D&D 5E State of D&D

[Staffan]

What I want is to be able to get self contained modules on the scale of LMoP that are good for 3-5 sessions and that I can slide into my current campaign. Neither the massive adventure paths nor the AL stuff fits my need.

I mostly agree. I do recognize however that such a thing is hard to make for Wizards - they've said they want each release to be an Event, plus there's the whole issue of format. A hardback has an actual spine which shows up better in a game store, and feels more "deluxe". There's also the issue of cost - Paizo charges $25 for a 64-page module (same size as Lost Mines of Phandelver), and I seriously doubt Wizards would charge less than $30 (their books are generally more expensive than an equal-size Pathfinder book), more likely $35. $30-35 for a 64 page book compared to $50 for a 256-page book doesn't sound like such a good deal.

What might work is an anthology book with 4-8 short adventures. Ideally, they would be playable as stand-alone adventures, but each would have some connections to the next without having an over-arching plot - perhaps adventure 1 has a map that leads to adventure 2, but the plot of adventure 1 is self-contained. I'm thinking linkage on the level of the original 3.0 adventures starting with the Sunless Citadel - you had some recurring mentions of the vampire Gulthias and the dragon Ashardalon, but each adventure stood on its own two feet.

 

[Mistwell]

I'm not Seebs, but in the Days of Old there were other sources for short adventures.

The list of current sources for short adventures for 5e is incredibly long and diverse. People keep pretending if it's not outsourced by WOTC to a 3rd party but is instead just made directly by a third party that it somehow "doesn't count". It's a nonsense standard. 5e has tons and tons of support for short adventures. If you refuse to buy them because they don't have a WOTC symbol on the cover, that's nobody's fault but your own.

 

[Mistwell]

If there's plenty of stuff being produced, I don't much care whether some of it is for things I'm not doing. But when there's a shortage of stuff, I care a bit more about the scarce resources being allocated to things that are not relevant to me, and I got annoyed by seeing people present these non-answers as "rebuttals".

This happens everywhere that people are passionate about stuff. It's like the people who get mad whenever anyone mentions that the current Mac product line doesn't suit their uses as well as it used to (say, because of the lack of built-in Ethernet ports in laptops). There's always some people who offer explanations of other things that might work and get angry and a little insulting or pushy when people say that those things don't work for them as well as the other thing which Apple used to do. Or how, when the PS3 came out and had no rumble controllers, anyone saying they missed that feature got yelled at and insulted.

It's not a good thing! It is not beneficial to the community to tell people they're wrong to not want the thing, or to want the thing under different terms. It's not making Wizards look better or making people happier with D&D; it's just making people feel dismissed and insulted.

First, you keep speaking for others, but you speak for only yourself. WOTC is constantly surveying on people's views of D&D, and they have a lot of resources to check on the reception of 5e. By every single metric we know of, it's being fantastically well received. "People" are not feeling "dismissed and insulted", you are. So you're who we are addressing, and not "people" because it's you who is making the complaint. And I think it's plenty healthy for the community to address complaints to try and help people find a way to be satisfied rather than everyone just sitting back and going "Yeah, you complain on! Rant away! Feel the catharsis!"

Second, why are you refusing to check out all the short adventures from 3rd party producers of content for D&D 5e and only willing to check out content from 3rd parties if it's done with a WOTC stamp on the cover due to outsourcing instead of directly done by a 3rd party?

 

[SteveC]

I'd say the state of D&D at the end of 2015 is largely complete, and ready for either a major tie-in such as the upcoming movie, or the next edition.

At this point 2016 is likely to see some outsourced modules and maybe, if we're lucky, a soucebook.

WotC doesn't have the staff or resources to do much else at this point.

If you can't tell, that makes me sad, since I'd really like to enjoy the edition, but it doesn't have enough meat or crunch for my group (and, to be honest, me) to really enjoy. Now I obviously know that others feel different, and that's great for you, but if you're not into the Realms or adventures, 2015 hasn't had a product for me to purchase. That's too bad because I'd love to offer some support in the form of my $.

So the state is mellow, but if you ask me about the state of games like 13th Age, well, then we have something!

 

[Hussar]

I'm not Seebs, but in the Days of Old there were other sources for short adventures. TSR/Wizards published quite a few, and in addition you had Dungeon. Now the only Wizards-based source is AL, which requires a whole different kind of investment, and isn't available everywhere.

But, there are hundreds of short adventures out there. Sure, they don't have the WotC stamp of approval, but, so what? It's not like they aren't available.

And, as far as AL goes, since you can run online versions through a Virtual Tabletop, then I would argue that it is avaialble everywhere.

 

[Jester David]

I just want SOME splatbooks with a crunch focus.

I don't need a "sea of content" or "bloat." I don't need or want a Pathfinder release schedule or a 4e release schedule or a 3.5 release schedule. We have a trickle of adventure books with an even tinier trickle of new crunch contained therein. At this point, i would kill for a single PHB type release per year (and an MM wouldn't hurt either).

People keep acting like it's all or nothing with releases. It's either a man dying of thirst in the desert or a man drowning in a flood with no intermediate amount of water in between. I'd settle for a canteen, ATM.

It could be argued that it is all our nothing. The difference is just time. With a long enough edition even one book every eighteen months leads to bloat.

