WoTC Campaign Books

I was recently listening to a conversation with Dael Kingsmill & BardicBroadcasts on Questing Beast's Youtube Channel. The discussion was titled, "Why DnD Is So Great", but the group covered many different topics. If any of you spend a lot of your life commuting or driving children all over creation, it's a great conversation to listen to in the car. 

Anyway, the topic of Wizards of the Coast's big campaign books came up in the second section of the video, entitled "Most nostalgic module". All of the panelists seemed to make the assertion that they're too big, too cumbersome, and too much of a plot railroad. I think it was Dael who said something to the effect of, "I don't even know what to do with them".

I do use Campaign books when running games for the kids, and I'd like to talk about how I think we got here, some of the benefits of the campaign books, what I miss about the old days, and strategies for applying these books at your table. I may or may not go off on a little rant here and there about what I would like to see moving forward.

This is a long post, so if you just want the advice, skip to the section titled, What do we do with these things??

The Lonely Fun Era

I came to D&D in the early 90's, which was a really captivating and magical time to enter the hobby. Basic D&D, I believe considered BECMI by grognards and OSR enthusiasts, was coming out with some amazing stuff with their Black Box, and accompanying Thunder Rift products. AD&D Second Edition was killing it with Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, and Dragonlance, to name a few. There was so much material, and it was all so rich and developed. Planescape alone was so captivating that I was writing fan fiction about it before I knew what fan fiction was. 

Unfortunately, I had no one to play all of these great games with, and apparently, I was not alone. As DM David recounts, "During all the hours you wanted to play games like Dungeons & Dragons but couldn’t, you settled for exploring the game world by reading its source books... In those days, gaming used to be what D&D boss Mike Mearls called 'a hobby of not playing the game you wanted to play.'" This is where folks began using the term "lonely fun" to describe the hours spent pouring over campaign supplements and rolling up characters. Sadly, between then and now, I lost all of those great boxed sets in one move or another (I think my ex thew them in the trash). Now I have to settle for the PoD copies from DriveThruRPG (shown on the right). 

A different strategy

So this system apparently backfired in a monumental way for TSR, because while it gave us some amazing stuff, there wasn't enough of an audience to buy it. Further, people likely to spend hours reading the contents of the latest box set became the people who instead logged hours on Bioware's Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, and Torment. Ultimately, that became the audience for MMORPG's. Further, today with the resurgence of the TTRPG, we can use a range of tools from Roll20 to Owlbear Rodeo to ensure we need not sit around reading and dreaming of gaming. We can just round up a group and start playing. Finally, thanks to Twitch, Youtube, and other streaming, "video offers a new way to watch people play D&D—and a new way to enjoy D&D while not playing D&D and not buying D&D books" (DM David, 2016). Again, as DM David bears this out in his 2016 post, How the end of lonely fun leads to today’s trickle of D&D books, this lead to the d20 license under the 3.0 and 3.5 era and ultimately the strategy of campaign books we have now. 

In my mind, Wizards of the Coast is simply straddling the chasm between us old-heads who want shiny new stuff to read and the folks who just want to get a game going with these books. If you look at Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, for example, you're getting the old-school campaign setting materials with several really well-developed adventure hooks, instead of box sets full of poster maps, history, mechanical errata, and some weak hooks. 

Nostalgia for the past

Honestly, I miss the old box sets. Unfortunately, I don't have a Beadle and Grimm's budget and there's no one out there doing non-premium / non-bespoke boxed sets for 5E. I have to say, my favorite product that Wizards has come out with for 5E is the Essentials kit, and that not just because it comes in a box. Let's be honest, though, if it were a hardcover book, I would like it a lot less. There are some things WoTC could stand to learn from TSR, though, that isn't limited to mistakes and how not to run a gaming company.

I think TSR had some great accessible modular products. I think the absolute best products TSR came out with to get kids into the game was the earlier mentioned Thunder Rift Products as well as some of the Mystara stuff. Even the crappy little $6-$12 modules like Quest for the Silver Sword and the Dymrak Dread came with a poster map and cardboard minis. They were simple in set up, and got your party rolling dice right away. This is the kind of adventures I see in The Dragon of Icespire Peak. Loosely connected adventures with a quick set-up and lots of possible solutions and spin-offs are great to set up your group for hours of fun without feeling like there's some monumental world-crippling event on the horizon that your players must stop.

