Despite my cynicism, I'm somehow cautiously optimistic regarding 5e, esp. due to the claims of backwards compatibility.
Everything I've seen of the 4E adventures makes them looks like a total clownshoes shitshow to my eyes; do you think the WOTC crew could actually make some good adventures for 5e?
I don't think it's rocket science, some freebies like The Fane of St. Toad or Challenge of the Frog Idol strikes me as awesome adventures. Do the Wizards designers have some sort of baggage that prevents them from designing good, fun, evocative site-based adventures?
If I was in their shoes I would contract some of the good hobbyist adventure writers to come up with a stack of short, fun, good site-based adventures.
Imagine a 64 page book for 5E of such adventures, that strikes me as a good way to get people playing 5E.
Due to their track record I just have a hard time not imagining them poochy-ing such a simple thing.
Quote from: Planet Algol;503433Despite my cynicism, I'm somehow cautiously optimistic regarding 5e, esp. due to the claims of backwards compatibility.
Everything I've seen of the 4E adventures makes them looks like a total clownshoes shitshow to my eyes; do you think the WOTC crew could actually make some good adventures for 5e?
I don't think it's rocket science, some freebies like The Fane of St. Toad or Challenge of the Frog Idol strikes me as awesome adventures. Do the Wizards designers have some sort of baggage that prevents them from designing good, fun, evocative site-based adventures?
If I was in their shoes I would contract some of the good hobbyist adventure writers to come up with a stack of short, fun, good site-based adventures.
Imagine a 64 page book for 5E of such adventures, that strikes me as a good way to get people playing 5E.
Due to their track record I just have a hard time not imagining them poochy-ing such a simple thing.
I'm not going to break my arm patting myself on the back but I've written what I think are pretty good adventures. If I can do it, surely to god WotC can.
The problem is that WotC is overthinking the structure of the game and destroying it in the process. It's got a name: "the Encounter" and its completely retarded follow-up, the delve-format. That's basically theoretical bullshit that affects the game play in very nasty ways (by turning it into a set-piece to set-piece miniatures wankfest, for instance), and kills the potential of modules. It needs to get right out the window to come back to the actual structure of adventure design for D&D: the dungeon. The map. The area of adventure that is keyed through the module.
Fans of the game love the maps in the modules. DMs love to draw their own based on those modules they like. It's part of the core experience and shared identity of the game. Why can't they get it, for fuck's sakes?
Once WotC gets over itself with its encountardization, it'll be able to write decent adventures.
I always disliked the line that "modules aren't profitable" in explaining why they ever stopped making them. Sure, they may not be profitable in and of themselves, but they SUPPORT something that is profitable. They give people something else to look at and use that would, by extension, probably lead to sales of other products. Loss-leaders are common in many other industries, why not D&D?
Suggestion: use modules to introduce new/optional rules a few at a time before binding them into a splatbook.
I ALWAYS loved the old D&D modules (even the bad ones), so I never saw why they went away...
Well, Robert Schwalb is on board, so why not?
He seemed rather good at it when i worked for him on TT for WFRP.
In fact, the lad's done rather well for himself. Pity i didn't stay pinned to his rising star!
Quote from: Benoist;503444....as always far more eloquent that I could ever express it....
I've been thinking about "swingyness" (as Goodman Games talks about in re. to the DCC RPG) lately, and what you said was a catalyst for this line of thought:
WOTC really dropped the ball when they repudiated "chaos" in favor of an increasingly tailored, manicured, and regulated "experience."
Unpredictability is exciting.
Quote from: Benoist;503444The problem is that WotC is overthinking the structure of the game and destroying it in the process...Once WotC gets over itself with its encountardization, it'll be able to write decent adventures.
I think that's much of it. It might also be "oh shit, we forgot to write any adventures, lets dash off a few encounters and call it an adventure."
Recent stuff I've seen feels like a bad video game in that you have a scene with something to fight, kill it, go to next scene with something to fight. I think Benoist has it right in that they are a series of set piece encounters strung together in a linear fashion and called an adventure. It's all a tedious railroad. I want a chance to explore, interact, and have an interesting plot to interact with.
Quote from: Planet Algol;503470WOTC really dropped the ball when they repudiated "chaos" in favor of an increasingly tailored, manicured, and regulated "experience."
Unpredictability is exciting.
Yep. I wonder how much of this is driven by using rpga as the standard with a homogenized structure that leads to a fairly constant outcome.
