Quote from: Bill;638379There is something about many newer modules that feels wrong to me, and I don't know what it is yet.

For me, it's a couple of things.

First, a lot of them rely on badly constructed linear plots. A lot of my efforts in using modules published in the last 20 years is in ripping out the plot and reconstructing the situation.

Second, a lot of modules in the last 10-15 years are bloated to a point where they're almost unusable at the table. It's not unusual to see location keys that are 1-2 pages of largely undifferentiated text (not including stat blocks). A key like that is impossible to use efficiently at the table. (This wasn't unheard of back in the day, either. Tomb of Horrors suffers from it badly, for example.)

Alternatively, you get retro-stuff that tries to avoid that bloat. But a lot of OSR stuff somehow ends up stripping out the interesting stuff and focusing on the banal. (See Castle of the Arch-Mage and Dwimmermount for key examples.)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;638409First, a lot of them rely on badly constructed linear plots.

Second, a lot of modules in the last 10-15 years are bloated to a point where they're almost unusable at the table.

Both so true, and pretty much the exact points I was going to respond to Bill with. I think the former has become worse over time (Paizo suffers from a bad case of it), and the latter over game systems (WotC has this problem) - although, as you say, there are examples of it from earlier editions, too.  

It's funny that, after this much time and material published, there isn't a defacto best format widely used for 3.x (or many other systems) modules, for example. It's very hit and miss, with standouts like Ptolus, and botches like Rise of the Runelords.

I tried to stretch my boundaries and appreciate a couple of the Paizo adventure paths. I really tried. How could so many gamers, a lot of them long-timers, be wrong? But I found several insurmountable barriers to using them in play:

* The characters are like something out of a Pixar movie, rather than any fantastic fiction I've ever read. Anachronistic, superficial, and cheesy. Also, anachronistic.

* Bloated text. Backstories of NPC's cheesy romantic entanglements. Detailed descriptions and backstories of characters who have no long-term role in the game. Really long-winded three paragraph descriptions of hazards that could be summarized in two lines. And only a fraction of the book devoted to describing the actual game setting. Oh, and did I mention the endless NPC backstories?

* The linear plotlines. Now, I expected there to be villains with agendas, and clear goals for the PCs, and some sort of climactic finish to each chapter. However, I didn't expect so much of the adventure to be 'now that the characters have uncovered the inkeeper's treachery and made an alliance with the planar half-elf rogue/sorceror pirate princess, he will set up an ambush in the graveyeard'. Don't assume what my players will do. Just don't.

* Paizo's kitchen-sink world. It's a tone-deaf mashup of renaissance Europe, pirates, horror, and whatever else is popular with the videogame crowd these days. Serial-killers? Teenage runaways? Asylums? Top-hats and carriages? The creative direction relies on all sorts of geek tropes that I have absolutely no fucking interest in. Tropes, it seems, that are mainly from the 19th century. When did D&D become a Victorian horror genre?

* The reliance on ever-more-bizarre monsters and monster variants in the place of creative use of existing monsters. Apparently, WotC D&D players have all memorized the MM, so in order to present effectively challenging encounters, adventures need to provide new 'crunch' material  in the form of medusa-goblins, vege-walruses with a level in Ranger, and dire pigeons.

I try to brush all that tone and style and backstory and anachronism out of the way and just use the skeleton of the adventure content. But I can't. I just can't do it. Tone and feel is just too important to me, and this stuff is aimed at an audience with dramatically different sensibilities from mine.

Quote from: Haffrung;638459Tone and feel is just too important to me, and this stuff is aimed at an audience with dramatically different sensibilities from mine.

That sums it up for me, too.

Quote from: Haffrung;638459When did D&D become a Victorian horror genre?

Ask Strahd von Zarovich, he might know.

Quote from: Haffrung;638459I try to brush all that tone and style and backstory and anachronism out of the way and just use the skeleton of the adventure content. But I can't. I just can't do it. Tone and feel is just too important to me, and this stuff is aimed at an audience with dramatically different sensibilities from mine.

I totally don't get why so many adventures had this lame, Pixar filtered through a shitty 70s cartoon show aesthetic. The Hobbit was the biggest movie this past Christmas. The fucking Boston Sports Guy took a break from covering sports to write about Game of Thrones.

Do RPG writers ever leave their houses? Do they read or watch anything?

Quote from: Chairman Meow;638570I totally don't get why so many adventures had this lame, Pixar filtered through a shitty 70s cartoon show aesthetic. The Hobbit was the biggest movie this past Christmas. The fucking Boston Sports Guy took a break from covering sports to write about Game of Thrones.

Do RPG writers ever leave their houses? Do they read or watch anything?

