Having read his response on the keyed dungeon point, I think it’s a matter of him being very passionate about dungeon design and feeling that WotC is moving in a direction that doesn’t value that as much (or at least not in the same way) as he does. Perhaps he’s overstating the seriousness of the issue, but it seems to be out of genuine concern that the art of dungeon design and keying is being deprioritized, which may lead to a loss of that generational knowledge.
Yeah, layout and information presentation is a thing.
I tend to agree with Bryce Lynch and the designers over at Necrotic Gnome that efficient, pithy presentation with evocative descriptors, putting key info up front and using bullet points, bold, and indentation to help make the info easy to absorb at a glance is best for my usage.
Key info buried in paragraphs is a pet peeve. A map showing three rooms and text describing three rooms but without labeling for easy reference of which is which is an error, IMO. I can sort-of get it if their intent is for players to use a digital image of the map on VTT and they don't want to put a number in the middle of the room where it's visible to the players in that use-case, but you can still put a numeric label or title OUTSIDE the image in that case.
I have several of Arcane Library's adventures in my "Wishlist" on DriveThruRPG but I haven't pulled the trigger on any of them yet. Any suggest for the best one to look at?
I've only run their Secret of Skyhorn Lighthouse, which was free or dirt cheap, and I liked it.
I see your point from the perspective of veterans like us. However, as this is a new book I feel the review should be oriented towards a prospective customer, and they don’t know or care about what was published when; they care about “how good is this product I am thinking of buying?”. IMO
I think Justin's audience is more experienced players. I don't think he's someone newbies would naturally go to. And I think his rating explicitly reflects that; that he's grading it with the assumption that his readers already have had access to LMoP, and so the review is to assess how good the expanded material is.
And yeah, the dropped threads and discontinuities seem much bigger issues. No telling us what the heck the Spellforge is. A nonsensical way of tying in the psychic goblins with the regular ones. NOT making the NPCs relevant later. Etc.