One of the three game groups I GM for recently had a period where we were absent a player for a longer stretch so I consulted the group and we decided to run a side adventure with new characters. I gave the players a choice and they opted for running an 'official' adventure.
Now for the longest time I've maintained that the official adventures and settings are pretty trash. I don't remember getting much fun out of them and I didn't remember thinking that they were well balanced. So, I chose to run Dragon of Icespire Peak under the guise of us all returning to the absolute basics of the rules and refreshing ourselves on the fundamental mechanics of the game. We house rule inspiration as a non-transferrable re-roll that expires with a long rest (because I'm pretty liberal with Inspiration and this method encourages use) so in this run we ditched our house rules too and went back to basics.
I've got to say that although it was far, far less stress and work planning the adventures I'm left once again rather disappointed by the official adventure. I've even since gone and read some of the other officially published adventures to see how they all line up and I'm left with the same impression. The official stuff is just dreadful. If it's not wildly mis-balanced, it's dull as dishwater. Take the recent Keys from the Golden Vault publication, or Spelljammer. I found both to be little more than a collection of cool seed ideas, but certainly not something I'd run as a whole adventure.
I'm aware though that this might bias my players in future if I ever do suggest running official adventures (for a new campaign or side adventures or whatnot). So, I wanted to ask you fellow DMs...what's your thoughts? Especially those who have returned to official adventures after wading into homebrew realms. Am I wrong in thinking they just aren't worth the wicked high price tags? Am I misjudging the official adventures?
Are there ways of modifying the official stuff to make them more playable and more worth the investment you spend into them?
Bear in mind that the 'wicked high price tags' are the equivalent of around five hours at minimum wage, so if it's saving you even a modest amount of time it's likely worth it. I would generally use published adventures as a skeleton to build on rather than thinking it accomplishes everything by itself.
I like to collect the anthology adventure books; Yawning Portal, Candlekeep, Radiant Citadel, etc and use those to help populate an open world map so it doesn't have to be all my own work. They're great for integrating into a homebrew adventure.
I don't have much use for full campaign adventures (except Mad Mage which is great).
Bear in mind that the 'wicked high price tags' are the equivalent of around five hours at minimum wage, so if it's saving you even a modest amount of time it's likely worth it. I would generally use published adventures as a skeleton to build on rather than thinking it accomplishes everything by itself.
Having set up an independent publishing house many years ago believe me I know what the publishing margins for printed books are. Back then I was publishing poetry which was about as niche as it comes (with bestsellers only expecting to sell maybe 2,500 units). Even taking into account the premium quality of the paper and materials...the individual cost of a book represents a significant margin. The price tags are exceptionally high...more than they ought to be frankly given they are printed in China at the lowest cost possible. Cost to consumer isn't the issue here because frankly that cost needs to be weighed against value to consumer. Given that I can find similar inspiration right here for free on the forums, or any other RPG community, that I could find inspiration from video games, films, or books...yeah the value proposition of the books is quite simply indefensible. It's also quite likely why the 3rd Party Publishing scene has grown quite as large as it is.
I like to collect the anthology adventure books; Yawning Portal, Candlekeep, Radiant Citadel, etc and use those to help populate an open world map so it doesn't have to be all my own work. They're great for integrating into a homebrew adventure.
I don't have much use for full campaign adventures (except Mad Mage which is great).
I must admit, this struck me looking at the freebie section of Keys of Golden Vault that it's eerily similar to a Youtube play series I've watched. Breaking into a prison to get x, y, or z is a fairly good plotline, but as I've encountered it elsewhere it immediately put me off purchasing the book. I do of course see though how if you haven't encountered that questline before it might make a great addition to a homebrew campaign.
Is there a particular anthology you'd recommend picking up for augmenting one's own homebrew world?
Take the recent Keys from the Golden Vault publication
You mean the book that only became available to read in full, like, four hours ago... ?
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Take the recent Keys from the Golden Vault publication
You mean the book that only became available to read in full, like, four hours ago... ?
And Prisoner 13 was a preview section of that publication. Prisoner 13 was underwhelming to say the least. It is one of 12 sections. Let's be clear here, if you're marketing a publication you put a good representative sample out to tempt audiences is. Even if Prisoner 13 is representative of the average quality rather than the best of those 12 chapters, it's enough to make a judgement on the publication.
