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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sir Whiskers" data-source="post: 748595" data-attributes="member: 6941">I think you will agree that such a product cannot meet the needs of everyone - you'll have to decide who your target market is, and focus on them. As an example, for me, regardless of price, the purchasing decision boils down to two questions: 1. How open-ended would it be?  If this is just another RttToEE, with the players expected to do nothing but what is in the module, when the module says they should, I'm not interested. One of my favorite mega-adventures is The Vault of Larin Karr, because I can (and have) so easily take pieces of it (the towns, npc's, some encounters) and let the players deal with them when the party wants to, how the party wants to. My players often don't even know when they're playing through a piece of that module. While I agree that a module of this size cannot be purely generic, it also shouldn't be a mega-dungeon (whether inside a dungeon or not) where the party is always expected to go a certain way and focus on a particular goal (as RttToEE did too often).2. How easily can I customize it?Virtually all adventures and modules I run are customized, some quite heavily. This is probably well beyond the intended scope of your project, but you should consider including electronic aids with a product of this magnitude. Though many would not use such tools, many of us would, if only to save countless hours of prep time. For instance, if you included a cd with the npc's and monsters at various challenge ratings, and the ability for me to change simple details about them (this wizard has a wand of fireballs, not a ring of flying), that would make a huge difference to me. I'd need the ability to print out the npc's/creatures, and you would need to include some mechanism to make it difficult for others to pirate your work - but think of the time savings for a GM. I'm not suggesting a generator, more of a mass index from which I choose the appropriate npc/creature, make a few quick adjustments (perhaps during print preview?), then print. This would greatly simplify having npc's change over time, as they should in an adventure of this length.Another electronic tool could organize the setting information (history, geography, npc's, towns, legends, etc.) similar to MyInfo (a great tool for GM's, by the way). Allow the GM to change the information to fit his/her version, then print as needed. Even if it is never printed, keeping it handy on a pc would be a benefit. I see much greater problems with piracy for this tool - I'm not sure if you could protect the product sufficiently to make it worthwhile, but it would again be a great aid for the GM running such a module.Think of it this way - how many pages would this mega-module be? How long would it take me, as a GM, just to read it? Then how many hours would I have to spend to tweak it the way I like? You suggest this could suffice for a 2-year campaign, justifying the steep price tag. I agree that 2-years' use would do so - I just don't want to spend two years first getting it ready.Of course, you could just decide that I'm not your target market. Maybe it will have to something that is run pretty much as is, out of the box. I would understand such a choice, but then I would not be very interested in the product.Good luck with this - I'll be interested to see how it turns out if you go through with it.PS - Just for the record, I'm another vote for stand-up cardboard counters, not the style used in the creature collections.</blockquote>

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