Quote from: Werekoala;503458I always disliked the line that "modules aren't profitable" in explaining why they ever stopped making them. Sure, they may not be profitable in and of themselves, but they SUPPORT something that is profitable. They give people something else to look at and use that would, by extension, probably lead to sales of other products. Loss-leaders are common in many other industries, why not D&D?
Suggestion: use modules to introduce new/optional rules a few at a time before binding them into a splatbook.
That's exactly what TSR did. Big hunks of MM2 are in S4, as are magic items and spells that were later featured in Unearthed Arcana.
QuoteI ALWAYS loved the old D&D modules (even the bad ones), so I never saw why they went away...
Yup. I think WotC was disappointed that nobody on their side of things seemed to have it in them to create anything as memorable as B2, G123, S1, S2, S3, S4, WG4, A1-4, etc., and therefore proclaimed that MODULES DON'T SELL.
I've sat in on a convo with Gary and he flat out stated S1 sold 350,000 copies. At $5 a pop back then, that was a cool million-five. Now charge $15 for a similar (in terms of appeal) module in 2013, assume that sales are 3.5x less, the money is still the same. Now release ten modules in a year. There's your $50m, Hasbro. And we haven't even addressed the rulebooks yet.
I'm going to insist, but really this is important: they need to drop the encounter for that to happen. Leave it in the game as one of those structural options, maybe, but drop it for the baseline of the game.
Look at what makes the old modules great: they're open environments contained in a map or two. The dungeon itself is an environment. The wilderness is an environment. The game itself on the DM's side is all about managing the environment: drawing the map, putting locales/rooms on the map, populating each room/locale. Then have the immense pleasure and surprise to see what the players do with this stuff, and see the whole come to life before your eyes.
This is what the game is about. That's why these modules sold. S4 Tsojcanth, the Giants and Drows series... that's what these modules do best. Come on, WotC! This is NOT rocket science!
Y'know, I've routinely had problems sifting through modules because I found the structure and writing so terrible across most rpgs I buy for. But perhaps this is because most of my D&D module experience was with D&D 2e, 3e, and 4e modules with only a smattering of the cheapest 1e I could scrounge. However, as you now talk about it, perhaps I'm looking at modules all wrong.
Perhaps I should look at modules as microcosmic settings with mapped out locales as a waft, equivalently focused plot strings and characters as the colored thread, and the prime story arc as the paint-by-numbers pattern. No one says you have to limit yourself to the prime story arc, but you can follow it if you are a) inexperienced, or b) no other inspiration hits you. Hmm, yes, maybe I've been far too jaded about the value of modules.
But so many of them suck... And I'm tired of sifting or hunting down collectibles.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;503477I've sat in on a convo with Gary and he flat out stated S1 sold 350,000 copies. At $5 a pop back then, that was a cool million-five. [...] There's your $50m, Hasbro.
No, and here's why.
First, let's assume Gary's telling the truth about S1. 350,000 copies sold isn't 350,000 copies
sold to people, it's 350,000 copies
sold to distributors. We have no way of knowing how many copies of S1 ended up in retail stores, or in people's hands. Fortunately it doesn't matter. What does matter is that TSR didn't sell S1 to distributors at $5 a pop, it sold to them at distributor cost.
Distributor + retail markup is about 60%. So that $5 retail cost becomes $2 a copy. That's now $750,000
gross TSR made on S1. In 2011 dollars, that's just shy of two million. So you'll need twenty-five+ of those modules a year to hit your $50M target, and that's assuming Hasbro meant gross instead of net, which they almost certainly did not. $50M
net a year and you haven't a prayer even if every module and the core books sell like S1 did.
As an aside, I'm sure the "I'm so much better at writing adventures than WotC" WAAAAAMbulance makes you feel better, but every other RPG company has said the same thing about adventures not selling well enough to justify the cost of producing them.
"Infrastructure" may not be financially profitable; but it is profitable in other ways, such as long-term viability.
The "shared experience" of the oldschool modules is an example of a non-monetary assest.
This is so funny. Modules would be great but then we would hear the incessant complaints that they are all RAILROADY and whatnot. One complaint will spawn many more from the OSR crowd.
Quotepretty good adventures
GARBAGE!!!!
QuoteFirst, let's assume Gary's telling the truth about S1. 350,000 copies sold isn't 350,000 copies sold to people, it's 350,000 copies sold to distributors. We have no way of knowing how many copies of S1 ended up in retail stores, or in people's hands. Fortunately it doesn't matter. What does matter is that TSR didn't sell S1 to distributors at $5 a pop, it sold to them at distributor cost.
