D&D General The Biggest Problem with Modern Adventures...

[Burnside]

Candlekeep mysteries was underwhelming enough I did not bother with Radiant Citadel. I am curious about the Keys anthology, mostly whether they will actually be "heists" in any useful meaning of the term.

People say stuff like this all the time and all I can say is that there is no way to know whether anything there is good or not. There's too much material and too few reviewers. Plus, honestly, have you EVER seen someone mention a DMsGuild adventure in discussions here? It doesn't matter if they are gold if they are impossible to find.

I recommend RogueWatson for DMsGuild reviews:

 

[Burnside]

Candlekeep mysteries was underwhelming enough I did not bother with Radiant Citadel. I am curious about the Keys anthology, mostly whether they will actually be "heists" in any useful meaning of the term.

IMO, Radiant Citadel is a stronger collection that Candlekeep. Out of the thirteen adventures included, there are really only two that I think are not good.

 

[delericho]

I guess the completely "meh" quality of Candlekkep Mysteries (which led me to avoid Radiant Citadel) made me forget those two anthologies. So, fair enough: WotC is publishing short adventures, but not good ones.

That's fair enough. That said, there's lots of mediocrity in the longer adventures too.

 

[DEFCON 1]

That's fair enough. That said, there's lots of mediocrity in the longer adventures too.

Yep. And there's just as much mediocrity in the old TSR adventures and WotC adventures as well.

Quite frankly, I bet on the whole every single adventure or module ever written "stinks" from the perspective of somebody.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

...is that they are too long. We don't need "campaigns" that take us from level 2 to 11 or 13 or 20. Diversity of experience is important. I hope that in the not-6E era, shorter, more focused adventures come back into vogue and big adventure campaigns/APs disappear.

i think the 'put out a book with semi linked smaller adventures' might get some traction, but I am afraid the day of the 30pg paper adventure are most likely behind us

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Hrm... need short adventures.

Well, we've got TotYP - 7 adventures, Phandelin, Ghosts of Saltmarsh 7 adventures, Waterdeep Dragon Heist - it's only for levels 1-5, a bit longer, than a standard adventure, but, not much, Candlekeep Mysteries 17 adventures, and a new collection of short adventures coming out soon.

So, 33 short adventures. All 100% official. Exactly how many are needed?

Radiant Citadel as well. Spelljammer’s adventure also covers 3 levels

 

[Burnside]

i think the 'put out a book with semi linked smaller adventures' might get some traction, but I am afraid the day of the 30pg paper adventure are most likely behind us

There are SO MANY. They are on DMsGuild. Look, here's a good one:
Shore of Dreams - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

Full-color, 24 page softcover short adventure, print on demand for $11.

 

[delericho]

Yep. And there's just as much mediocrity in the old TSR adventures and WotC adventures as well.

Of course. It would be nice to think, though, that things might have improved with time.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Of course. It would be nice to think, though, that things might have improved with time.

Nah... I don't think that's really possible. Because for every so-called "improvement" to adventure writing, there is an equal number of players for whom these improvement run counter to how they want to play their game. Which means we're always going to have people review adventures with "this thing sucks!"

I mean as an example... for me the "building an encounter" is the least interesting and wanted part of a module. Which means that for me, a lot of 4E's adventures were some of the worst I've seen-- as a lot of them were merely an opening paragraph of "Here's a scenario of something happening"... and then the entirety of the rest of the adventure was just a series of encounter fights with specific monster blocks written out along with their tactics. Virtually no story to the adventure beyond the McGuffin at the top. To me... these types of adventures blow-- just like I think a whole bunch of classic TSR adventures blow for being nothing more than dungeon crawls written to "kill monster, get loot". But I also acknowledge that these adventures are exactly what some other people want. They want adventures completely devoid of story so that they can plop these encounter strings into their own stories and campaigns with little issue.

Which means we now have two separate camps who think the 4E modules were either fantastic or sucked. And thus we can't make any judgements on whether these adventures are now "better" than they were back in the day. They may have improved for some people... but they took a giant step backwards for others.

 

[Charlaquin]

...is that they are too long. We don't need "campaigns" that take us from level 2 to 11 or 13 or 20. Diversity of experience is important. I hope that in the not-6E era, shorter, more focused adventures come back into vogue and big adventure campaigns/APs disappear.

There has been a trend of adventure anthology books that have a half-dozen or so short adventures with some kind of common theme.