I guess it's a matter of personal taste. I just find their plots average and cliché. They're still fun to read and run but they're the kind of stories you forget a few months later. Some adventures are so good that I still remember the details 25 years later. These adventures haven't been published by WoTC (or published at all).
-
The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Which of these would you like to see in 2015 from WotC?
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
I guess it's a matter of personal taste. I just find their plots average and cliché. They're still fun to read and run but they're the kind of stories you forget a few months later. Some adventures are so good that I still remember the details 25 years later. These adventures haven't been published by WoTC (or published at all).
TarionzCousin
Second Most Angelic Devil Ever
At this point, I am really just happy to see no news about Xmas layoffs at WotC.
Stormonu
Legend
Dragon and Dungeon more or less died when they killed the print issue (well, Dragon was dead at least a year or three before - it'd become splat-supplement-of-the-month-club some time back), and I don't think it would be feasible or profitable to bring it back in this electronic age.
Put me down for a new campaign setting and/or a revival of some of the older, forgotten settings (Al-Qadim, Birthright, etc.), and continued adventure support. Especially if they weren't adventure paths - a handful of unrelated adventures of various levels would be a nice thing to see.
OGL would be okay, but I'm not screaming for it. It's not like it was back in 3E days where everyone's jumping on the bandwagon of d20/OGL. These days I'd prefer quality over quantity of materials.
<Edit> Oh yeah - and monster books. I always enjoy a good monster book.
Put me down for a new campaign setting and/or a revival of some of the older, forgotten settings (Al-Qadim, Birthright, etc.), and continued adventure support. Especially if they weren't adventure paths - a handful of unrelated adventures of various levels would be a nice thing to see.
OGL would be okay, but I'm not screaming for it. It's not like it was back in 3E days where everyone's jumping on the bandwagon of d20/OGL. These days I'd prefer quality over quantity of materials.
<Edit> Oh yeah - and monster books. I always enjoy a good monster book.
pming
Legend
Hiya!
[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] ...touche, mon ami!
Yes, there are some definite turds in the 1e pile, but I'd still rather have a 1e style module over a glitz-n-glamour railroad'ish "new style" module any day of the week. As a DM, I want to be able to use a module as an "adventure backdrop"...I don't want to use it as a "story to follow".
^_^
Paul L. Ming
[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] ...touche, mon ami!
Yes, there are some definite turds in the 1e pile, but I'd still rather have a 1e style module over a glitz-n-glamour railroad'ish "new style" module any day of the week. As a DM, I want to be able to use a module as an "adventure backdrop"...I don't want to use it as a "story to follow".
^_^
Paul L. Ming
It sounds to me that you're looking for setting books, not adventures. That's exactly what a setting is - a backdrop for adventures with no included story.
Henrix
Explorer
I have to disagree there.
Many of the issues at the end were excellent, with lots of world material.
It was mostly greyhawk stuff, but usable for anyone.
The Demonomicon of Igglw, the writeups about the different gods and their worship, geographical backdrops (mainly for the APs). Good stuff.
YourSwordIsMine
First Post
Mystara Setting box set
Gazetteers
poster size Mystara map folios
Gazetteers
poster size Mystara map folios
The Slaying Stone and Orcs of Stonefang Pass were after Vor Rukoth and were also pretty good.
Mercule
Adventurer
I'd like to see a 5E update of Eberron. Even more, I'd like to see Dragon and Dungeon return to "print" -- I'm fine with PDF/digital versions, but I want it in a format I can keep around for 30 years, like I've done with the magazines from the 1980s.
I'm indifferent to the OGL. I don't dislike the idea, but I was never really wowed by any of the d20 third party stuff.
I've decided I actually do not want adventure paths. I don't mind the concept, but I don't want that to be the only way we get adventures. Returning Dungeon to publication would, again, be ideal. Also, I despise the idea of attaching future supplements (e.g. psionics) to an adventure path.
I'd be happy to see some variation on the 3E Spell Compendium and Complete Psionics Handbook, but neither is a "hot" item, for me.
I'm indifferent to the OGL. I don't dislike the idea, but I was never really wowed by any of the d20 third party stuff.
I've decided I actually do not want adventure paths. I don't mind the concept, but I don't want that to be the only way we get adventures. Returning Dungeon to publication would, again, be ideal. Also, I despise the idea of attaching future supplements (e.g. psionics) to an adventure path.
I'd be happy to see some variation on the 3E Spell Compendium and Complete Psionics Handbook, but neither is a "hot" item, for me.
pming
Legend
Hiya.
That's what a setting book should be...take a look at the Greyhawk Folio or even the Greyhawk "gold-edged" box set. To me, thats a perfect campaign setting.
