D&D 5E To much 5th edition content?

[Shroomy]

2020 is the only year that we may not get 2 APs.

Every other year since 5e's inception we've gotten 2 APs. And we've gotten 3 setting books in a row - Eberron, Wildemount, and Theros.

With the anticipated Icewind Dale AP for Sept release, it only remains to be seen what the Nov release will be.

What are you counting as APs? If you don't count the anthology adventures then there's been one storyline per year since 2017 (2017 Tomb of Annihilation, 2018 were the Waterdeep adventures, and 2019 was Descent into Avernus).

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Does wildemount count as a WotC book (as in part of their schedule of releases) or was that like the acquisitions inc book that was going to be released anyway but WotC offered to publish it as an official book?

I count it as a WotC book, since it says Wizards on it.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

What are you counting as APs? If you don't count the anthology adventures then there's been one storyline per year since 2017 (2017 Tomb of Annihilation, 2018 were the Waterdeep adventures, and 2019 was Descent into Avernus).

I count the Anthology adventures. They have very little rules stuff in them.

 

[Reynard]

The big Adventure books are essentially Dungeon Annuals, with a unifying theme of some sort.

The DMs Guild Adept and Adventurers League stuff does have editorial oversight, as much as Dungeon material seems to have received.

Shackled City: 410 pages.
Storm King's Thunder: 256 Pages.
And the APs in Dungeon were just a third of the content because they knew not everyone wanted an AP.

I don't understand why this is controversial, other than some weird desire to defend 5e no matter what. I'll say again: this isn't a dig against 5e's adventures. Some are great and some are not. Just like every edition. But it is demonstrably true that adventure output was more frequent and diverse during the 3e era.

And, frankly, if you are going to include DMsGuild adventures you have to include all 3rd party products -- that's all the DMsGuild is, a marketplace for 3rd party products under a different license -- and there again 3e out performs 5e, probably by an order of magnitude (with no accounting for quality in either case).

The assertion that 5e has the equivalent adventure support to 3e is just plain wrong and I don't understand why anyone would choose that hill to die on.

I would LOVE it if 5e had so many adventures as 3e. It would be a huge boon. But it simply doesn't.

 

[darjr]

It does come with 4 new adventure modules, which is nice.

So, what do you all think of them?

 

[teitan]

Adventures? Yeah. Too many and they're all epic quests to save the world. Supplements? I think they would be fine with 1 storyline a year and 2 supplements. Not even a setting. Something like Mordenkainen or Volo's Guide and then a rules expansion. It's all adventures all the time... and campaign settings now.

 

[Parmandur]

Shackled City: 410 pages.
Storm King's Thunder: 256 Pages.
And the APs in Dungeon were just a third of the content because they knew not everyone wanted an AP.

I don't understand why this is controversial, other than some weird desire to defend 5e no matter what. I'll say again: this isn't a dig against 5e's adventures. Some are great and some are not. Just like every edition. But it is demonstrably true that adventure output was more frequent and diverse during the 3e era.

And, frankly, if you are going to include DMsGuild adventures you have to include all 3rd party products -- that's all the DMsGuild is, a marketplace for 3rd party products under a different license -- and there again 3e out performs 5e, probably by an order of magnitude (with no accounting for quality in either case).

The assertion that 5e has the equivalent adventure support to 3e is just plain wrong and I don't understand why anyone would choose that hill to die on.

I would LOVE it if 5e had so many adventures as 3e. It would be a huge boon. But it simply doesn't.

I mean, if the DMsGuild material, even just the Adepts program and the AL material (8 FR Seasons, 1 Ravenloft, and 1 Eberron so far) don't "count," then the. dungeon material isn't really relevant either.

I was around during 3E: the Adventure presence was minimal.

 

[Parmandur]

So, what do you all think of them?

Having given them a read through, they are decent low-level getting the band together modules. Each one sets the stage for one of the four major regions of the continent, and has good hooks to build on after they end.

Honestly, the material in Ravnica, Eberron and Theros might be better through helping generate new homebrew stories, by a lot. But the four modules are solid.

