D&D 5E Thinking about 5E releases...

[delericho]

One thing that I think might be cool (and maybe something like this is coming down the pike?) is if WotC held a few fan-made short adventure competitions. Set up a structure. No more than X pdf pages, type of thing. Make it wide open and have the community vote for a winner.

Something like these, maybe?

 

[teitan]

Its just the dead-horse beating that getting to me, but I guess this is the internet.

And you make a good point. The only time that the release schedule has been this slow in the last 30+ years may have been when TSR went bankrupt, but even then I am not sure it was this slow. Fine. Beat away.

You weren't around for 1e then. 1e never had a huge amount of supplements and then those were in the last three years. Before UA? Core book, god book, fiend folio and Greyhawk sets. Adventures weren't nearly as numerous as thought, four a year?

 

[MerricB]

You weren't around for 1e then. 1e never had a huge amount of supplements and then those were in the last three years. Before UA? Core book, god book, fiend folio and Greyhawk sets. Adventures weren't nearly as numerous as thought, four a year?

A little more common than that. According to one chronology:

1978: 8 adventures
1979: 3 adventures
1980: 5 adventures
1981: 10 adventures
1982: 8 adventures
1983: 15 adventures
1984: 29 adventures
1985: 21 adventures
1986: 23 adventures

These include both basic & advanced adventure lines.

Cheers!

 

[teitan]

A little more common than that. According to one chronology:

1978: 8 adventures
1979: 3 adventures
1980: 5 adventures
1981: 10 adventures
1982: 8 adventures
1983: 15 adventures
1984: 29 adventures
1985: 21 adventures
1986: 23 adventures

These include both basic & advanced adventure lines.

Cheers!

Ahh thanks Metric! Even then with the page counts being 24-32 pages, until 1983 they didn't really exceed the page count we are getting now with two APs. So we are getting a little more content than was really generated in the hey day outside of Dragon Magazine. Wonder how many were for just ad&d though. So in first edition in the first three years we had very little, the MM was released first and 8 adventures for both lines, with an assumption of B/X being a transition product...ish. 79 was the PHB and three adventures, updating the classes from the white box and standardizing the ranger from Dragon, 80 the DMG. Then the gods book and Greyhawk, a book of magic items and in 84 things exploded, DL, Manual of the Planes, UA, the survival guides and OA. 6 years into the life cycle. Then FR and the second edition transition when they got supplement drunk.

 

[teitan]

And with the AP comparison, many of the AD&D modules were series where one led into another like Slavers, Giants, the D and Q series. The S series were special adventures but essentially these series were Adventure Paths! Of woah to those complaining about 5e and the dearth of material.

 

[aramis erak]

I'd love to see some short adventures as well, but I'm not sure we'll be seeing anything like that for a while.

One thing that I think might be cool (and maybe something like this is coming down the pike?) is if WotC held a few fan-made short adventure competitions. Set up a structure. No more than X pdf pages, type of thing. Make it wide open and have the community vote for a winner. All they would have to do is put their stamp of approval on the winner or say, the top 3, with some cool prizes or something, and the community all of a sudden has a bunch of free short 5e adventures, with extremely little effort on WotC's part. You get yerself some breathing room from all of us idiots clamoring for modules and you don't lose focus on your big projects. Plus you are engaging your fanbase and interacting with them in a fun way.

If they'd just release another hardback or two of the season tie-in expeditions adventures at the end of the season, even just put them up PoD on DTRPG, that would fill a lot of the gap. Most of them have been pretty good, even the ones for the Rise of Tiamat season.

Ahh thanks Metric! Even then with the page counts being 24-32 pages, until 1983 they didn't really exceed the page count we are getting now with two APs. So we are getting a little more content than was really generated in the hey day outside of Dragon Magazine. Wonder how many were for just ad&d though. So in first edition in the first three years we had very little, the MM was released first and 8 adventures for both lines, with an assumption of B/X being a transition product...ish. 79 was the PHB and three adventures, updating the classes from the white box and standardizing the ranger from Dragon, 80 the DMG. Then the gods book and Greyhawk, a book of magic items and in 84 things exploded, DL, Manual of the Planes, UA, the survival guides and OA. 6 years into the life cycle. Then FR and the second edition transition when they got supplement drunk.

more wordcount, definitely. More play-content? Not so sure. GDQ was pretty long, but can be crash played in about 40 hours of (fairly monty haul) play. And the 2E consolidated version was a volume about the same size as Horde+Rise. Hoard alone is probably 40-60 hours of play, if taking all the options.

 

[teitan]

Queen of Spiders? I thought it was 128 pages? Hmm

 

[Mercule]

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?

Surprisingly, I don't. At least not for the multi-purposing you're talking about. I think making the adventures do double duty as setting and module is holding back the quality -- kinda. It reduces the general utility of the adventures for anyone not interested in the setting.

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?

Name recognition, but not in a marketing sense (otherwise, "Forgotten Realms" would be fairly conspicuous on the cover). Rather, it keeps them from having to make up as many maps, whole cloth, including place names and factions. This, I support, in principle. The implied setting of Greyhawk was one of the strengths of 1E; it ran throughout the core books and many adventures, but in subtle ways. WotC has tried to recapture that since 3E, but always comes on too strong, IMO.

If storyline is so important why aren't there tie-in novels?

I've wondered this, as well. Isn't this where the Realms are supposed to be strong?

Why aren't their narrative connections between the adventures?

Newcomers (say, next year) shouldn't have to run them in order and/or need info from prior adventures. Since my plan is to restart the campaign for each AP (levels 1-15 seems a good run for a campaign), I'm very glad there isn't a strong connection.

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.

I don't see any content restrictions in the hardcovers that tie to AL. Not following AL, the only impact of which I'm aware is (maybe) the two-per-year release schedule, which I think is actually the right rate (at least for right now).

 

[TerraDave]

Ahh thanks Metric! ...

At least you didn't get my name wrong.

I said 30+. So lets take 1983, which is 30+, its true the only big releases for AD&D would have been MMII and World of Greyhawk Box set. For D&D there was Mentzer Basic and the slightly revised Mentzer/Cook Expert set.

But you would have had 12 issues of Dragon and 6 issues of Polyhedron. I count about 14 adventures, not including RPGA or other special releases. Your statements about page count are also misleading. These older adventures where loaded, far denser then what is released today. One I have used recently (and thats a B!) has 100+ potential encounter areas.

AND, at that point every classic adventure anyone has heard of had been released.

We agree that 30 years ago the pace only accelerated.

 

[halfling rogue]

Something like these, maybe?

Yeah, something like that. But make it official. Put the WotC stamp of approval on it, or at least its blessing.

Someone mentioned earlier that they are creating tie-in adventures for the Adventure League, which to be honest was something I had completely forgotten about. So, I guess technically they are producing small adventures, but only for AL groups... Does anyone know if they will be released at some point outside of Adventure League play?