D&D General The longer I play Baldur's Gate 3 ...

[Paul Farquhar]

I know the modules came first, but I strong disagree that they were not railroads, especially when sat beside classic adventures modules. It's called the Hickman revolution for a reason--they were the start of something very new in adventure design, and to my mind the inception of what eventually would be come "adventure paths."

How Dragonlance Ruined Everything

How's that for hyperbole? And it is hyperbole. Dragonlance didn't ruin everything , but it did exert a baleful influence over the developme...

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Dragonlance – Vintage RPG

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The thing about a series of modules is they have fixed fix points, or nodes, at the beginning and end. Module 1 has to end where module 2 begins, and so on. The longer the series, the more of these nodes exist, so the less freedom the players the players have in guiding the overall narrative. Which was why DL1 was better before the rest was published. And the time it was just like all the other published adventures, with a bunch of undefined pregens and the possibility it could end differently.

Some (but not all) WotC adventure books use this same format. Chapter 1 has to end at the start point for Chapter 2, and so on.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I know the modules came first, but I strong disagree that they were not railroads, especially when sat beside classic adventures modules. It's called the Hickman revolution for a reason--they were the start of something very new in adventure design, and to my mind the inception of what eventually would be come "adventure paths."

An adventure path can be designed to run/played or designed to read though.

It's absolutely not a given that an AP is designed to be read.

So I feel like you're conflating two independent things at this point. Like, a car can be four wheel drive or not, and a car can be an SUV or not, but just having FWD doesn't mean your car is an SUV.

 

[Rystefn]

Also, Dragonlance didn't start the "adventure path" style of linked sequential modules, either. GDQ beat it to the punch by several, years. Weirdly, no one ever seems to claim that GDQ "ruined everything."

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Also, Dragonlance didn't start the "adventure path" style of linked sequential modules, either. GDQ beat it to the punch by several, years. Weirdly, no one ever seems to claim that GDQ "ruined everything."

Those where sequels, not episodes. Whist one module could carry on from the other, but the didn't have to. For example, you might not find the clues about the Drow at the end of Giant, or the party might decide not to follow them in the Underdark. Or a party might descend into the Underdark without having first encountered the giants. You didn't need to play the whole series in order to have a satisfactory story, each part stood alone.

 

[Rystefn]

Those where sequels, not episodes. Whist one module could carry on from the other, but the didn't have to. For example, you might not find the clues about the Drow at the end of Giant, or the party might decide not to follow them in the Underdark. Or a party might descend into the Underdark without having first encountered the giants. You didn't need to play the whole series in order to have a satisfactory story, each part stood alone.

First: That's literally what episodes mean. Episodic series definitionally can stand alone. Sequels are the kind where you really need to have what went before to make sense of things.

Second: You miss a metric ton of the story if you only play parts of it. If your argument is that you can just casually jump in on Shrine of Kuo Toa without having played Descent and that you won't have missed anything important, I'm about to start laughing even harder than I did at the claim that the Dragonlance novels changed the face of fantasy literature forever.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

First: That's literally what episodes mean. Episodic series definitionally can stand alone. Sequels are the kind where you really need to have what went before to make sense of things.

Second: You miss a metric ton of the story if you only play parts of it. If your argument is that you can just casually jump in on Shrine of Kuo Toa without having played Descent and that you won't have missed anything important, I'm about to start laughing even harder than I did at the claim that the Dragonlance novels changed the face of fantasy literature forever.

No module requires any other part of the story in order to make sense. You do not need to have defeated the hill giants to understand what is going on in the shine of the kua toa, or visa versa. That's what is meant by "episodic". It's like Star Trek TOS, and unlike Picard, where each episode is a chapter in a single story.

 

[Rystefn]

No module requires any other part of the story in order to make sense. You do not need to have defeated the hill giants to understand what is going on in the shine of the kua toa, or visa versa. That's what is meant by "episodic". It's like Star Trek TOS, and unlike Picard, where each episode is a chapter in a single story.

I'm going to take the fact that you just ignored my specific example and switched it to a different one as the admission that I'm correct we both know it to be, just like you switching your assertion what is meant by "episodic" is. I'm going to follow it up with pointing out that you can pull out Dragons of War or Dragons of Despair and play them as a stand alone just as easily as you can Shrine of the Kuo Toa. Then I'm going to go ahead and cap that off by pointing out that you can pull out Death House from Curse of Strahd and play that as a standalone just fine. You can start Tomb of Annihilation in the City of Omu in Chapter 3 (out of 5) and it plays just fine, you'll understand what's going on perfectly well, and in fact many people suggest that you do exactly this.

Claims that the DragonLance modules started something new and special here are wildly inaccurate. They're somewhat more strongly interconnected than certain other linked adventures, but parts of them are strongly less so than parts of others that came before. And the adventure paths that came after, even the big hardcovers that aren't even a chain, but literally sold as one single adventure, are hardly more strongly connected than the pre-Dragonlance linked adventures.

The simple fact is that the most impactful thing the Dragonlance modules did was provide the setting, characters, and basic plot for the novel series, and if not for those novels, they would be nothing more than a curiosity for the number of adventures linked together being higher than any of the other linked adventures of the time. Maybe the most ever, but the current batch of hardcovers would disrupt the Hell out of attempts to count that, and I honestly have no idea how big any of the Paizo adventure paths were anyway becaue I skipped 3rd edition.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm going to take the fact that you just ignored my specific example and switched it to a different one as the admission that I'm correct we both know it to be, just like you switching your assertion what is meant by "episodic" is. I'm going to follow it up with pointing out that you can pull out Dragons of War or Dragons of Despair and play them as a stand alone just as easily as you can Shrine of the Kuo Toa. Then I'm going to go ahead and cap that off by pointing out that you can pull out Death House from Curse of Strahd and play that as a standalone just fine. You can start Tomb of Annihilation in the City of Omu in Chapter 3 (out of 5) and it plays just fine, you'll understand what's going on perfectly well, and in fact many people suggest that you do exactly this.

Claims that the DragonLance modules started something new and special here are wildly inaccurate. They're somewhat more strongly interconnected than certain other linked adventures, but parts of them are strongly less so than parts of others that came before. And the adventure paths that came after, even the big hardcovers that aren't even a chain, but literally sold as one single adventure, are hardly more strongly connected than the pre-Dragonlance linked adventures.

The simple fact is that the most impactful thing the Dragonlance modules did was provide the setting, characters, and basic plot for the novel series, and if not for those novels, they would be nothing more than a curiosity for the number of adventures linked together being higher than any of the other linked adventures of the time. Maybe the most ever, but the current batch of hardcovers would disrupt the Hell out of attempts to count that, and I honestly have no idea how big any of the Paizo adventure paths were anyway becaue I skipped 3rd edition.

Paizo were 6 adventures per AP. Not sure about now.