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

[mamba]

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...".

AP stands for adventure path, so you understood it correctly. Not sure what is misleading about something you understand.

An adventure is something shorter than an AP. The stuff in the anthologies are adventures, Rime of the Frostmaiden or Curse of Strahd are APs, to distinguish them from 16 page adventures.

What is the difference between the Abomination Vaults 5e AP and, say, Dungeon of the Mad Mage that makes the former an AP and the latter an adventure?

 

[sevenbastard]

Just give me a sandbox of slightly interconnected location based adventures with a homebase that has some mild intrigue.

It is not that hard.

 

[tetrasodium]

AP stands for adventure path, so you understood it correctly. Not sure what is misleading about something you understand.

An adventure is something shorter than an AP. The stuff in the anthologies are adventures, Rime of the Frostmaiden or Curse of Strahd are APs, to distinguish them from 16 page adventures.

What is the difference between the Abomination Vaults 5e AP and, say, Dungeon of the Mad Mage that makes the former an AP and the latter an adventure?

I think that there is a qualitative difference between the Paizo APs & the wotc HC adventures. The biggest and most important difference is that one is very much designed for the GM to run it and maybe includes a section with player options. In contrast though, the other places servicing a reader who reads it while thinking about playing it very high and sometimes at the expense of the gm trying to run it.

 

[tetrasodium]

AP stands for adventure path, so you understood it correctly. Not sure what is misleading about something you understand.

An adventure is something shorter than an AP. The stuff in the anthologies are adventures, Rime of the Frostmaiden or Curse of Strahd are APs, to distinguish them from 16 page adventures.

What is the difference between the Abomination Vaults 5e AP and, say, Dungeon of the Mad Mage that makes the former an AP and the latter an adventure?

I think that there is a qualitative difference between the Paizo APs & the wotc HC adventures. The biggest and most important difference is that one is very much designed for the GM to run it and maybe includes a section with player options. In contrast though, the other places servicing a reader who reads it while thinking about playing it very high and sometimes at the expense of the gm trying to run it.

 

[bedir than]

Their skill sets suggest they are.

Aren't Haek and Merwin more mechanics nerds while the other two focus on lore?

 

[Reynard]

Just give me a sandbox of slightly interconnected location based adventures with a homebase that has some mild intrigue.

It is not that hard.

They should do one of these for each tier. You start in Phandelver. At 5th you move to 10 towns. At 10th you are off to the Aether Sea and when you hit 15th you land in Sigil!

 

[Morrus]

How would a 5.5 adventure path differ to a 5.0 adventure path?

 

[mamba]

How would a 5.5 adventure path differ to a 5.0 adventure path?

it would have been released after the 2024 core books I assume. It’s basically saying there has not been an AP in a while

One year+ on though no AP yet.

To a degree there also seems to be a hope that it would be better than the more recent ones (Phandelver Below, etc)

Generally I think theres been a massive uptick in product quality (core books, Faerun, FotA, Starter ser). No duds.

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

Its an abbreviation nothing more and nothing less. And most will know what I mean.

 

[TheSword]

Well my own hope would be that it means the days of the WotC "big dumb campaign book" are just over, because they're frankly poor products.

I can’t disagree more with this take.

Firstly the Campaign books are living examples of how a 1-10 (14) campaign can run. The themes are strong. They inspire me far more than individual adventures do. Tomb of Annihiltion really makes me want to run a jungle campaign. Rime an icy wasteland. Dragonheist a city campaign. Out of the Abyss makes me crave the Underdark. Inspiration matters to me as much as implementation. Not to mention all the spinoff products they inspire.

Secondly for anyone who has even causally read them it’s clear that the books are comprised of sections that would be referred to as a module in any other edition. Want a city based investigation of a corrupt noble family - use the first part of DIA. Want one of a dozen jungle locations - use the central part of TOI. Want a frost giants steading or a cloud giant’s flying castle - its in Storm Kings thunder.

Lastly they are choc full of themed monsters, items, maps, NPCs and encounters after encounter I can drop into any situation. The worst of them is still better than the average adventure from earlier editions.

It frustrates me that they draw a disproportionate amount of flak. When I see criticism of the implementation it’s often the most nit-picky personal gripes that get brought up. “I wouldn’t do it this way and therefore this product is worthless.” Or balance is criticized as if there is any universal standard of balance. Worse of all, people complain that the links between chapters or elements don’t make sense but they then want anthologies of adventures that don’t have links at all. If you can make up your own links then stop complaining about the ones in the campaign book - just use your own!

The idea of returning to Paizo’s/3e/4e’s splatbook bloat of ‘options’ fills me with horror. They killed all three of those editions. 5e’s success mirrors the launch of its Campaign books. The first edition to do so successfully and comprehensively. WotC will abandon them at its peril.