D&D 5E Why is WoTc still pushing AP's when the majority of gamers want something else?

[MerricB]

Out of curiosity, I looked up how big Sunless Citadel was. Eight modules, with five being 32 pages and the final two being 48.
A total page count of 288 pages. Just a tad larger than one of the storyline adventure hardcovers. Only they crammed 20 levels into those pages. At a slower progression of leveling. And released them slowly over two years.

Did anyone have these?
How much actual story was in the modules? Or was it just eight giant dungeons?

Got them all. Some are excellent. Others less so. And I had possibly the most fun with the worst of the lot (Deep Horizon!)

Interestingly, they were the first series of D&D adventures to gain the title "Adventure Path" (which Paizo later made famous).

Each adventure is stand-alone, but there are various links between the adventures.

• The Sunless Citadel is a 56-area dungeon. It introduces the Gulthias tree and the shrine of Ashardalon. A map leading to FoF can be found.
• The Forge of Fury is a 52-area dungeon.
• The Speaker in Dreams is a town adventure without links to the previous adventures (basically, when the characters go to town, they get caught up in events. I really like this adventure.
• The Standing Stone is a wilderness adventure in 14 "Scenes", some really dangerous. Lots of misdirection. There are a few links to the Ashardalon storyline (though you won't know them until later).
• Heart of Nightfang Spire is a 77-area dungeon. It reveals the identity of Gulthias, who you get to fight.
• Deep Horizon is a stand-alone Underdark adventure. It introduces a new Underdark race that has negative traction - we never heard from them again.
• Lord of the Iron Fortress is a planar adventure (mostly dungeon), with links to Ashardalon.
• Bastion of Broken Souls is another planar adventure where you finally fight Ashardalon.

The story is fairly slight, but it may be more effective for being so. It's nice getting to the end and realising that a bunch of things you've encountered suddenly have relevance. That said, how many players got to the end of it all? One of the big problems with releasing multi-part stories is that players get the first couple, then stop. (Paizo have discovered this). It's far more cost-effective to release them as one big adventure.

Cheers!

 

[darjr]

Has this ever been released as a collected path? Can it be purchased as a bundle on drive thru?

 

[MerricB]

Has this ever been released as a collected path? Can it be purchased as a bundle on drive thru?

Not as a collection, unfortunately (nor as a single product - I expect the later adventures didn't sell well enough to justify it, and by the time it could had been collected, 3.5E had come out). The individual adventures can be purchased from the DMs Guild.
Here's the first The Sunless Citadel (it links to the others).

Cheers!

 

[Parmandur]

Got them all. Some are excellent. Others less so. And I had possibly the most fun with the worst of the lot (Deep Horizon!)



Interestingly, they were the first series of D&D adventures to gain the title "Adventure Path" (which Paizo later made famous).



Each adventure is stand-alone, but there are various links between the adventures.

• The Sunless Citadel is a 56-area dungeon. It introduces the Gulthias tree and the shrine of Ashardalon. A map leading to FoF can be found.
  
• The Forge of Fury is a 52-area dungeon.
  
• The Speaker in Dreams is a town adventure without links to the previous adventures (basically, when the characters go to town, they get caught up in events. I really like this adventure.
  
• The Standing Stone is a wilderness adventure in 14 "Scenes", some really dangerous. Lots of misdirection. There are a few links to the Ashardalon storyline (though you won't know them until later).
  
• Heart of Nightfang Spire is a 77-area dungeon. It reveals the identity of Gulthias, who you get to fight.
  
• Deep Horizon is a stand-alone Underdark adventure. It introduces a new Underdark race that has negative traction - we never heard from them again.
  
• Lord of the Iron Fortress is a planar adventure (mostly dungeon), with links to Ashardalon.
  
• Bastion of Broken Souls is another planar adventure where you finally fight Ashardalon.
  

The story is fairly slight, but it may be more effective for being so. It's nice getting to the end and realising that a bunch of things you've encountered suddenly have relevance. That said, how many players got to the end of it all? One of the big problems with releasing multi-part stories is that players get the first couple, then stop. (Paizo have discovered this). It's far more cost-effective to release them as one big adventure.



Cheers!

So, basically pretty similar to, say, OotA, but less "themed," and spread over a number of books that end up costing more?

 

[pemerton]

Bastion of Broken Souls is another planar adventure where you finally fight Ashardalon.

I would reiterate that the interesting bit of this is the cosmological set-up -


**SPOILERS FOR A 15-YEAR OLD ADVENTURE**




- the missing souls, the trapped god whose living gate is an angel sworn to her duty, the night hag (I can't remember her proper name) who can provid info that she gathers from travelling through dreams, etc.

I used all this stuff in a RM game, ignoring the bad GMing advice like "the angel can't be persuaed to let the PCs pass" - one of the PCs in my game persuaded her that the only way to truly fulfill her duty was to let the PCs kill her so the gate would open so they could talk to the exiled god - and "the exiled god is to mad to do anything but fight" - the PCs in my game became friends with him and he was able to provide them with help for their mission. But for the actual resolution I combined ideas from Monte Cook's Requiem for a God (the exiled god had been best friends with a now-dead god) and Elder Evils (a voidal entity fallen to earth) rather that what seemed a fairly tedious dungeon slog as the conclusion to BoBS.