I would not assume anything but I seriously doubt he was telling the truth anyways. Gygax was known to be a LIAR and a THIEF to boot.
Your one trick is getting tiresome old man.
Quote from: daniel_ream;503518As an aside, I'm sure the "I'm so much better at writing adventures than WotC" WAAAAAMbulance makes you feel better, but every other RPG company has said the same thing about adventures not selling well enough to justify the cost of producing them.
Reading fail much?
I didn't say I'm better than them. I said, I do write adventures. Simple things. Dungeon crawls, mostly. Few puzzles, mostly monster bashes.
WotC should go back to adventure writing, too, but they have it in them to make great stuff. There's someone out there with something as cool as G123 on their minds. There's an S1 lurking there somewhere (shut up, I don't care if you think it's a deathtrap or whatever, it sold). They should be writing them, they should be publishing them.
QuoteAs an aside, I'm sure the "I'm so much better at writing adventures than WotC" WAAAAAMbulance makes you feel better, but every other RPG company has said the same thing about adventures not selling well enough to justify the cost of producing them.
LOL!!! Except of course for Paizo whose PFA's are kicking ass...;D
Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;503570LOL!!! Except of course for Paizo whose PFA's are kicking ass...;D
You are aware that the same Paizo guys had a list of the "Greatest Modules of All Time" that made it into Dragon Magazine which included all those we are talking about here, right? The way you're blinding yourself with your "hat on K&K" is kind of funny, but it only becomes truly hilarious when you make hugely ironic statements like these. Keep being you, dude. Rage on! :D
Quote from: Benoist;503572You are aware that the same Paizo guys had a list of the "Greatest Modules of All Time" that made it into Dragon Magazine which included all those we are talking about here, right? The way you're blinding yourself with your "hat on K&K" is kind of funny, but it only becomes truly hilarious when you make hugely ironic statements like these. Keep being you, dude. Rage on! :D
I seen that list and I have seen countless others and guess what, I have no problems with it because it is a personal opinion. Anyways, your elitist band of merry groggers have diminished the value of old school modules because of their very "railroad" nature BUT now, there is a chance something might come good of the recent announcement with 5th edition that you hoist titles up in the air above your bald heads and make it seem they are the greatest.
Make up your "waffle" minds and settle on some consistancy. Either you like the modules despite their "railroad" weaknesses or just dismiss them as you all have for the longest time.
Now, if you are interested, I will gladly send you my conversions of the good old modules such as G1-3 into Pathfinder which I will have to pat myself a lot on my back at the considerable ease it took me.
I promise you, Benoist, I never act otherwise whether I be on the net or in real life.
And since you brought up Paizo, I did not see them pat themselves on the back as much as your crony, Bill Silvey did in this thread concerning their line of adventure modules. Get on that "whaaaaaaaaaambulance"...
Glad to see I didn't make it on your ignore list yet! I love you too, AG!
Quote from: Benoist;503587Glad to see I didn't make it on your ignore list yet! I love you too, AG!
No, as I stated previously, There are times you make good and sensible comments. I agree with some things you say. I am not going to bomblast you by the company you keep.
You know, 4th edition almost had it right when they brought out those hardback modules but we all know they were not really modules, it was more akin to a huge series of ENcounters within the adventure itself. If WOTC had put out some decent adventures like Paizo did, they would have probably earned a few more fans.
Yes, the old TSR adventure modules that are widely reviled by the K&K/OSR set....
Old Man, would you kindly quit cunting up my serious, good faith thread with your histronics.
Regarding the Paizo APs; of the material I've read there are several elements I quite like; however there is waaaay toooo muuuuch fluff regarding NPCs, plots, backstories, blah, blah, blah.
I know folks get paid by the word and all; but frankly I don't enjoy paying for a bunch of fluff that I wouldn't use (as I would likely strip it out and use them as site-based adventures); and I find it counterproductive having to read page after page after page of exposition in order to run an adventure.
Bring back the olschool 16-page gems I say!
Quote from: Planet Algol;503597Regarding the Paizo APs
The ones that I've seen contain a great deal more sourcebook-style info, relatively speaking, than the 1E modules that had new monsters or mechanics. I don't think it's fair to compare the sales of Paizo adventure paths to 1E modules because I don't think the products are comparable: APs are like mini-sourcebooks with a major adventure in them.