I heavily modify official adventures (if I use them), or use them for inspiration. I cannot quite use them as they are, because a lot of stuff is missing and my players rarely follow the obvious path. And I have some preferences and like to do things my way:)
For me, getting ‘official’ adventures working (to my liking) is often more challenging than making my own stuff from scratch. So, I sometimes tear them apart and use just the elements I like. Small encounters, maps, NPCs, monsters, plot points… and reassemble them in my world.
Often, I do not actually use the adventure, but I do still enjoy reading through it. It helps me come up with my own ideas.
I do agree that the price tag is usually too high for me and my use.
Personally, I've run DoIP, CoS and I am currently running Out of the Abyss. (I have played ToA, LMoP and currently playing LoX). I have another campaign that has been hashed together out of modules in Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Tales from the Yawning Portal and Candlekeep Mysteries with home brew plot lines tying the modules together.
In general, I've adjusted here and there so that the plot lines make a bit more sense. There is a great set of modifications out there for DoIP that ties the dragon into the Cult of Talos and substitutes a young blue dragon for the young white one. There are several other plot changes that come together to help tie the collection of quests together into a more accessible storyline. CoS and Out of the Abyss aren't bad. The biggest issue is having the various vignettes and encounters make sense and come together into a decent over-arching narrative for the players and that mostly takes a bit of work on the DMs part to see what foreshadowing and other elements they need to add so that the NPC actions make sense in the story from the NPC and character perspective.
As far as encounters being too hard or too easy, that often depends entirely on the players, the party and the DM. The group I was running with CoS managed to defeat the hags at level 3 while for other groups the same encounter is a TPK. Similarly, the goblin ambush at the beginning of LMoP is often derided as challenging, which can be true with a bit of bad luck if one of the goblins gets a crit - but that is the nature of level 1. The party should still be able to defeat a couple of goblins most of the time unless they have terrible luck - at which point the DM could have the goblins take prisoners or the DM could have thought ahead and introduced an NPC wagon driver that might be able to help if a combat goes sideways.
For encounters, the books provide a framework but it really is up to the DM to adapt it to the players and characters in their game. This is the same whether you are discussing WotC content or anything from any 3pp.
Finally, I've only read a few adventures from 3pp and most of those are similar to the WotC content in terms of "quality".
P.S. I've also done home brew for decades - the main reason I run published content is for Roll20 support running online - it saves me literally days of prep time when running this stuff for friends. I couldn't afford the time to run it if I couldn't buy the resources to streamline it.
If I homebrew something it is much easier to define all the NPC motivations, tie them into world actions, foreshadow future events, balance encounters around the party and adapt to the party decisions because in many cases in homebrew, you don't bother creating any detailed content until the players actually decide to go to that location ... and at that point you can improvise it. I find that this approach doesn't work that well for online play where digital resources result in a better play experience for both the players and the DM.
However, the flexibility of homebrew content usually means that the organic story you create in response to character actions often feels more narratively consistent - which isn't the fault of published content.
official adventures are just the bones with some cool ideas interspersed? well, yeah. yes. it's some linked quests separated by a few described rooms. your players will still need you to make stuff up between those checkpoints. i chuckle when people put some big divide between homebrew and official stuff like Forgotten Realms. they both live and die by the efforts of the dungeon master. you'd say there was a difference between you running your homebrew and someone else attempting to DM from your notes, right? it might come across as on the rails, flitting from one described node to the next. personally, i never feel like i'm running wholly by the book. everything i pick up, no matter how official, is essentially homebrew and off-canon from the first time an NPC glances across the tavern.
for instance, i've found it fascinating to read the beginnings to a good number of play-by-forums Waterdeep Dragon Heist campaigns just to see how differently the first few NPCs are handled. wow. often way, way differently than i'd pictured them! and the first encounter can be brief or last an entire session. the next bit in the streets as well with players either zipping to the next stop or having a minor adventure just on the way. this is an adventure that can feel pretty on-the-rails... if you let it.
i don't expect or intend to change someone's mind whose mind is already made up enough to take the time to address it publicly. however, i did want to add that research is possible. check out how other people treat the official adventures and see if maybe the 'not fun' is just a matter of how much a thing calls you to customize it. i mean, we're all working from a framework here. we're dungeoning dragons rather than role playing plumbers or hedgehogs or something.
