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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Why is Hoard of the Dragon Queen such a bad adventure?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6481996" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>On this point my tastes are closer to those of ExploderWizard than Evenglare and Mephista.</p><p></p><p>It is not hard, in principle at least, to design an adventure that frames a situation for the players to engage via their PCs, but is open-ended as to outcome. I think Robin Laws provides some good examples in his HeroWars Narrator's Book, and the Penumbra line of modules for d20 are generally pretty good in this respect also.</p><p></p><p>But these adventures tend to have less material in them than many prospective purchasers seem to prefer - just enough to frame the initial situation, perhaps provide a little bit of guidance on how it might develop as the PCs initially enter into it, then the material for the crunch. If you are going to provide a <em>lot </em>of material, than either it probably has to be a railroad, because the outcome of scenario A has to frame the PCs into scenario B, or else a whole lot of locale descriptions (like the traditional dungeon).</p><p></p><p></p><p>On this issue I generally agree with Neechen.</p><p></p><p>In particular, I agree that downstream operational consequences (eg a later encounter being significantly easier) is not the only form of meaningfulness. (Indeed, if that makes that later encounter a bit boring then from the point of view of the players it's not even really a reward.)</p><p></p><p>If the outcome is nearly pre-determined, then as a player I would prefer to <em>know</em> that when I make my choice to take a stand. In D&D this can be a bit hard to signal without meta-gaming, because a 5th level NPC looks much the same as a 1st lvel one. I don't know how HotDQ handles this particular point.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6481996, member: 42582"] On this point my tastes are closer to those of ExploderWizard than Evenglare and Mephista. It is not hard, in principle at least, to design an adventure that frames a situation for the players to engage via their PCs, but is open-ended as to outcome. I think Robin Laws provides some good examples in his HeroWars Narrator's Book, and the Penumbra line of modules for d20 are generally pretty good in this respect also. But these adventures tend to have less material in them than many prospective purchasers seem to prefer - just enough to frame the initial situation, perhaps provide a little bit of guidance on how it might develop as the PCs initially enter into it, then the material for the crunch. If you are going to provide a [I]lot [/I]of material, than either it probably has to be a railroad, because the outcome of scenario A has to frame the PCs into scenario B, or else a whole lot of locale descriptions (like the traditional dungeon). On this issue I generally agree with Neechen. In particular, I agree that downstream operational consequences (eg a later encounter being significantly easier) is not the only form of meaningfulness. (Indeed, if that makes that later encounter a bit boring then from the point of view of the players it's not even really a reward.) If the outcome is nearly pre-determined, then as a player I would prefer to [I]know[/I] that when I make my choice to take a stand. In D&D this can be a bit hard to signal without meta-gaming, because a 5th level NPC looks much the same as a 1st lvel one. I don't know how HotDQ handles this particular point. [/QUOTE]
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Why is Hoard of the Dragon Queen such a bad adventure?
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