An acquaintance of mine made a note about D&D 5E, which is something I have too been studying for some time. D&D 5E suffers most from it's lack of prep tools.
If we're being honest, most systems have little to no prep tools in their RPG systems. Typically, these games have a ritualistic passing-down of knowledge, where you learn how to play and plan for a game from the previous generation of DMs. This is all nice and well, but the issue becomes that certain adventure modules, when handed to you, are often overloaded with material, making them difficult to plan for. Think of it like moving into a house, but you're given a large box that has lots of essentials in it, but they're all mixed up. Toothbrushes, Clothes, assorted plates, books. You can slowly work your way unpacking everything from the box and getting it sorted, but it can be difficult if you're trying to use the tools and items in the box before you've fully unpacked everything. Especially when all of the items in the box are just words in a book, things get frustrating quickly.
Well, let's talk about what Wizards should shift for future rule books, and what you can do to help your current games.
Issue 1: The Issue of Expectation
So, if you read anything about D&D adventures, you'll know that one of the main complaints about them is they're almost always hard to run for DMs. One of the things I hear the most is along the lines of "This LOOKS interesting, but there's so much content here, that I'm not really able to plan for any of it. Shouldn't this be easy for DMs?" One of the biggest appeals to 5E is the simplicity. It's not the simplest TTRPG on the market by any means, but I can bring someone completely new to the game to the table, and have them playing in a manner of minutes. It's very easy to understand the basics as long as you can get by with some basic understanding of the core rules and maths. For 5E, rarely any of the adventure modules are anywhere near that simple. The books recommend for DMs to read through the entire book once to get a general idea of the adventure, and then to go through again and take notes. Most books do include a 2-5 small paragraph outline of the general plot points of the adventure as well, but that's usually all that's provided for an outline.
The above is an issue for many reasons.
For some, reading a 300 page book with lots of intricate details and with a mindset of "I need to regurgitate this later" often will make the book an extremely long read.
It's not clear if each book is a setting outline, a campaign, or both.
A 2 paragraph summary often fails to include the right amount of information needed to be actionable.
It's not what many want or expect.
Now, what do I mean by "It's not what many [people] expect"? Let's consider adventures of old.
Something like the classic adventure "The Lost City" was an adventure module, and was marketed similarly to modern adventure modules for 5E. However, these booklets were only between 10-50 pages, usually hovering around 30 pages of information. They're the micro-DLC for TTRPGs, but that was part of the appeal. You spent a little bit of money, and you have enough to keep a table satisfied for a month or two. Inside, while it may not be dripping with lore content, is enough to satisfy most questions about the setting, and implement the dungeon and enemies effectively. They're iconic now, and conceptually tied to the identity of D&D.
I believe when people are looking for a D&D adventure module in the modern day, there's a form of expectation that's expecting that Rime of the Frostmaiden or Tomb of Annihilation can be run out-of-the-box. This isn't unreasonable, but it's just not what the totality of product being offered by Wizards. Modern modules are supposed to include "improved value" with lots of potential options for use and a wide range of included content for DMs to use at will. That being said, the presentation is still difficult if you want to use everything that's included.
Now, portions of the 5E Adventure modules can be broken down into manageable segments. For example, the supplement Ghosts of Saltmarsh is an excellent example of this. The first chapter is all reference information about the subplots and characters found in Saltmarsh, while each chapter afterwards is a remake of a classic D&D adventure. This allows the setting to be broken up into usable bits by the DM, and with some starting reference information to allow them to weave everything together. More recently, Rime of the Frostmaiden's "Ten-Towns" features 10, unique, manageable adventures each with their own dungeon map. Each section is between 5-15 pages, each of which can be pulled and put into really any game you wish to.
Issue 2: Laying Out the Adventure
Now, there still is an issue, even with Rime and Saltmarsh; these books don't really come with an explicit "How-To" planning guide with them. The information is simply laid out before you and you're told "this is generally what this book is about". Each book comes with a section named "Running the Adventure", but this is part of my biggest gripe with the books.
A paragraph notating the general events or linings of a book is usually a bad way of presenting the material. In order to understand what is happening in an adventure, I need the following information.
A storyline.
Basic timeline of events and/or chapters.
An index or notation of helpful adventure information.
That's it. Generally speaking, the chapters in a book can fill out as much or as little as that information as possible, but otherwise, a DM really just needs some of these basic points to get started. Most modules do not include these aspects. Storm King's Thunder and Curse of Strahd are exceptions.
Above is the timeline of events and possibilities for Storm King's Thunder (SKT). It's an impressive looking timeline, and it's functionally perfect. It allows me to follow what possible timelines have to offer, and how players' actions may lead to the end of the story. While SKT was criticized for having some railroad tendencies, it's one of the only books to really offer any sort of concrete timeline. There's also nothing stopping the players from working outside of this timeline, it's just that this timeline provides some framework for DMs to prepare around. SKT was also one of the only books to offer a substantial. background and summary of the adventure that was thick enough to give you a heads up on why everything is happening, but not enough so to bore you right at the beginning. In Curse of Strahd (CoS), the Tarroka Deck is a prop that you can either create yourself, use a deck of cards to substitute, or buy a real deck to supplement your game. It's made clear that CoS is first a sandbox game in Ravenloft, with a attached campaign to run if you so choose. By using the Tarroka deck, you're effectively outlining your own game with a random set of variables. This gives a customized layout for your game, and gives the reader a very simple structure to the campaign. It also thus gives the DM the freedom to only prep what they need to, as getting around is also very dangerous, and the DM can bide their time in prep by throwing a combat encounter, or run-in with Strahd at the players to delay their arrival until next week.
In truth, neither of these adventures are anymore or less complicated than the other adventures Wizards has put out. The difference between these was the intention of making an explicit detailing of the adventure to the DM, giving them a very base understanding of what is to come. The other adventures can be fairly well understood, but often lack the beginning framing. One of the most egregious examples is Out of the Abyss. The book literally starts as a mini-adventure, breaking out of a prison. You're given names, a huge amount of NPCs, and references to goals and people that you know absolutely nothing about, and then pushed off the edge into the air expecting to fly. Abyss is loaded with really cool and interesting content, but there's not a peep as to what the DM should be prepping for unless they deep fry themselves in its' greasiness. To make matters worse, there's no indexes for 5E adventures, so you're not even able to look up names and where they appear in the book.
Imagine bringing a mechanical engineer into a project, sitting them down without giving any reference information about the project or engine they're building, and then saying "Alright, build us a new one". I mean, some may take up the challenge, and some would do it well. But I don't know many people who would be especially happy about it.
So, we've talked about the two main issues about these adventure books. What does an adventure look like prepared then? We'll go over that next time.