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
Bear in mind that the 'wicked high price tags' are the equivalent of around five hours at minimum wage, so if it's saving you even a modest amount of time it's likely worth it. I would generally use published adventures as a skeleton to build on rather than thinking it accomplishes everything by itself.
Having set up an independent publishing house many years ago believe me I know what the publishing margins for printed books are. Back then I was publishing poetry which was about as niche as it comes (with bestsellers only expecting to sell maybe 2,500 units). Even taking into account the premium quality of the paper and materials...the individual cost of a book represents a significant margin. The price tags are exceptionally high...more than they ought to be frankly given they are printed in China at the lowest cost possible. Cost to consumer isn't the issue here because frankly that cost needs to be weighed against value to consumer. Given that I can find similar inspiration right here for free on the forums, or any other RPG community, that I could find inspiration from video games, films, or books...yeah the value proposition of the books is quite simply indefensible. It's also quite likely why the 3rd Party Publishing scene has grown quite as large as it is.
I like to collect the anthology adventure books; Yawning Portal, Candlekeep, Radiant Citadel, etc and use those to help populate an open world map so it doesn't have to be all my own work. They're great for integrating into a homebrew adventure.
I don't have much use for full campaign adventures (except Mad Mage which is great).
I must admit, this struck me looking at the freebie section of Keys of Golden Vault that it's eerily similar to a Youtube play series I've watched. Breaking into a prison to get x, y, or z is a fairly good plotline, but as I've encountered it elsewhere it immediately put me off purchasing the book. I do of course see though how if you haven't encountered that questline before it might make a great addition to a homebrew campaign.
Is there a particular anthology you'd recommend picking up for augmenting one's own homebrew world?
I didn't have much interest in Keys because I'm not a huge fan of heist adventures-- I feel like everyone always wants to run an Oceans style heist but the system doesn't really support it and it just devolves into combat-- but that's mostly personal preference.
If you're looking for quests, I really liked Candlekeep Mysteries, which are really easy to adapt to your world and the missions are pretty fun, there's funny ones and creepy ones, lots of variety.
Tales from the Yawning Portal is also a great one to have, not only because it updates several classic modules (including White Plume Mountain babyyyy!), but it's pretty much all straight dungeon crawling, meaning you can construct any story you want about why the players are going there (or one of my favorites, have the players come across one of the dungeons while out wandering the wilds without any idea what they're getting into).
Tales from the Radiant Citadel is also good, but much more tied to the worlds and regions included in the adventures and harder to import into your own homebrew about importing the whole region. This is both a drawback and a strength. A strength because the regions and their cultures are genuinely cool and interesting, but a drawback because it's harder to include just anywhere.
I also got Strixhaven without realizing how much of the book was adventure, but I had a lot of fun running it. The plot is kind of bare bones, so I modified it with new B-plots of my own invention and some published (i actually merged Strixhaven and Candlekeep and included some Candlekeep adventures as side quests) and characters and several minor tweaks to the main plot, but there's the blueprint for a great adventure there.
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One of the three game groups I GM for recently had a period where we were absent a player for a longer stretch so I consulted the group and we decided to run a side adventure with new characters. I gave the players a choice and they opted for running an 'official' adventure.
Now for the longest time I've maintained that the official adventures and settings are pretty trash. I don't remember getting much fun out of them and I didn't remember thinking that they were well balanced. So, I chose to run Dragon of Icespire Peak under the guise of us all returning to the absolute basics of the rules and refreshing ourselves on the fundamental mechanics of the game. We house rule inspiration as a non-transferrable re-roll that expires with a long rest (because I'm pretty liberal with Inspiration and this method encourages use) so in this run we ditched our house rules too and went back to basics.
I've got to say that although it was far, far less stress and work planning the adventures I'm left once again rather disappointed by the official adventure. I've even since gone and read some of the other officially published adventures to see how they all line up and I'm left with the same impression. The official stuff is just dreadful. If it's not wildly mis-balanced, it's dull as dishwater. Take the recent Keys from the Golden Vault publication, or Spelljammer. I found both to be little more than a collection of cool seed ideas, but certainly not something I'd run as a whole adventure.
