If you aren't going to prepare for a session, then don't DM. Period. I'm currently running the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign with hardcover and we have all loved it. That is not to say I haven't had issues with the book. My biggest peeve is that several plot hooks go nowhere until late in the campaign, and that is only IF the party comes across them. Once this was realized, I quickly made up my own reasoning and homebrewed it as part of the larger mission . Another fun thing that occurred (which wasn't in the book) was the party going to the Underdark. This turned out to be incredibly fun, as I made up an Underdark city and tied the random encounters the book laid out into this little foray, as well as tying it directly into the backstory for the main villain.
Overall, to DM is to never be fully prepared but the hardcovers do a lot of work for you. If you just want to show up and run an adventure without preparing on your own time I would suggest playing a board game.
Nice opinion, but who said they want to show up an run an adventure without preparing on their own time?
I inferred it from your OP about a hardcover book not touching much on an aspect of the adventure you found most interesting. Some prep work could easily flesh out the areas you appreciate/think your PCs will enjoy/pursue; prep work could also be done by simply re-skinning what is presented in the book to fit your vision. I find myself always prepping to tie my PC's backstories and motives into the current book, and that is in addition to normal prepwork. In summation, all the hardcover books (campaigns, as well as PHB, MM, etc.) are simply guidelines for you to use. They are not considered absolute, nor complete, and WotC is pretty transparent that they want all of us to make the game our own.
What did you infer from the fourth sentence from that post where I said that I needed to rewrite a lot of the content to make it compelling then? One might suppose that says I have and am doing work to make it function. Which might indicate a willingness to do said work because I have in the past, on these very products, done said work. That would probably make the assumption that I just want a plug and play experience without any work on my side rather silly and contrary to stated fact.
And yeah, we all do the work to make hooks for people's backgrounds. It's called compelling storytelling.
I find these forums have an awful lot of people who argue against the positions they wish their "opposition" held, rather than arguments actually articulated by those they argue against.
Well...you just answered what I inferred, you want to plug and play with minimal work. And I would say that does not seem "rather silly" considering your main hangup (4th sentence as you identified),"I have to spend a lot of time rewriting the content to make it actually good"
That is what all DM's do, as "good" is subjective and what is good to your group may not be good for another, and so on. The changes you make will always need to be done unless you write and publish your own hardcover - and even then I would say the work is never finished, as you would probably continuously fine-tune things.
"I find these forums have an awful lot of people who argue against the positions they wish their "opposition" held, rather than arguments actually articulated by those they argue against."
I articulated myself previously, and your response was "Nice opinion" - If you want an articulated argument, you should make one instead of backtracking your OP. You don't do much for your cause when your gripe is the hardcovers require extra work, but you don't mind doing extra work.
Question: is there something you can compare the hardcover to? Perhaps something on dmsguild that gives the format and layout you would like? It would help get your point across better. Especially when I simply elaborated on my "no, but..." response (as requested in the poll)
Finally, you identified what these hardcovers are in your OP (and I echoed the sentiment in my last response)
"I'm starting to see them better as loose guides with general premises than actually prepared adventures that you can run by just following the text as written"
That is exactly what these hardcovers are, loose guides with bones provided and maybe some idea of how events will sequence.
The content in most of these hard covers (in my opinion of course) is quite high level (not character, but distance from detail) and light touch, as they cover a lot of adventuring mileage. It's big on meta plot stuff, but incredibly poor on the small yet vitally important things: interesting interactions (combat, social or exploratory) are mostly handled in an off hand manner. We've all heard the dogma... provide an interesting battle ground, don't make the combat a hitpoint bash fest, create some other threat of urgency to the situation... and yet many combats are on a 2d flat plane with masses of hit points, no interesting strategy from the enemies, and crucially either no to low stakes (other than XP, loot and avoid death - again!), or no change in the battlefield mid battle - new enemies arrive or environmental changes. Again, you could breathe life into them, imagine all the chandeliers you want... and you will or your players will get bored with another boring grind fest of an incredibly vanilla encounter... but surely most of that should be on the page. This isn't even touching on social or exploratory challenges, the other two pillars of the game. They're glossed over while monsters are statted and battle maps provided (of more 2d planes). It's been a while since I read a module and thought "damn I cannot wait to run this as is"... these days its more "that's awkwardly written", or "that tone is not my gaming group" (this is souls as coins that power hellscape madmax vehicles - it sure looks like fun when penny arcade does it, but if your tone is more on the serious side... oy vey!), or "none of these hooks are at all original" or "how does this map make any sense". These issues are never insurmountable... that's not the point. The point is if all the originality is coming from me, why buy written adventures?
