A friend of mine has an interesting theory. Streamers such as Critical Role and the like are a tax that grognards like me pay. The play style of streamers is unrepresentative but for whatever inscrutable reason they attract younger players to the game. The grognard gets the benefits a large market brings: notability the presence of flourishing third party publishers (Kobold Press and Goodman Games ftw); access to a larger player base; continued expansion of the D&D IP and corporate support for the franchise. The theory continues: classic dungeon crawls and their ilk are of no use to streamers: they are heavy on encounters which streaming is not and it is harder to work in the one-liners and 'humorous' one-upmanship which is the streamer's bread and butter. To conclude, we are getting a pirate adventure because streamers want to say 'aaargh.' Grognards like me are free to ignore the pirate adventure just as we ignore the streamers, but this means we are ignoring a huge portion of the official release schedule. This is why the book can be though of as a tax: we 'pay' it so we can continue to enjoy our Greyhawk homebrew, the one crunch book per year, and outstanding 3rd party 5e products.