Review Dragon Heist, Mad Mage, and Ravnica!

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[Parmandur]

Well, a lot of that is carry over from a long time ago. Obviously, when 1e changed over to 2e and Gygax's ouster from TSR, Greyhawk basically got shelved. And, of course, FR was then brought very, very much into the foreground. There's still a lot of hard feelings from fans over this. Throughout 2e, the system that is known for its settings, Greyhawk got very little loving and what little it got was largely crap. The Greyhawk 2e modules were bad to worse - Puppets? Gargoyles? Yeesh.

Then 3e comes along and Greyhawk gets a big shot in the arm. It's the base setting for the game! Wow. And then... well... nothing. Paizohawk probably has more actual 3e support than Greyhawk ever got in 3e. WotC, despite making Greyhawk the baseline setting, pretty much buried it in later books. And, then, FR gets what, half a dozen or more beautiful full color source books including the FRCS.

Add that to 4e's complete retreat from Greyhawk and now 5e hasn't exactly done anything either, and Greyhawk fans are a pretty bitter bunch. And, honestly, they have a point. Forgotten Realms has gotten encyclopedias worth of material. Thousands of pages of support across now four editions and the better part of thirty years. Greyhawk has gotten pretty much taken out behind the barn and a gun put in its ear.

Ed Greenwood is mostly to blame here: he has been eager to give volumes of material whenever asked, by anyone, for any reason whatsoever. Gygax basically ignored Greyhawk after blowing up the Gord novels.

As somebody who prefers Greyhawk, I see TSR and WotC fairly constantly attempting to make Greyhawk a thing between 2E and 3E: but it never had the critical mass commercially, nor a creative force like Greenwood, to compete with a setting that covers the same genre bases.

 

[Retreater]

Of the three, I've only purchased Mad Mage, and I don't suspect I'll purchase the other two as I don't use published campaign settings, and past experiences with urban adventures have soured me on that genre.
Mad Mage has been "ho-hum." I spend more time reading than I do running the game, and the presentation is definitely lacking. The maps are uninspired and artwork is pretty much non-existent (just pages of unbroken text in the same font.) The adventure itself seems more like a randomly-rolled dungeon with little thematic unity. I guess I would've preferred more cohesion. Something like Frog God's Rappan Athuk seems better designed.

 

[MNblockhead]

I can't stand the D&D subreddit. It feels like 90% of the posts are "Look, I drew my character!" while the other 10% are "Look, I commissioned an artist to draw my character!" The mods tried to ban these types of posts at one point, but the users revolted and continued to post them anyways.

They should come to EN World. The only reason it is an issue on Reddit is that everything is jammed into a single, multi-level thread. It is hard to divide the conversations into different subreddits because people start to think of a particular one as their community.

In a forum like this, you could just have a thread, or even a section for such threads. I mean, many of the users here already do it for sharing their miniatures and terrain.

Drawing up and sharing your character art or asking more talented friends to draw up your character is a long-established tradition. We were certainly doing it in the age of the Trapper Keeper and I'm happy to see folks doing it today in new media.

 

[MNblockhead]

Reddit seems like a terrible place, it doesn’t help that I find the interface confusing to boot.

It has gotten much better I've found. It really depends on the how good the moderators are for any specific subreddit. I finally created an account a couple years ago because so many of the active and useful discussions for both my work and my hobbies take place there.

I do wish there were more ways to organize conversations, but I do like the ability vote up a response.

I find Reddit is better to get a quick answer to something, such as a rule question, but a forum like EN World is much better to have a deep-dive discussion about it. I still like to have post listed chronologically for a more back-and-forth discussion feel.

 

[MNblockhead]

I don't understand the whole Realms/Greyhawk anger thing. I never have. Aren't they both fairly generic fantasy worlds? What's the big deal?

Maybe it depends on what you started playing with? I agree, most popular D&D settings, TSR/WoTC and third-party included, are pretty kitchen sink and interchangeable, because that is what sells.

Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Mystara, Lost Lands (Frog God Games), and Midgard (Kobold Press) setting material are all pretty interchangeable to me and I will happily take pieces of each and borg together my own campaign.

While I'll happily play D&D in more thematic settings, if I want a very different experience I'll usually choose a different system. The mechanics of the game heavily influence the feeling of the game.

 

[Kramodlog]

I can back my position perfectly well. Do you have numbers that show the adventures are not selling well?

I've been clear that I was speculating. I wasn't trying to present my opinion as fact by making an appeal to authority by refering some unnamed websites.

 

[Kramodlog]

D&D has never been more popular, or sold more.

What is selling? The various licensed products or the subpar books?

 

[Parmandur]

I've been clear that I was speculating. I wasn't trying to present my opinion as fact by making an appeal to authority by refering some unnamed websites.

Riiiiight.

 

[Lily of the Valley]

Riiiiight.

I see snark, but none of the mysterious websites you mentioned earlier.

 

[Parmandur]

I see snark, but none of the mysterious websites you mentioned earlier.

I didn't know Googling "Dragon Heist review" was "mysterious," but here is a sampling, examples are easily multiplied with a search:

"D&D’s latest adventure is state of the art tabletop design" at Polygon: https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/11/17845902/dungeons-and-dragons-waterdeep-dragon-heist-review

"Review: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Is an Amazing Introduction to 'Dungeons & Dragons'" at comicbook.com: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/09/12/dungeons-and-dragons-waterdeep-dragon-heist-review/