D&D 5E (2024) No 5.5 AP Yet?

[Paul Farquhar]

Were they all hired to write "big dumb campaign" books?

Their skill sets suggest they are. They are world builders and story tellers, not mechanics people. Whist a Radiant Citadel 2 anthology would be possible, it seems more natural that they would want to move on to something bigger. Which might be an adventure path, possibly using an RC setting, or a new setting for 2027 (assuming 2026 is Dark Sun, and that is being worked on by an established team).

 

[Zardnaar]

Their skill sets suggest they are. They are world builders and story tellers, not mechanics people. Whist a Radiant Citadel 2 anthology would be possible, it seems more natural that they would want to move on to something bigger. Which might be an adventure path, possibly using an RC setting, or a new setting for 2027 (assuming 2026 is Dark Sun, and that is being worked on by an established team).

My theory is WotC will pivot to player options and world building.

They hired good worldbuilders. Player splat DLC on Beyond. Recent releases have been really good quality wise.

I dont think we will see more Spelljammer type product.

Wouldn't mind a 5.5 AP as I want to see their encounter design. Only seen a hint of it in Adventures of Faerun.

. At level 4 I had PCs sneaking around as a low encountervis 20 goblin warriors or multiple CR 1s and 2s or some combo.

A high encounter is 5 or 6 CR 2s or 5 plus mooks.

I used Karkhalohk from Rime of the Wrist maiden. Lvl 4+ 4 goblins encounter. Not gonna cut it.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yup. There's useful stuff in all of them. I picked all *6?) of them up.

I think their usefuness.was hurt by how little need and room there is for treasure on 5e PCs . One of them should have included rules for chargen skill system and progression to fix that for the gm.

 

[DragonLancer]

I do miss a good adventure path. I'm not particularly interested in adventure anthologies - I can write short adventures myself, and they play better than purchased adventures since mine will be tailored for our campaign and characters.

Same. Adventure Paths were some of the best Pathfinder 1st products. I miss pre-written campaigns. Those that do exist are either too short (only 1st to 12th) or weird and not generic enough to fit into an existing setting.

I bought the Shackled City hardcover. Tempted to tun it but s lot of conversion work for higher lvls

I love Shackled City. One of my absolute favourites. I've run it many times for 3rd and Pathfinder 1st. At some point I plan on converting it as best I can too.

 

[mamba]

Were they all hired to write "big dumb campaign" books?

no idea, but I don’t think APs sell bad and settings or anthologies sell much better, so the ‘WotC can make more money by hosting 3pp products than by creating APs themselves’ is either nonsense or can be applied to other non-core releases as well (i.e. a new Xanathar or an updated MotM).

If it were true for ‘everything’, then hiring people would not make much sense.

But yeah, I doubt WotC is actually retiring the format entirely, but I wouldn't be surprised if its getting a serious rethink.

I doubt it gets retired, not even sure it needs a serious rethink. A bit more coordination between the teams writing the different parts to create a more cohesive whole is pretty much all it takes, the rest is a matter of ideas and quality control

 

[humble minion]

My theory is WotC will pivot to player options and world building.

I think they will in the short term. There was a lot of player options that accumulated over the lifetime of 5e - WotC will want to make it as easy as possible for people playing a legacy subclass to switch over, and will not want prospective 5.5 adopters to look at the pallete of available character options, monsters etc and feel constrained by comparison. Once there's a solid body of mechanical options supporting the new edition, I think they'll probably pivot back and adventures will get a look in once more.

But also, judging by the (mostly very good) Faerun books and what we've seen in UA of Dark Sun, it appears they're moving a bit away from the 'adventure as setting guide' model from 5e products like Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Planescape etc anyway. Which is not a bad thing imho.

 

[Cergorach]

When I read AP, I see Adventure Path. That's a Paizo 'thing' and that pretty much stopped for D&D when Paizo moved to PF. Some Paizo AP have been released for 5e: Abomination Vaults and possibly the Kingmaker Bestiary...

Everything official D&D 5e is called an 'adventure', or "...an adventure in an anthology...". For D&D5e 2024 there's the Dragon Delves book, which is an adventure in an anthology, but has options in it to string the whole thing together. The Keep on the Borderlands box set has adventures in it, there's Welcome to the Hellfire Club, the adventure in the Adventures book for Faerun, so there's ample adventuring stuff available for D&D5e 2024.

As for the future... This year is the 10 year anniversary of Curse of Strahd (2016), one of the more popular adventures in their 5e lineup. It wouldn't surprise me at all if we saw this year a 'new' and updated release for Curse of Strahd...

Calling the D&D adventures APs is imho similar of calling all fantasy RPGs D&D, it's confusing and misleading.

 

[Reynard]

Calling the D&D adventures APs is imho similar of calling all fantasy RPGs D&D, it's confusing and misleading.

There is no functional difference. Both are intended to be the whole campaign.

 

[Cergorach]

There is no functional difference. Both are intended to be the whole campaign.

Sure, but calling Pathfinder or Daggerheart, D&D also has no functional difference. But it wouldn't be clear, it would be misleading, and that's the point I'm making.

 

[DEFCON 1]

My own opinion is that the previous designers knew when their time was ending at WotC and wrapped up all the campaign adventure books they wanted to produce. And the people who were assuming the helm (Bilsland, Arman, Schneider, Wyatt etc.) were getting to start from a clean slate on their own decisions (including whether to make more campaign adventure books and then ramping up the design and production if they did) and thus we are now merely in the down time between the products of both groups.

But I would not be at all shocked if we hear rumblings of a new adventure path that is currently in development right now by the new guard and which will get released in like early 2027. And it's not like it's that big a deal, seeing as how I'm guessing 99% of all D&D tables out there still have one, three, six, or even more APs that have already been released over the past 12 years that they haven't even touched yet and could pick up and run right now if they really needed one that badly. I mean I could grab any one of like 10 different ones that I haven't yet run and could plop it down in front of me and start putting a game together if I felt like it. So waiting another 12 months for WotC to make a new one ain't really much of a problem.