I'm aware though that this might bias my players in future if I ever do suggest running official adventures (for a new campaign or side adventures or whatnot). So, I wanted to ask you fellow DMs...what's your thoughts? Especially those who have returned to official adventures after wading into homebrew realms. Am I wrong in thinking they just aren't worth the wicked high price tags? Am I misjudging the official adventures?
Are there ways of modifying the official stuff to make them more playable and more worth the investment you spend into them?
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Bear in mind that the 'wicked high price tags' are the equivalent of around five hours at minimum wage, so if it's saving you even a modest amount of time it's likely worth it. I would generally use published adventures as a skeleton to build on rather than thinking it accomplishes everything by itself.
I like to collect the anthology adventure books; Yawning Portal, Candlekeep, Radiant Citadel, etc and use those to help populate an open world map so it doesn't have to be all my own work. They're great for integrating into a homebrew adventure.
I don't have much use for full campaign adventures (except Mad Mage which is great).
Having set up an independent publishing house many years ago believe me I know what the publishing margins for printed books are. Back then I was publishing poetry which was about as niche as it comes (with bestsellers only expecting to sell maybe 2,500 units). Even taking into account the premium quality of the paper and materials...the individual cost of a book represents a significant margin. The price tags are exceptionally high...more than they ought to be frankly given they are printed in China at the lowest cost possible. Cost to consumer isn't the issue here because frankly that cost needs to be weighed against value to consumer. Given that I can find similar inspiration right here for free on the forums, or any other RPG community, that I could find inspiration from video games, films, or books...yeah the value proposition of the books is quite simply indefensible. It's also quite likely why the 3rd Party Publishing scene has grown quite as large as it is.
I must admit, this struck me looking at the freebie section of Keys of Golden Vault that it's eerily similar to a Youtube play series I've watched. Breaking into a prison to get x, y, or z is a fairly good plotline, but as I've encountered it elsewhere it immediately put me off purchasing the book. I do of course see though how if you haven't encountered that questline before it might make a great addition to a homebrew campaign.
Is there a particular anthology you'd recommend picking up for augmenting one's own homebrew world?
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
You mean the book that only became available to read in full, like, four hours ago... ?
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
And Prisoner 13 was a preview section of that publication. Prisoner 13 was underwhelming to say the least. It is one of 12 sections. Let's be clear here, if you're marketing a publication you put a good representative sample out to tempt audiences is. Even if Prisoner 13 is representative of the average quality rather than the best of those 12 chapters, it's enough to make a judgement on the publication.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
I heavily modify official adventures (if I use them), or use them for inspiration. I cannot quite use them as they are, because a lot of stuff is missing and my players rarely follow the obvious path. And I have some preferences and like to do things my way:)
For me, getting ‘official’ adventures working (to my liking) is often more challenging than making my own stuff from scratch. So, I sometimes tear them apart and use just the elements I like. Small encounters, maps, NPCs, monsters, plot points… and reassemble them in my world.
Often, I do not actually use the adventure, but I do still enjoy reading through it. It helps me come up with my own ideas.
I do agree that the price tag is usually too high for me and my use.
Personally, I've run DoIP, CoS and I am currently running Out of the Abyss. (I have played ToA, LMoP and currently playing LoX). I have another campaign that has been hashed together out of modules in Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Tales from the Yawning Portal and Candlekeep Mysteries with home brew plot lines tying the modules together.
In general, I've adjusted here and there so that the plot lines make a bit more sense. There is a great set of modifications out there for DoIP that ties the dragon into the Cult of Talos and substitutes a young blue dragon for the young white one. There are several other plot changes that come together to help tie the collection of quests together into a more accessible storyline. CoS and Out of the Abyss aren't bad. The biggest issue is having the various vignettes and encounters make sense and come together into a decent over-arching narrative for the players and that mostly takes a bit of work on the DMs part to see what foreshadowing and other elements they need to add so that the NPC actions make sense in the story from the NPC and character perspective.