Not to say that isn't the Silver Bullet format for selling adventures, but I don't think APs clearly disprove the "adventures don't sell" rubric.
Quote from: daniel_ream;503606The ones that I've seen contain a great deal more sourcebook-style info, relatively speaking, than the 1E modules that had new monsters or mechanics. I don't think it's fair to compare the sales of Paizo adventure paths to 1E modules because I don't think the products are comparable: APs are like mini-sourcebooks with a major adventure in them.
Not to say that isn't the Silver Bullet format for selling adventures, but I don't think APs clearly disprove the "adventures don't sell" rubric.
Of course they are comparable. Now, instead of just LOOKING at them and just READING them, how about PARTAKE in them.
I will admit that I was very doubtful in the beginning when Rise of the Runelords came out but when I actually hosted it for the first time and completed it as a DM and as a player in its entirety, you will certainly see the admiration for that line of product. So, I appreciated the PF modules in its entirety after I actually partaken in them as a whole.
Now, when I talk to some of the 4thEd crowd in the local area about how adventures were a staple back in the day, they of course scoffed at me and said that adventures sucked back then when I told them that 4thEd is severely lacking in that area.
It does not matter to me because I know that besides me, there are quite a few others out there and in here who had the awesome privilege and experience of actually playing in old school modules and not taking it for granted.
Modules, in my personal opinion, are extremely important in an RPG. Paizo knew that and they are doing it right.
Quotethan the 1E modules that had new monsters
I have no clue what you are reading but EVERY PFA module has a minimum of at least 3-5 NEW MONSTERS at the end of the module.
I think a lot of the old TSR modules had serious issues. Quite a number of them were either railroady "story" modules (e.g. Dragonlance) or little more than dungeon crawls that were not all that different from 4e's delves.
That said, there were some gems and I 100% agree that dropping the concept of modules in favor of the splatbook treadmill is one of the ways the industry killed a lot of interest in the hobby.
I do think the key is for each module to be a bit of a mini-sourcebook that has people, places, maps, and new stuff (monsters/items/etc) that could be dropped into the middle of any campaign. And the ability to introduce background plots and plot hooks without insisting on a linear story for the PCs to experience.
QuoteI think a lot of the old TSR modules had serious issues. Quite a number of them were either railroady "story" modules (e.g. Dragonlance) or little more than dungeon crawls that were not all that different from 4e's delves.
LOL
QuoteI do think the key is for each module to be a bit of a mini-sourcebook that has people, places, maps, and new stuff (monsters/items/etc) that could be dropped into the middle of any campaign. And the ability to introduce background plots and plot hooks without insisting on a linear story for the PCs to experience.
And that is what Paizo does well with their release of the PFA's.
On the lines of using modules/adventures to introduce new content (that may later make it into the main game), how often (if ever) have monsters and the like been widely playtested through the RPGA?
To write good modules, WotC would have to hire some people who knew how to write adventures. Lemme know when that happens.
Who the fuck is Bill Silvey?
Quote from: One Horse Town;503821Who the fuck is Bill Silvey?
He wrote some chunk of OSRIC.
Quote from: One Horse Town;503821Who the fuck is Bill Silvey?
I heard he's some kind of Old School hack. :D
I also heard he's behind YDIS, along with me and Kellri as coauthors, though we might just as well be the same person writing under different pseudonyms.
Quote from: Benoist;503829I also heard he's behind YDIS, along with me and Kellri as coauthors, though we might just as well be the same person writing under different pseudonyms.
Your Dick is Small?
That's a pretty shit abbreviation. ;)
Just reading Your Dungeon Is Suck, you can tell just how microscopic its author(s)'s dick must be, yes. :D
Just reading Your Dungeon Is Suck (a blog on the intarwebz that melts your grey cells at the first read), you can tell just how microscopic its author(s)'s dick must be, yes. :D
Quote from: One Horse Town;503830Your Dick is Small?
That's a pretty shit abbreviation. ;)
I don't want to "get behind" Your Small Dick btw, thanks for asking. :D
OK seriously now. Bill Silvey is thedungeondelver on this board.
Quote from: Benoist;503839OK seriously now. Bill Silvey is thedungeondelver on this board.
Thedungeondelver has a small dick? That explains a lot. :D
Seriously, however, i now take Ancientgamers posts in a rather dim light.
Ignored!
Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;503825He wrote some chunk of OSRIC.
Tiny bit - just some descriptives in the monsters section of the book is all.
Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;503818To write good modules, WotC would have to hire some people who knew how to write adventures. Lemme know when that happens.
I think the problem is deeper than that.
Bruce Cordell used to write good adventures. Before going to WotC, Mike Mearls wrote several creative and entertaining D20 modules. If you had told me in 2007 that 8 out of the 9 tier adventures for 4E were going to be written by them, I would have said: "Hey! Sign me up!"
... and yet those adventures sucked. And Cordell's earlier
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft also sucked, despite doing a lot of cool stuff to expand the original.
The problem at WotC is that there is a corporate methodology for "how we publish adventures" which is anathema to good adventure design. And it's been a problem for WotC since 2006.
Before that, WotC had a
different corporate methodology which was
also crippling their adventure design. (The idea that you could squeeze an expansive Underdark mini-campaign into 32 pages was insane... And yet
Deep Horizons happened.)
I'm not entirely sure WotC is capable of fixing that problem. As a corporate entity, they want product that fits nicely into whatever cookie cutter their management has currently deemed "a good idea". Sometimes that cookie cutter is strict; sometimes its loose. But, no matter what, the cookie cutter severely restricts the creative freedom of their module creators.
Quote from: Justin Alexander;503884I think the problem is deeper than that.
Bruce Cordell used to write good adventures. Before going to WotC, Mike Mearls wrote several creative and entertaining D20 modules. If you had told me in 2007 that 8 out of the 9 tier adventures for 4E were going to be written by them, I would have said: "Hey! Sign me up!"
... and yet those adventures sucked. And Cordell's earlier Expedition to Castle Ravenloft also sucked, despite doing a lot of cool stuff to expand the original.
The problem at WotC is that there is a corporate methodology for "how we publish adventures" which is anathema to good adventure design. And it's been a problem for WotC since 2006.
Before that, WotC had a different corporate methodology which was also crippling their adventure design. (The idea that you could squeeze an expansive Underdark mini-campaign into 32 pages was insane... And yet Deep Horizons happened.)
I'm not entirely sure WotC is capable of fixing that problem. As a corporate entity, they want product that fits nicely into whatever cookie cutter their management has currently deemed "a good idea". Sometimes that cookie cutter is strict; sometimes its loose. But, no matter what, the cookie cutter severely restricts the creative freedom of their module creators.
I agree with you, corporate culture is a substantial part of the problem.
I don't know if you've ever read Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi), but he's a psychologist who wrote a book on creativity back in the 90's that's extremely interesting.
In that book, he discusses how creative endeavours rarely develop in isolation, even ones that are done in private like writing. What instead happens is that people with similar interests and drive tend to clump up into communities that at some point develop a critical mass. That critical mass makes all the members of that community more productive in their creative endeavours as ideas are bounced around and debated, high-quality feedback on work is given, and the members serve as spurs and inspiration for one another's work.
I would suggest that Wizards, even if has a few good adventure writers on hand at any given time, does not have that critical mass. Moreover, by pulling self-employed individuals who previously participated in a wider gaming discourse into a smaller, more hermetic environment with corporate norms, it cuts them off from that broader gaming discourse and basically shuts down their ability to participate in that community, except in extremely formal and rigid ways (PR-minded interviews, magazine articles in a house publication, press releases, etc.). This would have the obvious effect of a creative decline, perhaps not instantly but certainly over time.
This is especially true if the corporate norms don't emphasise relationship and community-building with their clients, something WotC has done effectively with MtG but never with D&D. e.g. CustServ back in the 3.x days was notoriously unreliable and ignorant at answering rules questions. Another example would be that WotC has only ever done one comprehensive survey of its D&D customers (or of D&D players including non-customers) that I am aware of (under Ryan Dancey). This is so completely contrary to best practices that I still find it kind of hard to believe.
With regard to specific individuals being cut off from the broader gaming discourse, let's use the example of Mike Mearls. Mike Mearls used to have a livejournal on which he would talk about his gaming and his games, and the broader gaming public who were interested could come by and argue, discuss, etc. his various works (hell, even I commented once or twice on something he said). Mearls also used to post here, and IIRC he was on rpg.net as well (and probably other places beyond that). When he joined Wizards, all of that interaction began to slowly stop, until sometime before 4e came out he was basically no longer part of the broader gaming discourse.
