Actually, I wish Paizo would go with the Delve format. It encourages dynamic encounter design with varied elements, and I think that encounter design is one of the few areas that the Paizo adventures I've read could improve on. I love the Delve format, because I buy adventures to run them. How well they "read" is of secondary importance to how well they run, and the Delve format makes running them easier on me as a DM.I completely agree, the "adventure separated from encounters" format is the main reason i stopped bying any adventures from WOTC. It can be better to use in encounters but is annoying to read them in the first place.
As a gamer who used to enjoy reading adventures, it was a disappointment.
At least we have paizo for traditional adventures.
Each box contains an envelope with a Power Card. "It's the cereal with crunch."
Chris is a great guy and a talented designer. I wish he were even higher up the ladder.
Don't put that on Bruce Cordell. I think it's wildly unfair to blame the sucktasticness of the published WotC 4E modules on him. He wrote some amazing modules back in the day. I think it's the fact that everyone writing published WotC adventures for 4E now are forced into writing them a certain way, and that way is crap.
Blame the format, the encounter and adventure design assumptions which are built into "official" 4E.
The Gates of Firestorm Peak is my favorite D&D module of all time, and Bruce Cordell's illithid trilogy was really cool, as well. He's more than capable of writing great adventures. I think he's just constrained now by "it must be in the space-eating delve format, must contain X number of combat encounters built according to X encounter budgets, and fit on a map this small, in this page count, and it has to be written according to a default, codified 4E adventure style".