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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6537308" data-attributes="member: 6680772"><a href="http://archive.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20110315" target="_blank">Legends & Lore #7 - One Adventure to Rule Them All</a>March 29, 2011<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?303623-Legends-and-Lore-March-29th&highlight=Legends+Lore" target="_blank">Original EN World thread</a><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?303619-Mearls-Legends-and-Lore-poll-on-delve-format-for-adventures&highlight=Legends+Lore" target="_blank">Alternate EN World Thread</a>In this L&L, Mearls looked at adventures, leading off with a poll he did of his Twitter followers and the folks at D&D R&D.<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Ravenloft</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Red Hand of Doom</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Desert of Desolation</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Keep on the Borderlands</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Night’s Dark Terror</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Tomb of Horrors</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Village of Hommlet</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Against the Giants</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Burnt Offerings</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Temple of Elemental Evil</li> </ol>Per Mearls, the difference between Ravenloft and Red Hand of Doom was as great as the difference between Red Hand of Doom and Burnt Offerings.Looking at this list, Mearls comes to some conclusions about what makes a good adventure:Ultimately, Mearls thinks it comes down to Choice.  Choice for the players to engage the adventure in a variety of ways, and choice for the DM to tailor the adventure for the group.  Ideally, the adventure shouldn't dictate to the group, but rather shift to provide the group what they want.Mearls ends the column by noting that the delve format works against the above.  Having a page for each room encourages the designer to ensure that it sees play, as well as limiting the choices of areas, chambers, etc. for the players to explore.  On the other hand, he notes that the delve format is quite convenient for DMs, allowing them to run the adventure without having to look things up in other books, and working quite well for running a game on the fly.Personally, I was happy to see this article at the time, because I have a preference for mini-sandbox adventures.  I think B2 is actually underrated as an introduction to this style of play.  And one gripe I had with 4e adventures were that they seemed so limited, as far as dungeons go.  The need to both make rooms big enough for interesting tactical combat as well as provide two pages per encounter just seemed to make everything so small.How did things end up in 5e?Well, the jury's still out a bit on this, I think.  We can see some trends, but as of yet our sample size is still quite small.  The Lost Mines of Phandelver, by Rich Baker, is almost an instant classic, hitting many of the high points mentioned in this article.  It's got a good setting with Phandalin.  There's also all sorts of freedom -- I've run it for two groups, and after the initial section in Cragmaw Hideout, neither of them were remotely similar.  It's provided with plenty of interesting maps that are not, on the whole, very linear.  And while it lacks a specifically unique hook, it has multiple small hooks for a variety of players.  They abandoned the delve format, so in 64 pages there are 82 encounters spread out over 11 locations.  So far so good.  I certainly want to see more like that!On the other hand, WotC seems to be focusing not on single adventures, but rather on Adventure Path-style campaigns.  Tyranny of Dragons being the exemplar here, with Princes of the Apocalypse looking to be in that vein.  These adventures (well, ToD, at any rate) are inherently less sandboxy, having a very urgent through-line that the characters are urged to follow.  While there is some degree of choice in Hoard of the Dragon Queen and the Rise of Tiamat, I don't know that I can say that they "shift themselves to match what the group wants from them".  Rather, they seem to dictate to the players.  There's certainly a market and a need for such adventures, and while I think WotC is wrong, per se, to go with this plan, I do hope we see more stand-alone adventures, even one-shots.Like LMoP, HotDQ and RoT do not use the delve format, and as a result, they can pack a lot of locations and fairly intricate dungeons into their pages.  However, HotDQ and RoT, perhaps moreso than LMoP, suffer from the disadvantages of this style -- sometimes they simply don't provide enough information to make DMs' jobs easier.</blockquote>

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