I'm not sure why folks think that WotC's adventures are so bad. The hardbacks are clearly derivative of earlier edition stuff (Giants, Ravenloft, etc) but those earlier products are often reviewed in a positive manner and I don't think that the new versions are significantly different from the earlier ones. If you look at the hardbacks they feature dragons, elementals, giants, vampires/undead, dinosaurs, and so on. Some variety there.

What I'd like to see is something outside of the Forgotten Realms. I'd like to see some Greyhawk or Blackmoor books. Maybe even Dark Sun or even Dragonlance. They have a lot of nice older source material to adapt to 5E, or they can create something new. I think they assume that older materials would appeal more to fans that new stuff, but that's just my take on the matter.

As far as their one-shot Adventurer's League adventures go, I'm not sure how creative you can be for a single 2-4 hour time slot. Most AL adventures have a little role play followed by 3 combat encounters, but I suspect that's a function of the "tournament" style of play and not a lack of creativity.

It is not so much lack of creativity, but the peculiar decisions about where creativity is allowed to flourish and where it is restricted.  It would be unfair to say that, "There is no there, there."  I think it's fair to say that, "Whatever there is there, is somewhere else."

Quote from: finarvyn;1017244I'm not sure why folks think that WotC's adventures are so bad...

In my experience most of those commenting haven't actually read or played them. Admittedly the first few hardcovers were uninspired but I think they have had a few good ones as well.

Quote from: finarvyn;1017244What I'd like to see is something outside of the Forgotten Realms. I'd like to see some Greyhawk or Blackmoor books. Maybe even Dark Sun or even Dragonlance. They have a lot of nice older source material to adapt to 5E, or they can create something new. I think they assume that older materials would appeal more to fans that new stuff, but that's just my take on the matter.

As far as their one-shot Adventurer's League adventures go, I'm not sure how creative you can be for a single 2-4 hour time slot. Most AL adventures have a little role play followed by 3 combat encounters, but I suspect that's a function of the "tournament" style of play and not a lack of creativity.

From what I have seen, you will not have any published WotC adventures outside of the Forgotten Realms for a while yet. AL is set in the Forgotten Realms and WotC believes that AL is driving sales of D&D 5E since AL and social media are the primary means of advertising for WotC on D&D 5E.

You think? I remember Mearls talking about how they recognized via surveys that a lot of play is happening in home-based and homebrew campaigns.

Although I do know there's been a lot of talk about encouraging more people to take up DMing and I'm not sure AL is really doing that.

Mearls or Crawford said somewhere that other settings are on the agenda for 2018.

Quote from: Voros;1017250In my experience most of those commenting haven't actually read or played them. Admittedly the first few hardcovers were uninspired but I think they have had a few good ones as well.

Maybe, but I know that my sister keeps wanting me to run the Dragon Hoard book again because it's the "most D&D-like" of all the settings. What some call uninspired, others call classic. :-)

I played Rise of Tiamat and rather enjoyed it. We went around the world, killed some dragons, then had a battle royale in a big temple and sent an evil god back to hell. It was fairly linear, but what do you expect? If you bound the classic Against the Giants + Drow stuff into a hardback, it woudln't be much different in structure.

What I would like, though, is an actual sandbox. Not an adventure that gives you some ability to hit things out of order, but a large map with some adventure sites given, a reasonable amount of background lore, and tools to help you to fill in the open hexes. So basically an old-fashioned setting box updated for the modern era.

Quote from: S'mon;1017234Feats & Multiclassing are listed as optional rules, not core rules.

Ok yeah fair enough, but the open table rules (sort of made up when the club started) are feats are allowed, so it is what it is.
Like I said, it's no biggie really, as feats aren't the huge presence they are in RPGs like PF.

I like the chassis.

Running it RAW, or close enough, cemented some of my initial criticisms, and they've only strengthened over the years. But they are campaign aesthetic choices, how I like to play vs. actual system dysfunction or inflexibility. So that's where the chassis becomes important to me; less cruft to thread out, and simple good-enough systems, helps save the product in my eyes.

Adventure League was an interesting attempt to re-empower the GM and allow table variance in the margins of a Season's Campaign. It was an exercise in hope that people could set aside their adversarial competitive habits and collaborate in a shared narrative experience across the world. Unfortunately several of the modules made from the first had glaring weaknesses which only got worse with tourney mentality over the years.

Adversarial competitive habits were present in module writing, some with weird GM reward inflation, sloppy structure, micromanaged "encouter-ization," tighened time frame (2 to 4 hr ideal), narrowed depth of alternatives... It all led to a hyper-fixation on MMORPG style combat raid mentality with 'spotlight time'. It has firmly convinced me that the mere concept of Org Play is inherently toxic, and therefore unmanageable, for it only appeals to Spikes (MtG player archetype) and traveling bretheren.

The game is to be beaten, the builds are how you mitigate the game's "most lethal column," you build to defeat that column. If the module deviates making the other columns (social & exploration) more "competitive" pitch a fit and campaign to hamstring GMs and future modules further so you can retain in media res combat primacy. Mechanics is all because it is the only "non-magical tea party" segment of the game, thus grounded enough for players to metagame bludgeon into submission in the name of cross table consistently.

The well-intended AL reformating ended up sucked back into the same quagmire as before, and I think that "bug" I see might be an inherent "feature" of the campaign format. So, it cemented that I am not that style of player or GM. It is gaming of last resort for those willing to endure that sort of reigning mentality over the play environment.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1017270What I would like, though, is an actual sandbox. Not an adventure that gives you some ability to hit things out of order, but a large map with some adventure sites given, a reasonable amount of background lore, and tools to help you to fill in the open hexes. So basically an old-fashioned setting box updated for the modern era.

