Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
It is interesting. 5e really lends itself more to location-based adventures than plot-based ones, yet pretty much all of the adventure modules that have been published for it are largely plot-based. I think the near-universal praise for Tales From the Yawning Portal (a collection of locations in which to adventure) and Curse of Strahd (an ostensibly plot-based adventure whose “plot” is mostly just connective tissue between the adventure locations), and the critique of more plot-based modules like Tyranny of Dragons and Out of the Abyss, are strong indicators that people can feel this tension, even if they aren’t consciously aware of it.My preferred campaign will include a number of location-based adventures (dungeons, hexcrawls) that may or may not be connected in some fashion that the PCs can explore as they will. As opposed to a storyline the PCs are expected to follow to the end with NPCs and clues and the DM's fervent prayers keeping them on track.
What I have found is that this style of campaign seems to work particularly well with D&D 5e. A lot of the character options, exploration, and social interaction rules we don't see a lot of come online and work beautifully ("What? Natural Explorer is actually good?!"). I'm running a scaled-down version of such a campaign as a replayable one shot, for example, and the 30 or so players I've run through it so far frequently comment that things happen in that game that they never see in plot-based games. I think that's a good result.