Looking up at my shelves, I can see a lot of published Dungeons & Dragons adventures. It’s sort of the thing I really enjoy, so I’ve collected many of them – but by no means all. And (sadly), I’ve tended to concentrate on the official ones rather than spending lots of time going around what other authors are doing.

But you’ve got to start somewhere. And you are more likely to find a good D&D adventure from the official publishers than any random adventure writer. But once you know which writers or publishers to follow, the world can open up.

Availability is a problem, of course, especially if you live in Australia. I can get electronic copies, but physical costs. And it can cost a lot. Just at the moment, a new official hardcover adventure is expensive – and anything else more so.

But even when I get the adventure in my hand, is it worth me reading and running?

History of the Big Campaign Adventure

Campaign adventures are fun. It’s nice devoting yourself to a big story and going from first to maximum level without leaving the created works. For everyone? By no means! But there are many ways to enjoy D&D.

The first steps towards these big arcs came with the original adventures published by TSR in the late 70s – the Giant/Drow series, which was six linked adventures, to which a seventh came along after not too long. Then, in the mid-80s, three of these series were linked together to form a master campaign taking characters from level 1 to level 12 or higher. T1-4 (Temple of Elemental Evil), A1-4 (Scourge of the Slave Lords), then GDQ1-7 (Queen of the Spiders).

There were a few nods towards the long-running campaigns in 2nd edition, but they really flourished in 3rd edition. First with the official adventures starting with The Sunless Citadel, which took characters all the way to 20th level, then with Dungeon Magazine that started running “Adventure Paths” from first to very high level. Sometimes 20th, sometimes less. As Dungeon dropped away but the creators – Paizo – remained, they adapted this structure to their Pathfinder game, and it continues to this day.

Structuring the Adventure

Paizo’s subscription service typically delivers their adventure paths in six instalments, each written by a different designer or team of designers. (There are variations).

When Wizards of the Coast started publishing 5th edition D&D, they started doing yearly (or more frequent) campaign adventures, typically going from levels 1-15, or 1-12, or thereabouts. There are definite advantages to publishing the adventure in one book rather than spread over six, particularly in adventure structure. In a single book, you can structure the adventure however you like. Paizo have to split it into six parts, each of which probably runs on its own.

That said, a lot of Wizards adventures don’t really take advantage of the book format. They might be not divided exactly into six parts, but many of them are very linear.

I know I’m not the biggest fan of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk, but a lot of my frustration with the adventure is that it isn’t executed better. It has a lot of good ideas. Some of them happen to be in the wrong adventure and would better be employed elsewhere, while others need more work for them to hit their full potential. And there are some that work just fine or really, really well.

The Home Base

One of the aspects The Shattered Obelisk employs is using a town-as-base. When you think of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, you have an adventure that is a road trip. You only stay in each location long enough to solve its problem, then you move on. Both the original Lost Mine of Phandalin and the expanded The Shattered Obelisk use the town-as-base. And, importantly, The Shattered Obelisk develops what happens in the town as the adventure progresses.

Not all that many adventures do. It is sort of left up to the DM in a lot of cases. Me, I like it when the designers offer hints or concrete suggestions. I was very struck by Keep on the Shadowfell by Bruce Cordell and Mike Mearls – the first of the 4E adventures – that it had events in the village as you progressed on your adventures. This is also something that occurs in Princes of the Apocalypse.

This technique is a lot easier to do in a single adventure rather than a six-volume set. This is not to say that Paizo don’t do it, but it is somewhat trickier for an adventure writer when you can’t be sure that the GM has the previous book.

The Living Home Town

Both Princes of the Apocalypse and The Shattered Obelisk use a similar method: At the beginning of each new chapter, they describe what’s going on in the home base and the main changes and events of which to be aware.

There are two problems you can have with this approach, and both these adventures fall into the first one: They have sections describing what happens back home when the adventurers may never go back home. This is only one section in The Shattered Obelisk (the players are very likely not to go home once they enter the final chapter). Unfortunately, it’s so signficant that it’s a pity the party often won’tsee it!

This period of missing stuff back home might be even longer in Princes of the Apocalypse. That one is a much less linear experience, so it is hard to predict.

Have you noticed how little the characters need to go back to their base in later sessions? It’s almost like they have magic ways of resupplying. (Both in-game and agreed-upon elides. Like archers not running out of arrows. No rule in the rulebook saying that archers have infinite arrows, but some tables just find tracking ammunition to be too much work).

But, assuming you’ve got a reason for the characters to return home (Bastions! Research! Plot reasons!), showing the town progresses helps the feeling it is a living breathing world. And it can advance the story in interesting ways.

Keeping the World Consistent

The second problem that The Shattered Obelisk runs into is not building on the town from Lost Mine. Two things happen here: Few NPCs in the first half get a mention, and new NPCs are introduced to serve plot functions. Given that Lost Mine had lots of good NPCs to continue using – and could take those plot roles – this doesn’t feel good.

Players appreciate continuity. Admittedly, I’m sometimes very bad at giving it to them. And sometimes they’re very bad at remembering continuity themselves. However, when you have a cast of NPCs turn up session after session after session, you all start remembering them. That’s the advantage of having a home base: it’s a recurring cast as well that helps build engagement.

The chief problem with using a recurring cast in a published RPG adventure is a simple one, really: What happens if one of them dies? If the adventure is written about that character surviving, what then?

More on that later.