D&D General (SPOILERS for Vecna: Eve of Ruin) Are My Standards Too High for Adventures?

[KYRON45]

That is like expecting Disney to put out experimental indie films. It doesn't make sense.

It makes perfect sense, but its risky. So instead we get Return to the return to the revisited version of the old fashioned dungeon from yesteryear. Not the dungeon from 3 versions ago, but the one from 25 years ago. Except now it makes no sense at all because we nuked the lore that made it what it was back before you learned how to drive.

 

[jayoungr]

What’s funny about Strahd is it isn’t wholly created by modern WotC. It’s a remake of an old adventure.

Just the castle part. The bulk of Curse of Strahd, i.e. everything outside the castle, is new.

 

[DarkCrisis]

A friend of

Paizo used to do RPG Superstar, which started simple (create an item or monster on this theme) as as it went on and the field narrowed, the challenges got more involved (create an adventure). The winner got a writing assignment, i think.

I am pretty sure it is still going but under Roll For Combat.

A friend of mine won one of those writing contests and they published her adventure. I own a signed copy

 

[grimmgoose]

WOTC just can't make good adventures. I don't want to think it's their writers, but rather their process.

I don't know why folks are giving WotC a pass here because high level adventures are hard or because anniversary or whatever.

WotC has one job: making good D&D books. Maybe they should get back to focusing on that.

Also, if they're going to call themselves "The World's Greatest Roleplaying Game", shouldn't they also have the best adventures? If you google "best TTRPG adventures", you're likely going to Masks of Nyarlathotep or The Enemy Within. Maaaaaybe you see Curse of Strahd (which, while good, isn't great IMO), but shouldn't that list be stacked with WOTC adventures?

 

[jayoungr]

Probably the weakest 5E Adventure books are Tyranny of Dragons and Dragonheist...but, well, those both worked in practice for me, still?

I never understood why Tyranny got so much hate.

I am firmly convinced that Tyranny of Dragons would be rated much higher if it hadn't been the first campaign-length adventure to be published for 5E.

It has a few issues. One problem is that it was developed with the playtest stats, and it runs FAR better with them than with the final monster manual. (Some CRs changed a LOT!)

The single-volume reissue fixed this problem.

 

[Faolyn]

Sure, but it can be very hard to ignore when the balance between they make stuff you like and they make stuff you don't really starts to shift mostly or entirely into the negative. Quite frankly, not everyone is as strong as you.

Meh. That's just when you find a different game. It's not really a biggie.

 

[Reynard]

Meh. That's just when you find a different game. It's not really a biggie.

With 5E, you don't have to find a new game, just find the publisher that produces the content you prefer. This is why Open gaming is good thing for both consumers and WotC. Those customers stay in the WotC ecosystem are are more likely to buy some WotC material than if they left 5E altogether.

 

[dave2008]

I think I will start a new thread for this, but: what makes an adventure good? People love to say something is bad, but I rarely hear about what makes an adventure good.

Me personal opinion: You can't make a good campaign length adventure. PC just have to many options and players to many different ideas. Instead, you can make good encounters.

So for me, I would like to see books of encounters with potential threads to tie together some of those into a story of your (and your players) crafting.

 

[Shardstone]

TSR went out of business for practically destroying its creatives. That and the abundance of material self competing along with the inability to be able to adapt their material schedule for what was actually selling. TSRs demise was a bunch of factors.

According to Zeb Cook, your second reason as a non-factor. They had a cycle where they would print products for one world, then those products would go out of print as they moved to the next world. The bigger issue was your first reason, which was they had a format and leadership that not only ground down the creatives, but burned bridges and hollowed out the company.

 

[Reynard]

I think I will start a new thread for this, but: what makes an adventure good? People love to say something is bad, but I rarely hear about what makes an adventure good.

Me personal opinion: You can't make a good campaign length adventure. PC just have to many options and players to many different ideas. Instead, you can make good encounters.

So for me, I would like to see books of encounters with potential threads to tie together some of those into a story of your (and your players) crafting.

When I consider the things I would produce if I decided to go indie instead of freelance, at the top of the list are Stand-alone Adventure Creation Kits (SACKs) that detail a situation and those factions, personalities, locations and events related to it, designed specifically for GMs to be able to include in their own campaign. Explicitly NOT adventures.