D&D 5E WotC Is Designing Adventures With Shorter Content Chunks

In a recent interview, WotC’s Jeremy Crawford talked about how WotC’s D&D design accommodates streaming and busier adult gamers by dividing adventures into shorter, bite-sized content.

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Dungeons & Dragons is undergoing a popularity boom unlike anything in its existence lately. More and more people are picking up the game — and even more have turned it into its own kind of show, as the “Actual Play” genre of streamed campaigns has shot to its own kind of transmedia boom. So it’s […]

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“So you’ll notice that around the time we came out with the Essentials Kit and then continued on with a lot of our adventure content — even when it’s a large, epic campaign, like last year’s Rime of the Frostmaiden —they’re much easier to divide up into digestible segments that where … if the DM wants to just read a part of this big book, or just run one of these little quests, we’re making that easier to do. Not only to make things less arduous for a brand new Dungeon Master, and with new groups of players coming to D&D for the first time, but also because of that format of play, also suits streamed games better.

“We know streamed games, with the exception of maybe Critical Role, tend to be shorter than a lot of [traditional] tabletop games. You know, in the old days and even today, a lot of people’s tabletop games [sessions] might range between three and four hours, although we’re seeing the average length go down — most streamed games are often sometimes as short as two hours, or even 90 minutes.”

 

[Retreater]

There is definitely a market for this type of content. Just recently there have been several posts on here looking for shorter adventures, and we've all read the complaints of WotC making almost exclusively 1-13th level mega campaigns.
My ideal product from them would be adventures that could be run with minimal prep. Short things I could get together at a moment's notice to run when the entire group isn't there and I've got less than an hour to prep, which can be done in 2-3 hours, which can be dropped into an on-going campaign or be a satisfying one-shot.
Playing exclusively on VTTs (with little hope of ever playing in person again regularly) means that having all of this available digitally, with maps, tokens, etc., already done would be even better for me.
Honestly, after the experience of Rime of the Frost Maiden, I will probably never run a campaign adventure again.

 

[Staffan]

I don't think it is impossible at all and it is a design goal i have for my own work. It just takes the view that words are not as important as graphic design in adventure formatting. Pretty much since the end of the 70s adventure designers became writers instead and suddenly walls of text started obscuring the actual adventure. And getting paid per word didn't help.

All that text is fine for the back story and the setting fluff, but in the actual adventure it is a detriment. The GM shouldn't have to comb through it to find the important details for running the thing. Annotated maps,informative icons, info graphics and other tools can do that job better.

I see your point, but on the other hand I've seen the results of that line of thinking: the Delve format that showed up in late 3.5e and was prevalent in 4e. This was... not popular. Part of that was probably the focus on the pre-planned encounter as a distinct unit instead of the module as a whole.

Of course, it should be possible to make adventures more succinct and easy to use without going that far.

 

[Hussar]

I see your point, but on the other hand I've seen the results of that line of thinking: the Delve format that showed up in late 3.5e and was prevalent in 4e. This was... not popular. Part of that was probably the focus on the pre-planned encounter as a distinct unit instead of the module as a whole.

Of course, it should be possible to make adventures more succinct and easy to use without going that far.

Let's be honest here. 4e issues got smeared across quite a few things. Simply having a 4e mark on something made it a target. I've just recently wrapped an updated campaign using the Chaos Scar 4e modules from Dungeon. The Delve format was FANTASTIC for updating purposes. It made everything so crystal clear and easy to organize. But, then again, I play on Virtual Tabletop, so, "modules for reading" is never a priority for me. It's all about ease of use in play.

I know that the traditional format makes online play EXTREMELY difficult. You get bits of information that the players can learn, buried in the text in some encounter somewhere in the middle of the adventure and trying to find it during play is very difficult. I know that I constantly get caught short with players asking questions and me having to flip through ten different encounter locations just to find answers. It's really frustrating. The Delve Format put all the adventure information in one place and all the combat information in another place. They weren't all smooshed together.

From a purely personal viewpoint, I'd very much welcome the return to the Delve format.

