Lack of Evolution in Pre-Made Adventure Presentation

[MGibster]

Back in the dark ages, when Michael Jackson reigned supreme as the King of Pop and we were all wondering who shot J.R., we could head down to Kay Bee Toys, B. Dalton Bookseller, or even Sears and purchase a D&D module like the one pictured below.

The typical D&D adventure module consisted of two parts: The cover was typically not bound to the rest of the module and on the reverse side you would find a map of a wilderness area or a dungeon. The meat of the module was contained in a booklet that was anywhere between 15-30 pages filled with points of interest, more maps, NPCs, and other information to run the scenario. Other companies certainly produced adventures of their own and the format wasn't radically different from what I can remember. You essentially got a pamphlet with everything you needed (minus the core rules) to run the scenario.



The Keep on the Borderlands was first released in 1979, and over the last 43 years the only major change I can think of in how an adventure is packaged and presented to the audience has come in the form of electronic files like PDFs. It can certainly be argued that the presentation doesn't need to be improved. After all, books and pamphlets have been a staple for presenting information to the masses for centuries now. But why hasn't anyone taken advantage of new formats?

Back in 2000, when D&D 3E was released the PHB came with a character generation program on a CD-ROM disc. For you youngsters, a CD-ROM looked like a compact disc but instead of playing music you put it into your computer and played games or opened files. At the time, I thought it was only a matter of time before we started seeing companies release entire campaigns on CD with hand outs the GM could print including letters, maps, and pictures. I also saw a potential for including things like radio broadcasts or voice work. i.e. Instead of the GM reading as a news reporter, the adventure could include a recording of someone reading a news broadcast.

If I were to hazard a guess, and why not hazard one, I would guess that adventures just don't generate a lot of revenue so there's not much incentive to make them all that fancy? Is that right?

 

[Haiku Elvis]

I don't know, but I'd be inclined to think you hit the nail on the head with costs.
I suspect there isn't much margin in those shorter adventures.

 

[Umbran]

If I were to hazard a guess, and why not hazard one, I would guess that adventures just don't generate a lot of revenue so there's not much incentive to make them all that fancy? Is that right?

Well, no.

Who needs a CD-ROM now? Nobody. If you want electronic bits, you are getting them for a virtual tabletop - look at an adventure for Roll20.

And, if you want fancy adventure products, may I suggest looking at Beadle & Grimm’s

 

[Mezuka]

The art in early D&D products is really bad. As a 15 year old, in 1980, I could see the artwork was lacking.

Good artwork is very expensive. Buyers have a savvy eye now. They won't tolerate amateur looking art in products. Some even complain about black & white illustrations.

That is why many compagnies have community programs now. They let the fans write the adventures themselves.

 

[aco175]

I would think that someone has a world online where you can Patreon or something to gain access. There is all the world history and gods and such as well as adventures in certain locations. You could solicit more adventures in locations you like or other areas on the map. Maybe DMs can add homemade modules to the world as well. Of course, not being 'official' leads to not that many using it.

There is DMsGuild where again, not 'official' means that many great adventures are not used by that many. It also means that the not so good adventures aren't as well.

I would love to see more adventures of shorter length come out. Even updated old modules would work. I may not pay $50,00 for a hardcover book Tales of Yawning Portal with 10 old modules, but I would pay $10-15 for Forge of Fury, Sunless Citadel, and Against the Giants.

 

[Umbran]

If I were to hazard a guess, and why not hazard one, I would guess that adventures just don't generate a lot of revenue so there's not much incentive to make them all that fancy? Is that right?

We should also add - there's a question of skillsets. The skills needed to design a well-balanced adventure that is apt to produce compelling story are not the skills needed to make visual art for that adventure. And those aren't the same as the skills as making digital assets or software support, and those aren't the same skills as designing or producing physical props.

So, the fancier you want it, the more different skills are involved. You need a bigger team, and that means the adventure must have a higher price point.

Then, on the consumer end, the GM has to ask themselves how much better the added money makes the adventure experience. If the experience with added art, for example, is only a little better than the base experience... why pay for art?

 

[Zaukrie]

We should also add - there's a question of skillsets. The skills needed to design a well-balanced adventure that is apt to produce compelling story are not the skills needed to make visual art for that adventure. And those aren't the same as the skills as making digital assets or software support, and those aren't the same skills as designing or producing physical props.

So, the fancier you want it, the more different skills are involved. You need a bigger team, and that means the adventure must have a higher price point.

