Lots more adventures from Wizards?

[DaveMage]

I love adventures, so I think it would be great for WotC to make 'em.

However, I'm quite satisfied with the offerings from Goodman and Necromancer Games, so if WotC decides not to do them, well, that's fine too.

 

[DragonLancer]

More adventures are a good thing IMO. I liked the original Adventure Path series so hopefully any new ones released will be of the same good standard (Yes, I am aware that Speaker in Dreams and Deep Horizon were not all that).

 

[jgbrowning]

I've heard so many industry people state this (and none in the industry refute it) that I'm willing to bet "adventures don't sell" is more fact than belief. The amount of work that goes into an adventure simply brings more profit if it is directed at a supplement instead.

Yes. It's not just an issue of "does it sell" but an issue of "If we put the same amount of work into something else, that something else sells better."

My guess is that they are realizing the minimum adventure support they have to give to keep customers happy is higher than their initial estimates.

I think they realized if they want to sell "Core" campaign books they need to support the setting with adventures. They're not letting other companies support Ebberon or Greyhawk.

The only project cost differences are the zero printing cost and the reduced distribution costs, and these are offset by the reduced price customers expect to pay for a PDF. When you factor in that PDFs sell one to two orders of magnitude less than print products, it's easy to see why Wizards isn't producing straight-to-PDF adventures.

-Dave

Traditionally PDF perform as you say. The market lately, however, (at least in 3rd party products) has seen the difference in sales between PDF and print diminish. Both due from reduced print sales as well as increased PDF sales. At least, this is what I'm picking up.

joe b.

 

[Vrecknidj]

Anything but new rules supplements. Enough with the rules, on with the adventure.

Ditto.

 

[Jackelope King]

Ugh. Adventures are about the only thing I don't want at this point. I'd be much happier if they were putting out site-based books like the Scarred Lands books (Hollowfaust, Mithril, etc.) than putting out adventure modules. I'm certainly glad that other folks'll get some use out of them, but it'll take one jaw-droppingly spectacular module to get me to pony up for one.

 

[megamania]

I'll throw in my 2 coppers-

I would like to see adventures published that create plothooks. When I did Forgotten Forge for Eberron it had several plot hooks within it. This is something I like.

You run the published adventure then use whatever plothook your players took interest in.

The inside back cover could be nothing but follow-up adventure ideas.

examples- The map found can be this and it relates to the story this way
This NPC is really this and he would like your aid (remove you) because...
If the party decides to keep the magical item this can happen


It kinda becomes a sounding board of ideas to play off of.

If it is a series of loosely linked adventures each should list about six ways of connecting the stories for ease of the DM and give the players a feel of their decisions matter.

just my my 2 coppers....

 

[Turjan]

If I had to guess, I'd say Wizards is realizing that many of their customers refuse to look outside WotC for adventures so, even though there are lots of great third-party adventures out there, many customers are demanding more adventure support from WotC.

That probably hits the nail on its head. Even on this board, which bears the d20 in its name, you will find posters who simply deny the existence of everything that hasn't been published by WotC. I just think of "there's been nothing published about fey so far", which you will hear repeated over and over. From there it's only logical that WotC publishes adventures on their own, whether it's directly profitable or only indirectly.

 

[MerricB]

I'll throw in my 2 coppers-

I would like to see adventures published that create plothooks. When I did Forgotten Forge for Eberron it had several plot hooks within it. This is something I like.

You run the published adventure then use whatever plothook your players took interest in.

There are quite a few plot hooks in Fane of the Drow. (Actually, the adventure is mostly four set-pieces plus plot hooks for you to then expand upon.)

Cheers!

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I'd like to see them do new adventures, but with the Goodman Dungeon Crawl Classics covering the old school style of module pretty well, WotC will really have to step up the plate. They need to do something innovative and new to really generate interest, or do classic style modules as well as possible, given their greater resources.

Beyond that, I've hoped they would toss out a few d20 Modern/Future/Past/Apocalypse adventures beyond the downloadable ones. They tend to be too brief. I'd love to see them do a series of modules for d20 Modern; this game could use its own "Adventure Path" from WotC. I know third party adventures are available, but I'm talking about what would be nice to see from WotC.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

WotC has the potential to sit a group of designers down with the instruction: Make The Best Adventure Ever Written. The stuff coming out of Dragon is good. I really like their adventure paths, and the one-shot modules are also usually very nice. They've got a team working full-time on making this stuff and it shows. Now, WotC's previous offerings in the adventure market have been fair-to-middling. But I think that was a lack of effort. They just said to a bunch of authors, "make us an adventure for levels X to X+3."

If they went at adventure design aggressively, put a team of authors (and sous-authors) together for each project the way they do for sourcebooks, did extensive playtesting, packaged the thing up nicely... I'm thinking a series of unconnected mega-modules of City of the Spider Queen or RttToEE scope. Stuff that you can send your party into for 6 or 8 levels, and which are robust enough that you can roll up characters of the appopriate levels and just play that one module instead of a full-length campaign. And since they have the resources and staff for it, they can really take a running start at making them really, really good adventures.

While Dungeon has the position to corner the market on "adventure paths," which are connected but don't necessarily have to be (since they have an adventure-a-month format they can exploit), WotC has the ability to create higher-priced soft- or hard-cover modules. Instead of quickly cranking out a bunch of mediocre modules like they did when 3.0 came out, they could put some time and effort into modules that are designed to be the modules we'll be talking about in five or ten years.

So, I'm less than enthusiastic about the initial direction they're going. Fane of the Drow is a scene, not an adventure. I'm not so sure about (the skimpy-looking) Sons of Gruumsh, either, although I'll wait for the reviews before making judgement. But the last thing I want to be paying for is disposable adventures, or these new adventurelets like Fane of the Drow. I like adventures that have enough room in the book to flesh out some locations, some NPCs, motivations, plotlines, etc. I'm tired of pamphlet-sized adventures that are essentially three fights and a pile of treasure. I see a lot of potential for WotC to get back into adventure publishing in a powerful fashion, but it remains to be seen whether this is something that they'll jump into with both feet or something they're just waving some cash at in the hope that it pans out for them.