For an "adventure", I'll use my fave of all time...Keep on the Borderlands. I've ran no less than three, full-length (2 to 4 years each) campaigns using that one, simple, 32 page booklet. Each of those campaigns were quite different from the others. In one, the evil clerics were the focus, with a lot of political intrigue and whatnot going on in the actual Keep, secret deals struck with various denizens of the Caves, etc. Another had the lizardmen as a focus; the caves were originally where they were from (I added water here and there and made the main box canyon that the caves are in more swamp-land like). The lizardmen had been "kicked out" by an onrush of other denizens who were in turn fleeing from some nasty, organized giants who lived in the mountains to the NE. The giants were lead by a charismatic leader, and semi-secretly getting ready to assault the keep because of some giantish relic that was supposed to be there, buried under the Black Tower. Lastly, I had a campaign revolve around the mad hermit and how he became mad; I added a dungeon complex between the 'caved in tunnel' in Cave K (IIRC) and the "Unknown Cave" on the wilderness map. That dungeon was made by a planar-hopping wizard named Mogg (a recurring NPC in many of my fantasy games...not just D&D). The hermit had gotten caught up in Mogg's planar hopping and it drove him mad, spending about a century in a pocket dimension where he didn't age, eat, drink, or sleep...but the hermit held a secret to a trap/trick in the Dungeons of Mogg (Cave of the Unknown).
Anyway, the point is, I had very little to "rewrite" for all three of those campaigns. I could just add on or ignore little bits as needed. No muss, no fuss. No NPC was rendered "useless", there weren't paragraphs (or pages) wasted on "story background" I was never going to use, etc. For me, that's the best form of adventure module; one that lets me add what I want and easily ignore the hints/suggestions tossed in throughout it. As I said...coming up with story and NPC motivation is the easy part; it's drawing 6 levels of dungeons, ruins and other maps, filling them with traps, treasure and monsters, and designing a few random tables (wandering monsters, weather for the area, rumors, etc.). That's the stuff that sucks up time, not the story/plot stuff. Hell, sometimes you don't even need to start with a story/plot...the players will start to imagine all sorts of neferious things going on, and as a DM it's your job to pick up on that. Run with it. Improv the stuff that they seem to really be keen on. If you have enough maps, encounters, rumors, etc, then it's really easy to ad-lib. DM'ing becomes a fun and creative experience...as opposed to simply being a "task delegated to one player, who runs the monsters and follows the plot/story". I got into RPG'ing for the creativity. I didn't get into it to follow a script.
^_^
Paul L. Ming
That's what a setting book should be...take a look at the Greyhawk Folio or even the Greyhawk "gold-edged" box set. To me, thats a perfect campaign setting.
For an "adventure", I'll use my fave of all time...Keep on the Borderlands. I've ran no less than three, full-length (2 to 4 years each) campaigns using that one, simple, 32 page booklet. Each of those campaigns were quite different from the others. In one, the evil clerics were the focus, with a lot of political intrigue and whatnot going on in the actual Keep, secret deals struck with various denizens of the Caves, etc. Another had the lizardmen as a focus; the caves were originally where they were from (I added water here and there and made the main box canyon that the caves are in more swamp-land like). The lizardmen had been "kicked out" by an onrush of other denizens who were in turn fleeing from some nasty, organized giants who lived in the mountains to the NE. The giants were lead by a charismatic leader, and semi-secretly getting ready to assault the keep because of some giantish relic that was supposed to be there, buried under the Black Tower. Lastly, I had a campaign revolve around the mad hermit and how he became mad; I added a dungeon complex between the 'caved in tunnel' in Cave K (IIRC) and the "Unknown Cave" on the wilderness map. That dungeon was made by a planar-hopping wizard named Mogg (a recurring NPC in many of my fantasy games...not just D&D). The hermit had gotten caught up in Mogg's planar hopping and it drove him mad, spending about a century in a pocket dimension where he didn't age, eat, drink, or sleep...but the hermit held a secret to a trap/trick in the Dungeons of Mogg (Cave of the Unknown).
Anyway, the point is, I had very little to "rewrite" for all three of those campaigns. I could just add on or ignore little bits as needed. No muss, no fuss. No NPC was rendered "useless", there weren't paragraphs (or pages) wasted on "story background" I was never going to use, etc. For me, that's the best form of adventure module; one that lets me add what I want and easily ignore the hints/suggestions tossed in throughout it. As I said...coming up with story and NPC motivation is the easy part; it's drawing 6 levels of dungeons, ruins and other maps, filling them with traps, treasure and monsters, and designing a few random tables (wandering monsters, weather for the area, rumors, etc.). That's the stuff that sucks up time, not the story/plot stuff. Hell, sometimes you don't even need to start with a story/plot...the players will start to imagine all sorts of neferious things going on, and as a DM it's your job to pick up on that. Run with it. Improv the stuff that they seem to really be keen on. If you have enough maps, encounters, rumors, etc, then it's really easy to ad-lib. DM'ing becomes a fun and creative experience...as opposed to simply being a "task delegated to one player, who runs the monsters and follows the plot/story". I got into RPG'ing for the creativity. I didn't get into it to follow a script.
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Similar Threads
