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

[Micah Sweet]

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.

They are, however, the person who has invested in it. Is it unusual that adventure writers are catering to the people who are actually giving them money? Its not a simple issue.

 

[Incenjucar]

TTRPG adventures are a medium that hasn't really been developed in the same way that video games or story writing have. There is jargon like "hooks" and so on, but it's an area that really hasn't been fleshed out and studied.

 

[MockingBird]

I dunno, I'm one of the group who likes to read the adventures. It works for me as I can see how the story is suppose to go. It also helps me remember what's coming up in the next session.

 

[TwoSix]

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.

Well, RNG is cool, to be fair. It's just not what you to have in a game if "fidelity to developed character concept" is one of your main play priorities, as it is for most popular modern games (5e certainly included).

 

[Retreater]

They are, however, the person who has invested in it. Is it unusual that adventure writers are catering to the people who are actually giving them money? Its not a simple issue.

I can agree that many DMs are like me - they buy more than they could ever run. Some games are aspirational ("one day, I'd love to run this game") others inspirational ("I'd like to take some ideas from this") while others are regrettable ("Why did I ever buy this?!") Sometimes I like to curl up and read an adventure, supplement, or system as someone else might read a novel - and that does have value to me. And honestly, sometimes the streamlined adventures and systems don't make for great pleasure reading. [Not to single them out, but I'm thinking of highly gamist rule books such as 4E D&D and OSR adventures with loads of random tables and bullet-point descriptions ... even though they're great to have at the table.]
However, there is a line adventure writers can walk between presenting information useful for DMs and blurring the important details to surprise the DM during the course of play. The old suggestion of "read this adventure completely before you attempt to run it" might've worked better in the days of 32-page modules than in the 200+ page campaign adventures of today.
Also, logic, common sense, relevant information are valued whether you're reading for pleasure or running a game for your friends. The best adventures can have that without at the expense of good game play. You can see this from the valuable advice on ENWorld, or the work of reviewers like @SlyFlourish or Justin Alexander where they "improve" published adventures by plugging plot holes, connecting encounters that seem random, etc.
And I would suggest that if ENWorlders, SlyFlourish, or the Alexandrian can do it, certainly a good editorial pass from WotC could help.
Many of the official adventures I've run have glaring issues - and they're not issues that exist just to "tell a good story" or "create a memorable, magical scene." It's carelessness.

 

[Malmuria]

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 would say the inception was around the time of Dragonlance adventures (1987), so just before 2e was released. The Hickman revolution. One memorable example for me is the Hickmans' "The House on Gryphon Hill," (1986) which concludes with the DM reading the following novelistic boxed texts to the players (after an adventure full of railroady scenes):

As the last of falls sunlight battles the chill morning mist, a small black cat suddenly darts across your path. You feel eyes on your back. Turning, you see a small girl, clutching her black kitten. Soundlessly, she turns away, stopping at the last minute as her lips curl in a faint smile. Floating over-head comes a deep-throated chuckle, faintly and mockingly.Looking back the girl is gone. Was she ever there?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I would say the inception was around the time of Dragonlance adventures (1987), so just before 2e was released. The Hickman revolution. One memorable example for me is the Hickmans' "The House on Gryphon Hill," (1986) which concludes with the DM reading the following novelistic boxed texts to the players (after an adventure full of railroady scenes)

That's not what we mean by "written to read".

