D&D 5E A playthrough of The Shattered Obelisk (spoilers)

[pukunui]

The bit with the pantry leading to the bedroom shocked me as well. Such an obvious gaffe. How does that get through playtesting?

I'm beginning to think this adventure wasn't playtested.

 

[MerricB]

I'm beginning to think this adventure wasn't playtested.

I expect the playtest was with placeholder maps. This one doesn't shock me (though it should have been picked up on approvals/editing.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[pukunui]

I expect the playtest was with placeholder maps.

Yeah, true. They were probably hand-drawn maps. But yeah, there's so much here that seems to have slipped past the internal reviewers. It really makes me question Amanda Hamon's abilities as a project lead, but it also seems like Chris Perkins wasn't paying much attention during the approval process either. (But then he also deemed his Candlekeep Mysteries adventure "Book of the Raven" to be worthy of publishing without further revision, so ...)

 

[Ancalagon]

Agreed. That image and the one of the 'broken' shrine are laughable. There's just so much that's wrong with this product. I haven't finished reading it myself, but I'd probably rate it down near the bottom with Dragon Heist and Descent into Avernus.

And Dragon Heist, at least, has some fantastic art.

So are you saying that the Alexandrian might have been right?!?

 

[billd91]

So are you saying that the Alexandrian might have been right?!?

THOSE, suh, ah fightin' words 'round heayah. Leastwise they ah to some folk. You best be gittin' along, now.

 

[Parmandur]

So are you saying that the Alexandrian might have been right?!?

No, he was wrong: he rated it an F with no redeeming qualities, then chose to go on a kooky rant about the importance of keying one room battle maps. This is a pretty Medicare expansion to Phandelver, bit he pushed his point all the way to crazy town.

Anyways, the art director for this just got laid off, so that sucks.

 

[pukunui]

So are you saying that the Alexandrian might have been right?!?

Maybe. He got some of his facts wrong, but I’m not sure his overall negative impression is all that wrong. I’ll withhold full judgment till I’ve finished reading the book myself.

Some things like the pantry door on that map are just errors that got missed in review. It happens. But there are also some issues with this adventure that would have to have been deliberate decisions on the designers’ parts, and some of them are just mind-boggling. I would love to know what they were thinking.

(Same with Dragon Heist really. Some of it was the marketing hype not matching up to reality, but the egregious railroading and removal of player agency come from deliberate design decisions.)

 

[MerricB]

I would not be surprised with Dragon Heist if I learnt the designers went FAR too ambitious in their initial pitches, and they were never able to bring it together and had to hack a few things to get it out the door.

It's one of the adventures I've run three times (along with Tyranny of Dragons and Curse of Strahd), but it needed the most DM work to get it to run well. (Though there are parts of it that are excellent!)

Cheers,
Merric

 

[pukunui]

I would not be surprised with Dragon Heist if I learnt the designers went FAR too ambitious in their initial pitches, and they were never able to bring it together and had to hack a few things to get it out the door.

Yes, it does feel like stuff got cut out.

Though there are parts of it that are excellent!

It's a great resource to mine for low-level city-based content.

 

[Ancalagon]

I hope this campaign will start again in the new year?