I don’t. I can see for myself when something is well off target, and I like to think the people who work at WotC are at least as capable of that as I am.
Sure, it’s not impossible that WotC put out a steaming pile of garbage, but their track record hasn’t been bad of late.
And the vibe the...
Haven’t come across anyone defending them. But the feedback is irrelevant. UA is marketing, not part of the development process. If the WotC developers need a bunch of amateurs to tell them when something isn’t right then they should be looking for a different line of work.
I felt it flagged a little in the second half, and was more Indiana Jones than Sherlock Holmes, but was entertaining old fashioned pulp fiction overall.
I don’t think we have any real idea as to how long Deadfall will be yet, so can’t say if it’s better value than dragonheist. Forge of the Artificer was 112 pages, exactly half as long as Dragonheist.
One thing with Dragonlance - remember the lunar sorcerer? That didn’t really match the lore at all. 5.5 has a much better way to do wizards of high sorcery - using three backgrounds and accompanying feats. And that wouldn’t go through UA. You might be able to tackle Solomanic knights the same way.
The novels put him back on Krynn, they trashed Sithicus in VGR (because no one understands that stuff about Krynn elves), and he has appeared in two recent WotC products - in Krynn.