D&D 5E Rejecting the Premise in a Module

[Helldritch]

As a DM that have had so many players I can say that all published adventures must be adapted to your group and you specific campaign. Even adventures that I wrote my self for my players will be modified, adapted and changed if used with an other group.

I now have two groups, but there was a time when I had five or more and always six players in each group. That is a lot of prep and a lots of notes for each group. But it can be done with relative ease if you are organized enough.

What you have to remember is that sometimes, what you find inconsistent, is simply something that was cut inadvertently in the final printing. And it happens a lot more than you think. The page roll, the space limitations and many other factors might have contributed to what you perceived as an inconsistency. Sometimes it is assumed that the DM will adjust this or that part anyways. So to save space and page count, they skipped it. Not necessarily a good choice, but not a bad choice either.

So far, I have like and appreciated every single AP in 5ed. Some were better than the others; that's for sure. Yes, sometimes, some information were missing, but it is my job as a DM to fill up the blanks when needed. An AP is not a dungeon crawl. It is an open sandbox with mostly guidelines. The dungeon crawl parts are described fully, but the sandbox parts are simply described. No finish product can take into account every possible outcome. This is why the DM's position and the work associated with it is so important.

 

[Mort]

Yes this is staggering sometimes. One DM I was talking to told me an AP he ran us through had most of a page of backstory for three minor NPCs it was unlikely the party would even talk to beyond "Which way did the baddie go?", which wasn't relevant to the plot, and which they were unwilling to discuss anyway (!!!), but didn't even have maps for half the encounters and was extremely badly organised.

Module writers sometimes make staggeringly bad decisions on what to include!

Let's take Waterdeep Dragon heist:

The module is 224 pages long. 60 or so of those pages are devoted to villain lairs. Problem is - the adventure, as designed, makes no provision for the PCs to find out about, go to or need anything from any of these lairs!

Further the Lairs are designed to be a challenge for 10+ level characters. The module is designed for characters level 1-5, so if the characters do find a lair and choose to explore it, they're in for a likely TPK.

It's just a baffling waste of 60 pages when the adventure could have used 60 pages to better connect the events in the adventure (the connective tissue of the adventure is sorely lacking and needs a lot of work).

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

The players chose to play in that adventure.

But the players don't know what the adventure entails. Unless they read it beforehand. Unfortunately, many would consider that poor form. In the end, the responsibility falls on the DM.

 

[Helldritch]

Module writers sometimes make staggeringly bad decisions on what to include!

Let's take Waterdeep Dragon heist:

The module is 224 pages long. 60 or so of those pages are devoted to villain lairs. Problem is - the adventure, as designed, makes no provision for the PCs to find out about, go to or need anything from any of these lairs!

Further the Lairs are designed to be a challenge for 10+ level characters. The module is designed for characters level 1-5, so if the characters do find a lair and choose to explore it, they're in for a likely TPK.

It's just a baffling waste of 60 pages when the adventure could have used 60 pages to better connect the events in the adventure (the connective tissue of the adventure is sorely lacking and needs a lot of work).

Of course it is a waste of 60 pages... if you do mot take into account that these villains will be there for Dungeon of the Mad Mage. They will be there for a long time and should harass the PC when they are out of Under Mountain. Recurring vilains are great for story telling! This is exactly what I was hinting at. DH has been written as part of DotMM but some links are missing. Either due to space constraints or editing cuts. You are assumed to buy the second book to play the first. Is it a bad assumption? Yes and no. Those 60 pages are wasted if DH is only a one shot for you and your group moves on to an other part of FR. But if you go on with DotMM, it opens up so many opportunities...

 

[Helldritch]

But the players don't know what the adventure entails. Unless they read it beforehand. Unfortunately, many would consider that poor form. In the end, the responsibility falls on the DM.

Right and wrong. They both share a responsibility in the story/adventure. It is the DM's job to adjust AP to the the players, but the players must also try to play along. The work a DM is doing entails a certain amount of respect. If the players do not even attempt to buy in for a little while or they simply reject just because... This is a lack of respect.

There is such thing as adversarial DM, I have seen my share of these. But there are adversarial players too. I have seen these too.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Right and wrong. They both share a responsibility in the story/adventure.

