WotC Hasbro CEO Chris Cox, "I would say that the underlying thesis of our D&D business is all about digital,”

[darjr]

That would be the "lucky" part. Didn't seem to have much to do with WotC themselves.

Of coarse it did. It was a huge hit from they day the PHB was released. Look at the 2014 posts here about it. It went out of print in days. They had to push the DMG printing back to print more PHBs. And then it sold out AGAIN.

And it wasn't an unknown. The starter set had been out for a bit as well as the Basic pdf. Not to mention the playtest.

The 5th edition's Basic Rules, a free PDF containing complete rules for play and a subset of the player and DM content from the core rulebooks, was released on July 3, 2014.[38] The

Starter Set was released on July 15, featuring a set of pre-generated characters, a set of instructions for basic play, and the adventure module Lost Mine of Phandelver.[39] The Player's Handbook was released on August 19, 2014.[40]

 

[darjr]

An aside, I ran the holy h*ck out of the basic set. I printed quite a few copies that I gave away at games at my friends store. I think he kinda freaked out I did that. I didn't even think about it actually. I also knew it was going to be a hit and it def has been for him.

 

[Zardnaar]

An aside, I ran the holy h*ck out of the basic set. I printed quite a few copies that I gave away at games at my friends store. I think he kinda freaked out I did that. I didn't even think about it actually. I also knew it was going to be a hit and it def has been for him.

I quite like all 3 of the starter sets I bought. Just skipped the oddball ones eg Stranger Things.

 

[Hussar]

You're equating sales with quality.

Remember the Transformers movies? Made billions at the box office. Are they fondly remembered now? Not really.

HotDQ is a Transformers movie. Probably the second one.

I'm not familiar with some of the newer adventures but HotDQ is the worst one of the older books.

No.

I’m saying your judgement of “quality “ is unimportant. You can claim this is the worst module until the cows come home but WotC is just laughing all the way to the bank.

Again, apparently, “quality” is in the same category as “cash grab”. It’s just another way of saying “I don’t like this.”

 

[Hussar]

And that's all that matters, apparently.

When you’re a company CEO talking about your business model? Yes. Absolutely yes.

 

[Hussar]

That would be the "lucky" part. Didn't seem to have much to do with WotC themselves.

Rotflmao. I’m sorry but are you for real?

Years of marketing. Product placement in all sorts of media - tv shows, movies, you name it. Yeah total luck.

It’s that whole overnight success years in the making.

 

[Zardnaar]

No.

I’m saying your judgement of “quality “ is unimportant. You can claim this is the worst module until the cows come home but WotC is just laughing all the way to the bank.

Again, apparently, “quality” is in the same category as “cash grab”. It’s just another way of saying “I don’t like this.”

It has a very crappy reputation online and us frequently in the bottom of rate D&D product type tier lists so it's not just my opinion. The other bad products seem to be Spelljammer, SCAG and maybe 5E DMG and Strixhaven.

The well regarded stuff tends to be the starter sets, Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation.

Sure everything is somewhat objective but that's the general trend online.

Keep on the Borderlands. Sold a lot but generally get 3/5 type ratings these days and it's not the best regarded B adventure now. B3,B4,B5 and B10 seem to be better regarded.

There's a difference between good for WotC bottom line and good for consumer.

The Tiamat book is better it's not Tyranny of Dragons mostly just HotDQ.

Your logic Avatar 2 is greatest movie of all time.

 

[BigZebra]

I get the feeling that HotDQ's bad reputation is mainly found online. "Uhhh Justin Alexander writes a review about how bad it is, that must be true"-kind of thing.

I would wager if a poll was made amongst those who actually played it, it would rate quite well. It's also still on the best selling 5e adventure books. The main complaint I saw was the railroadiness, which really didn't bother me at all. On the contrary one of the reason I buy adventures is to get a good plot and story. That kind of necessitates some rails unless you wanna do true hexploration - which isn't my jam.

Anecdotal as it may be, we had an absolute blast when I was running it. Still something we talk about to this day.

 

[Ondath]

I would wager if a poll was made amongst those who actually played it, it would rate quite well. It's also still on the best selling 5e adventure books. The main complaint I saw was the railroadiness, which really didn't bother me at all. On the contrary one of the reason I buy adventures is to get a good plot and story. That kind of necessitates some rails unless you wanna do true hexploration - which isn't my jam.

Anecdotal as it may be, we had an absolute blast when I was running it. Still something we talk about to this day.

Having been a player in it, I'd say the internet criticism is mostly right. The Greenest encounters are completely out of balance, and I just felt like the plot yanked our chain to go to nonsensical places. Like, I had no idea why we were going to the Mere of the Dead Men at some point, and the plot didn't follow any particular logic you could work around, it was just "follow the trail of the looting cultists".

 

[delericho]

The Tiamat book is better it's not Tyranny of Dragons mostly just HotDQ.

That one always amuses me - I found HotDQ to be rather better than I'd been led to believe (albeit still pretty bad), but found "Rise of Tiamat" to be abysmal, and not in a good way.