Who Makes WotC's Adventures?

There are now three large hardcover adventures for D&D 5th Edition. There's the two-part Tyranny of Dragons campaign produced by Kobold Press; there's Princes of the Apocalypse, from Sasquatch Game Studios; and there's the imminent Out of the Abyss, from Green Ronin publishing. All of these are official, hardcover adventures produced for WotC by third party companies. But how does that actually work? What is the relationship between the company producing the products and the company publishing them? WotC's Jeremy Crawford told me yesterday that the term "outsourcing" is innacurate when it comes to describing this arrangement.

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If we go back a bit to when I asked Kobold Press' Wolfgang Baur about the process, he told me that "the 5E adventures are produced as a combination of studio work and WotC oversight." He went on to describe it in a little more detail, highlighting a to-and-fro between the companies -- "we'd do some portion of the work, then we would get feedback from WotC on Realmslore, or story beats, or mechanics. Then we did more of the design, and got feedback from swarms of playtesters. Then we turned over another version for feedback on the art and layout. And so forth. It was iterative..." So collaboration clearly takes place all the way through the process.

He describes Kobold Press role as "the heavy lifting in design, development, and editing" with WotC having "crucial input and set the direction for what they wanted".

Moving ahead to now, WotC Jeremy Crawford observes that "It's bizarre to see a few posters on ENWorld mistake our [D&D 5E] collaborations as outsourcing. Each book has been a team effort." The input from WotC isn't just greenlighting the book at various stages; as Jeremy tells us "Our reviews are deep. We create the story & the concept art. We write portions of the books. We design mechanics. Etc.!" As he also points out, the credits page of each book tells us who contributed to each.

So there we have it. These books aren't outsourced to third parties in any traditional sense of that word; the books are written as a collaborative effort with writing and more done by both companies.

 

[Morrus]

Ok fine. I'm wrong for feeling that what they are doing IS outsourcing and expressing that. I never attacked him or used the word liar. Clearly things are much too sensative around here for people to have a thing called freedom of speech, to express their views. I'll just stop posting ANYTHING negative and conform to the hive mind.

Don't be so ridiculous. If you don't want a debate, fine, but temper tantrums aren't the answer when somebody disagrees with you.

Especially ones where you're calling everybody *else* too sensitive...

 

[robconley]

I can see why you'd be confused.
If the modules were 'outsourced', in the usual sense of the term,
then it would be easier to understand why they don't work well
as Organized Play adventures -- the developers wouldn't have any
real reason to consider OP unless it was part of the contract.

Perhaps they deliberately don't consider the needs of Organized Play in published adventures. In general the constraints of organized play make for poor products for traditional campaigns. Organized play should have their own line of support designed and oriented to the needs, and constraints of OP. And it should be separate from products for general release.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Sorry, but, could you define what you think is "suck"?

We've got two full adventure paths so far, one that is so so and mediocre. The other has been widely praised and very highly regarded.

Batting 500 so far. I'd say that's pretty far from "making them suck".

You could have stopped at "adventure path" and the suckitude becomes self evident. 5E needs SCENARIOS not adventure storylines.

 

[justinj3x3]

Don't be so ridiculous. If you don't want a debate, fine, but temper tantrums aren't the answer when somebody disagrees with you.

Especially ones where you're calling everybody *else* too sensitive...

The comment is intentionaly ridiculous. That's the point. The tantrum is in your head. Nobody is crying in the corner over here. Like I said earlier big boy pants.

 

[Umbran]

You could have stopped at "adventure path" and the suckitude becomes self evident. 5E needs SCENARIOS not adventure storylines.

Given that some folks like adventure paths, and others like stand-alone shorter scenarios, I think it is reasonable to say it could use a mixture of both.

 

[Matt James]

The 3rd-Party folks that are working on Adventures have done a great job. I have zero complaints with the quality of the work. Heck, they're all former WotC D&D folks anyways. I think it's great, as the institutional knowledge of the brand and game is still right in the mix.

 

[Umbran]

The comment is intentionaly ridiculous. That's the point. The tantrum is in your head.

Perhaps you forget that in text there is no "tone of voice", only the words - there's nothing in what you wrote indicating directly that it is intentionally ridiculous.

Moreover, sarcasm is generally failed communication, and does not typically convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you. If your intent is constructive criticism of thought processes, you're missing the mark by stooping to snark.

 

[Pauper]

Perhaps they deliberately don't consider the needs of Organized Play in published adventures. In general the constraints of organized play make for poor products for traditional campaigns. Organized play should have their own line of support designed and oriented to the needs, and constraints of OP. And it should be separate from products for general release.

This would make more sense if WotC then turned to the folks running Organized Play and said, "OK, we're not going to do all that much to optimize the adventures we're publishing (rather than the ones you're publishing) for your use, so we grant you the authority to make whatever changes you need to in order to make the adventures work better for OP. After all, it's a big part of our player outreach, and we want the product to be as attractive as possible."

That doesn't seem to be what's happening -- the Adventurers League Player's Guide has Greg Bilsland and Chris Tulach as being members of the 'Wizards team' for OP, with Bilsland being the R&D Player Experience guy and Tulach being the head of OP. Either these guys aren't contributing to the "deep review" of adventure material being created, or they are but aren't passing along much of their knowledge to the volunteer admins who make up the next tier of the OP command structure. (I actually suspect it's more the latter, since a sample of the hardcover adventure gets released early as the Encounters season for that storyline season, and I have to think that Bilsland and/or Tulach are pretty significantly involved in creating that document.)

Lastly, I'm not sure where the idea comes in that Organized Play is somehow vastly different from regular home games -- after all, some of the greatest adventures in D&D history started as RPGA offerings, often as tournament adventures. Now if you want to talk Living Campaign adventures, then you may have more of a point, though lots of people seem eager to try to find old Living Greyhawk adventures to play through. One of my own groups still plays 4th Edition using the old Living Forgotten Realms adventures -- we're just starting out the Epic Campaign and expect to continue playing through that until some time into 2017. So I don't see 'designed for Organized Play' being a detriment to using that same material in a home game; in a sense, a campaign is a campaign.

--
Pauper

 

[justinj3x3]

Moreover, sarcasm is generally failed communication, and does not typically convince anyone who doesn't already agree with you.

Good thing I'm not trying to convince anyone. But if my message isn't clear let me say it like this. There's no point in conversing about anything if the thought police are going to accuse you of attacking people and hurting their feelings for expressing an opposing view.

 

[Parmandur]

Good thing I'm not trying to convince anyone. But if my message isn't clear let me say it like this. There's no point in conversing about anything if the thought police are going to accuse you of attacking people and hurting their feelings for expressing an opposing view.

Aaaaaand that, again, is why WOTC doesn't spend much time engaging with the fans. "There's no point in conversing about [D&D work] if the thought police are going to accuse you of [double-speak, corporate shilling, not communicating enough]."

WOTC has no reason to participate in public fora with fans when they get feedback like this.