 

[teitan]

Shackled City: 410 pages.
Storm King's Thunder: 256 Pages.
And the APs in Dungeon were just a third of the content because they knew not everyone wanted an AP.

I don't understand why this is controversial, other than some weird desire to defend 5e no matter what. I'll say again: this isn't a dig against 5e's adventures. Some are great and some are not. Just like every edition. But it is demonstrably true that adventure output was more frequent and diverse during the 3e era.

And, frankly, if you are going to include DMsGuild adventures you have to include all 3rd party products -- that's all the DMsGuild is, a marketplace for 3rd party products under a different license -- and there again 3e out performs 5e, probably by an order of magnitude (with no accounting for quality in either case).

The assertion that 5e has the equivalent adventure support to 3e is just plain wrong and I don't understand why anyone would choose that hill to die on.

I would LOVE it if 5e had so many adventures as 3e. It would be a huge boon. But it simply doesn't.

To be fair, early on 3e and 3.5 didn't have a lot of adventures. What was coming out was mostly 3rd party. You had the Ashardalon AP, ToEE & City of the Spider-Queen plus Dungeon mag but that was, in spite of high quality, a take it or leave it kind of product. It was a few years before 3.x era Dungeon of legend really took off with Shackled City. Even with that little bit though 3.x really did have more adventures and a greater variety. 5e has the issue that most of the product from WOTC is adventures. So in contrast with all the supplemental material for 3.x that WOTC put out in contrast with the comparable dearth of supplemental material in 5e by WOTC, well it is a case of yeah, too many adventures that take a year or so to play.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

5e has the issue that most of the product from WOTC is adventures. So in contrast with all the supplemental material for 3.x that WOTC put out in contrast with the comparable dearth of supplemental material in 5e by WOTC, well it is a case of yeah, too many adventures that take a year or so to play.

And it seems a lesson learned by WoTC. No more rules inflation. As I said, given a set of rules the aim of the game is to either run your imagination or help it with AP or Settings (considering also people that do not have time to homebrew). Crunch material is not bad by itself but must be released with a slow pace because while it give you more options, in the long run make the game fragmented and erodes the core rules consistency. Every option/rule you add to the game make the original game older.
My personal "if WoTC was mine" release politic would be:
1. Avoid editions: the game is that and it arrives in this form after decades of refinement. This edition proven to be good balanced and make happy all kind of players, so good to be able to bring back to game a lot of old (and expert) players. It is a winning horse.
2. It would be nice if every 5/10 years or so would produce a compendium that refine rules without compromise retro-compatibility: This kind of modules would be an organized and well edited set of Errata, Rules refinement coming from community playtesting and crunch material sparse between other products. So even people that did not want to buy i.e. Wildemount, can find a sub set of rules options coming from it. This to avoid the opposite of rules inflation and to give the sentiment of a system that doesn't give up to renovate itself.
3. From the Settings point of view privilege cross-overs, stay open to the community, look around what it is good and offer to publish under the WoTC hat with strict editorial quality control. A setting per 1 or 2 years as guideline. Not necessarily a new setting every time. Maybe focus on specific parts of a setting would be good: if we decided that FR is the core setting (and it seems to me a good choice because is quite a generic fantasy pastiche), than expand it. Don't treat it as Cinderella.
4. Adventure Path: experiment new ways! This is the part in which my personal WoTC would invest the most. Keep in mind that RPG live on stories, narrative amusement. Build interesting plot and try not to make everyone happy mixing all type of game in one module. Release a dungeon crawl, then an investigative, then an high political plot and so on. Every AP must have a flavour and must have the aim to be remembered as a great job in its genre.
5. Multi platform: yes, keep an eye on VTT, streaming, podcast because the market want it. But do not make the terrible mistake to let the traditional players feel excluded. No content in VTT must be more than in paper/pdf.
6. Merchandising at will. But good quality, again.

As you can see my WoTC shares a lot of choices made by real WoTC, but it is, let me say, a little bit more bold and quality oriented.