Going from 1st to 10th level is no mean feat, yet the page count doesn't necessarily reflect this. Sure, we can all (and would anyway) insert our own stuff - that's part of the fun - but one hopes for more than just a bare bones skeleton that one has to entirely dress to get the players from levels 1 to 2 in a meaningful, campaign launching manner. Hoard of the Dragon Queen was so bad, I flat out told my players we're not running it. I'd rather do anything else than run it (which was a blessing because we discovered tales from the loop). I'd personally prefer an adventure series with the same page count that took players 1 through to 5 (or lower). There'd be more detail, more minutia, more grist and hopefully more column inches to describe something more interesting than a "forest floor", a "cave floor", a "dungeon floor", a rich nobleman, an evil cultist or a dwarven shopkeeper.
Now to the positives, while the adventures are mostly hohum, the setting material is usually top notch. There is stuff there I can use to shape my story and world, things I hadn't considered, things that make the world or space richer. So when the adventure book doubles as a settings book, I'm liable to give it more respect as it has another function.
I will also add that reading Wildemount now... it's written with a sense of "what if" that is inspiring the old DM engine. So many original throw away hooks and threads. Close to the same way I was inspired reading the original box set of FR. It's well written and it's detailed in a rambling unpredictable way... and it's written in Matt's voice, so I can hear him say this weirdly spelled place names.
Lastly, the above criticism isn't a blanket across all of the HC books, there's a continuum, but none of them have read perfect, I'm older and wiser and more picky perhaps, but back in the day with Dragonlance or FR's trilogy of the Gods coming down (jeepers that was good) or the original ravenloft... those read like something I could never come up with.
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Rule for drama. Roll for memories. If there isn't a meaningful failure condition, do not roll. Ever. (Perception checks, I'm .... clunk, roll, roll, roll, stop... 14, looking at you... maybe?)
First off, the campaigns don’t seem to be written for 5e. The narrative pacing of the books don’t match the mechanical pacing of the game. In my experience 5e works best as a war of attrition. How many rooms can you clear, or how deep into the temple can you delve before you have to leave for a long rest. There also seems to be a shortage of urgancy to prevent 3 minutes of combat followed by a long rest, repeat.
You are also playing the adventure not you characters. The amount of railroad buy-in you have to do as a player tends to be very high. Most of the time I check-out midway through because there simply are no motivations for the NPCs, they are usually there to drive the plot forward, nothing more.
The biggest issue I have though is the amount of meta-gaming necessary to play. How is a new player that reached lvl 5 supposed to know what they can handle? At lvl 5 you have access to the fireball spell. You can literally blow up a house with your mind, see into the future and bend time! Is a dragon too powerful? What about a vampire spawn, a drow priestess, a gladiator or just 3 veterans? A ”guard” can be anything from 11hp to 70hp with multi-attack. I always get the sense that most adventures are written by an aspiring writer and not a game-designer.
They should be written like Ressources first Novel / Plot Second - but they are all written like a Novel and you have to rewrite the Majority of it to have consistent and organic connecting encounters.
Second VTT isnt "the new cool thing" it exists for years now. The Maps provided are an insult for the price you pay. You have to get your own Maps for everything.
You are better off buying third party adventures than the official slop.
They should be written like Ressources first Novel / Plot Second - but they are all written like a Novel and you have to rewrite the Majority of it to have consistent and organic connecting encounters.