 

[Reynard]

Let's be honest here. 4e issues got smeared across quite a few things. Simply having a 4e mark on something made it a target. I've just recently wrapped an updated campaign using the Chaos Scar 4e modules from Dungeon. The Delve format was FANTASTIC for updating purposes. It made everything so crystal clear and easy to organize. But, then again, I play on Virtual Tabletop, so, "modules for reading" is never a priority for me. It's all about ease of use in play.

I know that the traditional format makes online play EXTREMELY difficult. You get bits of information that the players can learn, buried in the text in some encounter somewhere in the middle of the adventure and trying to find it during play is very difficult. I know that I constantly get caught short with players asking questions and me having to flip through ten different encounter locations just to find answers. It's really frustrating. The Delve Format put all the adventure information in one place and all the combat information in another place. They weren't all smooshed together.

From a purely personal viewpoint, I'd very much welcome the return to the Delve format.

The nice thing is it doesn't have to be an either/or situation. You can have all the lovely prose that make modules fun to read, and still provide succinct layouts and outlines/flowcharts.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I am running 2 campaigns right now (Monday and Wednesday evening). The sessions have been 3 hours since I started (4 or 5 years ago).

I am in my mid-50’s and most of my players are no younger than mid 30’s. We all have work and kids and life. 3 hours is plenty.

 

[Stormonu]

If WotC returns to the Long Campaign-style books, I hope they add breakpoints into the adventure so you can have good stopping points if you want to cut the length - maybe a mini-climax a 1/3rd into it. Something that has a satisfying point where you can stop it there and walk away, or continue onward into a longer adventure. The Saltmarsh book is partially like this - you can run the U1/U2/U3 section and stop after U3, or run the following adventures if you wish to choose to continue the campaign further. More breakpoints like this would be helpful so you could run a "short", "medium" or "long" campaign from the book, as you choose.

 

[Parmandur]

If WotC returns to the Long Campaign-style books, I hope they add breakpoints into the adventure so you can have good stopping points if you want to cut the length - maybe a mini-climax a 1/3rd into it. Something that has a satisfying point where you can stop it there and walk away, or continue onward into a longer adventure. The Saltmarsh book is partially like this - you can run the U1/U2/U3 section and stop after U3, or run the following adventures if you wish to choose to continue the campaign further. More breakpoints like this would be helpful so you could run a "short", "medium" or "long" campaign from the book, as you choose.

I mean, that's more or less most of them. The Chapters are pretty modular.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

I run a Tuesday night game that runs around 3.5-4 hours nightly (we all need to get some sleep for work the next day after all), and for close to 30 years now I've kept 6 hours on a Saturday night open for gaming. Some nights might vary (5 hours, 7 hours) but it remain that way......very interesting to hear that sessions longer than 4 hours seem to be the exception now.

 

[CharlesWallace]

I run a Tuesday night game that runs around 3.5-4 hours nightly (we all need to get some sleep for work the next day after all), and for close to 30 years now I've kept 6 hours on a Saturday night open for gaming. Some nights might vary (5 hours, 7 hours) but it remain that way......very interesting to hear that sessions longer than 4 hours seem to be the exception now.

I play on roll20 every sunday morning with friends in a couple other states. Our sessions are only 90 minutes, and I don't know if we could play that frequently in person. I rely on their online tools to speed up the character leveling process. I drag and drop magic items on to my character sheet, etc. So nothing crazy advanced, but it speeds up combat and spells and stuff quite a bit. I sadly can't allocated any more time than 90 minutes a week, and so I do whatever I can to make that work.

Now back in the 80's when I was a maybe 13 or 14, we'd play for 8 hours on the weekend. It was amazing! I miss those days...

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

While I appreciate the time and effort that go into crafting the large campaign books, as well as the production values of those releases, I really do miss the earlier days of the game when they had the smaller modules that you could buy for a few sessions of fun. I mean, Isle of Dread all by itself could last you for a good few months of gaming if done right, and you didn't even have to pay extra for that when you purchased the Expert set!