D&D 5E Why does WotC put obviously bad or illogical elements in their adventures?

[robus]

To be fair, the latter is a perfectly valid way of playing and can be great fun. It's just not my preferred way.

Good point.

 

[LordEntrails]

... Apparently it's normal for things to not make sense. I guess I will do more work preparing these adventures in future - but as I'm paying WotC I kind of thought that was their job?!

I think this shows the core of the problem producing something for a diverse audience. First, it's hard to know what people want. Second, whatever you produce will not please everyone and some of your customers will complain that you don't make what they want.

 

[clearstream]

They have a teleporter. I'm not at home to access the book, but it's in like room 36 or something.

Thank you. I can rest easy at last. It's room 18. Oddly, they break the magic item rule (you identify and attune the magic room in one short rest, instead of two). I wonder why?

 

[Tormyr]

Perhaps it's never come up, since they all got eaten by sharks? Probably also it's not that hard to leave Maelstrom, via conch or other tool, it's just hard to enter it.

My main problem with Maelstrom is that it feels kind of small for the capital of the Giant civilisation, but then nobody wants a dungeon map that accurately depicts an entire city, so I just accept that as a necessary price for a useable setting.

The monster manual says that Storm Giants are solitary by nature. Maelstrom is probably a decent sized group of Storm Giants in comparison.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

Here's a thought: you can play any way you want but if the campaign book you bought so that you don't have to do a lot of work on a campaign, has a lot of illogical aspects to it, then if your group doesn't like illogical tropes, you have to work to fix them. But if the campaign book you buy doesn't have illogical tropes, then the beer and pretzel types won't notice or care and still enjoy the game while the people who do mind, and the DM's who run games for those groups, will both appreciate the effort and buy your product again.

I wanted SKT specifically because I run two campaigns with two different groups on alternating weeks. One is my homebrew which requires a lot of effort. The other was meant to be easier for me to run due to having a campaign book. SKT, however, has turned out to be more work than my homebrew game simply because I have to spend so much time and effort fixing all the illogical crap in it so that it makes, at least, a modicum of sense to the players and also satisfies me as a DM running it.

That's what I would be willing to wager most people pay for when they buy a campaign book: having a lot of the work already done for them.

 

[robus]

[MENTION=6863518]dropbear8mybaby[/MENTION] - I was going to make a very similar point!

 

[LordEntrails]

Well guys, my advice would be next time before you buy an adventure model, do some online research. Read the reviews and comments etc on it. If you have an FLGS you trust, go talk to the people who work there. If you have social groups, ask them. Search ENWorld for a thread on the adventure, if not, start one. If it's important enough to you, see who the author(s) are and keep track of the ones you like and don't like.

Once, shame on them, twice, well... but the third time you make the same mistake, shame on you.

 

[GX.Sigma]

On a serious note, quality assurance is time consuming and expensive. If you think a good product will sell 110% of the predicted sales of the current state product but will remove 30% of the expected profit per sale then, barring any ramifications to your brand, you ship the current product.

This is the correct answer to the question posed by the thread title, and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten any XP (here, have some on me).

To put it another way: Quality assurance has diminishing returns. The closer you get to 100% perfection, the more difficult/expensive it is. There's not much difference between the sales of an 80% product and an 85% product, so making it any better is just a waste. By the time the customer realizes the imperfections, you already have their money.

Note also that the artwork and visual design of the 5e books are always very high quality. That's because visuals are a big part of marketing.

A big public company like Hasbro will never release a product that is 100% perfect, because the diminishing returns of quality will always impact their profit margin.

 

[robus]

Well guys, my advice would be next time before you buy an adventure model, do some online research. Read the reviews and comments etc on it. If you have an FLGS you trust, go talk to the people who work there. If you have social groups, ask them. Search ENWorld for a thread on the adventure, if not, start one. If it's important enough to you, see who the author(s) are and keep track of the ones you like and don't like.

Once, shame on them, twice, well... but the third time you make the same mistake, shame on you.

So wondering why the products aren't better is not an acceptable position? I should be ashamed to ask that question this far into the 5e lifecycle?

'Hit me baby one more time!"

 

[robus]

This is the correct answer to the question posed by the thread title, and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten any XP (here, have some on me).

To put it another way: Quality assurance has diminishing returns. The closer you get to 100% perfection, the more difficult/expensive it is. There's not much difference between the sales of an 80% product and an 85% product, so making it any better is just a waste. By the time the customer realizes the imperfections, you already have their money.

Note also that the artwork and visual design of the 5e books are always very high quality. That's because visuals are a big part of marketing.

A big public company like Hasbro will never release a product that is 100% perfect, because the diminishing returns of quality will always impact their profit margin.

I don't think this is a bug ask given the modest release cycle.