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

[Yora]

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.

Tracy Hickman might possibly only have been delivering what the market had already been calling for, but I still feel like the Hickman Revolution was the biggest turning point in the development of RPG culture since its inception. For the worse.

The idea of what an "adventure" is supposed to be seems to me completely contradictory and opposed to what's the whole reason of the existence of RPG. And because these adventures are the only kind of mainstream game content you can get, everyone making new game content keeps trying to emulate that format.
And it's a bad format. After 40 years it should have become obvious that it doesn't work, but still the whole industry is trying to make it work.
And for countless GMs, these adventures are the only kind of reference they have for how scenes in a campaign should look like.

The great tragedy of RPGs.

 

[Retreater]

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.

A flaw of mine is a desire to stick closely to what was written in the adventure. I've valued the concept of the shared experience. For example, I wouldn't want to have run Ravenloft for a group only to switch out Strahd for a Rakshasa who had created the whole castle as an illusion [even if that would be a cool concept for a homebrew adventure]. I feel that would deny my players a classic moment of shared experience with other players. Or to be running Lost Mine of Phandelver to make Gundrin Rockseeker (?) the mastermind behind the disappearance, having set a cunning ambush for the party at Wave Echo Cave.
I understand about maps, but you know, I just got a free Dyson Logos map for this Sunday's game. I'm populating it with my own monsters, traps, and treasures based on some random plot thread my players decided to pursue. It's not much work. It would've been far more difficult for me to mine several WotC hardcovers to find a dungeon that is 1) somewhat thematically connected to my campaign; 2) of the right level range; 3) for the correct edition; AND then study it well enough to run it correctly. Of course, that's how I view the workload involved, and your views can vary.

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?

I'm not sure exactly to whom you're referring, but I don't know if WotC has any A-List talent remaining (for my standards). So, yeah, I agree.

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).

Their most recent adventures haven't captivated me, for sure.
Justin Alexander's recent GM book was excellent, btw. I read it in a weekend and got two copies for my DM friends.

 

[Retreater]

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.

Yeah, I realize I could be the exception. I've run Strahd, Princes of the Apocalypse, Phandelver, and Tomb of Annhilation for multiple groups. That said, I've run others only once. And others (Avernus) not at all.

I wonder if some of us on these boards "might" purchase too many books? (Heck, I know I do.) Other DMs I know actually run the adventures they purchase - and don't buy another book until they "need" another book. (Wild idea, right?) For example, I have a friend who has purchased and run one WotC adventure (Strahd). Another picked up the Critical Role campaign and is running that for his family - and I think that is the first official module he's bought.

If we consider that most of WotC's customers (by their own metrics) are 1) new to the hobby and 2) are of the millennial or younger generation [and maybe have less discretionary income and time] - it would stand to reason that they might not purchase as much as an old-timer like me. Ergo, they likely wouldn't buy stacks of books they're not going to use.

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.

But it would make a difference to my wallet and bookshelves. And that's where it needs to start (for me).
I watched a video recently from a guy I like to watch - Uncle Atom (Adam?) from Tabletop Minions. He talks about Warhammer and other miniature wargames, but the advice is relevant to any hobby collector. I'll link the video here.
He talks about how to ignore your "goblin brain," that part of us that is driven by FOMO and a desire to complete collections (an impossible task).
For me, I'm going to take some of this advice to heart. I'm going to stop buying "the new hotness" in gaming, new adventures that I don't know when I'm going to run, etc.
While it may not ensure that companies make "better" adventures, it does help me curate a collection I'm proud of ... and that I will use.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Justin Alexander's recent GM book was excellent, btw. I read it in a weekend and got two copies for my DM friends.

Oh interesting. I may have to talk a look!

 

[Malmuria]

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.

I mean the Drangonlance adventures were just scripted re-tellings of the novels IIRC. It was the novel in a different format. PCs didn't really get a choice of what happened to their characters, because they were playing the characters from the novels.

 

[overgeeked]

I think the fiddlier bits, from what I've seen, can mostly be adapted by using good 3D scenery (I know, I don't have the budget or space for that either) or by adapting mechanics that require tracking things like lightning charges to roll-to-refresh, similar to how 5E dragon breath weapons work.

The real BG3 effect, if there is one, will be to open up more players' minds to the idea that you can do a whole lot more in the game than just what's on your character sheet, a trap a lot of people, especially newer players, fall into.

Yes, you can absolutely set fire to the web bridge the giant spiders are on.

Sure, you can stack up all those crates and use them to climb on the roof, although if you do it wrong, you're going to fall and get hurt and/or make enough noise that someone comes to investigate.

You absolutely should scout out before you move into an area and come back to the area later, with higher level characters and/or good tactics, before taking those enemies on.

Doctors & Daleks does a great job of making the point repeatedly that environmental actions are not just welcomed but encouraged. The rules are simple and straightforward, too. Which is always a bonus.

 

[Shardstone]

Oh interesting. I may have to talk a look!

It is the most useable and best DMG I've ever read. Heavy endorsement.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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):

But The House on Gryphon Hill is actually quite non-linear and sandboxy. Stuff happens at certain times, but what the PCs are doing is up to them. The narrative stuff simply bookends the content. And your quote is simply a parody of "The End... or is it?" Hammer Horror trope.

You see that with a lot of the early Hickman stuff: Pharaoh, Ravenloft (I6), DL1. Structurally these are very similar to earlier adventures like White Plume Mountain and Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. There is a dungeon at the core, possibly with a wilderness area around, with a bit of narrative at the beginning and end to set things up and put it into context.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I understand DND24 took a lot of effort, but the BG3 rules were cemented for years and could have easily, with just 1-2 dedicated people, been turned into a money-printing product.

When Hasbro''s CEO said that D&D was "Under monetized" I immediately thought, "I agree, but it's unfortunate that you and I are not talking about the same things".

He goes on to jack MSRP and fire 20% of the staff.

I, on the other hand, would be doing things like what you describe. Easy, low development cost products. Less work produced that is never used. More updates of older products. More licenses. Stuff that is useful at the table. (I would keep the book count low, though! That is working well!)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Speaking of the subject, which is only tangentally related to the OP: At one point they said, IIRC, that they had 100 or was it 150 people working on D&D Beyond. (Compared to a few dozen or whatever it was, on D&D itself).

I have a question: WHAT DID THEY DO? Because, as far as I can tell, D&D beyond is only minorly changed since they bought it. "Maps", for one, obviously. What else? The encounter builder is still in Beta and the Character Builder still can't do some stuff from Tasha's, if I remember rightly. I'm pretty sure that they've downsized by now, of course, but... what did they accomplish?

I really hope that there's a big UI change-up coming for D&D Beyond that's just waiting for the 2024 Core Books to drop!