D&D General Why 5E Adventurs Suck!!!!!

[DEFCON 1]

the AL adventures are not created by WotC afaik

A number of the more recent seasons of AL material are written / probduced by Baldman Games I believe... the "independant" company that runs most of the Adventurer's League found at conventions and the like. I don't know if they are subsidized by WotC at all... but they are perhaps the most officlal unofficial company as part of WotC.

 

[jayoungr]

the AL adventures are not created by WotC afaik

Not anymore, but WotC made 10+ "seasons'" worth of adventures themselves before outsourcing them.

 

[jayoungr]

My main issue is that they don't tend to bundle all of the various story arcs together. So you have to hunt and peck for each module. Not the end of the world, just an annoyance I have.

I started a thread to compile a list of available arcs, although I'm sure there are many that haven't been added yet. It might be a good starting point:

DDAL - AL Adventures That Form Mid-size Story Arcs

This an offshoot of a conversation I was having with @Hurin88 on another thread. Hurin (and several others) were wishing for the days of published adventures that were meant to cover three or four levels--something in between a one-shot and a full campaign. I mentioned that several of the AL...

www.enworld.org

 

[SteveC]

As far as AL goes, Gamehole Con is having a HUGE AL event in sort of a western marches style. I don't know if the adventures will be available but I do know the organizer of the event and he's a great DM. I'll see if they are going to make them available for purchase or general DL.

 

[Lalato]

I started a thread to compile a list of available arcs, although I'm sure there are many that haven't been added yet. It might be a good starting point:

DDAL - AL Adventures That Form Mid-size Story Arcs

This an offshoot of a conversation I was having with @Hurin88 on another thread. Hurin (and several others) were wishing for the days of published adventures that were meant to cover three or four levels--something in between a one-shot and a full campaign. I mentioned that several of the AL...

www.enworld.org

Cool. If I find some time, I'll see about creating a list on my site that compiles some of these. Just looking at that first arc where the module numbers for the arc jump all over the place just sets my teeth to grinding. LOL

 

[Scott Christian]

Didn't Colville do a video on this or something? I thought someone posted it on these forums. I watched it and thought his conclusions were logical; smaller modules back in the day helped people piece together campaigns and finish stories without the fear of party breakup, schedule mishaps, and/or tedium setting in.

 

[jayoungr]

Didn't Colville do a video on this or something? I thought someone posted it on these forums.

Yes, we had quite a long discussion thread on it.

D&D General - Matt Colville on adventure length

So, Matt Colville posted a video on adventures, their length, and individual adventures vs campaign-length ones: The Cliff's Notes version: The preponderance of big campaign-length adventures like Curse of Strahd (which, for the sake of brevity, I'll call Epics) is bad for the hobby, and...

www.enworld.org

 

[ECMO3]

I think they are lazy and spend more money on marketing than they do on actually making the adventure.

VEOR is one example of this. There was a HUGE amount of hype around it and instead of putting as much effort into design they just talked about how great it will be, then it is published and, well it isn't.

Also the current staff seems way too focused on art. The art in all their hardcovers is very good (I am talking about portraits, not about maps here) and they even talk at times about how much they spent on the art. Well the story and the mechanics are more important than the art when you get down to it. These aren't children's books.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think they are lazy and spend more money on marketing than they do on actually making the adventure.

VEOR is one example of this. There was a HUGE amount of hype around it and instead of putting as much effort into design they just talked about how great it will be, then it is published and, well it isn't.

Also the current staff seems way too focused on art. The art in all their hardcovers is very good (I am talking about portraits, not about maps here) and they even talk at times about how much they spent on the art. Well the story and the mechanics are more important than the art when you get down to it. These aren't children's books.

Pretty much the production values are very good.

Bit adventures I'm running from 1986/87 are better with B/W art.

Quality wise i think there's 3 golden ages for good adventures in D&D. Mostly because of Dungeon Magazine.

Late 1E/Early 2E. Night's Dark Terror and Dungeon was on fire. 2E kinda sucked until...

Around 1995. Night Below through to Early 3.0. (Forge of Fury). Various silver anniversary products, 1999 Starter set, Dungeon Magazine.

2006-2010ish.

SavageTide, Red Hand of Doom, peak Paizo.

A lot of 1E adventures haven't aged that well tbh, B/X had a higher hit ratio bit spread over a larger time frame eg 81-89.

Modern adventure design kinda started around Night Below Paizo refined it.

Pre 2E a lot of the classics are very Dungeon hack but you have things like B3. X1 to break up the monotony. Early Dungeon tried to get away from Wizard did it and Dungeon hacks.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

5e format is designed to make adventures easily accessible for all players, especially newcomers. However, their real value for gm is if you treat them like a skeleton of actual adventure that you have add the meat to, either of your own imagination or provided by other GMs. no 5e adventure I have ever run I've run "out of the box" and honestly, I wouldn't want to.