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

[FitzTheRuke]

World shattering events sound cool. Running them however......

Any high level adventures you recall that do it well? Paizo stopped doing higher level stuff.

I'm more thinking of all of the 5e APs, not anything epic-level (though I think if you built slowly and properly, you could pull THAT off, too - obviously you'd do it less often than you'd produce 1-7 Adventures - but you could do it occasionally.

That's probably how I'd do it - I'd make several sandboxy L1-7 Adventures, that all could lead to a smaller number of L8-14 adventures, that in turn could lead to a very few L15-20 adventures. The first would be helping out towns and individual NPCs, with plenty of advice for DMs on how to connect the PCs to the NPCs so that there are proper stakes when you pit them against the larger scale of the next tier, where you'd get into grander scale stuff, and so on.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

To be clear, I don't have an issue with campaign length adventures NOT being meant to pull apart, nor do I care if they are. What I find frustrating is the people that constantly defend the long adventures by claiming their are built for and intended to be used as toolkits. yes, experienced GM's can and should do that, but that is not the same thing as the designers building it to that end and selling it that way.

The only fault I have with what you're saying here is that the designers have specifically stated that they mean to design them that way. I'd agree with you if you want to say that they didn't do a great job of it, but I can't get on board with you when you say that they didn't do it at all. They did, just not well.

 

[Reynard]

I'm more thinking of all of the 5e APs, not anything epic-level (though I think if you built slowly and properly, you could pull THAT off, too - obviously you'd do it less often than you'd produce 1-7 Adventures - but you could do it occasionally.

That's probably how I'd do it - I'd make several sandboxy L1-7 Adventures, that all could lead to a smaller number of L8-14 adventures, that in turn could lead to a very few L15-20 adventures. The first would be helping out towns and individual NPCs, with plenty of advice for DMs on how to connect the PCs to the NPCs so that there are proper stakes when you pit them against the larger scale of the next tier, where you'd get into grander scale stuff, and so on.

I would love to see them do it like this. Paizo has kind of gone that way with their low and high level APs that one could conceivably mix and match now that there is a library.

In reality, WotC has enough starter sets at this point they could probably just start making 6-13th level campaign modules. Half of the previous ones had mostly filler for levels 1-5 anyway.

 

[DragonLancer]

Why ever would you need someone to write a generic plot for you?! If you can't do it yourself you could lift one from pretty much anywhere!

I never said generic plot. My issue with many campaigns/adventure path that I see, are that they often built into a specific setting hardwired into the campaign. ENW's own (but very good) War of the Burning Sky is a great example. You can strip it but as is, it is based around the specific nations, history and peoples of it's self contained setting. Now, compare that to Paizo's adventure paths. Yes, built for Golarion but easily lifted and converted to any campaign setting with minimal effort.

It's nothing to do with generic plot. It's everything to do with how easily it is to lift and drop into an established setting at your own table. I have commitments and time is precious, so I don't want to waste it shoehorning a campaign into my setting when I could just be making notes and getting on with it.

For the same reason, I liked Paizo's APs because they have done the hard part and given me a campaign I can use with minimal effort that goes 1st to 16th or up to 20th.

 

[tetrasodium]

To be clear, I don't have an issue with campaign length adventures NOT being meant to pull apart, nor do I care if they are. What I find frustrating is the people that constantly defend the long adventures by claiming their are built for and intended to be used as toolkits. yes, experienced GM's can and should do that, but that is not the same thing as the designers building it to that end and selling it that way.

Campaign length adventures need to have some degree of pull apart support --OR-- they need to very explicitly define themselves as a railroad where the players lack agency to make choices that could result in them going around X ignoring Y and jumping straight to P before spending wayyyyyy more sessions than expected on Q.

Absent the creature diversity and expected magic item churn provided
by the 3.5/of templates it becomes quite difficult to rescale things as needed and we wind up with all these weirdly inappropriately leveled world shattering adventure components that players with agency to choose where to go next will often have PCs who wildly miss the level/gear expectations

 

[W'rkncacnter]

World shattering events sound cool. Running them however......

Any high level adventures you recall that do it well? Paizo stopped doing higher level stuff.

oh boy, zeitgeist shilling time

 

[Zardnaar]

To be clear, I don't have an issue with campaign length adventures NOT being meant to pull apart, nor do I care if they are. What I find frustrating is the people that constantly defend the long adventures by claiming their are built for and intended to be used as toolkits. yes, experienced GM's can and should do that, but that is not the same thing as the designers building it to that end and selling it that way.

This. Its really not obvious.

Its experienced DMs assuming everyone plays line them. Experienced DMs are a minority. DMs in general are a extreme minority apparently.

 

[Reynard]

This. Its really not obvious.

Its experienced DMs assuming everyone plays line them. Experienced DMs are a minority. DMs in general are a extreme minority apparently.

If the majority of fans have discovered the hobby in the last 5 years, then the majority of GMs also discovered the hobby in the last 5 years.

 

[Zardnaar]

If the majority of fans have discovered the hobby in the last 5 years, then the majority of GMs also discovered the hobby in the last 5 years.

Yeah but apparently it's 1 in 20 are DMs. DM shortage and all that.

Veterans of multiple editions are probably sub 10% at this point. Last WotC survey 75% were 18-40 iirc.

Veteran DM would be say a couple of years or several campaigns I suppose.

I've got 3 DMs in my group we're basically training the locals. Ones newbie he's a dad and is running for a younger group (5 DMs in 2 years. Teen dramas).

 

[tetrasodium]

Yeah but apparently it's 1 in 20 are DMs. DM shortage and all that.

Veterans of multiple editions are probably sub 10% at this point. Last WotC survey 75% were 18-40 iirc.

Veteran DM would be say a couple of years or several campaigns I suppose.

I've got 3 DMs in my group we're basically training the locals. Ones newbie he's a dad and is running for a younger group (5 DMs in 2 years. Teen dramas).

That aligns with my experience too. There's a definite age gap between the average gm age and average player age among the regulars who show up to run/play AL at the flgs where I ran AL for years.