Revenge of the Giants is very similar to the previous WotC adventures.
Take that for good or bad as you will
I am only familliar with KOTS and Revenge as far as 4E WOTC adventures go so I don't know how true this is.
Revenge of the Giants took all the enthusiastic wind right out of my sails for published adventures. I was so excited that I snapped it up soon after release. I was only slightly let down that it was a book instead of a boxed set (less potential cool maps) but it wasn't an obvious dealbreaker.
Then I started reading.................
The entire introduction of the adventure was, to me, a textbook example of what not to do to PC's in an adventure. The PC's immediately get involved in action featuring mechanical resolution which results in them having to witness an event against which the party is rendered impotent via a plot device mechanism.
If the party is powerless to do anything about a situation then it really should just be described as flavor text, preferebly of events that took place prior to the PC's involvement not some BS situation that just happens in the middle of action that is supposed to represent meaningful resolution.
The first part left a bad enough taste in my mouth that it was a day or so before I read any more.
The whole adventure feels like a hoop jumping excercise to build up XP before confronting the big bad. Despite the whole premise of the adventure being about stopping the big bad from awakening and no matter how successful the PC's are in any of the challenges the big bad WILL arise to be fought in a final showdown. Sorry if thats a spoiler but its pretty much gonna happen without a major DM re-write.
This makes everything the PC's do up to that point paper mache time filler fodder. Any "success" they might achieve along the way is reduced to meaningless background fluff.
Thats the big stuff. There are other things that just grate on the nerves:
Only one encounter out of the whole book gets a "roleplaying" section and its a laugh riot (check out page 44).
Constant "hearthing back to the inn (Argent)" between quests (encounters) seems a bit lame at times.
There is a difference between
runes and
ruins. Good editors catch this stuff.
This was an adventure I really wanted to like but it left me cold.
