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

[Maxperson]

...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 won't buy them. It's only the books with multiple different short adventures(Yawning Portal, Candlekeep, etc.) that I buy.

 

[dave2008]

Never has before in three editions.

3/4/5E had totally different approaches to and qualities of DMG. 4E had by far the best-quality DM advice and was definitely the easiest for a "noob DM" to run a fun (for everyone involved) game in (esp. with noob players).

Yet 4E had by far the worst WotC adventures at launch. I mean they were super-trash. Every single fault you can point to in an adventure, those three either all had it, or one of them had it in spades. They were so bad I was finally convinced to go back to writing my own adventures (which turned out to be easy because 4E was so good for that).

I have heard that they had some really good adventures at the end of its life cycle though.

 

[Hussar]

It's one of the reasons I wish Dungeon was still around-- not necessarily because "official" is better, but at least it is curated. I use pre written modules more than I ever used to (mostly because VTT makes improv hard for me) and would love to do more small ones but finding the quality is hard.

Now that I will totally agree with. Dungeon was hands down the best investment a DM could make. 30-50 modules a year? You couldn't possibly beat the price. It was fantastic.

 

[Hussar]

I have heard that they had some really good adventures at the end of its life cycle though.

Funnily enough, I just ran a 5e campaign last year using the Chaos Scar adventures from 4e. They were fantastic. Unbelievably easy to convert to 5e and easy to run. The whole "Delve Format" thing is ... yeah, it's a good idea on paper, but, it's just not for me. It just didn't work for me.

But, as far as the adventures went? They were great.

 

[Staffan]

I don't think.that is a common point of view. Also, yes, Sunless Citadel is considered a classic.

Meh. Big dungeons (as judged by number of encounters, not physical size) are boring.

I mean, look at Moria. It is absolutely HUGE. But how many interesting things really happen there? I'd argue four or five, depending on how you count the Chamber of Mazarbul.

1. The Doors of Durin. It takes a while to figure out how to open the doors, and in doing so we learn something about ages past.
2. The Watcher in the Well. Big monster, run away. Can't go back now.
3. The Chamber of Mazarbul. The Fellowship finds Balin's Tomb, and learns some of what has happened.
   • Fight against orcs and the Cave Troll.
4. Fleeing through the rest of Moria, culminating in Gandalf's confrontation with the Balrog.

That's 4 or 5 interesting things in all of Moria, depending on whether you consider the orc fight separate from the discovery of the Chamber.

 

[Parmandur]

It's one of the reasons I wish Dungeon was still around-- not necessarily because "official" is better, but at least it is curated. I use pre written modules more than I ever used to (mostly because VTT makes improv hard for me) and would love to do more small ones but finding the quality is hard.

Now that I will totally agree with. Dungeon was hands down the best investment a DM could make. 30-50 modules a year? You couldn't possibly beat the price. It was fantastic.

Y'all realize that Perkins' big Adventure books are all just Dungeon Annuals...? Their stories are loose enough to extract the modules fir reuse.

 

[Staffan]

Never has before in three editions.

3/4/5E had totally different approaches to and qualities of DMG. 4E had by far the best-quality DM advice and was definitely the easiest for a "noob DM" to run a fun (for everyone involved) game in (esp. with noob players).

Yet 4E had by far the worst WotC adventures at launch. I mean they were super-trash. Every single fault you can point to in an adventure, those three either all had it, or one of them had it in spades. They were so bad I was finally convinced to go back to writing my own adventures (which turned out to be easy because 4E was so good for that).

Early adventures usually have quite a few problems. Which is a shame, because many curious people will get the game and whatever adventure is available, have a bad time with a bad adventure, and conclude that the game sucks.

The main problem is of course that early adventures are made by people who by definition don't have much experience writing adventures for this game, or this version of the game. Worse, they may be relying on instincts from previous versions that no longer are correct. For example, both Hellknight Hill (part 1 of the first PF2 adventure path) and The Fall of Plaguestone (the first PF2 standalone adventure) are incredibly overtuned. This is likely because in PF1, rampant power inflation and an inherited problem with how challenge rating worked meant that the encounter building guidelines were a joke, so you pretty much had to overtune your encounters compared to what the rules suggested. But balance in PF2 is much tighter and unforgiving, particularly at lower levels, so that's going to lead to a bad time and TPKs.

A related problem is that the early adventures are often written using early drafts of the rules, and often a late rule or design change isn't accounted for in the adventure. For example, in the last D&D Next playtest package, kobolds had AC 11, 2 hp, and a +1 attack bonus dealing d4+1 damage at either melee or range. Their Pack Tactics ability would give them +1 to hit for each ally within 5 ft of the target.

In the Monster Manual, the kobold has AC 12, 5 hp, a +4 attack bonus dealing 1d4+2 damage, and pack attack gives them advantage on their rolls.

Now, the numbers don't translate one-for-one – for example, it seems attack rolls are a bit lower in the D&D Next version (only fighters have a +2 proficiency bonus at level 1, for example). But player AC and hit points seem about the same, so it's clear that the published kobold is a much more dangerous creature than its D&D Next cousin.

Why do I go on about this? Because the first published 5e adventure, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, starts with the PCs fighting a group of 8 effing kobolds. Against a typical 4-person adventuring party, that's two kobolds each, and it's a BIG difference between fighting two kobolds with +2 to hit dealing d4+1 damage, and fighting two kobolds with +4 to hit and advantage and dealing d4+2 damage. Even the hp can make a difference – against a typical d8 damage cantrip, 5 hp gives you a 50% survival chance, but 2 hp only 13%.

Now, I don't know if the designers of Hoard of the Dragon Queen were balancing this fight using D&D Next kobolds, 5e kobolds, or some version that was never released, but it would certainly explain why they start the adventure, which will be many people's first encounter with 5e, with such a potentially lethal battle.

 

[edosan]

I think my growing dissatisfaction with WOTC adventure books is that they for the most part make an assumption that your players are going to run through the adventure pretty much as intended which is destined to fail the longer the campaign goes on. It doesn’t seem to help that that writers (and Perkins is especially bad at this) tend to go back to “What if X happens? Don’t know, you’ll figure it out.” to get themselves out of a narrative jam. If I’m going to sink fifty bucks on an adventure book it’s because I want to save time so we can play and not feel like I have to do tons of prep. If I had that kind of time I’d build an adventure from scratch.

I was kind of surprised when I realized they weren’t going to make Tales From The Yawning Portal an annual thing - reprinting classic old adventures with updated sensibilities and nicer art seemed like a no-brainer (Goodman Games seems to think so, anyway). The original anthologies (Candlekeep, Radiant Citadel) might have some gems in there but I’m done with buying those unless I see a review from someone I’d trust.

 

[Lanefan]

Sunless Citadel is a standout? I've run it, and while it's a perfectly cromulent dungeon crawl I don't think it's a good adventure. Mostly because big dungeon crawls don't make for good adventures. My rule of thumb is that if you need to take a long rest to complete the dungeon, it is too big. If you're going to go modular, I'd much rather see a small dungeon with lots of interesting encounters on the way to the dungeon, and hopefully in preparing for the dungeon. Or cut the dungeon out entirely and have the adventure be about something that's actually fun.

For me, if you can do the dungeon in one non-stop run it's either too small or too easy - or both.

But I agree about making the en-route encounters interesting.

 

[thom_likes_gaming]

DM's Guild is full of short stuff. Get cracking...