D&D 5E Why (and when) did "Adventure Paths" replace modules?

[n00b f00]

Chris Perkins talked about this a bit in that Q n A where he hinted at Ravenloft. It was linked here like 2 months back or so.

It was basically what everyone else here said. The smaller books don't look good on a shelf for the stores. Many DMs who want to buy books, just want to run from one published adventure to the next, which is easier with a longer adventure. And the margins on books in general mean that Wizards don't want to release a lot of books. They think that the market just will not sustain them releasing 10 books a month, that people buy, but do not use. That's why I imagine they're leaning on UA and DM's Guild.

I'm someone who likes to do my own homebrew stuff, and occasionally tossing in some shorter polished published stuff. Something I can drop into a pre existing campaign for a few weeks, and then move on. Mix it up, see stuff that's different from my own personal narrative meta I suppose. I have no interest in running published stuff for months and years at a time, but that also apparently means I'm not the target demo of published adventures.

 

[JonnyP71]

Great. Now, would you pay $20 for it?

And, if yes, when you stack two(-ish) such adventures up against an "Out of the Abyss", are you really sure you wouldn't think you'd had a raw deal... especially since there's no guarantee that the quality of those two (as adventures) would be any better than OotA - after all, WotC engaged the service of some of the very best in the business to produce that storyline.

Yes, and I probably did pay $20 for it taking into account inflation. (£5 in the mid 1980s)

And if I knew the quality was there, ie I trusted the author (Graeme Morris was one of THE best) then I'd be happy to keep paying that amount for good adventures.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

The irony of all of this being that during 4E you could subscribe to DDI for like $6 a month and get on average 3 individual adventures in the online Dungeon Magazine for that month (let alone the online Builders, the Compendium, Dragon Magazine, and whatnot)... and there were oodles of people who REFUSED to do it because they thought it was a bad deal. Oh how times have changed.

Got any way to substantiate this claim? I skipped over 4E, so I largely missed any 4E drama that may have occurred.

 

[Demetrios1453]

There's now also the DMs Guild, which is selling 3rd Party adventures as well as the Adventurer's League adventures. Lots of various adventures there. And you can get digital copies of classic adventures to quickly update.

I was going to mention the AL adventures myself. Since they are now available for everyone, they should help at least partially fill the niche that actual published modules once filled.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Was referring to the current 5e APs.

Ah, no worries. I haven't played through any of those yet (we're about to play through PotA).

Are they really that short that you can play through them in 4 months? Weekly play I'm assuming?

 

[Olaf the Stout]

RPGs are not novels. A feature of APs is the extensive longterm railroading they HAVE to do in order to sustain your beloved novelization. Good campaigns also have a beginning, middle, and end....but they are developed over longer periods of time and allow for much broader character development and include potentially significant downtime. I have run campaigns lasting a decade in real time and the PCs have had strongholds and children who have grown up to become adventurers.

I am not trying to denigrate those who like APs. But they are designed to be, effectively, the fast food of the RPG world. Prepackaged, easily consumed, and easily forgotten when you roll up new PCs and start the next AP 6 months later.

They certainly require a level of buy-in from the players. I have run the Shackled City and Age of Worms APs (the first 2 Dungeon magazine APs). When I started those campaigns I made sure the players knew what they were in for, and that they were willing to go along with the plot to a certain extent.

Had my players not agreed to do that I would have gone with a less restrictive option. As it was, they were happy to go along with it.

 

[Jester David]

RPGs are not novels. A feature of APs is the extensive longterm railroading they HAVE to do in order to sustain your beloved novelization. Good campaigns also have a beginning, middle, and end....but they are developed over longer periods of time and allow for much broader character development and include potentially significant downtime. I have run campaigns lasting a decade in real time and the PCs have had strongholds and children who have grown up to become adventurers.

Just because something is home brewed doesn't mean it's not firmly on the rails. Many, many DMs firmly adhere to a planned storyline.
Heck, just the assumption of a beginning, middle, and end implies a narrative that requires the structure of rails.

Funny thing...
Because they cannot make assumptions of what the players will do, published APs often have side details (such as NPC backgrounds and dungeon details) that wouldn't normally exist because the DM is just writing for their party and might not expand beyond the small box they're seeing. Because all the details are there, it's easier for many DMs to react to the players, as they don't need to make things up when the unexpected happens.

I am not trying to denigrate those who like APs. But they are designed to be, effectively, the fast food of the RPG world. Prepackaged, easily consumed, and easily forgotten when you roll up new PCs and start the next AP 6 months later.

You may not be trying, but you're doing a bang up job.

APs are not home brew campaigns. But the experiences at the table are just as real and just as memorable. Just because the DM didn't pull the adventure out of their butt the day before play doesn't make the actions of the PCs or the story being told any less interesting.
I've run three APs in the last five years: two from Paizo and the MWP update of Dragonlance, and each one still gets talked about.

There's lots of reasons to run an AP. Just like there's lots of reasons to run any of the published modules that D&D has been cranking out since 1976. Not everyone feels comfortable with their adventure designing skill, not everyone has the time to plan a campaign, and sometimes different ideas are nice and inspire you towards different directions. Published adventures do different things and go in different directions than you might plan. And sometimes a story just sounds cool.

One of the strongest and most interesting things about RPGs is that not everyone plays the same. That everyone makes the game their own.

 

[ehenning]

Ah, no worries. I haven't played through any of those yet (we're about to play through PotA).

Are they really that short that you can play through them in 4 months? Weekly play I'm assuming?

My experience so far with PotA is party leveling about once every 1-2 sessions (6-8 hour sessions). If you run the AP as is with no additions, you could finish it in 15-18 sessions, I think.

That said, I embellish quite a bit and that draws it out. There are also several side quests which are optional and can add time.

 

[Rabbitbait]

Ah, no worries. I haven't played through any of those yet (we're about to play through PotA).

Are they really that short that you can play through them in 4 months? Weekly play I'm assuming?

We've been playing PoTA since May 2015 and are maybe halfway through. That's without using the optional lead-in stuff from chapter 6 and only 1 of the side quests. We play weekly 3 hour sessions.

That said, I have added a lot of homebrew stuff going on at the same time.

 

[delericho]

And if I knew the quality was there, ie I trusted the author (Graeme Morris was one of THE best) then I'd be happy to keep paying that amount for good adventures.

Ah, but there's the rub: you don't, and can't, get a guarantee of quality. UK4 is regarded as one of the very best adventures from the classic era. But for every UK4 or I6, you get a "Forest Oracle" or "Scourge of the Howling Horde". (Most adventures, of course, sit somewhere between the very best and the very worst!) And for that style of adventure to be worth WotC's while, they need them all to sell well enough - not just the cream of the crop.