D&D 5E Princes of the Apolcalypse/Adventurer's Handbook by Sasquatch Game Studios

[Gundark]

I keep wondering if two storylines a year will be too ambitious. (It's far more ambitious than my group would ever be able to do, but we are old and can only play about once a month - or sometimes ever other month - so I suspect we might be outliers).

This model seems to work well for Paizo.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Given WotC's new proclivity to farming out 5E material, they should get one longtime Greyhawk fan to spearhead producing an adventure and accessory therein: Erik Mona.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

They did something similar in 4E with themed releases like Heroes of Shadow, book of vile darkness, and the big boxed set for the shadow fell all releasing around the same time. Paizo of course does this all the time with a setting book and a player-focused book for each AP at least, often there is more.

I think it's cool that they're jumping right into an elemental evil campaign in he first year and I I agree it has really been a greyhawk thing, but this may not be a straight-up rework of TOEE. They are using the eye and the elemental princes of evil but it sounds like a different approach. If it goes over well they could always revisit the original down the road as part of a greyhawk revival.

 

[Jer]

The current Expeditions line is also part of the Tyranny of Dragons "arc" (in addition to Hoard and Rise). It seems likely that future organised play modules will be part of the Elemental Evil story arc.

You know what - I'd forgotten that the Expeditions line had additional adventures. That makes perfect sense and is a really good reason why you would want a different name for the adventure book than for the arc. So it could just be a single larger book instead of a multi-book arc.

 

[Osgood]

I like the idea of sourcebooks to campaigns (I can picture adventures set on the high seas having nautical options, or those dealing with undead having ghostbusting goodness), but I'm not crazy about everything being tied to the Realms. I get why--it's popular, its safe, and easily ties to the Neverwinter game--I just hope they branch out after a while.

I would love to see one story arc per year be the generic fantasy/Realms (perhaps with guidelines for using it in Greyhawk or some such), but the other being more themed to a specific setting with a completely different feel--like Eberron, Ravenloft, or Dark Sun. I get that these settings are more niche, but if every other campaign is the standard fare they have a bit more freedom to experiment.

I also hope we see some standalone adventures that aren't big campaigns.

 

[jodyjohnson]

I have the urge to pull out the 4th edition write-ups of Ogremoch, Imix, Cryonax, etc. and try Next versions of them in a high level 5e game.

Maybe I should use the Draconomicon write-up of Tiamat to inspire the end of TOD as well.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

If I was going to make a character for hunting giants and elementals and cultists, my instinctive stop wouldn't be the "Adventurer's Handbook".

Y'know, unless the full name is the "Elemental Evil Adventurer's Handbook". But that just says to me "don't buy the book if you're not running the adventure".

According to the article on the front page, that's exactly what it's called.

 

[Mistwell]

Again, they need to copy Paizo.
Big APs for people who like those, and smaller modules for other people.

Uh...didn't Paizo recently kill their smaller adventure line entirely, to focus just on bigger APs? I am not as up on Pathfinder stuff as many others so maybe I am wrong in that...anyone?

 

[DMZ2112]

Waitaminute... Elder Elemental Eye?
Could this mean.... the return of Greyhawk?!?

Setting an Elemental Eye themed campaign in the Forgotten Realms is a massive misstep.

A lot of us were stunned by the clear parallels between Tyranny of Dragons and the War of the Lance, when it was announced. What I find odd about these choices is not so much that they "belong" to other settings, but rather that, surely, the Realms have their own plot lines? Why aren't we seeing those?

Will we get anything not in the realms? as someone said this looks more greyhawk. IS it to to the obsession with factions so it can go with Adventurer's league?

They've as much as said that we will see other settings... at this point, specifically calling out Krynnish and Oeridian NPCs and gods in the PHB and then just leaving them to swing seems like an odd choice.

My players and I spoke briefly about transferring characters between arcs after the Epic event at Gen Con, and I half-joked that I was hoping for spelljammers, but after our discussion I got to thinking that we might be looking at a more organic system: four story arcs, five levels per arc, Adventurers League character retires at 20th level, make a new one for Greyhawk.

 

[Jester David]

Uh...didn't Paizo recently kill their smaller adventure line entirely, to focus just on bigger APs? I am not as up on Pathfinder stuff as many others so maybe I am wrong in that...anyone?

Kinda.
They moved from small 32-page adventures every other month to larger 64-page adventures every quarter. So they're comparable to the adventure in an AP but self-contained.