Pathfinder 1E WotC desperately needs to learn from Paizo and Privateer Press

[Dannyalcatraz]

Personally, most of my favorite D&D modules were 1Ed or 2Ed.

There were some 3.X ones I liked (RttToEE, for one), but by and large, I didn't buy many. I had more fun with 3PP products or my own homebrew.

 

[Crothian]

Even of the 3pp I use Goodman Games, Green Ronin, and Necromancer. Piazo I've triesd some adventure pathy stuff but that's it. And Privateer Press; are they even still making RPG books? I'm not sure I heard anything about them having something new since Five Fingers.

 

[Starsunder]

Im not a fan of 4e, but I usually love reading monster books from and and all editions; as mentioned earlier, the 2e monster compendium/monstrous manual is right up my alley. Frankly, the 4e MM are just terrible imo; so dry and boring to read that honestly I dont know how you would do it. There are a lot of interesting looking monsters in the MM1&2, but the dearth of fluff just kills any excitement I might have had reading them.

I've personally never understood the "too much fluff" mentality in a MM. Pick and choose is the name of the game. If you like something, use it; if the way the MM describes the monster isnt to your liking or campaign style, cut it out. But if there is little to no fluff at all, then frankly all your left with is stats. zzzzz.....

A great example of fluff turning a potentially snooze inducing monster into a awesome one is the giant mantis from Paizo's Bestiary. Im not going into too much detail (check the PRD for the fluff), but it essentaily takes the mantis and transforms if from a mundane (abeit huge) insect into perhaps something more...good stuff and gets my imaginative juices flowing.

But as always, different strokes for different folks.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

One of the problems with the lack of fluff in 4e monster products is that, while it does render monsters very easy to re-skin and use as something else, the new monsters don't generate ideas. (I'm pretty sure the lack of fluff is real, not just imagined--back in 3.x, I would borrow monster manuals from time to time and read through them to see what new monsters were out there. Afterwards, I would often have a list of monsters that I wanted to use in an adventure or that had given me adventure ideas; reading through the 4th edition MM, none of the monsters do that).

But this is not just fluff. While one previous poster claimed that 4e monsters have good mechanical hooks for combat such that the unique abilities of orcs, goblins, and kobolds give them unique feels in combat, what this misses is that all of the non-combat abilities have been stripped out of monsters. For example, in 3rd edition, I noted that bone devils have animate dead as a spell-like ability and that gave me the idea to write an adventure that featured an evil cleric who summoned a bone devil in order to create undead more efficiently. 4th edition monsters, on the other hand, do not have non-combat functions. Their stats and abilities exist only to allow them to fight and be killed. Net result: if you are writing for 4e, you come up with an idea first and then comb through the monster manual for creatures to fit into your boxes. You don't look at a creature and see a story develop from its non-combat abilities.

 

[Gort]

You can't generalise entire companies like that, in the manner of "Paizo are a lithe, pointy-eared company that excel at poverty".

 

[Jack99]

Some of the adventures are indeed better than others - Thunderspire Labyrinth springs to mind. But taken as a whole, as I said, they're uninspiring. They do focus far too much on designing cool tactical combats. A degree of that is fine, but when that's all there is, at least with my groups, enthusiasm fizzles.

I can't fault Paizo for designing adventures that don't fit well into game worlds than Golarion, because their campaign world is so well done that I'm happy to use the setting and just utilize 4E mechanics instead.

I agree that if you do not do any work at all, Paizo's adventures are arguably better. I just have to disagree with you on the uninspiring part - I think they (WotC's adventures) have lots of great ideas, but they need to be developed.

As for Golarion, its Greyhawk mixed with Forgotten Realms from what I can tell. It's well written and awesome if you want everything in a world spoonfed to you. But not all want that, because lets face it, a large part of DM's like to create their own adventures and worlds. Which again is probably why WotC have chosen to make their books how they do.

So, in short. My guess is that WotC's marketing research shows that by far most DM's run their own worlds. What they want is ideas, hooks and inspiration so that they can create their own thing. A much smaller amount of DM's want worlds where they can look up what the cost of an Inn is in each and every part of town, or what is on the menu on Thursdays at the Drunken Boar Inn.

Since WotC (as the market leader) needs to cater to the masses, it is no surprise why they make their campaign settings as they do. Short and to the point, a great frame to build within or to use for something else.

Cheers

 

[robconley]

I just purchased Supp VI The Majestic Wilderlands and it was much the same- well written but the setting info is 99% backstory/history lesson and not much adventuring material for a DM to use.

I understand your point and knew based on my own experiences that style often doesn't really translate into useful campaign stuff without some work on part of the referee.

Which is why I made sure I had 85 pages of rules that used that setting material in part. Plus within the setting stuff I have a lot on cultures and religion. These two areas I found are among the easiest of fluff to adapt to another campaign. The rest I hopes serves as an idea generator for similar situation in other campaign. Which is why I had a sentence or two of commentary on many of the entries on WHY I had this area in the Majestic Wilderlands.

 

[Derulbaskul]

All of them? No. But I liked Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury, and Speaker in Dreams.

I really enjoyed those also.

Speaker in Dreams, in particular, I have included bits of in about four different campaigns.

Sunless Citadel is, for me, the last time that Bruce Cordell wrote a good adventure (since then it feels like it's all weird for weird's sake).

Forge of Fury was by Rich Baker: seriously, he is one talented man. I like very product that has his name on it and he still "gets" adventures (he's also the only WotC employee who should be allowed to write FR novels).

 

[Runestar]

How many of you played 3e prior to switching over to 4e?

Considering that 3e splatbooks are usually chock-full of info which look like they can easily be ported over to 4e monsters, I am certainly glad they didn't bother trying to duplicate the information in 4e MMs. Avoids inflating the page count and everyone pays less as a result.

 

[Morrus]

My desire for adventure paths is met with ENWorlds own WotBS... an I hope, hope they do another AP.

We'd love to! If enough people buy WotBS, we may well be in a postion to do so in a year or so's time. Let's keep our fingers crossed.