Sounds to me that Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annhilation fit that request.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1017270What I would like, though, is an actual sandbox. Not an adventure that gives you some ability to hit things out of order, but a large map with some adventure sites given, a reasonable amount of background lore, and tools to help you to fill in the open hexes. So basically an old-fashioned setting box updated for the modern era.

The Phandelver setting in the boxed starter set is kind of like that, but designed for low-level characters. There is a basic village and some rumors which can send you in different directions to explore and find out stuff.

Some of the Adventurer's League modules could be run that way, but I don't know which modules quite fit which situations. For example, there are a bunch of AL modules that center around the town of Molmaster, so one could gather them together and put together a list of rumors and the one that the players pick would determine which module to run them through. Still kind of linear, but kind of sandbox as well.

The AL Expeditions seasons were literally a grand tour of the Moonsea, and all its delightful "warts & villainy." IIRC Season 1 was Phlan, Season 2 was Mulmaster, Season 3 Hillsfar, etc. It's a fun place where un-PC (politically correct) power structures are the norm -- and are not going to change soon from a mere band of PCs.

It's the Baltic Sea with city states and a fatalistic Finnish mythos bent (woefully tamped down by now over the years, but was there!). Threatened from all sides and right near Zhentil's Keep, Team Good was not understood to waltz through and right 'wrongs' so much as survive, find allies, and try to thrive. Also has tie-ins with previous memorable FR properties, like Pool of Radiance, etc.

Unfortunately not a lot of quality carry over from the Season's major NPC relationships survived much beyond power-gaming, and I do blame a lot of it from the poor module writing. I hear that WotC has a rather catch-22 expectation for module writers, so it might be a self-defeating committee of expectations. I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to launch Moonsea campaigns, both in and out of AL, but was sorely gimped by seemingly strange yet consistent module parameters. I stopped paying attention after Season 3, saddened at the lost opportunity.

ToA is kind of close, but still too much detail, and there is still a "beginning" and "end." What I am imagining (and won't ever happen) is a product that emphasizes the DIY aspect much more than the "adventure" or "story." My ideal fantasy sandbox would basically be the 1e Greyhawk box plus:

-Tables/rules for filling in hexes for each country similar to Welsh Piper's.
-A bit more in-depth material for fleshing out cities.
-A decent collection of 1-sentence adventure hooks for each zone.
-Some kind of material to provide ideas for connecting adventuring sides and main villains.
-Material for the social impacts of leveling up. None of this "you're a 15th-level Fighter in a city full of 12th-level law enforcement" nonsense.
-Guides for domains, invasions, and warfare. You've been given territory in Furyondy. Iuz invades. What now?

What I'm imagining would basically contain enough material for a newbie DM to run a hex-crawl. Some of this sounds trivial to experienced DMs, it's not to newbies.  It took me quite a bit of exploring the OSR community to find this kind of material and put together a coherent understanding of adventuring that wasn't some variant of an adventure path, and I think this kind of product could satisfy a much different kind of customer than the hardback campaigns do, so it wouldn't cannibalize sales (I have almost no interest in their hardback campaigns, but would buy something like this...I can't be the only one).

What I would really like for this ain't-gonna happen product is for WotC to basically maintain two settings. I think they've got enough customers now that they wouldn't be cannibalizing. The Forgotten Realms would continue to be the setting for the big adventures. The smaller-scale stuff, like Tales From the Yawning Portal, would be Greyhawk-based, as in anything WotC publishes that wouldn't be hard to drop into any setting would also give you Greyhawk hex keys. They could keep their publishing to two hardbacks a year, with one being a Realms campaign, and the other being a collection of things to populate the Flanaess with.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1017383My ideal fantasy sandbox would basically be the 1e Greyhawk box plus:

-Tables/rules for filling in hexes for each country similar to Welsh Piper's.
-A bit more in-depth material for fleshing out cities.
-A decent collection of 1-sentence adventure hooks for each zone.
-Some kind of material to provide ideas for connecting adventuring sides and main villains.
-Material for the social impacts of leveling up. None of this "you're a 15th-level Fighter in a city full of 12th-level law enforcement" nonsense.
-Guides for domains, invasions, and warfare. You've been given territory in Furyondy. Iuz invades. What now?

What I'm imagining would basically contain enough material for a newbie DM to run a hex-crawl. Some of this sounds trivial to experienced DMs, it's not to newbies.  It took me quite a bit of exploring the OSR community to find this kind of material and put together a coherent understanding of adventuring that wasn't some variant of an adventure path, and I think this kind of product could satisfy a much different kind of customer than the hardback campaigns do, so it wouldn't cannibalize sales (I have almost no interest in their hardback campaigns, but would buy something like this...I can't be the only one).

What I would really like for this ain't-gonna happen product...

This would be a great product. Maybe label it "DM's aid" or the like. It is the opposite direction than the one they are leaning, so I would put it in the ain't happening column.

If I were them, and this was being made, I would not set it in a specific setting. Most people would use this to create their own homebrew setting anyways. I say make it smorgasbord style--references to everyone and everywhere. Disparate, modular pieces of everything all interconnectable with the DM to provide the connecting pieces. If that means lots of new DMs have Mirt the merchant sending the party through Eberron (via Spelljammer from Sigil) to consult Melf on how best to defeat Bargle, all the better.