D&D 5E Is every Official Adventure Going to be about Saving the World?

[RangerWickett]

What everyone else has said. I only know a couple of adventure paths, but the ones I do know generally have you going up against a lesser god (Kyuss, Tiamat). Any AP that gets up to levels 15-20 is generally going to be about saving the world, because that is what the focus is at those levels.

Now a question: Is your difficulty with always saving the world or fighting super magical / god-like beings to do it? War of the Burning Sky and Record of Lodoss War are two stories about saving the world, but they are mostly military/diplomatic campaigns (or that is the background/motivation).

*Yes I know there are still magical beings in WotBS.

Thanks for the War of the Burning Sky name-drop. At the time we wrote it, there were only a handful of Paizo adventure paths out, and only one was really about 'saving the world' (Savage Tide). We thought there was actually a dearth of Lord of the Rings-esque 'ultimate stakes' adventures.

For ZEITGEIST, the stakes are still high, but we thought the "be law enforcement and investigate mysteries" storyline would be novel. There is not yet a 'run a bakery' element to the plot, sadly.

E.N. Publishing is thinking that, going forward, we'll do shorter story arcs, maybe covering 5 levels. My dream would be to actually have a series of high-level mini-campaigns that aren't "save the world." I mean, it might be, "Stop this major villain from invading a city-state," or "Kill the vampire lord who has cursed this region," or even "Ghosts are haunting a city because all the followers of a dead god are unable to pass into the afterlife, so fly an airship through the cosmos to his corpse and delve into his brain to find a secret that will let his followers get their rest."

 

[Tormyr]

Yeah. Don't knock the baker's. Our Tiefling Wizard come up with multiple great ideas for cooking amazing dishes in game. First, the player tricked the party into thinking he turned their prize baby owlbear into a stew. It was actually chicken stew. It smelled so delicious that everyone had to roll a Wisdom save to resist devouring the stew. The half gnoll paladin who had bonded with the owlbear failed miserably and started devouring the stew while bemoaning that it was so terrible that it was delicious. When the other characters said, "Why did you cook the owlbear?", he said, "What? It is safe in the basement." After another adventure I brought dirt cups to the game and worked out with the player that he went out back in the garden and dug up some mud and worms and bugs and transmuted them into a tasty treat. Some of the characters watched this, horrified. When he said that he served the other characters, I brought out the desserts. After that, I gave his character a bonus proficiency with cooks tools.

So, where this actually gets to. The party is level 3, they are infiltra^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H assaulting a temple of Hextor, and they overhear a bunch of Tiefling guards saying, "I wish we could get food like back home. Yeah! No one around here can make chicken stew like mom!" The told them the Tiefling could and put them off their guard. Right before they knocked them out. Later, when they finished off the head human cleric, the Tiefling shouted to the remaining guards, "Surrender, and we will feed you!" The guards switched sides, and now the party's base has a squad of Tiefling guards.

 

[steeldragons]

Yah, those are all plots of classic modules or module-series.

Nothing get's past you, does it?

The Slave Lords series would carry you through a few levels (The Slave Lords was levels 4-7, if I recall correctly), sure.

But, WotC is trying out a new model - instead of having a sea of splatbooks and separate settings, they're doing a major adventure path, and thematic rules supplement to go along with it. If it is going to have notable rules supplementation, I don't expect the adventure section to be short.

This is probably one of the reasons for them deciding to go with some form of open license - varied adventure support will come from third parties.

Right. So, they could all/any of them be "teased out", as I said, to cover levels 1-10 or 1-20 or whatever they need/want them to cover. The premise of the adventure path hardly needs to be "save the world" every time.

[And you do recall correctly, levels 4-7, all four of them. I've often thought that the 4 modules could easily have taken you farther than that. Stretching it out to 10th at the one end and back to 1st at the other would seem to require all of 1 section of adventure each. Pretty no-brainer if you ask me. We'll see if they pick that up for future use.]

 

[Zaran]

Isn't "Princes of the Apocalypse" from a third party? What exactly is WotC working on after the DMG?

 

[Morrus]

Isn't "Princes of the Apocalypse" from a third party? What exactly is WotC working on after the DMG?

Stuff they haven't told us about yet.

 

[ranger69]

So it seems that the ideal release would be a sandbox campaign with an adventure path, (or several adventure paths) included. That way most gamers would get something from it.

 

[sgtscott658]

There are a ton of epic plots you can design. Just off the top of my head:
Destroy a relic
Establish a guild or destroy one
revive a dead god
Save a woods or forest from destruction
establish a Kingdom

So there are plenty of ideas beyond the world saving trope I would venture to guess

Scott

I think it's a lot more difficult to come up with an epic storyline if it isn't save the world. I guess you could try to come up with a revenge plot, as it could apply to the whole group and could go on to high levels. But more personal-focused plots, are definitely not something that would work for a published storyline as it's best for DMs to plot on their own.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

This is the problem with the adventure path format. If you want adventures that take you up to Epic-ish levels, then the stakes are accordingly high.

Hopefully they'll do a low-level only AP at some point. Personally, I think they're the wrong people to be doing _any_ adventure paths, but I guess that bridge is burned.

Who are the wrong people? Do you mean WotC? If so, I agree with you, but I'd like to point out that WotC AREN'T writing the adventures, they're farming them out.

 

[Henrix]

Who are the wrong people? Do you mean WotC? If so, I agree with you, but I'd like to point out that WotC AREN'T writing the adventures, they're farming them out.

I think we can safely say that wizards isn't letting the farmers sow their own crops, but give them some fairly explicit orders.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think we can safely say that wizards isn't letting the farmers sow their own crops, but give them some fairly explicit orders.

Well, yes. Does that mean that the third party guys won't be able to make a good adventure path, though?