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Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos - First Party Review
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<blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9156647" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><p>I found Strixhaven to be downright <em>soulless</em> in comparison to a lot of other WotC campaigns on the market. Even with less than stellar ones, you still had an outline for an adventure, challenges to face, villains to vanquish. Stakes of some kind. Strixhaven feels like someone's unfinished draft, or one of those systemless online RPs that are more like collaborative creating writing exercises than a TTRPG centered around heroics and derring-do.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm reminded of how in Dragonlance: Shadows of the Dragon Queen there were several events that would ask for PCs to roll a skill check or do something else with an element of risk...then either have it so the adventure can't continue on a failure or the adventure proceeds as normal regardless of the result. Strixhaven is a more blatant example of this, but I feel that WotC is growing increasingly allergic to adventures that allow for variable outcomes. A sandbox format like in Curse of Strahd could do a good job of giving more player freedom without expanding the page count, but that adventure was lightning in a bottle and I don't think those are the company's strong suit anymore.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I may be skipping ahead, but this is also something I really disliked about the book. The actual mechanics for study are relegated to a few Exams that boil down to a singular skill challenge. And your reward is a 1d4 Student Die you can add onto a check relevant to the Exam and is gone once you spend it. Literally Discount Guidance.</p><p></p><p>I get that actual homework is overlooked in a lot of school-based media, but if you're studying at a MAGIC SCHOOL, I'm expecting that being a good student will let you do magical things better or have some kind of substantial benefit to show for it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Strixhaven was kind of the nail in the coffin for me for expecting quality work from WotC. Now I treat every new release on the same level as taking a gamble in buying an obscure third party product from the DM's Guild. I realize that this might sound harsh, but with WotC's other scandals and low quality work I don't have much faith in them in general. While I did sort of like 5e Dragonlance, it's honestly disappointing that a AAA developer in the TTRPG space released such a book in its unfinished state.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't have anything like this to share specifically, but there is a cottage industry of both professional content creators on the DM's Guild, a subreddit for DMs, and an accompanying Discord group dedicated to plugging up the many holes in the default adventure. And from what I've seen of some of them, they do quite a stellar job in filling up the adventure with bonus content and actual mechanics to the studying and social relationships. People really want a Dungeons & Dragons magic school adventure/setting; you don't see this kind of fanwork for Tyranny of Dragons, which going by several online rankings is the only adventure that scores consistently worse than Strixhaven.</p><p></p><p>And while I can respect the work these people are doing, it still feels icky in that a lot of this is the kind of thing WotC should've done. It's giving me flashbacks to unpaid modders patching the bugs in Bethesda games the parent company never seems to get around fixing when their <strong>re</strong>releases hit store shelves.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Libertad, post: 9156647, member: 6750502"] I found Strixhaven to be downright [i]soulless[/i] in comparison to a lot of other WotC campaigns on the market. Even with less than stellar ones, you still had an outline for an adventure, challenges to face, villains to vanquish. Stakes of some kind. Strixhaven feels like someone's unfinished draft, or one of those systemless online RPs that are more like collaborative creating writing exercises than a TTRPG centered around heroics and derring-do. I'm reminded of how in Dragonlance: Shadows of the Dragon Queen there were several events that would ask for PCs to roll a skill check or do something else with an element of risk...then either have it so the adventure can't continue on a failure or the adventure proceeds as normal regardless of the result. Strixhaven is a more blatant example of this, but I feel that WotC is growing increasingly allergic to adventures that allow for variable outcomes. A sandbox format like in Curse of Strahd could do a good job of giving more player freedom without expanding the page count, but that adventure was lightning in a bottle and I don't think those are the company's strong suit anymore. I may be skipping ahead, but this is also something I really disliked about the book. The actual mechanics for study are relegated to a few Exams that boil down to a singular skill challenge. And your reward is a 1d4 Student Die you can add onto a check relevant to the Exam and is gone once you spend it. Literally Discount Guidance. I get that actual homework is overlooked in a lot of school-based media, but if you're studying at a MAGIC SCHOOL, I'm expecting that being a good student will let you do magical things better or have some kind of substantial benefit to show for it. Strixhaven was kind of the nail in the coffin for me for expecting quality work from WotC. Now I treat every new release on the same level as taking a gamble in buying an obscure third party product from the DM's Guild. I realize that this might sound harsh, but with WotC's other scandals and low quality work I don't have much faith in them in general. While I did sort of like 5e Dragonlance, it's honestly disappointing that a AAA developer in the TTRPG space released such a book in its unfinished state. I don't have anything like this to share specifically, but there is a cottage industry of both professional content creators on the DM's Guild, a subreddit for DMs, and an accompanying Discord group dedicated to plugging up the many holes in the default adventure. And from what I've seen of some of them, they do quite a stellar job in filling up the adventure with bonus content and actual mechanics to the studying and social relationships. People really want a Dungeons & Dragons magic school adventure/setting; you don't see this kind of fanwork for Tyranny of Dragons, which going by several online rankings is the only adventure that scores consistently worse than Strixhaven. And while I can respect the work these people are doing, it still feels icky in that a lot of this is the kind of thing WotC should've done. It's giving me flashbacks to unpaid modders patching the bugs in Bethesda games the parent company never seems to get around fixing when their [b]re[/b]releases hit store shelves. [/QUOTE]
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