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

[Miladoon]

The problem is that all of those are Adventurer's League.

And AL just doesn't do it for me. It isn't just a single point either - for me AL falls short in just about every possible way, compared to previous-edition (and by that I mean 2E and 3E) modules.

I want an attractive module, in full color, with professional maps. And I want first-party products. Official WotC content.

I understand that WotC has realized that can never earn them any money, so they have stopped.

I just wish they hadn't.

Never been a problem for me but I see what you are saying.

 

[CapnZapp]

Not quoting you specifically to critique, only that it spurred my thoughts...

In the 1E AD&D days, and Queen of Spiders, for example, yes, you may have only raised 2 to 3 levels over the course of a year of play. But, IMHO, the magic item count (vis a vis the "christmas tree") was an indirect leveling system. In other words, in 1E a level 12 fighter with 0 magic items is much weaker than a level 9 fighter loaded down with magic.

I think its easy to forget that. In my memory, we didn't play to level, we played for loot.

That's actually a very important point.

In a low magic campaign, the assumption is that levelling needs to be fast-ish or the players will lose attention.

Times are changing.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The problem is that all of those are Adventurer's League.

And AL just doesn't do it for me. It isn't just a single point either - for me AL falls short in just about every possible way, compared to previous-edition (and by that I mean 2E and 3E) modules.

I want an attractive module, in full color, with professional maps. And I want first-party products. Official WotC content.

I understand that WotC has realized that can never earn them any money, so they have stopped.

I just wish they hadn't.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but do we know for a fact that that's the reason why they aren't doing smaller adventures? Did anyone there actually come out and say that, or are we (most of us) just speculating that that's the reason? They have said they are a small team super busy with what they are doing, so maybe it's not a matter of profit, but a matter of not having the resources (man power) to write them in the first place. Maybe there is a profit model there.

 

[Yaarel]

I thought I was clear in my last post. Apparently not. In what way does any of this help a person play the official campaigns?

Please notice. This magnitude table only decelerates significantly around level 10. So a DM can moreorless use standard campaigns until then.

By level 10 and up, DMs can convert SHORTER adventure modules from old school - and splice them into the longer adventure arcs.

 

[Yaarel]

Also, the DMs Guild is a good place to sell and gift shorter adventure modules by independent designers.

 

[Yaarel]

No, what I'd have to do is what I'm doing with SKT.

I.e., I've inserted B5 Horror on the Hill to replace the dripping caves because I feel the level advancement in chapter 1 is WAY too fast.

I'd have to do that with every chapter to get the slowed level of advancement I'm talking about here. At that point, you're really not playing the published official campaign anymore, but this giant rewrite.

Splicing in other adventures, I feel this is the solution. In old school, many DMs created their own adventures from scratch, anyway.

 

[CapnZapp]

I've been DMing for 35 years. I would like to consider myself experienced. This is not a simple "re-calibrate on the fly". I'd have to rewrite everything in order to make something like HotDQ/RoT playable for a narrowed level range, and that's a LOT of WORK. For one, it doesn't make any sense to be reaching the culmination of that campaign when you're still only level 7ish or so, which is the pace I'm happiest with when factoring in the amount of time actually playing vs. how often you level up. Fighting dragon lords, dragons, and possibly Tiamat herself at level 7? That's a lot more than just modifying on the fly.

No, what I'd have to do is what I'm doing with SKT. I.e., I've inserted B5 Horror on the Hill to replace the dripping caves because I feel the level advancement in chapter 1 is WAY too fast. I'd have to do that with every chapter to get the slowed level of advancement I'm talking about here. At that point, you're really not playing the published official campaign anymore, but this giant rewrite.

Everything you say is true.

Perhaps the most egregious case is Legacy of the Crystal shard, which officially is a, get this, level 1-3 adventure

"Luckily" the D&D Next stats are very wobbly, so they need replacing anyway. And retooling a level 3 encounter as a (more more appropriate) level 7 encounter isn't that hard anyway.

But I digress. High level play is something completely different. You simply can't just change the numbers but otherwise run a level 5 encounter at level 15.

Or vice versa, as in your case.

All of this in addition to the basic fact that by this time you're pretty much doing all the work yourself, which purchasing an official module was supposed to prevent.

I'm running the end of Out of the Abyss, and there is precious little that can be run as-is there, I can tell you that.

So I guess we will simply have to wait for Wotc to get this "one big shared adventure" phase out of their system.

Although I admit it doesn't look good, since the thing about the "shared" part isn't so much the community building of everybody playing and discussing the same adventure...

...it's the everybody buying the same publication part of it they're gunning for.

 

[Doug McCrae]

No, not solved. The campaigns are designed based on the assumption PCs are leveling as expected. If you super slow down the level rate in any of the existing campaigns, you'd have TPKs left and right before you ever got very far. Think about it, how well do you think a party of 5th level PCs would do in Tiamat's temple, assuming that they could even make it that far?

So yeah, I could slow down the level advancement, but then that would render all of the existing adventures unplayable. Which sort of defeats the point.

Would sidequests solve this problem? I'm unfamiliar with the 5e adventure paths so I don't know if they allow room for sidequests or if there's a constant forward pressure, such as time limits, that would make them unviable.

 

[CapnZapp]

I agree with most of what you're saying, but do we know for a fact that that's the reason why they aren't doing smaller adventures? Did anyone there actually come out and say that, or are we (most of us) just speculating that that's the reason? They have said they are a small team super busy with what they are doing, so maybe it's not a matter of profit, but a matter of not having the resources (man power) to write them in the first place. Maybe there is a profit model there.

You're basically answering your own question...

...but yes, we're speculating here. Wouldn't expect a company to spill their strategy beans after all, would we?

 

[Yaarel]

Not quoting you specifically to critique, only that it spurred my thoughts...

In the 1E AD&D days, and Queen of Spiders, for example, yes, you may have only raised 2 to 3 levels over the course of a year of play. But, IMHO, the magic item count (vis a vis the "christmas tree") was an indirect leveling system. In other words, in 1E a level 12 fighter with 0 magic items is much weaker than a level 9 fighter loaded down with magic.

I think its easy to forget that. In my memory, we didn't play to level, we played for loot.

I wonder if the ‘Christmas tree’ is a solution too. If there could be a reliable table that shows the ‘level adjustment’ that magic items cause, then the DM could just pile magic items onto lower level characters to help them survive an official high-level adventure arc as written.