D&D 5E Where's the Villain? and other musings. Why some published campaigns are great and some aren't (Spoiler alerts)

[TheSword]

The only "great" campaigns are homebrew, tailored to the players.

Published campaigns are a useful time-saver, but like anything off-the-peg, the best they can be is serviceable.

In my experience, players "agree to an adventure path" because it's the only campaign on offer, not because they want to play that adventure in particular.

It feels like these two statements may be linked. This thread is concerned with what makes a great adventure path - not what makes a great homebrew adventure.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It feels like these two statements may be linked. This thread is concerned with what makes a great adventure path - not what makes a great homebrew adventure.

And as I said before, a great adventure depends on the DM and players, not the text. The is no secret recipe for a great adventure path.

(But sticking too religiously to what is written in the book is a sure-fire recipe for a bad adventure.)

 

[TheSword]

And as I said before, a great adventure depends on the DM and players, not the text. The is no secret recipe for a great adventure path.

(But sticking too religiously to what is written in the book is a sure-fire recipe for a bad adventure.)

That’s like saying because a bicycle needs to be ridden there’s no such thing as a great bicycle because it depends on the rider. Which of course it does. But that doesn’t mean some bicycles aren’t better than others because they clearly are. What makes a bike great will depend on personal preference but there will be correlations and general options.

I think we can all agree that a great group can make a poor adventure great and a poor group won’t get the most out of a great adventure. So let’s move past that truism and back to the topic of what makes the published adventures great.

You say there is no secret recipe but some adventures are clearly better received and more successful than others. It’s how we have top 10 lists, reviews and well viewpoints. No adventure will be all things to all people but some land better than others. 10 pages in probably shouldn’t need to say this.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So let’s move past that truism and back to the topic of what makes the published adventures great.

And I have answered that. It's NOTHING. The adventures you consider great I don't like, and visa versa. There is no objective answer. It not the villain, its not the sandbox, it's nothing. Okay, if it has poor spelling, punctuation, and grammar it's not going to be great, but apart from that, nothing.

You can make a list of "stuff I happen to like", but you can't make a list of "objectively great".

 

[TheSword]

And I have answered that. It's NOTHING. The adventures you consider great I don't like, and visa versa. There is no objective answer. It not the villain, its not the sandbox, it's nothing. Okay, if it has poor spelling, punctuation, and grammar it's not going to be great, but apart from that, nothing.

You can make a list of "stuff I happen to like", but you can't make a list of "objectively great".

No one is trying to be objective. It’s up for discussion and many people have put forward alternative things they think make them great or not.

You don’t like published adventures. I get it. You’ve made the point. Nobody is telling you you’re wrong. I’m saying repeating that published adventures can never be great over and over in a thread about what makes published adventures great is probably not good for anyone’s soul.

 

[mamba]

A DM-imposed goal IS the rails of a railroad.

then any published adventure is a railroad because there is one intended goal, no matter how sandboxy parts of it are?

 

[TheSword]

then any published adventure is a railroad because there is one intended goal, no matter how sandboxy parts of it are?

It’s the social contract isn’t it. The DM builds a campaign with x threat and the players agree to bring characters who are interested in handling x threat.

Choice can still be found within a range of perimeters. It may not be unrestricted but it’s still choice. Not being able to play a pirate searching for glory on the high seas in this campaign doesn’t mean there isn’t choice.

 

[mamba]

It wouldn't be the first publisher to get a writer's work wrong.

sure, the point isn’t that they did not get it wrong after all

And when RotFM came out Chirs Perkins did a load of interviews talking about how it was inspired by The Thing and At the Mountains of Madness, with little mention of Auril. It's almost as if the (primary) writer was trying to set the record straight (while still keeping his job).

well, for one it plays in snow and ice / the arctic, for another he wanted to contrast its style of horror to the gothic one of Strahd. That is why he also mentions Alien and The Shining.

Maybe he also hinted at buried ruins with that, going all the way to ‘crashed spaceship’ from The Thing is a bit of a stretch though, none of the other references have that.

In any case, more people will get the books thinking it is about Auril than not, the books keep selling for years and the interviews are forgotten.