If I had my druthers, as the kids say (full disclosure: I know that the kids don't say that), I would like to see the following.

First, I would direct WoTC to try some of the old second edition settings with adventures, more in the modular style of Icespire Peak and Ghosts of Saltmarsh, giving us a captivating new setting to explore, but giving us some very playable modular adventures that take place there. I loved Planescape, for example. While you're not likely to ever capture the amazing feel and flavor of that first boxed set, without reprinting much of its contents (including the amazing art by Tony Diterlizzi), the setting was very lacking in good adventures. Most of the modules printed for Planescape felt like an incomplete rush job. There were a few gems in the adventure anthologies. It would be nice to get a Planescape campaign book (maybe even geared toward higher level play... now there's a concept) that cleaned up the best of the old modules and maybe introduced some new material.

Second, I would ask for more boxes. I would love to see WoTC thinking inside the box. There's something great about a box. It's self-contained, fun to open, and feels more like you're playing a tabletop game. The biggest problem with most of TSR's Boxes, back in the day, were that they weren't a self-contained game. I would like to see a reasonably priced box set come out at least once a year that follows in the path the Essentials Kit. I would love to see a modular ruleset box with some more adventures in it. I love Necrotic Gnome's Old School Essentials, which divides its rules books into modular booklets that can be divided up around the table. Full disclosure, I don't own the core rulebooks. Incidentally, I refuse to buy myself the core books until WoTC reprints the set with Hydro 74 Cover art (hint hint). I have the essentials kit, and I've printed and comb bound the free rules pdf as modular booklets for ease of use and reference. Between that and Xanathar's and Tasha's and the internet, I've never missed the core books. 

What do we do with these things??

I'm a teacher. I teach a computer science class that's built on the DNA of the Montessori method, with a healthy helping of Project Based Learning and Design thinking. I have 20 some starter projects outlined on my class web site to get students thinking, but I often have to tell students, "this is not a worksheet packet". In other words, this is not a linear fill-in-the-blank script you have to follow for the next 8 weeks. The same applies, I believe, to these campaign books. I know very few people who use these to railroad their players into a cookie-cutter adventure or who don't homebrew the crap out of them in some form or another. Just listen to Mike Shea and Bob World Builder discuss these adventures. Both of them approach these published adventures differently and both start with their players. As mentioned, I'm a teacher (Both online and in-person in this, the era of Covid 19), I'm a parent of 3 kids, I'm a husband, I'm an ex-husband (anyone who is co-parenting will let you know that this sucks your life away), and I'm renovating a farm house and helping my wife start a wedding venue. I love the campaign books because I don't have time to invent continents, cities, and plot hooks. There's only so much space in my brain, and I would love someone else to hand me NPC's and arch villains, and fantastic locations to inspire my players. 

Consider "the story" of any campaign book one possible story under a particular set of circumstances. Your circumstances will be as varied as your main protagonists (your players and their characters). Yes, WoTC brought in great writers and designers to make this book, but even they know that the most important part is missing from the plot by design... the main characters. 

1. Use the setting information and the Appendices

Most of these books have a large introductory section that outlines key locations in the setting and an appendix that includes monsters, NPC's, magical items, and often new or expanded mechanics. For example, Ghosts of Saltmarsh includes an introductory section on Saltmarsh, its locations and people, character background options, and how to place Saltmarsh in your campaign world of choice. It also includes and appendix section on ships and sea encounters and combat. If I had an idea for a sweet pirate-inspired high seas adventure, this book' intro and appendix alone would give me a gigantic head start. That's a lot that has been done for me before I even begin mining the adventures for locations, monsters, and plot hooks. 

