So, Matt Colville posted a video on adventures, their length, and individual adventures vs campaign-length ones:
The Cliff's Notes version:
The problem is that, as a business proposal, modules suck. The number of people who want to start a campaign and would be open to, say, going to explore the frozen north and maybe lift a curse in Rime of the Frostmaiden is probably a lot higher than the number of people in the market for a 6th level adventure where you need to figure out a whodunnit in a small town. In addition, modules want to be self-contained. You want a minimum of dependencies on things outside the adventure itself. And you know what's really easy to make self-contained? A dungeon. So there's a big incentive to make a module into a dungeon (not that Epics are really short on those either). They will also generally be designed to be very generic, because specific means you're excluding potential customers, and modules can't really afford to do that.
I really don't know how to solve this problem, other than by making sure adventure writers (and other people involved in creating adventures) don't need to worry about putting food on the table or keeping a roof over their heads. But I think there's an interesting discussion to be had here.
The Cliff's Notes version:
- The preponderance of big campaign-length adventures like Curse of Strahd (which, for the sake of brevity, I'll call Epics) is bad for the hobby, and shorter adventures (which I'll call modules) would be better.
- The main reason is that with modules, you get a sense of accomplishment. You went to Do A Thing, and then you Did A Thing, and now A Thing is Done. Then you can move on to do A Different Thing. But with Epics, doing The Thing takes a really long time, and you're likely to get distracted long before The Thing is done, either by real-life issues, by not being able to keep track of everything that's going on, or by getting distracted by the new shiny.
- Modules also require less prep, or at least prep in smaller chunks. You don't need to read hundreds of pages to get a grasp of what's going on, only a few dozens. That makes it easier to grab-and-go.
The problem is that, as a business proposal, modules suck. The number of people who want to start a campaign and would be open to, say, going to explore the frozen north and maybe lift a curse in Rime of the Frostmaiden is probably a lot higher than the number of people in the market for a 6th level adventure where you need to figure out a whodunnit in a small town. In addition, modules want to be self-contained. You want a minimum of dependencies on things outside the adventure itself. And you know what's really easy to make self-contained? A dungeon. So there's a big incentive to make a module into a dungeon (not that Epics are really short on those either). They will also generally be designed to be very generic, because specific means you're excluding potential customers, and modules can't really afford to do that.
I really don't know how to solve this problem, other than by making sure adventure writers (and other people involved in creating adventures) don't need to worry about putting food on the table or keeping a roof over their heads. But I think there's an interesting discussion to be had here.
