D&D 5E One of the biggest problems with WoTC's vision of published adventures

[Sacrosanct]

Right up front, I want to say that this could very well be a generational problem, and not nearly universal to most tables. Secondly, I think the published adventures (Tiamat, CoS, OotA, SKT) have a lot of good things about them, and for the most part we've enjoyed playing them.

However, here is my problem. Probably the biggest problem. All of those published adventures go to level 10 or 15. When you're done with them, your PCs are pretty much done. Time for retirement. I played TSR D&D as my main edition from 1981 to 2012. One thing about TSR D&D is that the level ranges 4-10 took a long time. You could go on several adventure modules and still be within that level range. Just finished the entire Slaver Series? No problem, we can still go play Ghost Tower of Inverness, and when done with that, go play White Plume Mountain. The DM would tie all of those together in his or her own campaign world with a central plot. Maybe after completing the Slavers, your PCs enjoyed their spoils while you went on another campaign with different PCs and a different DM, then came back later to reuse those original PCs in another adventure.

I really miss that with 5e's official published campaigns. The campaigns above that I've finished? I really doubt I'll ever use those PCs again. We've never really played end game levels anyway, not that there are any epic level adventures put out yet even if we wanted to... And you can't really take a 15th level PC and play them in lower level adventures.

With TSR D&D, we'd play a PC for an adventure, then a different PC in a different adventure. It allowed us to get more hands on experience with different character themes, and choose our favorites without spending dozens of sessions on the same campaign with the same PC. Maybe after playing 4 PCs in 4 different modules, I decided to use Norlay as my favorite when we did future adventures. In the current campaigns by WoTC, you can't really do that. It would be like switching PCs every chapter, and that doesn't really jive well with how the adventure progresses organically.

Maybe that's why I would really like to see a return to the old school style modules.

 

[CapnZapp]

5th edition basically has no solid support for play above level 10-12 or so.

I guess it's a sound business decision.

Both the decision to market the game as having the iconic twenty levels, and the decision to put essentially 100% of the effort on the levels where most people spend their time, I mean.

It's like people wanting Dark Sun or Eberron support. People wanting high-level support is just not a big enough chunk of the market.

WotC have been really savvy or harsh (depending) this time around with doing everything where lots of customers are and doing nothing where few customers are.

 

[abirdcall]

I think it depends on the adventure.

HotDQ had this problem because each chapter was assumed to be a level and you were supposed to level up by milestones.

CoS doesn't have this problem the same way. The entire adventure ends at 10th level and there is a lot to explore and do.

I like the levelling in general in 5e.

Levels 1-2 - 1 Session each
Levels 3-4 - 2 Sessions each
Levels 5-10 - 3-5 Sessions each

That has been my experience and the curve feels good.

That said, I would like to see episodic adventures, where each one isn't tied to the last like there used to be.

 

[Sacrosanct]

5th edition basically has no solid support for play above level 10-12 or so.

I guess it's a sound business decision.

Both the decision to market the game as having the iconic twenty levels, and the decision to put essentially 100% of the effort on the levels where most people spend their time, I mean.

It's like people wanting Dark Sun or Eberron support. People wanting high-level support is just not a big enough chunk of the market.

WotC have been really savvy or harsh (depending) this time around with doing everything where lots of customers are and doing nothing where few customers are.

Yeah, I get the reasoning based on the things you listed, but my biggest beef is that the adventures are all one big campaign. And you can't really do the things like those I mentioned in my OP. I'm not really asking for high level campaigns, or something odd. I'm asking for shorter unrelated adventures, so you can do the things with your PCs that we did in TSR D&D.

 

[JonnyP71]

Part of the problem is that PCs level so ridiculously quickly...

In the 'good old days', once you reached about level 6 it really slowed down, and then from level 8 onwards through name levels you were sometimes looking multiple series of adventures to gain a level! You might go into White Plume mountain having reached level 7, and emerge only roughly halfway to level 8... Starting G1-3 at level 9-10, some of the party probably would not have enough to gain a level when they finished G3!!!!

But you know what, I liked it that way.

 

[Dausuul]

I think CapnZapp nailed it. WotC has decided on their business model: We present you with an entire prepackaged campaign, and you can run the entire thing out of the book, from zero to hero. According to their market research*, this is what the DM on the street is looking for. Since they've stuck with the model for a couple years now, it seems safe to assume sales are pretty good, and therefore their assessment of the market is likely right.

[size=-2]*Caveat: As someone else pointed out a while back, market research is devilishly hard. It's one of those problems that can't be solved simply by throwing money at it--if you don't have the expertise to do it right, you also don't have the expertise to determine if your hired guns are doing it right, so you're basically just pouring money into a hole and hoping you picked the right hole. So I don't for a moment assume that WotC's market research is The Final Word. But it's better data than the rest of us have.[/size]

 

[Sacrosanct]

I know the market research said that most players like playing between X and Y range, but I think it's a flawed assumption to mean that they should only put out adventures that include all the level ranges that people play. I.e., just because most people don't play past level 12 or so, doesn't mean every adventure should be level 1-12 campaigns. It just means that those adventures you do make, have most of them below that cap. Have some 3-4 level adventures, some 5-7 level, some 11-12, etc. It seems like they feel like they have to have all levels from 1 to 12 in the same adventure.

 

[GameOgre]

I want a third party to come along and release a OLD School optional rule set and adventures for it.

Slow leveling and tons of small adventures where you might gain a level maybe but two would be having to kill everything and a little unrealistic.

5E was supposed to bring different styles of play together but it just hasn't really done that.

On the other hand it's good at what it does do and the old games are still out there and now on PDF to buy so....play them!

Yeah I think that's what i really feel. D&D 5E is great for what it is. A FAST leveling power character rpg experience. A Quick fix and then you are done kinda game. I mean if playing for like six to nine months to finish is quick to you that is. Some groups probably still have never finished a adventure path.

But for longer play or even different styles like old school.

Go play those games! There is nothing wrong with them!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I never really played the old adventures, but were they really that much shorter than what's out now? Is it the case that older adventures were shorter, so you could mix and match several over the course of a few levels? Or is it the case that they were just as long, but gave relatively little experience for all of that?

 

[JonnyP71]

I never really played the old adventures, but were they really that much shorter than what's out now? Is it the case that older adventures were shorter, so you could mix and match several over the course of a few levels? Or is it the case that they were just as long, but gave relatively little experience for all of that?

Typically an average 1E AD&D module would take 9-12 hours. My group did Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh thus - preamble and Haunted House upper levels, 1 3 hour session, Haunted House lower levels, deciphering what they found, selling stuff and training was the 2nd 3 hour session, then the finale on the ship took 1 4 hour session.

We managed Ravenloft in a single session of about 9 hours play... I say 'managed', Strahd got them.

It does depend on the pace of the group's style of play, and the demands of the adventure in question - Tomb of Horrors took about 10 hours for them all to die (twice in some cases), and my 5E conversions of Castle Amber and Master of the Desert Nomads both took about 20 hours to complete each... there was a hell of a lot of adventure packed into most of the earlier X series!