WotC Hasbro CEO Chris Cox, "I would say that the underlying thesis of our D&D business is all about digital,”

[Zardnaar]

That one always amuses me - I found HotDQ to be rather better than I'd been led to believe (albeit still pretty bad), but found "Rise of Tiamat" to be abysmal, and not in a good way.

Neither great lol. The worst 5E books tend to be meh vs actively bad. HotDQ might be an exception.

 

[Zardnaar]

I get the feeling that HotDQ's bad reputation is mainly found online. "Uhhh Justin Alexander writes a review about how bad it is, that must be true"-kind of thing.

I would wager if a poll was made amongst those who actually played it, it would rate quite well. It's also still on the best selling 5e adventure books. The main complaint I saw was the railroadiness, which really didn't bother me at all. On the contrary one of the reason I buy adventures is to get a good plot and story. That kind of necessitates some rails unless you wanna do true hexploration - which isn't my jam.

Anecdotal as it may be, we had an absolute blast when I was running it. Still something we talk about to this day.

Not sure who that is. I'm not a fan as I bought it tried running it twice, died at the start once playing it.

In my two games running it one tpk restart and the other was let's stop playing on the road.

We don't generally finish long adventures eg ToEE or Night Below, Adveture paths etc but have fun playing them.

HotDQ we quit.

 

[BigZebra]

We definitely liked HotDQ better than RoT. Except for the last scene in RoT. That. Was. One. Epic. Battle.
Really great.

Anyway, I don't know. Sometimes it feels like people expect a 260-page adventure to be perfect for all kind of groups and playstyles. I have yet to see an adventure fulfilling that. The designers have to make som choices. And that also means something ends up on the editing floor. Yes - of course - there were some things I changed and moved around a bit in HotDQ to make it better fit my group. But not anything major at all - just reading my group and picking up on some cues.

 

[Zardnaar]

We definitely liked HotDQ better than RoT. Except for the last scene in RoT. That. Was. One. Epic. Battle.
Really great.

Anyway, I don't know. Sometimes it feels like people expect a 260-page adventure to be perfect for all kind of groups and playstyles. I have yet to see an adventure fulfilling that. The designers have to make som choices. And that also means something ends up on the editing floor. Yes - of course - there were some things I changed and moved around a bit in HotDQ to make it better fit my group. But not anything major at all - just reading my group and picking up on some cues.

It's more if you claim everything in 5E is great or terrible imho. The adventures generally don't impress me much.

Xanathars, the starter sets do, production values generally always good. Theros, Ravnica Eberron pretty good.

Very mixed receptions though from Strixhaven onwards roughly.

 

[BigZebra]

It's more if you claim everything in 5E is great or terrible imho. The adventures generally don't impress me much.

Xanathars, the starter sets do, production values generally always good. Theros, Ravnica Eberron pretty good.

Very mixed receptions though from Strixhaven onwards roughly.

Generally agree with this. Though I'm a bit more positive for the adventures But I agree that some of the latter books has some rough ones in between. Except Ravenloft that was great. But I feel - and I might be wrong - but at some point they started doing books by committee and the results have been hit or miss.

 

[Zardnaar]

Generally agree with this. Though I'm a bit more positive for the adventures But I agree that some of the latter books has some rough ones in between. Except Ravenloft that was great. But I feel - and I might be wrong - but at some point they started doing books by committee and the results have been hit or miss.

Yeah I get that vibe. I bought Ravenloft despite not liking Ravenloft and it's growing on me.

So this is my second apathy mode. First one was roughly the Waterdeep hooks and Avernus didn't buy them.

Netherdeep book seems to be a void no one seemed to care positive or negative.

 

[mamba]

And we have a drastically larger player base because….?

many reasons, I am just saying that SJ is not selling proportionally more than 2e did. Your ‘they must do something right for SJ to sell more now’ sounded like the something right also applies to SJ

 

[mamba]

OK, real talk: it has a ship combat system, same ship combat system as Ghosts of Saltmarsh, in fact, just you can imagine the combat in Space rather than at Sea. In both cases, it kind of an abstract, quick and dirty vehicle combat system. What those YouTubers mean is the the slipcase lacks a detailed, high octane mini driven combat system...

was not disagreeing with you, I assume you have the set and know for sure. I found it weird that on YT it sounds like there isn’t one

 

[Hussar]

It has a very crappy reputation online and us frequently in the bottom of rate D&D product type tier lists so it's not just my opinion. The other bad products seem to be Spelljammer, SCAG and maybe 5E DMG and Strixhaven.

The well regarded stuff tends to be the starter sets, Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation.

Sure everything is somewhat objective but that's the general trend online.

Keep on the Borderlands. Sold a lot but generally get 3/5 type ratings these days and it's not the best regarded B adventure now. B3,B4,B5 and B10 seem to be better regarded.

There's a difference between good for WotC bottom line and good for consumer.

The Tiamat book is better it's not Tyranny of Dragons mostly just HotDQ.

Your logic Avatar 2 is greatest movie of all time.

You're the one talking about quality, not me. But, I find it hillariously funny that people keep harping on about how bad this module is, and how WotC must do better if they want to be successful, yet, this apparently bottom ranked module is making money for WotC hand over fist.

Funny how "good for the consumer" is yet another way of saying, "this is something I don't like, so it must be bad".

 

[mamba]

Just realized spelljammer at Amazon has 4.5 stars from 3,388 reviews.

yeah, Amazon reviews are kinda meaningless. Fans buy it, fans rate it. 4.5 is relatively bad, it might even be the worst rated 5e release with that.

Curse of Strahd has 4.9
Rime of the Frostmaiden 4.8
Storm Kings Thunder 4.8
Tyranny of Dragons 4.7
Did not check the rest…