Written to read means the adventure isn't designed to played, primarily, just read, as a story, for the DM, who might imagine it being played but might not even do that. I've not run the 1980s DL ones, but my impression was they were still written to be played, they just a lot of cinematic stuff in them. Which is fine - there's no hard incompatibility between some cinematic bits and being "written to be played". The problem is when the story is everything and the actual playability is a lesser consideration, which often leads to scenes where the PCs get sidelined and/or general disorganisation and poor presentation for actually running (talking of Dragonlance, this is true of the recent Dragonlance campaign, as mentioned). One good indicator for this is if, instead of plot twist or major reveals being immediately explained to the DM to give them the proper context and understanding of the adventure (usually in the synopsis at the start), such reveals are held back until the DM actually reads through the latter parts of the adventure.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can agree that many DMs are like me - they buy more than they could ever run. Some games are aspirational ("one day, I'd love to run this game") others inspirational ("I'd like to take some ideas from this") while others are regrettable ("Why did I ever buy this?!") Sometimes I like to curl up and read an adventure, supplement, or system as someone else might read a novel - and that does have value to me. And honestly, sometimes the streamlined adventures and systems don't make for great pleasure reading. [Not to single them out, but I'm thinking of highly gamist rule books such as 4E D&D and OSR adventures with loads of random tables and bullet-point descriptions ... even though they're great to have at the table.]
However, there is a line adventure writers can walk between presenting information useful for DMs and blurring the important details to surprise the DM during the course of play. The old suggestion of "read this adventure completely before you attempt to run it" might've worked better in the days of 32-page modules than in the 200+ page campaign adventures of today.
Also, logic, common sense, relevant information are valued whether you're reading for pleasure or running a game for your friends. The best adventures can have that without at the expense of good game play. You can see this from the valuable advice on ENWorld, or the work of reviewers like @SlyFlourish or Justin Alexander where they "improve" published adventures by plugging plot holes, connecting encounters that seem random, etc.
And I would suggest that if ENWorlders, SlyFlourish, or the Alexandrian can do it, certainly a good editorial pass from WotC could help.
Many of the official adventures I've run have glaring issues - and they're not issues that exist just to "tell a good story" or "create a memorable, magical scene." It's carelessness.

Which is why the primary reason I get adventures at all is to dredge them for my homebrew game. All that requires is some good ideas and a few maps I don't want to make myself.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And I would suggest that if ENWorlders, SlyFlourish, or the Alexandrian can do it, certainly a good editorial pass from WotC could help.

This is very true, but who is going to do that pass when the guy in charge of decision-making on adventures at WotC is himself one of the people most responsible for poorly-organised adventures full of plot issues, intentionally missing content, lack of context and so on.

This is a "Who watches the watchmen" scenario and I know that's a ridiculous analogy but it's true! If WotC's top guy doesn't believe in this stuff, how is it going to happen?

Many of the official adventures I've run have glaring issues - and they're not issues that exist just to "tell a good story" or "create a memorable, magical scene." It's carelessness.

Sure, but others have glaring issues precisely because they're trying to tell a specific story (your vote as to whether it's a "good" one) or create a specific scene, and this is the painful deal that's been commonplace since the 1990s (Shadowrun was where I first encountered it, oddly enough). Again the recent Dragonlance has a lot of this - Justin Alexander has talked about it a ton if you want specifics (also wow I didn't realize he was an actor and playwright and so on, that's fascinating).

 

[Rystefn]

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.

If.
I strongly suspect that that the overwhelming majority of adventures don't break that way. Lets be clear here: I'm sure there are a fair handful of people on these forums that have some adventure or another more than once for completely difference groups. But the percentage of books sold that get used that way can be safely rounded to zero. The number of adventure books that used to run an adventure to completion even once is almost certainly a pretty small fraction of the ones that actually see a table, which is absolutely a small fraction of the ones sold. And I explicitly picked a popular and enduring one to even estimate the number as high as I did.

Yes, we deserve better. But we're not going to get it. If we were, it would have already happened decades ago. The bulk of the books are sold to people who are perfectly happy to read them and never play. This is true for adventures, for PHBs, even for entire game systems. It's true among the super casuals, and it's even more true among the dedicated "most of my life revolves around the hobby" types. That's the reality of the hobby we're a part of. It only changes if people stop buying stuff they'll read but never use. And if that happened, there would suddenly be a whole lot fewer games on the market. A significant number of companies in the industry collapsing overnight as their margins buckle completely. And even then, I'm not convinced it would actually make the big dogs suddenly start investing a whole lot of time and effort into making the adventures better, they'd just try to make them more cheaply to make up for the lost numbers.