Removing all the small splatbooks and campaign books and Pathfinder really has seven big accessories. Over six years. But that's still a LOT of content. More than most tables will use: you don't start a new 1-20 campaign each year, let alone the two or three needed to consume a single accessory the size of the PHB.
A single book per year is great now and even for two or three years but after that it starts to feel bloated, especially if it starts to become expected, if the content is less filling a need and more a gap in the publishing schedule. It's a short term gain for a long term loss.

Unless they just stop after a few books. Three of four accessories thern nothing. But I'm not sure if that'd be better or worse.

 

[seebs]

First, you keep speaking for others, but you speak for only yourself.

That's true of all of us, though. I was merely complaining about people declaring that there's something wrong with anyone who doesn't want to play public games.

WOTC is constantly surveying on people's views of D&D, and they have a lot of resources to check on the reception of 5e. By every single metric we know of, it's being fantastically well received. "People" are not feeling "dismissed and insulted", you are.

I thought I was clear enough, but apparently not.

I have never thought that WotC was being insulting to me.

I think that the people telling me I should be happy with their choices no matter what are being insulting to me.

So you're who we are addressing, and not "people" because it's you who is making the complaint. And I think it's plenty healthy for the community to address complaints to try and help people find a way to be satisfied rather than everyone just sitting back and going "Yeah, you complain on! Rant away! Feel the catharsis!"

Okay, that's not a bad idea at all, except that telling people "you are wrong to not want that thing, and stupid not to see how good the thing is, and should not express this complaint" does not actually help people find a way to be satisfied.

In fact, I already long since found a way to be satisfied, which is to buy only the stuff they actually make available for me to buy, not the stuff they don't, and write my own adventures most of the time anyway. I'm not in this thread because I think there's a horrible problem that will destroy D&D; I'm in it because I saw people handwaving complaints away and saying "those complaints are invalid and the people who have those complaints are invalid".

Thing is, most of the time, people already long since figured out how to adapt to a circumstance, so while I'm sure you intend to be helpful, what you're actually being is invalidating, and that does not help.

Second, why are you refusing to check out all the short adventures from 3rd party producers of content for D&D 5e and only willing to check out content from 3rd parties if it's done with a WOTC stamp on the cover due to outsourcing instead of directly done by a 3rd party?

I have never refused to do anything of the sort. There was a discussion of whether or not Wizards should be publishing more content. People said the AL modules counted as content, other people said "it's not really available to me", and then they got told that they were wrong to think that because all they have to do is play the game the way someone else thinks they should instead of the way they want to.

And that struck me as unhelpful, so I commented.

 

[seebs]

It could be argued that it is all our nothing. The difference is just time. With a long enough edition even one book every eighteen months leads to bloat.

Removing all the small splatbooks and campaign books and Pathfinder really has seven big accessories. Over six years. But that's still a LOT of content. More than most tables will use: you don't start a new 1-20 campaign each year, let alone the two or three needed to consume a single accessory the size of the PHB.
A single book per year is great now and even for two or three years but after that it starts to feel bloated, especially if it starts to become expected, if the content is less filling a need and more a gap in the publishing schedule. It's a short term gain for a long term loss.

This is a really interesting point, and I think it's actually a really good point; overall, while I like getting additional books, I remember the point at which I could no longer just toss my 4E books in a duffle bag, because the bag I'd been using to carry "my gaming stuff" was no longer big enough to hold them. Let alone hold them plus any other stuff I might want handy, like dungeon tiles or whatever.

I would point out, though, I don't think that books like the PHB or various splatbooks are exactly "consumed"; I mean, I keep using them. I do start to be familiar with all the things, so they aren't Interesting And New, but that doesn't mean I use the new books instead, it means that I use the new books too. And that's where we start getting into Too Many Books.

 

[ZzarkLinux]

I remember the point at which I could no longer just toss my 4E books in a duffle bag, because the bag I'd been using to carry "my gaming stuff" was no longer big enough to hold them. Let alone hold them plus any other stuff I might want handy, like dungeon tiles or whatever.

Agreed. There is only so much space in the backpack. There are only so many dollars in the wallet.

They wanted gamers to buy DDI for the character builder. But that's when they lost me as a player :-( It got to the point where other people were using their DDI for my char because the char-gen was unplayable otherwise.

Once I realized that I could barely carry my 5 sets of dice, 3 PHBs, 2 Item Books, 1 Setting Book, and such, then I realized the time / weight / effort just wasn't feasible.

What specific content are people looking for? I'm not talking about missing digital content. Once you get in digital content, then they're competing with WoW, Star Wars, Hearthstone, Microsoft XBox, PlayStation etc... We all know what happened to Pathfinder Online.

What specific content / splat is missing? Are people missing weapon-damage-charts so bad that WotC can print a "Midieval DnD Weapons" book and make a profit?

 

[seebs]

I'm not sure what you mean by "digital content"; for instance, I'd love to be able to buy PDFs of the books. (And I don't think PFO's problems are a result of what they're competing with, so much as of them making a large number of spectacularly bad decisions.)

I'm not sure it makes sense to ask what specific stuff is missing, because part of the point of new content for an RPG is that it's new to you, so until you have it you don't have any way of identifying it. Before the original AD&D MM2 came out, I couldn't have told you I wanted Modrons, because I'd never heard of them. But they have been a wonderful addition to the game that I've used more than once.

Things I would definitely like would include tons more monsters, some sort of usable psionics rules, more variety of sorcerer bloodlines (I'd like there to be a number of bloodlines comparable to what clerics got for types, say), and much more comprehensive material for things like outer planes and post-20 adventuring. I wouldn't at all mind more of the options that showed up in 4e, such as shamans or warlords.