Then, on the consumer end, the GM has to ask themselves how much better the added money makes the adventure experience. If the experience with added art, for example, is only a little better than the base experience... why pay for art?

That last part is the key, imo.

 

[ninjayeti]

The tools for running adventures HAVE changed, they are just not packaged as an all in one product. Lets say you are running Curse of Strahd. WotC has the adventure in dead tree format. Want player friendly maps to project? Mike Schley has those available. Want adventure-specific music and ambiance? Syrinscape has that. Want to be able to pull up Strahd's statblock on your laptop so you are not flipping between pages? D&D Beyond has that. Want to print handouts? A Google image search turns up lots of options. And obviously if you want to run the game on a VTT then FG and Roll20 have versions that are set up to run with their platforms.

None of these things were available when I was running Keep on the Borderlands back in the early 80's. While it may seem like these things should all be in one package, not everyone wants or needs every tool, so it probably does not make sense to make people pay for the stuff they are not using.

 

[Jer]

Back in 2000, when D&D 3E was released the PHB came with a character generation program on a CD-ROM disc. For you youngsters, a CD-ROM looked like a compact disc but instead of playing music you put it into your computer and played games or opened files. At the time, I thought it was only a matter of time before we started seeing companies release entire campaigns on CD with hand outs the GM could print including letters, maps, and pictures. I also saw a potential for including things like radio broadcasts or voice work. i.e. Instead of the GM reading as a news reporter, the adventure could include a recording of someone reading a news broadcast.

As others have mentioned, you do get this with the virtual tabletop games, though the components are digital. And some companies (like Wizards) do package up handouts and maps for players with their physical releases.

You don't get voice acting, but TSR actually tried to do that kind of thing back in the 90s with their audio CD games. I have a couple of them - Mark of Amber, Night of the Vampire and A Light in the Belfry. We never actually used them in play but I recall them being fairly cheesy. I think it's tougher to make work than you might think - a cheesy line read by a DM among friends is part of the game, a cheesy line read by an actor on a CD can break the whole table into giggles.

If I were to hazard a guess, and why not hazard one, I would guess that adventures just don't generate a lot of revenue so there's not much incentive to make them all that fancy? Is that right?

This was actually one of the stated reasons for creating the OGL back in the day. Adventures didn't make Wizards a lot of money but they were necessary to support the game. The OGL allowed third parties - who had less overhead and could see the profit from a D&D adventure as substantial where Wizards didn't - to create adventures for the game. This was one of the ways that the OGL directly benefited Wizards - a necessary component when trying to sell an idea as radical as it was to the executives in charge.

 

[MGibster]

We should also add - there's a question of skillsets. The skills needed to design a well-balanced adventure that is apt to produce compelling story are not the skills needed to make visual art for that adventure. And those aren't the same as the skills as making digital assets or software support, and those aren't the same skills as designing or producing physical props.

And that's fair. Just because someone can designed a decent module doesn't mean they can record a series of brief 1930s radio newscaster snippets for a Call of Cthulhu adventure.

Then, on the consumer end, the GM has to ask themselves how much better the added money makes the adventure experience. If the experience with added art, for example, is only a little better than the base experience... why pay for art?

For art, I don't know if I'd be willing to pay significantly more for a simple adventure. For a campaign, I'd be willing to spend a significant chunk of change for a campaign that gave me handouts I could customize and print out, for modern settings including recordings of creatures making noises, radio shows, telephone conversations, etc., etc., or other such things, maybe links to fake websites, etc., etc. I'm sure there's all sort of creative ways someone could incorporate modern technology into the game experience. But I'm not a game designer or in marketing so if the problem is one of cost I can accept that.

The tools for running adventures HAVE changed, they are just not packaged as an all in one product. Lets say you are running Curse of Strahd. WotC has the adventure in dead tree format. Want player friendly maps to project? Mike Schley has those available. Want adventure-specific music and ambiance? Syrinscape has that. Want to be able to pull up Strahd's statblock on your laptop so you are not flipping between pages? D&D Beyond has that. Want to print handouts? A Google image search turns up lots of options.

Again, that's fair. It's just in my old man Luddite ways I forget that such things exist.

You don't get voice acting, but TSR actually tried to do that kind of thing back in the 90s with their audio CD games. I have a couple of them - Mark of Amber, Night of the Vampire and A Light in the Belfry. We never actually used them in play but I recall them being fairly cheesy.

I had one of those but forget they existed until you brought them up. Yeah, they were cheesy. But I can't say my acting is any less cheesy when I'm running a game. I do think we have better ways to incorporate those things into games than we did in the 90s.