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Let me introduce you to a legendary review of Keep... https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/classic/rev_1250.phtml See who wrote it? He's got a couple of credits to his name. :) Cheers!

I haven't been able to summon the enthusiasm to write about Vecna, but here's my take on The Shattered Obelisk https://merricb.com/2024/04/22/review-the-shattered-obelisk Cheers!

Right, this monstrosity of a stat block turned up on my feeds recently: It might not look too bad to you at first glance. But what drew my attention was Healing Word. How much does it heal? Oh, I need to check the PHB for the description. 2d4+spellcasting ability. What's the spellcasting...

That at least gives me some hope!

The Caves of Chaos is such an odd choice given the place Wizards is at. I rather like the adventure - but more for its potential rather than how it is written. (Neither Hommlet or the Keep are great examples of how to write home bases, IMO). Oh, I also rather like just fighting monsters, too...

They're exhausted after Vecna, no doubt. Such incompetence takes effort. I'm so curious about the new starter set. It could be fantastic, but the personnel at Wizards don't inspire hope. (It's not like they're untalented, but I think they're very misdirected).

The only thing missing from next year's slate is a campaign adventure. And given we've had one or more a year from 2014-2024, that is a notable omission. But we are getting both the Dragon Anthology adventures and the starter set (an adventure); it is possible we may consider the starter a...

I've run both (mostly as written) in full. They are exactly as dreadful in play as you might expect. Cheers!

I've got the digital one preordered. Even if it sucked, I still needed to know the baseline. I'll order the physical one when I have some idea of when it will arrive in Australia. Both the previous books have been dreadfully late.

Vecna is a terrible book. Shattered Obelisk is a terrible book with actually worse editing. I can see in both examples of good game design, but the overall structure is awful - and that's the stuff Hamon should be responsible for. And yeah, I have little time left for Perkins either.

It's lore, because it does describe their behavior, etc. That derives from the culture, upbringing, history, and so forth. It assumes a certain (broad) role for the bugbear. If you recast the bugbears as peaceful shopkeepers, then all of that breaks.

Lore is an evolving beast in D&D in any case. (Check how halflings changed to be more kender-like and less hobbit-like in 3E). I think that's fine, just as long as you don't expect everyone to be aboard with the changes. (There are times it is entirely justified - especially when everyone was...

I doubt it. I think there was also a chase in the Chult season of DDAL that worked pretty well. But my opinion of Crawford as a rules designer has been dropping, and dropping fast with the 2024 releases.

I am particularly interested in actionable lore. Stuff that I can take as a player or DM and use at the game table. Honestly, I've found myself incredibly impressed by A5E's Monstrous Menagerie and how it handles it. Sections like "Signs" and "Behavior" are things I find useful at the game...

The 2024 DMG is impressively short on help for many adventure types. Investigations. Dungeons. Sandboxes. (Sandboxes are not alone in this). In fact, I'm not entirely sure that it helps DMs particularly create any type of adventure. It is (moderately) good at helping DMs run elements of...

Lore is tremendously important to the game. And here's the amount of lore that setting books have for 99% of monsters in the game: None. It all comes from the core books and the monster books. Setting books change the default lore for a tiny fraction of creatures, because those are the ones...

I find it awful. So many times I've looked up something only to find that it's only partially described in the glossary, and I have to go elsewhere. In both 3E and 4E we got really good Rules Compendiums later on in their lifecycles. This feels like a good idea only halfway implemented.