D&D General The longer I play Baldur's Gate 3 ...

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, the DM is the one paying for it. They're not just donating their time.

Sure but from my perspective as a DM, that makes it far worse.

I'm not paying for an adventure to read a fun story. If I wanted to read a fun story, I'd buy a fantasy novel. I do all the time! It'll be much better that way.

If I'm paying for an adventure to run for the group, so I want an adventure that is:

A) Fun for the players as well as me, and not just a series of cutscenes where the PCs watch NPCs having real discussions or doing cool stuff - something which was true of many WoD campaigns and is alive and well in the 21st century, because the new Dragonlance campaign for example features plenty of that.

B) Well-organised to run, not set up so it tells a compelling story as a book. This is a serious problem with a lot of modern adventures imho. I've discussed it many times.

Are those unreasonable demands? I don't think so, personally. If I buy a microwave, I want to microwave things with it, not like, admire it but find it impractical to actually use. And to be fair, there are consumer goods which look cool and are totally impractical and dumb and I also hate those!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Though, I feel 2e adventure design is actually maybe the epitome of adventures to be read, not run.

I don't really agree.

2E isn't the epitome of that, the peak, the apex, rather it's when that started to become a thing. Even big boxed sets like Dragon Mountain and The Night Below were designed to be run, not read.

But yeah in 2E, all the way through, and particularly towards the end, we got more and more adventures which put "cool story bro" ahead of "this plays well". I'd say in many ways that Dark Sun kind of kicked this off, because of the Prism Pentad (some of the worst books ever written with a D&D setting, which is saying something) and them forcing adventures and even the second version of the setting box to conform to Prism Pentad nonsense. It was definitely a 1990s trend and if that's what you really mean, I agree.

Perhaps you mean "inception" rather than "epitome"? Because it was the inception.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure but from my perspective as a DM, that makes it far worse.

I'm not paying for an adventure to read a fun story. If I wanted to read a fun story, I'd buy a fantasy novel. I do all the time! It'll be much better that way.

If I'm paying for an adventure to run for the group, so I want an adventure that is:

A) Fun for the players as well as me, and not just a series of cutscenes where the PCs watch NPCs having real discussions or doing cool stuff - something which was true of many WoD campaigns and is alive and well in the 21st century, because the new Dragonlance campaign for example features plenty of that.

B) Well-organised to run, not set up so it tells a compelling story as a book. This is a serious problem with a lot of modern adventures imho. I've discussed it many times.

Are those unreasonable demands? I don't think so, personally. If I buy a microwave, I want to microwave things with it, not like, admire it but find it impractical to actually use. And to be fair, there are consumer goods which look cool and are totally impractical and dumb and I also hate those!

I buy adventures for stuff to pull out for my homebrew, and for a good read. Same reason I buy setting books.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't really agree.

2E isn't the epitome of that, the peak, the apex, rather it's when that started to become a thing. Even big boxed sets like Dragon Mountain and The Night Below were designed to be run, not read.

But yeah in 2E, all the way through, and particularly towards the end, we got more and more adventures which put "cool story bro" ahead of "this plays well". I'd say in many ways that Dark Sun kind of kicked this off, because of the Prism Pentad (some of the worst books ever written with a D&D setting, which is saying something) and them forcing adventures and even the second version of the setting box to conform to Prism Pentad nonsense. It was definitely a 1990s trend and if that's what you really mean, I agree.

Perhaps you mean "inception" rather than "epitome"? Because it was the inception.

I enjoyed the Prism Pentad.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I enjoyed the Prism Pentad.

I mean, there's nothing so bad some people didn't enjoy it (indeed, the success of a lot of fan fiction is tremendous evidence for this). I enjoyed Jurassic Park: Trespasser so I know how it goes.

I buy adventures for stuff to pull out for my homebrew, and for a good read. Same reason I buy setting books.

If you can't see the problem here, when you literally say "same reason..." then I don't know what to tell you. It's like saying "I buy microwaves for the same reason I buy cars - to strip them for parts!", and it's like, okay, cool man, but like, what about people who buy microwaves to heat up food?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I feel kind of lucky that I grew up in an era where we still have a lot of adventures for various games designed to be run, not read, designed to be fun for the players, not for the DM reading it, and so on. Because like, if you started playing RPGs in 3E or later, you didn't really see that - it's never fully come back - sure some designers and even some companies do a better job than others, but the mainstream of adventure writing has gone with "fun for the DM to read as a story" waaaaaay ahead of all other factors, and WotC has very much been part of that movement.

You can even see that attitude creep up in discussions of games or adventures that aren't doing this: "What the hell? This book sucks to read!" has been a regular complaint about Shadowdark, as Arcane Library is all-in on table usability, as their 5E adventures make clear.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You can even see that attitude creep up in discussions of games or adventures that aren't doing this: "What the hell? This book sucks to read!" has been a regular complaint about Shadowdark, as Arcane Library is all-in on table usability, as their 5E adventures make clear.

Wow that sucks, Arcane Library is absolutely great at writing actual adventures that actually make sense and run really well, I wish she hadn't made such a weird old-school RNG-is-cool game because otherwise I'd have been all in on Shadowdark.

 

[Retreater]

I'm saying that for every hundred copies of Strahd that were sold, maybe twenty were ever used to actually play a D&D game. (Yes, that's an ass-pull number, but I'd stake real money that I'm not off by more than ten percent.)

I don't disagree. If 25% of DMs run an adventure for 4 players who didn't buy the adventure, that adventure has an even greater exposure than you're suggesting.
For example, I've run the one copy I purchased of Curse of Strahd for two groups, totaling 10 players. That makes up for ten DMs not running that adventure.
The DM is not the only person who uses an adventure. We deserve better than many WotC offerings, IMO.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Wow that sucks, Arcane Library is absolutely great at writing actual adventures that actually make sense and run really well, I wish she hadn't made such a weird old-school RNG-is-cool game because otherwise I'd have been all in on Shadowdark.

I think you can probably run it with less randomness, but you'd probably need to do something to bolster PC hit points, because even a high level PC can't take much abuse and there's no resurrection. At a certain point, though, you would be halfway to Dungeon Crawl Classics, which you could just use instead of monkeying with Shadowdark.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, there's nothing so bad some people didn't enjoy it (indeed, the success of a lot of fan fiction is tremendous evidence for this). I enjoyed Jurassic Park: Trespasser so I know how it goes.

If you can't see the problem here, when you literally say "same reason..." then I don't know what to tell you. It's like saying "I buy microwaves for the same reason I buy cars - to strip them for parts!", and it's like, okay, cool man, but like, what about people who buy microwaves to heat up food?

Plenty of people buy adventures to play them, and WotC isn't going to change their practices (on anything) until or unless if affects their bottom line in a negative way, which to date it largely has not (and when it has, they have indeed taken action). As a result I don't see the situation as fixable from a practical perspective. Interesting to talk about though.