Level Up (A5E) What makes an adventure a Level Up adventure

Zaukrie

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I asked this on discord, and made a comment earlier today....but what makes a Level Up adventure? If you were going to buy / write an a5e adventure, what would be different than a normal one? Why not take an o5e and tack on a journey or two?

Note, I'm not talking PC design here, but adventure design.
 

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LU adventures have the potential to support the exploration pillar more (they don't have to -- not every adventure needs to be like that). But generally, it's the OS that's changed, not the apps. The adventures are the apps which will run on the new version of the OS.
 

Speaking for myself, I would have the same criteria as any other rpg adventure: intriguing narratives, compelling scenes, and engaging NPCs that hand me the tools (as DM) to weave a fun session or three. As a specific A5e product, I would expect to find Maneuver-wielding enemies, a new type of Journey perhaps, and some monsters with a dash more flavour.

But, like you said, I can take original modules and add those elements, which, in fact I have been doing since late in the playtest phase. My players and I are currently enjoying a converted 2E module, and I'm about to start a converted 5E module. I think that's actually one of the strengths of Levelup is that you can port over the features you like into existing materials without a ton of fuss.
 


IF I was writing an adventure centered on A5E and wasn't just 5E with room for all variations of the system I would make sure that exploration was a noticeable piece and social encounters were well mapped out.

Given the fact that A5E gives more tools for the PCs to use in those situations feels like they both deserve a bit of polishing off for view, even if it's in a supporting aspect and not central towards the game.

That said I'm running a homebrew dungeon delve using some A5E now (I started the campaign before I got the PDFs) that is a mix of journey and dungeon crawl that my players are enjoying.

A friend of mine is converting the 2E campaign The Night Below for O5E/A5E and I can't wait to see how that plays
 

Tomb of Annihilation is a lot of fun, with A5e rules (and exploration/social pillars added), I'm sure it's a blast.

The other thing I can think of what separates an o5e and a5e adventure.. monster and encounter design. :)
 

Ultimately I think the journey/exploration is the key thing that differentiates LU from O5e. The other pieces are more interchangeable based on style, but the exploration is the most "new thing" that the system offers.
 

Use of new things added in LU, like Journey Rules and Maneuvers is a really obvious one. I would absolutely not sleep on the actually Math based CR though. o5e Monster math is notoriously best guess/wing it/whatever feels right in your heart which leads to incredibly unreliable encounter building, even in published Adventures. One of/the latest Adventure has a Level 5 or 6 party encounter, at point blank, a room with 3 Flameskulls. One Flameskull is a notorious TPK machine in a different Adventure one level lower, and this one pits you against THREE of them, at point blank range, and the reward is 20 less HP spent getting past a trap. By defeating 3 enemies that have, and are immune to, Fireball. The 5th Level Spell masquerading as a 3rd Level Spell for being 'iconic'. Then there's stuff like the Bugbears that can OHKO 1st Level party members in a 1st Level Adventure, the Dragon at low level with no indication it should not be a combat encounter, etc etc.

A system that goes "Hey, this is an Easy/Moderate/Hard encounter for your party" and it being consistently right about it immediately sets it apart from o5e. To me, that trust in the system is the biggest difference. Trust the system and only worry about altering things to play to your party and give them hooks and such. Be a Narrator that can focus on characters and story instead of a Dungeon Master that has to be an off the cuff game designer to make a purchased product function.
 

IMHO there are other aspects that can differentiate between an o5e and a LU campaing and may need some consideration (not necessarily an adaptation process)
One is that there's way more ways and good mechanical reasons to earn and spend money. Even ordinary equipment, followers and strongholds can be very good investments with an explicit price tag attached, i..e. they make for very good player chosen goals AND rewards.
On the same line, it's refreshing how reasonable are the prices, costs and times given by LU to craft magic items, instead of pretty much nonexistent o5e rules. Low-mid level characters can plan on what to invest, or gather specific ingredients to make specific items to deal with specific quests. Need to face a volcano? Maybe a good idea to get some fire resistance potions, let's look for the ingredients and see if we can craft it, or there's someone in town that can do that.

The other aspect as already mentioned is the monsters. o5E has simplified a lot the monsters wrt 3.5. Per se this is a good thing as handling some monsters was extremely taxing, but I feel they overdid it. Even worse, the CR and encounter design rules as specified are... let's say whimsical. If you're an experienced DM you'll immediately notice that the "ordinary encounter" monster that was placed in a published adventure can easily oneshot every PC, and you'll play it carefully. If not, you'll have very ugly surprises and will have to scramble for a solution.
LU instead has a really simple AND reliable monster design. They are interesting too. This makes running monsters much more interesting and above that safe, which is a huge plus.
The simple monster and encounter design guidelines are very helpful and are followed consistently in ENworld's publications, so I'm very curious to see how well some 2e monsters can be adapted (that would allow for some very interesting sessions indeed!)
 

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