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

This was exactly the point I was trying to suggest.

DarkCrisis stated that WotC should be able to produce better product than other companies because they have a larger staff and more money. But they have no proof that this indeed is at all true. It might merely be that they feel like this should be true, so I was asking if they actually knew of any other large companies (not even on WotC's scale because no one else is) for which this was true... that having more staff and more cash on hand meant they could produce better adventures than a small independent company could, whose only focus was on that singular adventure.

Paizo would be one that I imagine would be closer to WotC's scale in terms of employee numbers, money to spend, and designers/writers who need to keep several plates spinning at one time (not just work on the singular adventure.) But are their adventure paths as editorially sound and logically progressed moreso that WotC's? I don't know. But that's why I was asking.

It's easy to say "WotC has they money and people, they should be able to make the greatest adventures of all time every time!"... but what proof is there that that's at all true?

Not sure on their recent products but from day 2005ish t 2014ish they were making better APs than WotC. Several CoS equivalents and a mediocre one was more the exception espicially between Age of Worms to Kimgmaker.

That statement is more for levels people played at. And 3.X was rough at higher levels.
 

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Maybe, maybe not: but if you can have one booklet or all 7 in hardcover for the same price or at best 7 for the price of 2 paying full MSRP...how many customers eould ever buy tge softcover? I would posit, few enough that they don't make them
Oh they’re totally not going to make them. It’s just fun to play pretend. In the end it’s what all of this is….adults playing make believe and then “debating” every finite aspect of it in sickening detail. 🤓
 

Oh they’re totally not going to make them. It’s just fun to play pretend. In the end it’s what all of this is….adults playing make believe and then “debating” every finite aspect of it in sickening detail. 🤓
True! But that is the reason why they won't: not even ROI, it would just be a flagrantly terrible deal and D&D players would do the math on that.
 



Not sure on their recent products but from day 2005ish t 2014ish they were making better APs than WotC. Several CoS equivalents and a mediocre one was more the exception espicially between Age of Worms to Kimgmaker.

That statement is more for levels people played at. And 3.X was rough at higher levels.
Contrariwise, I've seen a lot of people having huge problems with Kingmaker. And that's the one everyone talks about as being good. And, I know from my own experience running it in PF1 that it has a lot of issues.

Paizo are good at writing adventures, but so are Wizards. (And I note that the lead designer of both Shattered Obelisk and Vecna is Amanda Hamon, who worked on many Pathfinder products.)

Writing good adventures is hard, and a lot of people have unrealistic expectations.

You think Curse of Strahd is good? Let me show you everyone who hates it.

Quite frankly, most of the D&D adventures from Wizards are perfectly playable, like most of the Paizo APs. I think Descent into Avernus is one of the biggest atrocities released for D&D, but it is still playable - and I see people who really enjoyed playing it and don't understand why I and others are so down on it.

Cheers,
Merric
 

What makes a good adventure?

It's not a question I can answer definitively, because there's not a definitive answer. What I can tell you is what I want in an adventure, but that doesn't necessarily correspond to what you want.

Here's an example: An adventure that consists of keywords and bullet points is utter trash.

That's something I normally take to be true, but you'll find a lot of people who love adventures like that. I want sentences and paragraphs, and I don't want to be spending time trying to synthesize descriptions from an overabundance of bullet points. Give me boxed text that is to the point!

So, that I react really badly to such adventures while others adore them doesn't help very much. (Contrariwise, I get very annoyed at the "we're paid by the word" writing style of Paizo).

For any adventure, there are genres of writing style. And you need to identify which ones you enjoy and want to run.

And this comes down to element after element of what makes an adventure. There are so many things that will "spoil" or "make" an adventure for you. "I only like adventure environments like Keep on the Borderlands." "I want an epic plot like Red Hand of Doom." "I only like dungeons!"

Cheers,
Merric
 

Contrariwise, I've seen a lot of people having huge problems with Kingmaker. And that's the one everyone talks about as being good. And, I know from my own experience running it in PF1 that it has a lot of issues.

Paizo are good at writing adventures, but so are Wizards. (And I note that the lead designer of both Shattered Obelisk and Vecna is Amanda Hamon, who worked on many Pathfinder products.)

Writing good adventures is hard, and a lot of people have unrealistic expectations.

You think Curse of Strahd is good? Let me show you everyone who hates it.

Quite frankly, most of the D&D adventures from Wizards are perfectly playable, like most of the Paizo APs. I think Descent into Avernus is one of the biggest atrocities released for D&D, but it is still playable - and I see people who really enjoyed playing it and don't understand why I and others are so down on it.

Cheers,
Merric

I can see why eole don't like CoS. Parts if it are ick for example.

I try and differentiate between stuff I don't like eg megadungeons and stuff that's probably bad eg Forest Oracle.

There is No Honor foe example I think s one of the bestcadventures ever inho. The rest of Savage Tide not so much.
 


An adventure is a creative work; a very particular form of writing. Creative works can be influenced for better or worse by a company system, but fundamentally you need solid creatives expressing interesting ideas with effective execution.

Unfortunately, an anniversary celebration is all about the brand and corporate demand, and not about anything artistic, so it makes it that much harder to get writers inspired even if they are otherwise skilled and passionate.
 

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