If I were WotC, I would do exactly what I said above. I would hire on a group of 4-6 full-time employees, supported by freelancers as necessary, who were a "adventure development team" responsible for at least 1 64-page module every two months (or maybe 1 32 page module every month), as well as adventure content for all D&D publications (include DDI/Dragon, the adventures that show up in campaign settings, etc). They would handle creative, copywriting, stats, alpha playtesting, etc. Probably including at least one artist amongst them to do maps, cover graphics and internal art.
Everything other than production, really. These people would be allowed to speak to the D&D community - in fact, I would encourage them to. I would also encourage them to run contests where fans submitted their modules and the best one was published and sold, with the writer receiving a monetary prize ($500 bucks and a free copy would be a solid investment), probably once or twice a year.
FFG does something like these contests already, IIRC, for Dark Heresy, and it helps them identify potential talent. WW used to as well, since Malcolm Sheppard was recruited off the WW boards in 1998-1999 to help write Tradition Book: Akashic based on some posts he made. The hiring goal I mentioned above would be aggressive, but not unreasonable - it's about typical for a large direct mail firm.
My goal there would be to create a "skunkworks" or critical mass of creatives in discussion with a wider community of my customers who could consistently produce new and original content suited to the taste of those customers.
Yeah, I completely with you guys. The corporate setup and mindset is part of the problem, and the really frustrating part is, it could be solved, if they really challenged the design and development MO and rebuilt it efficiently.
I'll be happy if they don't rehash ToEE, Giants, etc. Just how many versions of these adventures do we need? Make something new!
I think there may be one more issue to the modules here - except the obvious "Why won't they release the classics as PDFs", but that's really just indeed, corporate logic.
Internet.
Or namely - these days, if you need an adventure on the fly, you type "D&D x edition adventures", and bam - thousands of freebies. In the days of yore, you had to either buy a complete one, or you had to get them from Dragon or Dungeons magazine - both of which were none the less, and still are, a part of D&D revenue stream.
Of course, modules still bring profit, that's why they are made - but they aren't just that profitable to mandate doing so much work for them, I guess.
Quote from: Rincewind1;503970I think there may be one more issue to the modules here - except the obvious "Why won't they release the classics as PDFs", but that's really just indeed, corporate logic.
Internet.
Or namely - these days, if you need an adventure on the fly, you type "D&D x edition adventures", and bam - thousands of freebies. In the days of yore, you had to either buy a complete one, or you had to get them from Dragon or Dungeons magazine - both of which were none the less, and still are, a part of D&D revenue stream.
Of course, modules still bring profit, that's why they are made - but they aren't just that profitable to mandate doing so much work for them, I guess.
One thing I never understood about 4e's modules. The delve-only mindset aside, why did they not package them all as a set with map tiles and minis that would allow you to run the whole thing? Cards with the stats for new magic items found in the adventure? Etc.
Right off the bat they fumbled with KotSF. Sure, the module plot and RP opportunities sucked, but it was lame even for what it was: no counters to use on the maps they gave you and they leave you to figure out how to put together a map for most of the dungeon crawl parts yourself.
Even if you liked the rules and style of 4e (I did) the modules still sucked. I'll never understand how you could have minis games and card games and board games, build a RPG that is made to use those kind of components, then utterly fail to leverage those other games and their components for the RPG.
Quote from: jgants;504137One thing I never understood about 4e's modules. The delve-only mindset aside, why did they not package them all as a set with map tiles and minis that would allow you to run the whole thing? Cards with the stats for new magic items found in the adventure? Etc.
Gardmore Abbey has all that, except (of course) tokens for minis, to keep the price tag manageable. But yes, it's the first ever regular product to feature item cards for the major artefacts. And it features extra dice to help you run the mod with (otherwise) simply a copy of the Dungeon Tiles master set.
Like you, I'm amazed that they didn't hit on these ideas in 2008 (apart from tokens for minis, that came about later as a necessity, not by way of preference).
Quote from: Windjammer;504208Gardmore Abbey has all that, except (of course) tokens for minis, to keep the price tag manageable. But yes, it's the first ever regular product to feature item cards for the major artefacts. And it features extra dice to help you run the mod with (otherwise) simply a copy of the Dungeon Tiles master set.
Like you, I'm amazed that they didn't hit on these ideas in 2008 (apart from tokens for minis, that came about later as a necessity, not by way of preference).
As you stated but I would seriously doubt they would have used minis, they would have used their tokens instead since they stepped out of the miniature market.
If they did something like that Dungeon Crawls Classic #30 with miniatures included, it would have been a hefty price tag.