2. Star Trek vs. Star Wars

Professor Dungeon Master, from Dungeoncraft, often says that you need to decide whether your campaign is Star Trek (episodic in nature, with your players facing a new adventure every couple of sessions) or Star Wars (a grand epic made of interconnected chapters building toward a grand world or universe-changing climax). My Wednesday night group has made it very clear that they want Star Wars, and we're running Waterdeep Dragon Heist, largely following the over arching plot, but the Cassalanters are part of the Cult of the Dragon, as we build toward Tyranny of Dragons, specifically the Rise of Tiamat. I'm following the book plot, but there is a ton that has happened that's off-plot, but is now canon. After all, there are like 7 kids in that group, ages 9-15. We're going to go off-script, but there's so much in that book that can never make it into your script there seems to be no way to run out of material. Just like Professor Dungeon Master recommends doing flowcharts for your adventure and Bob World Builder recommends the scatterplot, I recommend doing some variation on these ideas for your epic campaign. Know where you're going and map out some of the cool things that can happen on the way, and let your players discover. 

My occasional Sunday groups, one playing Icespire Peak and the other playing Ghosts of Saltmarsh are definitely Star Trek. They're treating Phandalin and Saltmarsh respectively much like the Keep on the Borderlands, a home base from which to adventure but not necessarily the center of an epic story of good vs evil with fate of the world at stake. It's at this point that you begin mining the adventures for locations, monsters and plot hooks. If your players aren't interested in saving all of Saltmarsh, maybe Gellan Primewater, the shady council member / "businessman" has lost some illicit cargo and wants your players to go see if they can get it back. They can still find themselves embroiled in Lizard folk politics, but the stakes don't have to feel as high. 

3 Use the Lazy DM Method

Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, by Mike Shea, is a book of 8 practical steps for focusing game session preparation activities on those things that will bring the biggest impact to the characters. Chapter 6, Define Secrets and Clues, has been a game changer in my game prep, and I know it will be for you. Again, as you mine the adventures for locations, monsters and plot hooks, using this technique will allow you to reveal those to players more organically as they interact with the world. So, go through the adventure, looking for secrets to reveal (locations, monsters / villains, lore, and plot hooks). Write down 10 or so for your session. Then as players interact with your world, reveal the lore when you have opportunities to do so, rather than requiring players to hit certain plot points at particular times in order to progress the story as written. This has worked brilliantly in both my epic Dragon Heist game and my more episodic Saltmarsh game. My players take notes, but I also create a recap journal of the session on our campaign website for the players, which often ends with a "secrets discovered" section to help young players keep track of these tidbits and make decisions based on them. 

4 BYOT (Bring your own tone)

If you've ever read any of these campaign books, you'll quickly realize that, with the exception of Tyranny of Dragons, they all have elements that evoke multiple tones. Even Icewind Dale and Curse of Strahd, both of which are designed to evoke horror-related tones, have humorous elements in them. The tone you choose to approach a big campaign book with will definitely influence its scope, its direction, and how much of it you use as written. Professor DM, for example has some videos on making your tone more Grimm-dark, including an entire campaign where he re-dubbed the classic "Caves of Chaos" into the "Caves of Carnage". My Saltmarsh group has a very tongue-in-cheek tone that was easy to establish based on the names in that module alone. They have a very Blackadder the Second feel to them. One day, I was doing session prep notes for Saltmarsh, and I left a page where I had listed the local taverns and some council members on the dining table. My wife, while I was out of the room added some names, like "Tinklespitz McClusky". Tinklespitz McClusky is now a character in my campaign. The main drive in establishing your unique tone should be your players. It's going to become pretty obvious what they want in a game as they interact with your adventures. If you're trying for the epic, save the world tone, and they're constantly cracking wise, you may be missing it on tone. Just like you need to decide, Is this Star Wars or Star Trek, you also must decide is this Captain America, Civil War or Thor, Ragnarok? Both are heroic stories, but very different in tone. 

Final thoughts and parting shots

As I've said before, and might say again, while a modern D&D 5e Adventure book is around $50.00, you're actually getting great value for your money. You should check out some of the points that Mike Shea often makes on the topic. Additionally, I will repeat that I know very few people who use these to railroad their players into a cookie-cutter adventure or who don't homebrew the crap out of them in some form or another. They are a great help to those of us who don't have time to invent continents, and cities, and plot hooks. I think they are in some ways superior to the setting products of old because they have more of a focus on story than simply on setting. 

I just wish they came in a box...