The problem D&D faces is that it has a very steep progression curve. Characters gain a substantial boost each level and while a single level isn't a massive difference but it's not long before the difference is significant. That means if a party decides to hang around the first area for longer than intended, exploring certain plotlines, then when they progress they could be level 4 instead of level 2, which means the encounters are poorly balanced. Or they might do something innovative and manage to get to the area planned for level 4 while still level 1.
There are a couple of tricks you can do to try and fix this, but the simplest is to have a strong narrative that pulls the players along at the appropriate pace. That pretty much makes it a play-along-novel.
The setting book style adventures where you are given situations to develop rather than a story to follow are fantastic but are better suited to shallower progression games where a given encounter can be set up that's a challenge for high level characters but also feasible to be defeated by low level ones too. Homebrew can do it for D&D, but it's hard to do with prewritten stuff.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
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What did you infer from the fourth sentence from that post where I said that I needed to rewrite a lot of the content to make it compelling then? One might suppose that says I have and am doing work to make it function. Which might indicate a willingness to do said work because I have in the past, on these very products, done said work. That would probably make the assumption that I just want a plug and play experience without any work on my side rather silly and contrary to stated fact.
And yeah, we all do the work to make hooks for people's backgrounds. It's called compelling storytelling.
I find these forums have an awful lot of people who argue against the positions they wish their "opposition" held, rather than arguments actually articulated by those they argue against.
Well...you just answered what I inferred, you want to plug and play with minimal work. And I would say that does not seem "rather silly" considering your main hangup (4th sentence as you identified),"I have to spend a lot of time rewriting the content to make it actually good"
That is what all DM's do, as "good" is subjective and what is good to your group may not be good for another, and so on. The changes you make will always need to be done unless you write and publish your own hardcover - and even then I would say the work is never finished, as you would probably continuously fine-tune things.
"I find these forums have an awful lot of people who argue against the positions they wish their "opposition" held, rather than arguments actually articulated by those they argue against."
I articulated myself previously, and your response was "Nice opinion" - If you want an articulated argument, you should make one instead of backtracking your OP. You don't do much for your cause when your gripe is the hardcovers require extra work, but you don't mind doing extra work.
Question: is there something you can compare the hardcover to? Perhaps something on dmsguild that gives the format and layout you would like? It would help get your point across better. Especially when I simply elaborated on my "no, but..." response (as requested in the poll)
Finally, you identified what these hardcovers are in your OP (and I echoed the sentiment in my last response)
"I'm starting to see them better as loose guides with general premises than actually prepared adventures that you can run by just following the text as written"
That is exactly what these hardcovers are, loose guides with bones provided and maybe some idea of how events will sequence.
The content in most of these hard covers (in my opinion of course) is quite high level (not character, but distance from detail) and light touch, as they cover a lot of adventuring mileage. It's big on meta plot stuff, but incredibly poor on the small yet vitally important things: interesting interactions (combat, social or exploratory) are mostly handled in an off hand manner. We've all heard the dogma... provide an interesting battle ground, don't make the combat a hitpoint bash fest, create some other threat of urgency to the situation... and yet many combats are on a 2d flat plane with masses of hit points, no interesting strategy from the enemies, and crucially either no to low stakes (other than XP, loot and avoid death - again!), or no change in the battlefield mid battle - new enemies arrive or environmental changes. Again, you could breathe life into them, imagine all the chandeliers you want... and you will or your players will get bored with another boring grind fest of an incredibly vanilla encounter... but surely most of that should be on the page. This isn't even touching on social or exploratory challenges, the other two pillars of the game. They're glossed over while monsters are statted and battle maps provided (of more 2d planes). It's been a while since I read a module and thought "damn I cannot wait to run this as is"... these days its more "that's awkwardly written", or "that tone is not my gaming group" (this is souls as coins that power hellscape madmax vehicles - it sure looks like fun when penny arcade does it, but if your tone is more on the serious side... oy vey!), or "none of these hooks are at all original" or "how does this map make any sense". These issues are never insurmountable... that's not the point. The point is if all the originality is coming from me, why buy written adventures?
