D&D 5E Is Storm King's Thunder a flop . . ? Still early yet but doesn't look that good.

[BigBadDM]

I think SKT is built for a certain kind of DM. Personally I love it. The dungeons are pretty spot on. The locations are pretty spot on. The overall theme is spot on. This book is a platform for mind jumping; creative ideas are developed from these pages. What happens if your characters go off track? Well that can't happen here, there really is no track. And really that is the bane or the blessing of this book. It really depends on the type of DM. I would say that 90% of this book is usable. It has enough detailed bits without over-indulging.

My biggest gripe is that levels 1-5 are poor uses of text. I would not run the 1-5 chapter, even adding your own stuff it is quite lackluster. And around level 7 or so, you really need to incorporate another adventure into the mix; somewhere in the vast overland section because it can get a little lost without directions. I'd almost move the Oracle section up sooner so the adventure can flow better. Overall I would give this a 4 out of 5. The material is just plain good, but as a DM lot's of notes are needed.

 

[Uchawi]

I played all the previous Giant adventures, however there is a limit on how often you can retell a story. Strahd is different because vampires in general are a popular theme.

 

[Charles Rampant]

The big difference is that with Curse of Strahd the final goal and end villain is obvious from almost the first encounter. Strahd literally looms over the first few levels of the story. Everything you do has a purpose, it all relates to the end goal of kicking Strahd's butt. And once said buttocks has received kickage, the lesser problems are resolved, being defanged through loss of support.


None of this applies to SKT.
The titular Storm King isn't mentioned or relevant until two-thirds of the way through the story. Possibly more.
And resolving that final plot point doesn't resolve the main story: the broken ordning.
And resolving that final plot doesn't cease the predations or schemes of the other giants, who remain a threat.

I mentiom in my review that it's possible to replace the last third with a separate plotline that has to do with the giant high god and restoring the ordning. Which is problematic: if you can just effortlessly swap out the climax of an adventure with no real problems, then it wasn't very cohesive to begin with.

I do remember reading your review and finding it interesting, albeit I still bought the thing anyway. (Part of that is that it will be super useful for my future Waterdeep home campaign, even ignoring the Giants bits!) So thanks for the review.

The Strahd thing is true, and definitely ties into the oft-mentioned 'personalities' theme of that adventure. It doesn't matter where you go or what you do in Curse, so long as you meet Rictavio, the Hags, the Keepers, and Strahd. Hekaton and his family don't really have that quality, but then the adventure is much less focused on personalities, instead (from what I've seen) having a very location-heavy focus instead.

I'm intending to run it in a few months, once we finish Curse of Strahd. We're up to Yester Hill now, as 5th level characters, so still a fair way to go yet. (That is, assuming the Tiefling who receives endless racist abuse from the rest of the party doesn't take up Strahd's offer to be his successor and murders his comrades in their sleep...) It should be very interesting to see how SKT compares to CoS, even as I see how CoS compares to PotA.

 

[One_Shots]

SKT has followed the trend set by OotA by being both an adventure and a setting book. If you want to adventure in the north of Faerun, whether following the adventures in SKT or not, this book is essential, much like how if you want to adventure in the Underdark, or in Ravenloft, OotA and CoS, respectively, are essential. I like this trend. It is a good trend. It increases the value of these books immensely, in my opinion.

However, it also means that a large swathe of content will not only probably never be utilised in a game, it also means that DM's have to read through it all in order to get the most out of the adventure within the books themselves. That can be a drag if you don't enjoy reading through such content. What's more, if you don't read through and integrate the lore presented in these books, then a lot of the adventure really loses its shine.

Whereas OotA & CoS presented very strange, alien and unique settings that increase their appeal, SKT presents something that is really just the north of a continent that has nothing particularly unique about it that sets it apart from standard adventuring. Sure, there's a lot of interesting areas to explore, but they're not wildly different from any other area, at least not in the ways in which the Underdark or Ravenloft are different. And I think that's where the disconnect has been for many people.

However, I also feel that the adventure itself misfires in many places. I've had to extensively rework it in order to connect many of the disparate dots to make it feel like more of an adventure rather than a collection of disconnected, random plots. Without reading through the book and drawing upon the lore, this adventure would really miss the mark in a lot of ways and feel very dissatisfying to players because little of it makes any sense other than from the meta-perspective of the author and DM. Without threading that lore throughout the adventure and connecting those dots, I can absolutely see players getting to the end of it and thinking, "Why are we battling this enemy? This seems pointless. Yet another fight that has no meaning or connection to the setting."

 

[PMárk]

Maybe people are just getting sick of AP's and want source books that will help them create their own stories.

I think it suffers from the jack of all trades, master of none problem.

For an adventure, it's not enough and have story problems.

For a setting book it's also not enough and could be better organized. SKT + a 64 page pdf/booklet supplement about the parts of the north not closely relevant for SKT would have been better. That model would have also saved up space in SKT for more actual adventure content. I said it many times, but i think Paizo just does the AP+setting material model better, regardless of the fact that i also found their adventures to be more interesting.

Very little player stuff, nothing North-specific. A few monsters. Runes are uninteresting.

Also, I found it amusing people praising the flowchart as something novel and revolutionary. Adventures from other companies had them for decades. I'm glad they'd come into the conclusion that probably it's an useful thing.

However, the artworks and the overall visual direction is quite good, easily the best-lloking 5e book and certainly the best of the APs. At last, there's more landscapes and actions, not just galleries of NPC/monster pictures and busts without any background, action or context.

 

[PMárk]

If that was true we'd see a gradual decline of review scores (or even reviews) but Strahd reviewed very well and got a lot of attention. But that's sitting at 90%, which is higher than OotA (82%).

It seems much more likely people just don't like SKT...

One of them is the retelling of one of the most iconic, most successful adventures and riding on the vampire heyday wave. The other is about drow and underdark, which are also one of the most iconic and belowed parts od D&D/FR. I'm not saying they're bad adventures, because mostly not, but there are also other factors to consider.

 

[Parmandur]

The "Path" I AP is fairly tenuous for the WotC books. They are more like Buffett tables to pick and choose, using the elements for your table. Not play through stories with strong plots. Really, I would go so far as to say that they are stealth bundles of modules nit inherently linked together (Tyranny of Dragons is much better when you look at it that way).

 

[MerricB]

I think SKT is built for a certain kind of DM.

This.

And this is also true of every adventure Wizards has put out. It's just not the same kind of DM every time.

However, many of them reward a little creativity from the DM.

 

[Demetrios1453]

This.

And this is also true of every adventure Wizards has put out. It's just not the same kind of DM every time.

However, many of them reward a little creativity from the DM.

I guess I'm the certain type of DM that SKT was made for then, as I'm having a great time running it, more so than for OotA.

 

[delericho]

As I said in my review of the book, SKT is a pretty good setting book for that region of FR, but it's a poor adventure.

And Jester David is right - there's plenty of elements here that a good DM can build a really good campaign out of. But my problems with that are two-fold: firstly, none of those elements are anything that "good DM" couldn't easily come up with on his own; secondly, even that "good DM" would be better served by getting a better adventure to strip down for raw materials.

So, yeah, my advice remains that if you're looking for a setting guide, you could do worse than consider SKT. But if you're looking for an adventure, you're better served looking elsewhere.