WotC & Their Adventures

[Olaf the Stout]

With Green Ronin close behind for their new module line and the city quarters product.

Of course, while giving due credit to "The Game Mechanics", the company that actually write the City Quarters books. Green Ronin just publish them in hardcopy under their name.

I'd agree with you too that "The Book of the Righteous" is a kick-ass book.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Shroomy]

WotC not allowing Paizo to put out AoW might just be a tactic to get Paizo to license AoW to WotC.

I don't know what kind of licensing deal WotC has with Paizo. It could be that WotC would rather put the material out under their brand and are using the veto power as a bargaining tactic.

I believe that WoTC already technically owns all of the D&D related content of the magazines, and can do whatever they want with it.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

But isn't Paizo already competing with them by publishing Dungeon Adventures?
I personally don't see it as competing but rather a complement to the line. <shrug>

In general I wouldn't say that Dungeon adventures competes with WotC adventures. Something like "The Red Hand of Doom" would never appear in Dungeon unless it was part of an Adventure Path. It is way too long.

Dungeon adventures tend to be much shorter (with the exception of the AP's) than the adventures that WotC put out and therefore I think that they are a different product. A hardcover AP on the other hand can stop someone from buying any adventures for a good year or two, something that Wizards wouldn't really want.

Olaf the Stout

 

[sckeener]

I believe that WoTC already technically owns all of the D&D related content of the magazines, and can do whatever they want with it.

Then it is very silly of them...profit is profit and why waste resources reinventing the wheel if someone else already provided the wheel. Paizo is giving them great adventures. Might as well use them.

 

[smootrk]

Then it is very silly of them...profit is profit and why waste resources reinventing the wheel if someone else already provided the wheel. Paizo is giving them great adventures. Might as well use them.

Yes but profit that you have to share unequally with another is different than profit that you keep exclusively for yourself. I can understand the point of view that WotC may have, even if I, as a consumer, would prefer them to share more.

 

[Hussar]

While I agree with almost all of your comment here Hussar I disagree that you would get 50 hours of gameplay out of a medium sized module. I would put the figure at more like 25-30 hours personally. Of course it all depends on how much your group "roleplays" things out and how much they let their swords do the talking for then. Groups that focus on combat tend to run through the modules faster in my experience.

Olaf the Stout

I was picking a number out of the air, but, yeah, you're point is taken. I figured about 10-12 sessions for a larger module. Cool either way, you still can't get that much use out of nearly any supplement.

 

[kenobi65]

IMO, it's absolute folly to be promoting a RPG with all sorts of sourcebooks but not creating adventures that new players can pick up and run out of the box.

When 3E came out, I think that WotC believed that the third-party OGL publishers would fill that gap, and thus they wouldn't have to. It's been pretty well-documented that adventure modules are not as profitable as sourcebooks, for a variety of reasons.

If you recall, for 3E, they published the single set of Adventure Path modules (Sunless Citadel through Bastion of Broken Souls), a couple of FR modules, and that was about it.

However, while a lot of publishers eagerly jumped into the adventure business, a lot of them have since gotten out of it (and, honestly, an awful lot of the 3E OGL ones were AWFUL). While a few (e.g., Necromancer, Goodman) are continuing to be successful with publishing modules, they're the exceptions. I definitely get the sense that WotC realizes that someone has to fill that gap.

Interestingly, the WotC offerings seem to be clustering into two areas:
- The Fantastic Locations, which are fundamentally cross-promotions with the Minis line
- Longer modules, like Red Hand of Doom, which are bigger than Dungeon can tackle, outside of the Adventure Paths.

 

[haakon1]

Pesonally, I prefer the adventures to the rules suppliments, there are enough Feats, Alternate Classes and PrC's out there from WOTC alone to choke a donkey...

No kidding.

 

[Nyaricus]

The thing is, we're pretty much at the saturation point for rules supplements, and isn't it really tough to design an interesting, mechanically tight rules supplement, anyway? (I'd think it would be, given the very high proportion of expansions that are either conceptually boring, mechanically profligate, or both.)

Given that, I think it's a pretty good idea to put out more adventures at this stage of the game.

I wish I'd had so many adventures when I started playing D&D. I might not have had the time to terrorise my players with my house rules, rule expansions and whatnot

cheers,
--N

 

[airwalkrr]

I love the WotC adventures. Expedition to Castle Greyhawk is pure gold. My only complaint is I don't have time to play them all.