Yeah, take a look at the artwork for Game of Thrones boardgames, Tolkien calendars, and other mainstream fantasy licenses. It's textured, gritty,  menacing. I have no idea why Pathfinder has a Final Fantasy meets Disney's Beauty and the Beast aesthetic. I mean, the quality of the artwork - the composition, the use of colour, the dynamic poses - is first-rate. But I just don't get where the aesthetic of bizarre proportions and anime characterization is coming from, and why it's so out of step with the aesthetic of massively popular fantasy settings like Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.

It's especially bizarre when you consider that some of the content of the adventures, such as in the Rise of Runelords adventure path, is decidedly adult and dark in subject matter. Nasty/grotesque + cartoony is such a really weird, almost absurd combination. Can someone explain to me the source of this aesthetic, or other examples? Is it a comic/graphic novel thing? Japanese?

Quote from: Bobloblah;638383Is that to say modules for newer systems (e.g 3.x, 4E, etc.), or simply anything newer chronologically speaking?

3X, 4E dnd modules. Many feel a bit off to me.

In all fairness, some of the older modules are far from perfect as well.

Quote from: Haffrung;638459I tried to stretch my boundaries and appreciate a couple of the Paizo adventure paths. I really tried. How could so many gamers, a lot of them long-timers, be wrong? But I found several insurmountable barriers to using them in play:

I have a lot of the same problems with Paizo's stuff. Never mind aesthetic tastes, a lot of their stuff is just difficult to run at the table; they seem to think every game runs on rails, and believe that the best way to present you relevant information is to bury it in half-a-page of irrelevant backstory. Plus, I hate the format of putting the stats at the back. Although, to be fair, that last part is pretty much the norm now, and is no doubt less of a problem in .pdf format.

Quote from: Haffrung;638459* Paizo's kitchen-sink world. It's a tone-deaf mashup of renaissance Europe, pirates, horror, and whatever else is popular with the videogame crowd these days. Serial-killers? Teenage runaways? Asylums? Top-hats and carriages? The creative direction relies on all sorts of geek tropes that I have absolutely no fucking interest in. Tropes, it seems, that are mainly from the 19th century.

Out of curiosity, how did you feel about Mystara? I personally liked that setting a great deal, and it was also kitchen-sinkish, but I'm decidedly lukewarm on Golarion, and I can't put my finger on the reason (maybe it is the anachronistic pastiche of aesthetics).

Quote from: Haffrung;638459When did D&D become a Victorian horror genre?

Quote from: jadrax;638471Ask Strahd von Zarovich, he might know.

I see what you did there.

Quote from: Bill;6386223X, 4E dnd modules. Many feel a bit off to me.

In all fairness, some of the older modules are far from perfect as well.

I think I'm going to start a thread on which modules people think are actually good.

Quote from: Bobloblah;638653Out of curiosity, how did you feel about Mystara? I personally liked that setting a great deal, and it was also kitchen-sinkish, but I'm decidedly lukewarm on Golarion, and I can't put my finger on the reason (maybe it is the anachronistic pastiche of aesthetics).

Mystara is okay. It's pretty middle of the road and inoffensive, in the way a lot of later B/X D&D modules were middle of the road and inoffensive. I prefer Judge's Guild's Wilderlands. Or for something weirder, Talislanta. They're both kind of kitchen-sink, but in a good way.

It's the anachronistic stuff I just can't get past with Paizo and Golarion. Not just in the renaissance/pirate/victorian clothing, but in the characterizations. In an effort to make them sympathetic, Pazio makes the NPCs far too modern. I want the people and beings who populate my fantasy world to be as strange as the geography and history. Not Tekumel-eight-legged-Aztec-insect-warrior-priest strange. But with more flavour of the middle ages than of early 21st century suburban Seattle.

Mystara was fairly "inoffensive" (I would say "clean-cut") its true, but somehow managed to do so in a way that was really awesome.

RPGPundit

I like Golarion.

I like the premise of a lot of.Paizo's adventures but they're a mess and I cant see how they'd be worth the effort of.running.

The modern tone of the characters generally has my eyes rolling, although I guess there's a niche for contemporary situations in fantasy drag.

Still, I wish they would cut out ALL of the emo/soap opera horseshit.

Quote from: RPGPundit;639132Mystara was fairly "inoffensive" (I would say "clean-cut") its true, but somehow managed to do so in a way that was really awesome.

You should do a review or analysis of what made Mystara awesome. It sounds like it was setting that was more than the sum of it's parts.

Quote from: estar;639303It sounds like it was setting that was more than the sum of it's parts.

It definitely was that. I think a big part of that was how great much of the product writing for it was. A lot of that goes back to Mystara being Bruce Heard's darling. He was in charge of the (largely) freelancers who worked on it, and he simply made sure that the hired talent was up to his high standards. Not to say that there were no missteps (GAZ4 Ierendi, anyone?), but the signal to noise ratio in Mystara products was very good.

Quote from: RPGPundit;638159I agree; at the same time, modules do HALF the work for the uber-creative GM. He doesn't need to run them as-is, but he can brutally defile them into the particular vision he has . . .

Something about 'brutally defiling' a module made me smile.