Going from 1st to 10th level is no mean feat, yet the page count doesn't necessarily reflect this. Sure, we can all (and would anyway) insert our own stuff - that's part of the fun - but one hopes for more than just a bare bones skeleton that one has to entirely dress to get the players from levels 1 to 2 in a meaningful, campaign launching manner. Hoard of the Dragon Queen was so bad, I flat out told my players we're not running it. I'd rather do anything else than run it (which was a blessing because we discovered tales from the loop). I'd personally prefer an adventure series with the same page count that took players 1 through to 5 (or lower). There'd be more detail, more minutia, more grist and hopefully more column inches to describe something more interesting than a "forest floor", a "cave floor", a "dungeon floor", a rich nobleman, an evil cultist or a dwarven shopkeeper.
Now to the positives, while the adventures are mostly hohum, the setting material is usually top notch. There is stuff there I can use to shape my story and world, things I hadn't considered, things that make the world or space richer. So when the adventure book doubles as a settings book, I'm liable to give it more respect as it has another function.
I will also add that reading Wildemount now... it's written with a sense of "what if" that is inspiring the old DM engine. So many original throw away hooks and threads. Close to the same way I was inspired reading the original box set of FR. It's well written and it's detailed in a rambling unpredictable way... and it's written in Matt's voice, so I can hear him say this weirdly spelled place names.
Lastly, the above criticism isn't a blanket across all of the HC books, there's a continuum, but none of them have read perfect, I'm older and wiser and more picky perhaps, but back in the day with Dragonlance or FR's trilogy of the Gods coming down (jeepers that was good) or the original ravenloft... those read like something I could never come up with.
Rule for drama. Roll for memories.
If there isn't a meaningful failure condition, do not roll. Ever. (Perception checks, I'm .... clunk, roll, roll, roll, stop... 14, looking at you... maybe?)
Yes, and for several reasons.
First off, the campaigns don’t seem to be written for 5e. The narrative pacing of the books don’t match the mechanical pacing of the game. In my experience 5e works best as a war of attrition. How many rooms can you clear, or how deep into the temple can you delve before you have to leave for a long rest. There also seems to be a shortage of urgancy to prevent 3 minutes of combat followed by a long rest, repeat.
You are also playing the adventure not you characters. The amount of railroad buy-in you have to do as a player tends to be very high. Most of the time I check-out midway through because there simply are no motivations for the NPCs, they are usually there to drive the plot forward, nothing more.
The biggest issue I have though is the amount of meta-gaming necessary to play. How is a new player that reached lvl 5 supposed to know what they can handle? At lvl 5 you have access to the fireball spell. You can literally blow up a house with your mind, see into the future and bend time! Is a dragon too powerful? What about a vampire spawn, a drow priestess, a gladiator or just 3 veterans? A ”guard” can be anything from 11hp to 70hp with multi-attack. I always get the sense that most adventures are written by an aspiring writer and not a game-designer.
Voted "No, but ..."
The "But" is this: the quality is inconsistent from one to the next. Some of them are brilliant (Dragon Heist), some not so much (Descent to Avernus).
Yes absolutely!
They should be written like Ressources first Novel / Plot Second - but they are all written like a Novel and you have to rewrite the Majority of it to have consistent and organic connecting encounters.
Second VTT isnt "the new cool thing" it exists for years now. The Maps provided are an insult for the price you pay. You have to get your own Maps for everything.
You are better off buying third party adventures than the official slop.
The problem D&D faces is that it has a very steep progression curve. Characters gain a substantial boost each level and while a single level isn't a massive difference but it's not long before the difference is significant. That means if a party decides to hang around the first area for longer than intended, exploring certain plotlines, then when they progress they could be level 4 instead of level 2, which means the encounters are poorly balanced. Or they might do something innovative and manage to get to the area planned for level 4 while still level 1.
There are a couple of tricks you can do to try and fix this, but the simplest is to have a strong narrative that pulls the players along at the appropriate pace. That pretty much makes it a play-along-novel.
The setting book style adventures where you are given situations to develop rather than a story to follow are fantastic but are better suited to shallower progression games where a given encounter can be set up that's a challenge for high level characters but also feasible to be defeated by low level ones too. Homebrew can do it for D&D, but it's hard to do with prewritten stuff.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.