down the number of shorter hardcopy adventures they release each year substantially. They used to do a LOT. Now, hardly any. (Unless things changed in the past couple of years, which I doubt).

(Go to your local FLGS and have a look how many 32 or 64 page adventures there are in stock for any system).

I am somewhat dubious of the reach of electronic-only products, but we're well served for those at present - so, so many. (The trouble is finding reviews of them!)

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

For me the ideal is tv episodes. A random monster of the session, sotospeak, but with an ongoing and recurring development "arcing" across the levels. Not every session needs to refer to it, but there should be clear progress with a big picture ambition.

Having a longterm goal in mind, and somehow tying shortterm distractions into it, is what I try to aim for.

I have run a campaign of Serenity/Firefly as a series of 13 sessions, deliberately designing each as a standalone scenario except for a couple of two-parters including the finale. That was a fascinating experience!

My D&D campaigns tend to be longer term. The long-term goals often arise during play rather than being inherent from the start. (And are generally DM generated based on player actions rather than player-decided).

Cheers!

 

[Staffan]

There are two problems with D&D when it comes to making short modules. One is the enormous power increase as characters level up, and the other is the lack of a default setting and campaign mode.

The power increase thing is self-explanatory. An adventure appropriate for 6th level characters won't be fine for 3rd level characters, and vice versa.

The lack of a default setting and campaign mode means that potential adventure writers know nothing about the context in which the adventure is taking place. With a game like Shadowrun, that's easy: you're playing Shadowrunners, who are essentially criminals for hire, and you live in Seattle and you're being hired by Mr. Johnson to do a job and then you'll be betrayed. Star Wars: Age of Rebellion is also easy: you're rebels who have been sent to do something for the Rebel Alliance. You can play those games outside of those contexts, but there's a pretty clear default campaign mode that an adventure writer can use. But the closest thing D&D has to a default campaign mode is "here's a dungeon with monsters and loot for you to kill and steal." And that's kind of boring.

These factors taken together means that the chance of any given adventure both being the right level and being appropriate for my particular campaign situation is miniscule. That's why campaign-length adventures/adventure paths work better commercially: they're intended for new campaigns, so you can adapt the characters to the campaign instead of vice versa.

 

[Li Shenron]

Modern adventures, one and done. Start a new with fresh characters that take the rapid rollercoaster of 1-10 again. Rinse and Repeat. Why does WotC do it this way?

Because people nowadays have a lot more competing hobbies and distractions, less patience and more difficulty staying engaged, so they need more stimulus to keep playing. Also, quick levelling and making new characters often means that character material is consumed fast, increasing the chances of players wanting to buy something new more often.

Would you prefer a whole adventure that just takes you from 3-6? Then another that does 6-8. Etc?

Yes, that would be similar to how published adventures were designed in past decades, although it would still be not my ideal.

Generally speaking my ideal would be adventures set at a single specific level with no advancement predetermined or required.

 

[jgsugden]

I've always thought of this as the breakdown:

• One Shot: Something meant to be run in 8 or less hours. This may take one long weekend day or up to three evenings. You get one complete story.
• Adventures: You get something that covers a few levels. You might get something with natural break points (LMoP has break points - before arriving in town, arriving in town, the adventure in town, each location, etc...), or you might get a "this is a 40 encounter dungeon - go at it" type design, but regardless, this is a 40 to 80 hour experience. The story begins and ends within this material. Your PCs often advance 3 or so levels.
• Campaigns: You get something that spans many levels - generally 10 to 20, but could be shorter. It has multiple distinct chapters where a new primary focus for the PCs is introduced (short term goals) is addressed, but a larger storyline is unfolding (long term goals). Sometimes there can be multiple overlapping short term and long term goals.

Adventures have been fewer and far between in the modern era. We hear they're not economically viable, but in the end the minimum form of them is just a small book, similar to children's books or a magazine that sells for less than $10. You could either go cheap on materials and cheap on price, or go high on quality and higher on price ... but offer value that is more substantial including battle maps, etc...

I believe there is a huge market for adventures waiting to be tapped - but it isn't necessarily a lucrative market. After all, we keep coming back to several of them. LMoP, Keep on the Borderlands, Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury ... These see a lot of play. Some DMs also have a library of adventures from the old days (80s, 90s) from content people posted for free before the DM's guild (when this was a hobby where people were more collaborative and sharing freely rather than trying to monetize everything ... we create more value overall when we share our labors of love than when we put them behind a marketplace gatekeeper that says we need to be paid for everything ... people need to be paid for their jobs, but we used to have many talented people that were sharing their efforts as a hobby, not a job), etc...

Right now - in the end - there are about 80 to 200 adventures out there if you look for them. Some need to be updated to the current edition similar to how Yawning Portal's adventures were, and some of them have ... errr ... dated concepts in them that need some rethinking. However, there is a lot out there if you look for it. You can refer to a thread Matt Colville started on reddit a couple years ago for suggestions for adventures and campaigns:

 

[Shiroiken]

Having just finished Vecna: Eve of Ruin, I think this is an intentional design decision to keep the story moving. While I personally prefer 3-5 sessions per level, APs generally don't have that much space per chapter. If you run using XP, no APs provide anywhere near enough to level.

I think that it would be better to have APs be more like the starter sets, being 5 levels. If you made them from levels 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, and 16-20, then you could run a campaign using a series of them. Additionally, you could spend more time on each level, letting players actually have time to enjoy their toys before they get new ones.

 

[NN]

pish to modules and settings. gimme mini sandboxes.