D&D 5E Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[Paul Farquhar]

Maybe it's just me but I frequently find information to access quickly

When I write adventures, I do so in note form. If I had to publish them for other people converting the notes to standard English would increase the word count (and hence the amount of reading) by around 50% I guess.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The dungeon design is too linear. It looks like a triangular spiral, but its a line with rooms to either side.

Why do you consider that a problem? Many real world structures are like that. Most people don't want to live in a maze.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I’m starting it and ran one session of the post LMoP content.

Post LMoP is pretty bad.

Fortunately, myself and my players are good at making things work.

So the first chapter with all the crime investigations… the investigations are just filled with pointless ‘skill challenges’. They don’t do anything other than give players a reason roll dice.

The module also pushes an npc on the group who’s sole purpose is to solve everything for that players.. What happened to actually designing an investigation that doesn’t require a GM fiat to work?

The same annoying NPC "plot assistant" existed in the Dragonlance adventure.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Jerry seems to like it over at theseinfeldian.net.

 

[TheSword]

I like the Adventure-Path style epic stories now-and-then, but I really wish that they'd put out more of the style that you're talking about. Gone are the days when they're willing to put out 32pg adventure pamphlets, but Tales from the Yawning Portal and Radiant Citadel work. (My problem with Candlekeep is simply that I think that cramming 13 adventures into that book caused most of them to be edited for "space" down to the point where many of them are not very good - I don't blame the authors, I blame the process).

I'd love to see an anthology book with "only" like 4-6 adventures. Short, but with "room to breathe" (by which I mean Stuff That You Might Not Use - alternate paths that the PCs can take, etc).

You should check out Keys from the Golden Vault. They are very well put together, good NPCs, decent length, interesting story. The golden vault hook can be easily replaced with an alternative hook - the book gives options for both. There are also some common themes.

It’s a 5 star book to my mind.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You should check out Keys from the Golden Vault. They are very well put together, good NPCs, decent length, interesting story. The golden vault hook can be easily replaced with an alternative hook - the book gives options for both. There are also some common themes.

It’s a 5 star book to my mind.

I don't think Golden Vault is quite as good as Radiant Citadel. But Ghosts of Saltmarsh is better than Yawning Portal.

Candlekeep suffers from terrible editing. I made Shemshime's Bedtime Rhyme work though!

 

[pukunui]

You should check out Keys from the Golden Vault. They are very well put together, good NPCs, decent length, interesting story. The golden vault hook can be easily replaced with an alternative hook - the book gives options for both. There are also some common themes.

It’s a 5 star book to my mind.

Agreed. I am currently running it as part of my episodic Eberron campaign. I've got a play report thread for the Golden Vault adventures here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/keys-from-the-golden-vault-play-reports.697715/

I don't think Golden Vault is quite as good as Radiant Citadel. But Ghosts of Saltmarsh is better than Yawning Portal.

Candlekeep suffers from terrible editing.

Agreed about Candlekeep. I really wanted to like that one because of its library and book theme, but yeah ...

I've really struggled to get into Radiant Citadel. Not so much because of the different cultures but because I actually think a number of the adventures are quite weak and need a bit of work to make them shine. Also, because of their distinctly different cultural takes, they're harder to just slot in to your typical pseudo-medieval fantasy world. Also, while I love the concept of the Radiant Citadel itself, I was disappointed that none of the adventures actually make any use of it (or the really cool spirit animals that are tied to each world). Like how Tales from the Yawning Portal made no use of its Yawning Portal framing device.

At least Ghosts of Saltmarsh attempts to make some use of the Saltmarsh framing device. I'll agree that it's a good one. I've only run two of the adventures in that anthology, I think, but I enjoyed them both and would like to use more.

But so far I'm finding I like Golden Vault the best out of the 5e anthologies.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I was disappointed that none of the adventures actually make any use of it (or the really cool spirit animals that are tied to each world).

I used that! I'll see if I can dig out my notes.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This should illustrate just how "shorthand" my adventures are:

In the Radiant Citadel:

The Goddess Ioun. In the Radiant Citadel her avatar is a 6-year-old Tiefling girl. She will assist the party, but no more than she thinks necessary.



Clavinger Estwaldo Is a Topaz gem dragonborn from Atagua. They are part of a team of 12 who control the Yellow Quartz Concord Jewel.



Dawn Incarnate of Yongjing. The white flowering pear tree seeks aid for the incarnate of Atagua, a yellow quartz kapok tree. The incarnates do not communicate verbally (they are trees). A brightly coloured bird, made from an amalgam of different gems, sits in the branches of the pear tree. When the party approach, the bird flies off, and leads them to the kapok. Close examination of the kapok reveals some of the quartz crystals are blackened and cracked. If the party sleep under the kapok, they will experience a nightmare of a radiant snake fighting a massive, crumbling centipede. They awake to the smell of burning sugar with one word in their mind: “Sarire”.

Preserve of the ancients encounters (D10):

1. A Turquoise Lion menaces the party, prowling around them and roaring. It won’t speak or attack, but it will try to inconvenience the party.
2. A flock of flying monkeys passes overhead.
3. A herd of small, brightly painted roller-skating elephants passes by. They are intelligent but cannot speak Common, instead communicating in sign language.
4. A field of unicorn-horned rabbits (Almiraj). One sits on a tree stump.
5. The corpse of a sapphire wyvern.
6. A fat flightless pigeon-like bird waddles past.
7. An elderly human gardener called Boothby is taking a rest. He will assist if asked.
8. A black panther watches from the branches of a tree. She speaks Common, and will offer guidance if asked.
9. 10. The incarnate the PCs are looking for.

Basically, it was a treasure hunt, with the party being sent to speak to various strange folk in the preserve to find the information they needed. Meanwhile the Incarnate of Akharin Sangar was angry with them (because of their previous adventure) and was trying to be a horrible as possible without breaking the rules of the preserve.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

*) The dungeon design is too linear. It looks like a triangular spiral, but its a line with rooms to either side.

Topologically, there is no difference between a line(/ray/segment) and a spiral. Topology has a tendency to classify rather distinct looking things as technically identical, e.g. the rather tired joke of the mathematician who can't tell the difference between her coffee mug and her doughnut because each one is a torus, the mug just has a really big dimple on one side of its otherwise very thin torus.

This is one of the problems with simply calling dungeons "linear." It is actually quite hard to create an actually human-accessible, realistic dungeon space that is meaningfully nonlinear. The thing you speak of is a tree structure, it's just a tree structure that does not "branch," or more technically, if a node has siblings, only one node of that depth has children.

But, for example, most dungeons will instead loop upon themselves, because actual buildings that people would live in and use rarely, if ever, have long branches that don't provide at least one alternate path back to the root (aka main entrance). Real building spaces almost always have numerous redundant ways to return to start, often multiple long, parallel hallways with perpendicular connecting hallways at regular intervals.

Neither of these structures is particularly engaging. A straight line, or a line with dead-end spurs, isn't all that interesting purely from its structure. But neither is a taxicab grid; we don't make the grid to be interesting, we make it to be efficient, both in terms of avoiding wasted space and in terms of making it easier to navigate.

It's necessarily one of those areas where realism, gameplay, and design-effort collide. At best, you can pick two: realistic layout, engaging structure, easy to design. Easy and realistic? Not very engaging. Easy and engaging? Risks realism. Realistic and engaging? Better be ready to put in quite a bit more effort.