HobbitFan
Explorer
Do you guys think that WOTC's use of their AP hardbacks in the triple roles of multi-media tie-in, Adventure League material and traditional RPG product might be holding back their adventures from being better?
I'm not meaning this as a slam against WOTC, merely that it occurs to me that there may be conceptual and structural flaws in 5E's presentation methodology.
For example, is WOTC focusing on the Realms and on the Sword Coast in particualr because its central to any of their stories? Or are they choosing the locale for ease of linkages with Neverwinter and Sword Coast Legends?
Have their hardback adventures been stories that you couldn't tell elsewhere? Are they adventures DMs could set anywhere?
If they are so generic why are they using the Realms? Name-recognition alone?
If storyline is so important why aren't there tie-in novels?
Why aren't their narrative connections between the adventures?
Another concern I have is that the design of the adventures so far seems to be driven in part by the need to also use the hardbacks in Adventurer's League as organized play material. I'm not sure, honestly, that this has been to any benefit of the two storylines thus far. Writing for organized play puts resctrictions on writers and game designers that if they wer just trying to write the best adventuers they could they wouldn't have to mess with. Not saying that organized play is bad, merely that it might be better to have that stuff specially written (as some of it already is) to tie into the storyline but not utilize the adventure path material.
Basically, I think they are using their adventures to do too much. Having to serve in more than one capacity seems to be bringing down their storytelling, making the adventures feel fairly bland and designed by committee.
I'm not saying that I have any magic answer to this problem but there does seem to be one here.
Is WOTc aware of this you think?
I'm not meaning this as a slam against WOTC, merely that it occurs to me that there may be conceptual and structural flaws in 5E's presentation methodology.
For example, is WOTC focusing on the Realms and on the Sword Coast in particualr because its central to any of their stories? Or are they choosing the locale for ease of linkages with Neverwinter and Sword Coast Legends?
Have their hardback adventures been stories that you couldn't tell elsewhere? Are they adventures DMs could set anywhere?
If they are so generic why are they using the Realms? Name-recognition alone?
If storyline is so important why aren't there tie-in novels?
Why aren't their narrative connections between the adventures?
Another concern I have is that the design of the adventures so far seems to be driven in part by the need to also use the hardbacks in Adventurer's League as organized play material. I'm not sure, honestly, that this has been to any benefit of the two storylines thus far. Writing for organized play puts resctrictions on writers and game designers that if they wer just trying to write the best adventuers they could they wouldn't have to mess with. Not saying that organized play is bad, merely that it might be better to have that stuff specially written (as some of it already is) to tie into the storyline but not utilize the adventure path material.
Basically, I think they are using their adventures to do too much. Having to serve in more than one capacity seems to be bringing down their storytelling, making the adventures feel fairly bland and designed by committee.
I'm not saying that I have any magic answer to this problem but there does seem to be one here.
Is WOTc aware of this you think?