Why D&D is slowly cutting its own throat.

[Mark]

Indeed, if anything is portable between systems, it's adventures.

And between settings, to a great degree.

 

[Arnwyn]

That's getting close to every module published for 1e and 2e *combined*, and we haven't even touched on the OGL products yet.

Well now, let's not get carried away and ruin what credibility you have on this topic. If you insist on including Dungeon, then the above statement isn't very accurate, and your premise untrue.

 

[Staffan]

D6's could also be HERO, Space 1899, the original Prime Directive from Task Force Games or something from FASA (Shadowrun, Earthdawn, MechWarrior).

Note: Earthdawn doesn't use the "fistful of d6" system Shadowrun does. Instead you roll a combination of "exploding" (reroll and add on max) d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20, possibly in multiples, depending on how good you are at what you're trying to do (the average of the roll is supposed to be equal to your skill level). So if you have a Dexterity "step" of 4, and 2 ranks in Melee Weapons, your Melee Weapons "step" is 6, and you roll a d10 to try and hit someone.

 

[buzz]

Well now, let's not get carried away and ruin what credibility you have on this topic. If you insist on including Dungeon, then the above statement isn't very accurate, and your premise untrue.

Point taken, though I have to wonder whether it would still be true if we had an accurate count of all the PDF publishers who've produced adventures figured in.

Leaving out Dungeon, 3e is way ahead. Including Dungeon, 3e is comparable, and within a shorter timeframe. The overall rate of release is higher.. It will be interesting to compare once 3e hits the 10+ year lifespan of the previous editions.

 

[Arnwyn]

Including PDF adventures, I'd hazard a (wild) guess and say that 3.xe surpasses all the previous editions in number of adventures.

(But, when people complain about "no adventures", they are excluding PDFs. There are a number of people who don't care for that sub-market.)

 

[Sholari]

Including PDF adventures, I'd hazard a (wild) guess and say that 3.xe surpasses all the previous editions in number of adventures.

(But, when people complain about "no adventures", they are excluding PDFs. There are a number of people who don't care for that sub-market.)

More important I'd say 3.x has really lowered the bar for quality of adventures. The result is a glut of poor quality adventures that most people can whip out with their eyes closed. In contrast their have been a couple sources of really good quality adventures... Freeport, Iron Kingdoms, Dungeon magazine, and a few others.

However, this is still quite a bit better than 2e, which was the absolute pits when it came to decent adventures. It is really the whole Dragonlance era of adventures (except for the very first Dragonlance module) and 2e modules, which contributed to their demise in popularity. These modules usually wavered between too generic, too haphazard, or too railroading to be useful in most campaigns. It is because of the bad module design during these times, that a lot of people became turned off to them.

Funny thing is this also correlates with Lorraine Williams taking over the helm at TSR.

 

[Celebrim]

However, this is still quite a bit better than 2e, which was the absolute pits when it came to decent adventures.

I'll agree with that. The thing is, if you were a fan of quality adventurers, you could just about see the glorious recovery of the game that 3rd edition represents coming. Right there at the end of 2nd edition, there was a sudden flurry of good products - mostly epic scale adventurers. Whenever people talk about great 2nd edition adventures, they are either talking about Planescape or the big boxed set adventurers that came out around the time of the silver anniversary. That reinnasance in dungeon design lasted through the early years of 3rd edition with modules like 'Sunless Citadel' and RttToEE.

And I can't help but think that is the influence of Monte Cook and company. I could read a module like Axe of the Dwarven Lords and see Skip's same frustration that I felt with the old out of date mechanics, and see even the author's frustration with try to cludge a 'fix' together. And yet, Axe of the Dwarven Lords was a wonderful module. The criticism it most frequently recieves revolves solely around its end run around the mechanical limitations of 1st/2nd edition. But at the same time, for the first time in years you were seeing really good products coming out for D&D - Rod of Seven Parts, Axe of the Dwarven Lords, Return to the Tomb of Horrors, Planescape, etc. For the first time I since I was a young DM was seeing things being published which I felt were as good or better than what I could do on my own.

I hate to dump on anyone, but as long as we are blaming people for the downturn in product quality during 2nd edition, you have to add Ed Greenwood to the list. To me, Ed never struck me as more than a mediocre hack and slash DM - where as Monte is an extraordinary hack and slash DM. I mean, I'm sure that if your sitting at his table, Ed Greenwood is a blast to play with. You can tell that much from his work. But as far as the creativity and the inventiveness goes, he's just not in the same league IMO as EGG, Tracy Hickman, or Monte Cook.

Small company that it is, you can't help but feel that TSR/WotC is basically influenced by the visions of a small handful of DM/players. Sometimes these are amongst the best DM's in the country, but its not really being extraordinarily talented and creative that gets you the job and gives you creative control over the company. To a large extent, its even more important that your just willing to do the work and be productive.

There has been alot of list going around lately celebrating the products, but if you were building a hall of fame for game content writers, who would you put in it?

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Rod of Seven Parts, Axe of the Dwarven Lords, Return to the Tomb of Horrors,

Good taste, but I'd add A Paladin In Hell and The Shattered Circle. Plus, I've never been much of a Planescape fan.

 

[Celebrim]

Good taste, but I'd add A Paladin In Hell and The Shattered Circle. Plus, I've never been much of a Planescape fan.

I've never had a chance to read either, much less play them. I will note that you selected a Monte Cook and a Bruce Cordell adventure though, and that doesn't surprise me in the least considering that Bruce wrote 'The Sunless Citadel' and Monte wrote 'RttToEE'.

 

[woodelf]

Could it be that the reason that there are not many good modules on the market is that writing a compelling module is harder than writing up a rules supplement? Is the good fluff harder to do than the crunch?

IMHO, yes. In addition to my own abilities/experiences, i bring as evidence the D20 System market: First, there seem to be a lot more books with good fluff than good crunch. Second, there's just way more crunch than fluff, period--and i think part of that is production issues, as well as market demand. Third, really good fluff seems to stand out more than really good crunch, and i think that's in part because it's rarer.