As far as encounters being too hard or too easy, that often depends entirely on the players, the party and the DM. The group I was running with CoS managed to defeat the hags at level 3 while for other groups the same encounter is a TPK. Similarly, the goblin ambush at the beginning of LMoP is often derided as challenging, which can be true with a bit of bad luck if one of the goblins gets a crit - but that is the nature of level 1. The party should still be able to defeat a couple of goblins most of the time unless they have terrible luck - at which point the DM could have the goblins take prisoners or the DM could have thought ahead and introduced an NPC wagon driver that might be able to help if a combat goes sideways.
For encounters, the books provide a framework but it really is up to the DM to adapt it to the players and characters in their game. This is the same whether you are discussing WotC content or anything from any 3pp.
Finally, I've only read a few adventures from 3pp and most of those are similar to the WotC content in terms of "quality".
P.S. I've also done home brew for decades - the main reason I run published content is for Roll20 support running online - it saves me literally days of prep time when running this stuff for friends. I couldn't afford the time to run it if I couldn't buy the resources to streamline it.
If I homebrew something it is much easier to define all the NPC motivations, tie them into world actions, foreshadow future events, balance encounters around the party and adapt to the party decisions because in many cases in homebrew, you don't bother creating any detailed content until the players actually decide to go to that location ... and at that point you can improvise it. I find that this approach doesn't work that well for online play where digital resources result in a better play experience for both the players and the DM.
However, the flexibility of homebrew content usually means that the organic story you create in response to character actions often feels more narratively consistent - which isn't the fault of published content.
official adventures are just the bones with some cool ideas interspersed? well, yeah. yes. it's some linked quests separated by a few described rooms. your players will still need you to make stuff up between those checkpoints. i chuckle when people put some big divide between homebrew and official stuff like Forgotten Realms. they both live and die by the efforts of the dungeon master. you'd say there was a difference between you running your homebrew and someone else attempting to DM from your notes, right? it might come across as on the rails, flitting from one described node to the next. personally, i never feel like i'm running wholly by the book. everything i pick up, no matter how official, is essentially homebrew and off-canon from the first time an NPC glances across the tavern.
for instance, i've found it fascinating to read the beginnings to a good number of play-by-forums Waterdeep Dragon Heist campaigns just to see how differently the first few NPCs are handled. wow. often way, way differently than i'd pictured them! and the first encounter can be brief or last an entire session. the next bit in the streets as well with players either zipping to the next stop or having a minor adventure just on the way. this is an adventure that can feel pretty on-the-rails... if you let it.
i don't expect or intend to change someone's mind whose mind is already made up enough to take the time to address it publicly. however, i did want to add that research is possible. check out how other people treat the official adventures and see if maybe the 'not fun' is just a matter of how much a thing calls you to customize it. i mean, we're all working from a framework here. we're dungeoning dragons rather than role playing plumbers or hedgehogs or something.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
I didn't have much interest in Keys because I'm not a huge fan of heist adventures-- I feel like everyone always wants to run an Oceans style heist but the system doesn't really support it and it just devolves into combat-- but that's mostly personal preference.
If you're looking for quests, I really liked Candlekeep Mysteries, which are really easy to adapt to your world and the missions are pretty fun, there's funny ones and creepy ones, lots of variety.
Tales from the Yawning Portal is also a great one to have, not only because it updates several classic modules (including White Plume Mountain babyyyy!), but it's pretty much all straight dungeon crawling, meaning you can construct any story you want about why the players are going there (or one of my favorites, have the players come across one of the dungeons while out wandering the wilds without any idea what they're getting into).
Tales from the Radiant Citadel is also good, but much more tied to the worlds and regions included in the adventures and harder to import into your own homebrew about importing the whole region. This is both a drawback and a strength. A strength because the regions and their cultures are genuinely cool and interesting, but a drawback because it's harder to include just anywhere.
I also got Strixhaven without realizing how much of the book was adventure, but I had a lot of fun running it. The plot is kind of bare bones, so I modified it with new B-plots of my own invention and some published (i actually merged Strixhaven and Candlekeep and included some Candlekeep adventures as side quests) and characters and several minor tweaks to the main plot, but there's the blueprint for a great adventure there.