In a sandbox environment, I might be more sympathetic, but when playing a module, the DM is in control of the story - not the players. It DM responsibility to achieve thematic and cinematic greatness.

It is the DM's job to adjust AP to the the players, but the players must also try to play along.

Depends what you mean by "play along."

The work a DM is doing entails a certain amount of respect. If the players do not even attempt to buy in for a little while or they simply reject just because... This is a lack of respect.

No one deserves respect for work alone. I could draw the letter "a" on a piece of paper one million times. It would be a lot of work, but I'd be a moron for doing it.

It is the DM's job to earn respect by virtue of DMing well. If the DM chooses an adventure boring enough or runs it in a way that makes the players bored enough to go off the rails, then the DM failed and deserves no respect (as a DM, not as a human being). The DM may have failed 1) to run the adventure properly, 2) choose a good adventure, 3) find the right players for that adventure. In the end, however, the result is the same: the DM failed.

There is such thing as adversarial DM, I have seen my share of these. But there are adversarial players too. I have seen these too.

Choosing good players is an important DM skill.

 

[Mort]

Of course it is a waste of 60 pages... if you do mot take into account that these villains will be there for Dungeon of the Mad Mage. They will be there for a long time and should harass the PC when they are out of Under Mountain. Recurring vilains are great for story telling! This is exactly what I was hinting at. DH has been written as part of DotMM but some links are missing. Either due to space constraints or editing cuts. You are assumed to buy the second book to play the first. Is it a bad assumption? Yes and no. Those 60 pages are wasted if DH is only a one shot for you and your group moves on to an other part of FR. But if you go on with DotMM, it opens up so many opportunities...

But those 60 pages could have been used to shore up serious deficiencies in the module. Putting, essentially, a preview and advertisement for future stuff in this module is a waste of space that could have been used much better.

 

[Scott Christian]

So what products, specifically, are you saying are so inferior that they may 5E APs look like Shakespeare by comparison?

The Dalish Curse for Dragon Age.
Anything I have read or played from Numenera.
The one adventure (I didn't run it) from the Conan TTRPG. I looked at it after playing. I love the setting, but the adventure was...
I ran The Inn at Five Points for Dungeon Crawl Classics.
All of these I found much more difficult to run than anything published in 5e or PF. Some of the rulesets I really enjoy. But the written adventures need a lot of work to compare to D&D 5e.

 

[Scott Christian]

I thought it obvious that these are our opinions. The exact opposite could be said for your claim. You have offered no logic. No evidence. No rationale. No reason. All you presented was a vibe that said AP's are "crap." That the ones you had fun with were so laughable that you made a joke out of them. So they were only good ironically. I offered you to get a 5e AP and deconstruct its terribleness for me. You didn't. Instead you said you would have to charge an hourly wage - and called me ridiculous. Um, that would have been the time for you to offer evidence.

I think you mean "the same" because otherwise you're agreeing with me But that's not true, and this was my point about not wanting to argue with people who treat "vibes" as equal to logic. Your response to criticism is simply to accuse the other person, rather than to engage with it.

Not sure why you don't ever use my entire quote. The bolded part of my quote clearly states, with utmost clarity, that we are speaking of opinions. Opinions are not facts. They are subject to being grounded in facts, perception, experience, and time.
And yes, I meant the same.

 

[Scott Christian]

Making my point again! What you're describing is not "running it as intended". It's "running it the way Scott likes to run things". Almost none of that is "intended". That's a giant bullet-point list of things you enjoy doing. Some of them are even the opposite of "running it as intended", and are actual deviations (even if they improve your game). You literally can't claim you need to do almost any of that to "run it as intended".

I have stated clearly, all of these are not needed. I have stated clearly, that a few of those are necessary, such as reading the AP in its entirety. I have (because I believe I am still talking to the topic the OP posted) stated that when an AP is viewed as not good, it is possible that the DM did not take the time to run the AP as intended. Running it as intended includes: knowing your NPC's and being able to characterize them, having a setting that is both logical and vibrant to the players, utilizing encounters that challenge and are memorable, and incorporating your players' characters' backstories into the AP. That is a DM's job. When you run an AP, doing that job (intended), requires some or many of the things I listed. If you don't believe that's the DM's job, then that is a separate discussion. But everything I listed falls into a DM's responsibilities, particularly if they are running someone else's material.