u/tomwrussell

News about the Arcana Unleashed sourcebook is all over my algorithm right now and it got me thinking. WotC's marketing folks must have convinced them that the community wants lots of more subclasses and feats and species and other character options. Personally, I think we have enough of those. I'd rather they went back to putting out adventure modules like TSR used to do.

I'm a module runner as a DM rather than a homebrewer. I loved the old modules and module series. Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Against the Giants (G1-3), and so forth. Even when I started with a homebrewed setting I relied on lots of drop-in, one-off adventure modules and pre-written encounters to fill my sessions. (Thank the gods for DM's Guild.) I love those short (30-50 page), self-contained adventures that can be dropped in anywhere. The Adventurers' League content is pretty close to this, but, for me, suffers from poor implementation.

I think WotC would be well served to start putting out new modularized adventures rather than simply piling on the character options. The Forgotten Realms has a whole continent East of the Sword Coast that hasn't had any new content since 3.5e. The lore that we can access for those regions comes from either the novels or the early modules. I'd love to run a campaign in Eberron, but there are no, or very few, published adventures for it. Even fewer for Ravnica, Theros, and others.

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who responded. There is some good discussion here and some good points made. I understand that the market is better for player facing content. Also, I don't really want full campaign books that take you from levels 1 to 13. Those are not modules. Those are campaigns. All I want is simple drop-in adventures, maybe a level or two. I have run a few of the full campaign books, Strahd, Dragon Heist, Mad Mage. Those are fine for what they are, but I think it'd be nice to see short little adventures that I can drop in wherever. As at least one person pointed out, DMs Guild is great for this. I have run several adventures from there, especially those by DM Dave and MT Black.

I may get thorougly pummeled for this, but I've just started a new Ironsworn campaign and decided to try something different. I let Gemini guide the experience.

I started by asking for a character concept. It gave me three options. I chose one then told it what my Truths were and we fleshed out the character from there. Assets, Bonds, etc.

With that all established it presented me with an inciting incident and suggested a vow. I took the vow, and off I went.

It's way easier, and faster, than rolling oracles all the damn time and, so far, has been an intriguing adventure. Gemini sets the scene. I add dialogue, inner dialogue, and character reactions, decide what moves I want to make and roll the dice. Gemini tells me what happened.

It knows the rules well enough to adjudicate the Moves. However, I do have to keep an eye on it, because there were a couple hicups to start. It got the mechanics of a couple assets wrong, and had the wrong allocation of Progress for the various levels of difficulty. Once I corrected it, however, it runs pretty smoothly.