Does that mean the campaign itself is bad, no. There are bad campaigns that are accurately described and there can be good campaigns that are described misleadingly. To me Rime does not hang together very well however, it is a collection of disjointed events more than a story with a throughline

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Between the various D&D groups I play in we seem to have ran or prepared to run most of the D&D campaigns released for 5e - Lost Mines, Descent into Avernus, Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation, Prince of the Apocalypse, Dragon Heist, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Rime of the Frost Maiden, Out of the Abyss, and Saltmarsh - not to mention at least 50% of the Paizo APs for 1st Ed and most of the big 3e campaigns. Some worked, some didn't work. A few didn't get past the first few sessions - usually because I lost the drive to complete them (Princes of the Apocalypse and Rime). A few went on to be some of the most memorable campaigns I've ran in 30 years - Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation for instance.

There are a couple of things that I think I've spotted that make campaigns great or merely grate. I thought I would lay them out for a bit of discussion in turn with examples where its done well and where it falls flat. Here are my three:

• Great villains linked to a clear objectives
• Open world but within clear limits
• Meaningful NPC roleplay with clear outcomes

I don't believe its a coincidence that two of the best 5e campaigns - Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation - feature iconic villains. In both cases the players have a clear goal which involves thwarting said villains and even if the mystery of who is behind the plots is hidden at first - the goal itself is very evident and intrinsically linked to the villain. Rime of the Frost Maiden on the flip side suffers from the fact that the main villain is almost incidental to the bulk of the adventure. Auril is present causing problems, but little of what the party does attempts to correct that, and the finale location is incidental and unrelated to her. Dragon Heist has four amazing sets of villains but they barely feature in the bulk of the adventure - only appearing if the DM shoehorns them in (which works brilliantly when they do). Similarly in Descent into Avernus the lack of clear objectives that relate to Zariel mean the party are largely been led by the nose through a serious of encounters that seem to bear little relevance to the actual objectives of the villain. These villains aren't limited to the BBEG - in my current run through of Skull and Shackles the vicious first mate Mr Plugg is driving great engagement with is influential positioning. Similarly the corrupt councillor in Saltmarsh kept our party always searching for clues and a way to catch them out. Great D&D deserves great villains.

There are lots of disagreements about railroading, roads with rails, sandboxes and the like. I'm not trying to be dictatorial. Where a world is well detailed and interesting and has explorable areas you can visit in an order of your own choosing, they bring a lot of freedom and flexibility to adventures which I think many parties really thrive off. 5e is a gift for this kind of exploration and is very forgiving of wide ranging challenge ratings with many iconic creatures. It was a mistake to make the Dungeons of Undermountain sequential rather than giving the party choices about where to explore. Whereas the chance to explore the valley of Barovia bounded by its impassable mountains gives the party the feeling of being able to properly explore and discover the secrets of the lands. Barovia was packed with fascinating encounters and locations. That boundary is not optional in my opinion. The party needs to feel like they are exploring within limits - wandering amidst arbitrary locations with no fixed point is nowhere near as fun as anyone searching Avernus soon finds out. The island of Chult is bounded by the sea and you know your goal is somewhere on that island continent. Worst of all is the kind of linear encounter hopscotch found in chapter 4 of Dragon Heist or the later parts of Avernus.

Lastly (and this may be a personal preference) great encounters have great NPCs to roleplay with meaningfully. This has to be more than a five minute conversation to justify and reinforce why the PCs are killing the NPC or not. Meaningful NPC interaction involves persuasion, negotiation, trading of favours, obligations, betrayals, a bit of leverage and most importantly three dimensional NPCs have that clear goals and reasons to interact with the PCs beyond just fighting. Curse of Strahd delivers this in spades with fascinating characters to interact with - that can aid or hinder the party. Similarly in Chult a number of key NPCs can help solve the mystery of what the hell is going on.

I'm sure there are other elements that are important in making a great published campaign but I'm afraid without these three things - I'm on an uphill battle as both DM and a player. What do you think? Are these important to you, or are there other elements that matter more?

I think the OP's three are the "positive" elements that matter most.

As in, if they're present, the campaign is much more likely to be good, and I think even chicken and egg-wise, in this case, if the villain is good and their goals well-defined (even if not initially revealed to the players), the adventure is much more likely to make sense and be "together" because the writers (and it usually is plural with WotC) have something consistent to hang their story and set-pieces off of.

There are "negative" elements which can make a big impact too, like SotDQ's insistence on telling a story TO the PCs, and having them effectively watch cutscenes involving an NPC, rather than making them the driving central force of the story. That sort of approach can rapidly degrade and destroy almost any adventure, including home-written ones.

 

[Hussar]

That sort of thing can often make a campaign feel railroady. For example, "you are captured by slavers and have to escape and survive the Underdark" gives the players plenty of motive for adventuring, but it doesn't give them much choice.

I sometimes think choice is highly overrated.