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

[UngainlyTitan]

The issue is simply economic. Magazine sized "modules" are just too expensive to produce, especially with distribution and paper costs skyrocketing. So shorter adventures either need to be part of a collection, or digital only. And we know how some people feel about the latter option.

They need a pipeline from DMsGuild to D&DBeyond. Make it easy for authors on DMsGuild to put the same module on D&dBeyond and get paid on similar terms.

It just occurred to me, we are seeing Gleemax rising from its grave in a new form. An electronic portal and sales platform, with chargen and rules lookup and a 3d VTT.

 

[Nutation]

Well, I'm not entirely sure how Adventure League works, but PFS banks on 4 hour GM sessions.

It's the same structure. 2- and 4-hour scenarios with some story arcs of 3 scenarios if you want something longer.

 

[Burnside]

They need a pipeline from DMsGuild to D&DBeyond. Make it easy for authors on DMsGuild to put the same module on D&dBeyond and get paid on similar terms.

It just occurred to me, we are seeing Gleemax rising from its grave in a new form. An electronic portal and sales platform, with chargen and rules lookup and a 3d VTT.

Regarding the former, pretty much every DMsGuild creator agrees with you. WotC's purchase of DNDBeyond has removed the major obstacle to that happening, so it's now a possibility.

Regarding the latter, I think that is exactly where we are headed, and it will also eventually include a match-making system linking online players to online DMs, both paid and unpaid.

 

[Lanefan]

You beat me to it. Sure, WotC don't publish the old 32- and 64-page adventure books of old, for economic reasons. But they have published several collections of smaller adventures that would seem to be almost exactly what the OP is looking for.

If one is interested in all 7 (or however many) adventures in the collection, then sure. But if only one or two appeal I don't want to have to pay for the other five I'll likely never use.

That, and hardcover books don't lend themselves well to detached heavy-card covers with the maps on the back that can double as makeshift DM screens. This IMO is the biggest backward step published adventure design when comparing the 1980s to now.

 

[Lanefan]

Good is relative and subjective though. I don't think I have ever seen what I consider a "good" adventure. Not by TSR, not by WotC, not by Paizo, not by Chaosium, and not by any 3PP I have checked out.

And so of course I have to ask: what are your criteria for a "good" adventure?

 

[Stormonu]

It would be nice to see the return of the 32 or 64 page adventure module; the compilations have the disadvantage that I may only want one or two of the enclosed adventures instead of the proffered half-dozen. Several other publishers are doing individual modules, so there has to be some money in it. The current D&D team has probably shied away from it because it's a small group, and easier to compile a bunch of short adventures in one product, rather than try to produce a half-dozen smaller products. Perhaps if D&D's success continues, they might have a large enough team and call for independent mix-n-match adventures in the old format.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Almost, for me.

I don't mind there being some internal story to the adventure but I don't want the authors to waste their time and page-count trying to fit the adventure into the greater world or setting. I'll do that. It's what I'm here for.

By internal story I mean notes on how different things within the adventure interact e.g. different factions, different dungeon inhabitants, what element B will probably do once the PCs have dealt with element A, that sort of thing. Put another way, if the author makes some effort to give the adventure some life, I appreciate it.

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.

Part of the thing with 4e adventures* in particular, I think, was that they were written somewhat on an assumption that the PCs would blast through them in a single non-stop run without retreat or rest; meaning that for the author there was little if any need to think about "what happens next". When converted and run in a system where stopping, retreating, resting, and coming back maybe a few days or even a few weeks later is very much a thing, the holes in the writing and "plot development" become glaringly apparent.

* - early ones, anyway; I didn't much bother picking up any later ones after how I fared with what I had.

 

[Shardstone]

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.

Radiant Citadel is the best adventure content released for this entire edition. Your lack of interest in the product doesn't mean the product doesn't exist. You're literally asking for more small adventures when a book just came out and ANOTHER BOOK WAS JUST ANNOUNCED FOR DECEMBER THAT IS ALL SHORT ADVENTURES.

Like c'mon man, you not liking the content doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That's an insane argument. What you really meant was "I want more adventures that suit to my taste to be published," because the original premise of this thread literally does not work if you acknowledge the reality that they are published all the time.

 

[Tom B1]

...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 like campaigns that cover 3-4 levels. That means you can get into a good storyline, have some epic events, and then move to something different. I think original D&D had a number of short campaigns (Slavers, Giants, Drow, Saltmarsh/Underwater, Hommlet & Temple, etc). Some were a bit longer (up to 6 or 8 levels) but I don't ever recall anything '20 levels!'. With that sort of game (I've played one in 3.5 and I in 4) it always felt we were pushing encounters just to keep up the pace of leveling so the campaign didn't last 5 year years... it was a pressure I never recall in AD&D. And it just felt, in 4e, as 'tactical puzzles' not RPing.

 

[Tom B1]

...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.

Also, I've become more 'actors, resources, their goals, and possible ways players can cross paths' in a sandbox sort of way and adventures come from player agency and from how the players choose to deal with any encounter or information that could lead to getting into it with some possibly hostile actors. Players are not forced to follow out a campaign arc - they can decide they've got something better to do, just aren't interested in continuing, or have a better opportunity... it feels more like there is a lot of choice and player groups can blaze their own trail and the GM just reacts to their directions and adventures can occur.

I like sandboxing. I'm not all about dungeons and murder hoboing so I like goals, hatreds, wish lists, etc. as drivers for both the players and the NPCs. When those interfere with an NPC, then the party will likely encounter that NPC or his works or minions. But the lack of a hard plot railroad also lets NPCs decide to change their plans if the players seem threatening or just nosy. That's not so easy when following a pre-planned module.

Players have to get used to (bred out of...) the differences between a DM-led tour through a pre-determined story like a classic play and giving that up to driving the plot in the vein of improv where a lot is revealed at the table, by playing and rolling dice, and sharing ideas.