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<blockquote data-quote="GuardianLurker" data-source="post: 9376691" data-attributes="member: 786">I think this is one of those 3e legacies that went awry. 3e's Adventure Path (Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury, Speaker of Dreams, ...) is a series of (loosely) thematically tied adventures. They are clearly written as example adventures for their respective levels. E.g. Deep Horizons - &quot;if you're designing a Lv 13 (Tier 3) adventure, expect your PCs to have access to Teleport, Scry, and various other information gathering and travel spells.&quot;One of the common complaints was that the Theme wasn't strong enough. And the first modern &quot;Adventure Path&quot; knocked that out of the park. And was generally very well regarded. The first full adventure path's descendants have maintained their thematic focus (or so I've gathered), but at a cost of an apparently very single-threaded plot (i.e. railroad), and a generally weak endgame. (I mean that's what this entire thread is about.)The other problem with the 3e adventures is that they did a poor job of explaining what they were trying to demonstrate. As an example, the first few times I read Deep Horizons, I kept trying to figure out how the areas were supposed to be linked together, travel wise. The module certainly didn't call it out explicitly (that I remember, anyway).Between those two factors, I can't help but feel that the modern APs (especially the early ones) are focusing on the wrong things. The original Phandelver adventure worked so well, because it did not lose track of what it was, and what it had to do.&nbsp; It's a introductory adventure, and it shines at walking new 5e GMs through the various mechanics (including factions!), and also dropping hooks for the early Adventure Books - it has hooks for Tryanny of Dragons, Out of the Abyss, and even Storm King's Thunder, IIRC. And it's reasonably short, which help keeps the focus tight.Which of course, is my point (and others), about why &quot;modules&quot; (shorter adventures) work a little bit better when trying to build a long campaign.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="GuardianLurker, post: 9376691, member: 786"] I think this is one of those 3e legacies that went awry. 3e's Adventure Path (Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury, Speaker of Dreams, ...) is a series of (loosely) thematically tied adventures. They are clearly written as example adventures for their respective levels. E.g. Deep Horizons - "if you're designing a Lv 13 (Tier 3) adventure, expect your PCs to have access to Teleport, Scry, and various other information gathering and travel spells." One of the common complaints was that the Theme wasn't strong enough. And the first modern "Adventure Path" knocked that out of the park. And was generally very well regarded. The first full adventure path's descendants have maintained their thematic focus (or so I've gathered), but at a cost of an apparently very single-threaded plot (i.e. railroad), and a generally weak endgame. (I mean that's what this entire thread is about.) The other problem with the 3e adventures is that they did a poor job of explaining what they were trying to demonstrate. As an example, the first few times I read Deep Horizons, I kept trying to figure out how the areas were supposed to be linked together, travel wise. The module certainly didn't call it out explicitly (that I remember, anyway). Between those two factors, I can't help but feel that the modern APs (especially the early ones) are focusing on the wrong things. The original Phandelver adventure worked so well, because it did not lose track of what it was, and what it had to do. It's a introductory adventure, and it shines at walking new 5e GMs through the various mechanics (including factions!), and also dropping hooks for the early Adventure Books - it has hooks for Tryanny of Dragons, Out of the Abyss, and even Storm King's Thunder, IIRC. And it's reasonably short, which help keeps the focus tight. Which of course, is my point (and others), about why "modules" (shorter adventures) work a little bit better when trying to build a long campaign. [/QUOTE]

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