D&D 5E Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[humble minion]

It's been a real experience writing about Shadow of the Dragon Queen, because though I think the adventure is mostly quite competent, the deviations from established Dragonlance lore send me up the wall!

Sorry to go off-topic, but can you link me to where you’ve done this writing? I’m looking at running a heavily modified SotDQ at some point, and I’m kinda reading everything I can find in the pitfalls (even the Alexandrian’s stuff!)

 

[LordEntrails]

That's a big problem IMO of a lot of online reviews, I've noted the same. A restaurant with a 3 star review is one to avoid, and a 4 star is probably pretty ordinary... 5 start should be reserved for the best of the best.

Not just online. Most reviews and rating systems these days. Last time I bought a car I got something like this from the dealership; "If we don't get a perfect ten, please let us know why before you submit your survey!" People think getting rated less than perfect means they are not doing their job. I think this mentality is why places like Netflix have gone away from stars and just do a thumbs up or down. People don't provide any granularity or nuance.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

There is no unkeyed dungeon: they included battlemaps for a few non-Dungeon encounter spaces.

These are semantics - it's essentially BOTH. I absolutely get where you're coming from, but the adventure has several maps of the same sort that ARE keyed. It just seems sloppy to me to do it sometimes but not others, even if (as you say) it's not all that hard to figure out. I mean what's the difference between this and this (Aside from one being keyed and the other not?)

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Oh, and if you say "the scale", what about this:

That could certainly be a battlemap without the numbers on it, too!

Don't get me wrong, I hate having to file of the numbers when I want to use one of these as a battle-map. Good thing Beyond has been providing them lately. (I've also bought a bunch off of Mike Schley's site!)

 

[MerricB]

Sorry to go off-topic, but can you link me to where you’ve done this writing? I’m looking at running a heavily modified SotDQ at some point, and I’m kinda reading everything I can find in the pitfalls (even the Alexandrian’s stuff!)

You can find my SotDQ posts here: Shadow of the Dragon Queen Archives - Merric's Musings

At this point, mostly session posts which occasionally include my views on its design.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

No one wants to take a crack at defending making the first goblin hideout adventure harder?

 

[MerricB]

No one wants to take a crack at defending making the first goblin hideout adventure harder?

Players are so cocky these days. It's great seeing that Wizards of the Coast is helping DMs take them down.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[mamba]

I don't create keyed maps at may table.

I assume you know what is in each room, so for your own use, yeah, why bother, but if you are publishing....

 

[Parmandur]

Oh, and if you say "the scale", what about this:

View attachment 320196

That could certainly be a battlemap without the numbers on it, too!

Don't get me wrong, I hate having to file of the numbers when I want to use one of these as a battle-map. Good thing Beyond has been providing them lately. (I've also bought a bunch off of Mike Schley's site!)

One is just a battle arena with no exploration, the other has distinct areas thst need to be explored and wrong tracks to go down. Seems straightforward and consistent to me.

 

[Parmandur]

No one wants to take a crack at defending making the first goblin hideout adventure harder?

It is eaaily conceivable that PMoP understood the difficulty, I haven't run the numbers, same as HotDQ overshot it at the same time.