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

[doctorhook]

Anyway, not saying he made a game that everyone loves; that's impossible.

I'm saying he took "our" D&D and made it everyone else's D&D too. Specifically, the same people who would have made fun of us now want to play with us. And at the same time, managed to entice the OSR grogs back as well. That's quite the remarkable feat!

I see what you’re saying here and agree that 5E has been a runaway success because of a number of factors. But (controversy ahead!) I strongly believe that the 5E ruleset is, at best, a mid-sized factor in the explosion of popularity for D&D over the past decade. I truly believe the biggest factors were environmental: Critical Role and other streams, major marketing tie-ins like Stranger Things, the steady improvement of VTTs, and then the pandemic. 5E just happened to be simplistic enough not to immediately scare off newcomers with its complexity.

I’d also strongly dispute the point that 5E “enticed the OSR grogs back”. Maybe for like a minute in 2014? Certainly not since then.

 

[Velderan]

While this is certainly true, it’s also true that editing and proofing are very difficult tasks, and mistakes are bound to slip past even the most careful of us every once in a while. That’s why you build in redundancy—the editor, the copy editor, and the proofreader ideally will be three different sets of eyes.

The most egregious error I’ve seen in a professional publication was in the first American edition of the Elric novel The White Wolf’s Son from Warner Books (or possibly one of the other books in that trilogy—it’s been about twenty years since I read that library copy): there were two instances in the text of sentences like (I’m fabricating the example because I don’t remember the actual sentences) “The statue began to meLieutenant Soon it was a pool of gold.”

Find-replace is no one’s friend!

And then there’s this one:

 

[Velderan]

Fully agreed. Dragon of Icespire Peak was definitely a less cohesive, less complete adventure than Lost Mine of Phandelver, but it did flesh out the same area to an extent.

But when I previously suggested that this new product should integrate both and make a thorough mini-setting of the Phandalin region, I got a lot of flak comments to the tune of “This book is already going to be 50% reprint and you want it to be even more redundant?!?!?” No, I want it to integrate and synthesize the existing materials. Big missed opportunity here by WotC.

The extra material they released digitally on DDB for DoIP was helpful in filling out the area even more, although towards the end it did feel like stuff was tacked on just to lengthen the adventure. I ran a level 1-13 campaign using LMoP, DoiP, and some of the material in SCAG that went pretty well.

 

[mamba]

But when I previously suggested that this new product should integrate both and make a thorough mini-setting of the Phandalin region, I got a lot of flak comments to the tune of “This book is already going to be 50% reprint and you want it to be even more redundant?!?!?” No, I want it to integrate and synthesize the existing materials. Big missed opportunity here by WotC.

not so sure, they already get flak for it being 50% reprint, doing a 90% reprint is not really making things better, and if I go by how well integrated the new material is with the old one, you are better off merging the two sets yourself…

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'd rather the books be proofread and-or edited properly before release.

I'm sure they are. The absence of spelling mistakes testifies to that. But spelling, punctuation and grammar errors are a lot easier to spot than contextual mistakes.

Mistakes happen, sure. Catching and fixing those mistakes before they hit the public eye is what editors and proofreaders are for, and WotC are a big enough outfit to be able to employ such.

Who said anything about WotC? The mistake I quoted earlier was from "Partnered Content". But I'm pretty sure Usborne Publishing and Oxford University Press are bigger establishments than WotC, And a mistake in an exam paper is a lot more serious than a mistake in a game book.

And yes, I'll cut far more slack to something done by an amateur or a one-person company than I will to something that's supposed to be professional.

The same goes for your (in this case literally!) textbook examples: the proofreader(s) and-or editor(s) flat-out failed at the job, because not catching mistakes like that - when catching them is your only job - really is unacceptable.

Sure, get angry and stamp your foot! That will help by making everyone more nervous so they make more mistakes.

 

[Charlaquin]

If you are going to Phandbox the Triboar Trail area... grab the Essentials Kit and the Neverwinter Campaign Setting and incorporate all those locations as well. Sure, the NCS is from 4E and thus probably a certain number of years prior to LMoP, but the locations they go on about are most likely still there in some form or fashion so you might as well add them to everything else. The Tower of Twilight and Szass Tam's Dread Ring being two locations that definitely should be incorporated into the Phandbox, as they lend themselves to the craziness that is coming about due to Far Realm incusion.

Yeah, I’m planning to incorporate the Essentials Kit and maybe the Icespire Peak sequels (haven’t read those yet, so I don’t know how easily they’ll fit alongside the Shattered Obelisk content), and maybe In Volo’s Wake. Hadn’t considered 4e’s NWCS, but that’s an interesting idea! I’ll definitely consider it.

 

[delericho]

Yeah, I’m planning to incorporate the Essentials Kit and maybe the Icespire Peak sequels (haven’t read those yet, so I don’t know how easily they’ll fit alongside the Shattered Obelisk content), and maybe In Volo’s Wake. Hadn’t considered 4e’s NWCS, but that’s an interesting idea! I’ll definitely consider it.

There's some material in "Storm King's Thunder" that is potentially worth considering, too.

 

[Charlaquin]

There's some material in "Storm King's Thunder" that is potentially worth considering, too.

Oh? I have heard that it works well as a follow-up to LMoP, but I was under the impression that it was one of those adventures that involved a lot of travel across Faerun rather than being localized to triboar region.

 

[delericho]

Oh? I have heard that it works well as a follow-up to LMoP, but I was under the impression that it was one of those adventures that involved a lot of travel across Faerun rather than being localized to triboar region.

It does cover a much wider area, most of it not in the Triboar area. But, unless I'm misremembering entirely, there are at least a few bits overlapping with the LMoP/DoIP map.

 

[nevin]

Yes, I've been trying to push against this trend for around twenty years, but it's definitely entrenched. Look at the Net Promoter Score used as a KPI by so many businesses today. The typical question is "How likely are you to recommend us to your friends and family?"And the only scores which count for the metrics are normally an 8+. Anything below an 8 is undesirable.

Easily viewed metrics fan the worst in human behavior. It's a simple fact that most of anything are average to below average within thier group. But no one wants to publicly admit that they are ok with average. Thus we get mcdonald's with 10 on yelp. how the hell can a mcdonalds get a 10?

I remember a review of a surround sound system I was researching once. It was terrible, didn't have a bunch of function and no sane person would ever be happy with it. then the person listed the one he'd had before, it was a 6,000 dollar system and he was destroying a 350 dollar system because it wasn't as good. Internet reviews have become yet another place you have to spend 20 minutes to an hour sorting out the crazies so you can get an accurate idea of a product or store.