I would like to see Wizards of the Coast (tm) Do Adventure Books like this
Wizards of the Coast(tm) is releasing yet another D&D(tm) campaign book for character levels 1-12. And while I love running low level characters from nothing up to heroic stature, what then? There's no end-game except for a few scattered modules from the Adventurers' League or third party publishers. And while that's a perfectly acceptible solution up to know WOTC is leaving money on the table.
The average price of a campaign adventure is $30-$50. If they could cut the adventure in half and charge $15-$20 for it, it would be more appealing. But not just two adventures but three. Three low-level adventures for advancing characters from Level 1 to level 5. Why Three? Becasue there will be three adventures for levels 5-11 waiting for the players to transition into.
Same for levels 11 to 16 and 16 to 20. A total of 12 adventures with a story path that winds through them based on DM choice and player agency. Then, if you had fun, you could run them again from a different entry point and maybe even meet your prior heroes along the way! Each iteration will deepen the story details and worldbuilding.
You do not need to have all three tier 1 (levels 1 to 5) adventures and probably they should not even be set in the same place. But it is the story threads that they follow that could lead to any of the three tier II (5-11) adventures. Resolving any of the second tier adventures would lead to one of three third tier threats. Each of these third tier threats will culminate in a coin-toss of endings and the final chapter would likely only be two books.
In fact I can forsee this sort of structure being expanded into a stucture like this
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At $15 per book, a party that goes to Tier III would generate $45 in sales and if the group plays more than once through the same storyline it could total $90 or more - just on adventures, not counting any other supplements that might be purchased
As for content, it is pretty eeasy to set up your books along the "play style" paradigm. One of the books in the tier is more combat and fighting, another more exploring, and a third more social, the fourth is a balance of factors. Hand off your ideas to your writers to build towards one of three possible endings- which, conveniently lead to the next tier of adventures. Which might favor one outcome over the others that is more in the playstyle of the original adventure. It then is up to the DM to decide how he wants to "nudge" the players.
It seems they tried to do this in the Waterdeep:Dragon Heist with multiple paths to get to the same place. It was just a mess to have to try to work around all the unneeded material in the single book in order to run a single "season" of the story. It is a great resource on Waterdeep, however, and I don't fault it for that, but there may have been a better way.
L:et's use the Dragon Heist as an example. Each book would feature an overview of Neverwinter, but would concentrate on a single ward. There's be Dragon Heist: North Ward, Dragon Heist Sea Ward, Dragon Heist: Daggerford (a town outside of Waterdeep), Dragon Heist: Field Ward.
- Dragonheist: North Ward is the social adventure with the players building relationships with the merchants of Trollskull Alley and leading to the explosion, chase and the "Summer" plot with the Castlelanters.
- Sea Ward brings the PCs into conflict with the Xanathar's guild and Jarlaxle and is more combat oriented
- Daggerford is explorations, following tales of the Lord Neverember's plots and talking the characters eventually back to Waterdeep into conflict with Xanathar Field Ward is driven by the Zentarim who are plotting with Manshoon. Investigating their deeds in and around the Field ward will lead to the end plot.
- Mirt the Merciless stole the money to start a Spelljamming academy and is building ships to defend agasint a world-ending threat of astral elves. (Leading directly into the Spelljammer adventure)
- Neverember got the gold out of the city as way to bribe giants to not attack but the giants are breaking the Ordning becasue of the disappearance of the Storm King (Leads into Storm Kings Thunder)
- The Zentarim have absconded with the money as way to rebuild Zentarim Keep and are enlisting the help of Drow who are coming out of the uderdark in exchange for their help agasint a growing Demon threat (Out of the Abyss)
- Dragon Cultists seeking to break the centuries-long shield of the Dragonstaff over Waterdeep in order to sack the city leads to Rise of Tiamat.
But rather than leading the the buried treasure like it is in the actual adventure it would point to several other culprits in the next adventures.
These are simple ideas built on existing modules but you can see how the structure can be made. There are hints of this idea already in the modules, but they current 1-3, 4-12 structure of most of the modules prevents it from becoming practical to run it that way.