D&D 5E Boing Boing reviews Princes of the Apocalypse and calls it D&D's killer app.

[darjr]

http://boingboing.net/2015/05/15/princes-of-the-apocalypse-is-d.html

I do agree with a lot of this review. And though I knew the adventure paralleled T1-4 this review highlighted a few parallels and omages that I overlooked.

 

[TerraDave]

Hmm, to have such a dubious statement in the opening is not a good sign:

"exactly one D&D module was responsible for defining and perfecting the dungeon crawl: The Temple of Elemental Evil."

Both exactly one and perfecting are problematic. And of course, it was infamously late, in more ways then one. The heydays of big dungeons were probably already over by the time it came out.

But I will still read the rest of the review.

 

[DaveDash]

I am reading Princes now, and it has me really excited to run it. I love the sandbox nature of it, and I think my players will really enjoy it. However I don't think it's all the reviewer has made it out to be. The organization is pretty bad in the book, and you need to read it a few times to get a good handle on whats going on.

Lots of people aren't going to be into it either because it's a massive AP, despite the fact that it can be broken down into chunks, and actually has a lot of independent side quests.

I read another reviewer who slammed it for being hard to read, hard to run on the fly (due to the lack of chapters/milestones), etc. I don't agree with this assessment, but for the time poor DM (or one who can't be bothered reading it end to end before running it), it's not going to be their cup of tea.

I actually think Lost Mines is D&D's 'Killer App'. You can run it with minimal prep, and it's a great introduction to the 'ecosystem'.

 

[mattcolville]

Hmm, to have such a dubious statement in the opening is not a good sign:

"exactly one D&D module was responsible for defining and perfecting the dungeon crawl: The Temple of Elemental Evil."

Both exactly one and perfecting are problematic. And of course, it was infamously late, in more ways then one. The heydays of big dungeons were probably already over by the time it came out.

But I will still read the rest of the review.

ToEE has an amazing reputation for such an awfully written and poorly designed adventure.

 

[Henry]

Both exactly one and perfecting are problematic. And of course, it was infamously late, in more ways then one. The heydays of big dungeons were probably already over by the time it came out.

But I will still read the rest of the review.

I agree - hello, Keep on the Borderlands? Tomb of Horrors? Hommelet was seminal, I admit, but hardy the "definitive" one that established what to expect from the type.

I do agree with the paraphrasing of "evil cults of evil want to do EEEVIL and must be stopped" - some sections of the opening chapter I swear reads like some stuff I used to write for AD&D in the 10th grade - though the actual adventure content is not bad at all, and I would have been a LOT happier if they had used some conventions of adventure writing that Paizo has down to a science (e.g. In-text stat blocks instead of page references for one. Wotc can't get away with the same trick Paizo does where the stat blocks are generic, becuase Paizo has the PFSRD to fall back to for users to just pull from, WotC does not have this for gamer prep.) I do like their characterizations, both of the cults and their leaders - a party will be able to know the different squaring off against an Earth cult versus a fire cult, etc.

The adventure, I agree, is not bad; yes, it doesn't have to "be Tolstoy", but it can still have reasonably deep motivations for the enemies, and give good indicators of their fallback plans.

EDIT: lest I get accused of hatin' for the sake of hatin':
the troubles have a source known to few in the North: Elemental Evil. Servants of this malevolence gather in the Sumber hills and spy on the Dessarin valley, drawn by a force they can't explain...

...the threat of elemental evil surfaces in different worlds of the multiverse...

...the presence of Elemental Evil goes back thousands of years...

...lunatics, outlaws, power-hungry villains, and monsters of all description began to trickle into the valley, drawn by the dark call of Elemental Evil."

 

[DaveDash]

WoTC provide a free PDF where you can print out all the creature stat blocks (including MM stuff) and have them sitting next to you, which makes more sense when you're actually running a module.if you want to quickly read through a section while running the game, not having the stat-blocks getting in the way is cleaner.
I've started doing this and it's WAY faster than flicking through pages in books trying to find the statblock. What if the creature you're running is on a different page? Want to use it somewhere else? etc.

Since they have them all in an appendix as well, I imagine it saves on ink & paper. No double printing.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

ToEE has an amazing reputation for such an awfully written and poorly designed adventure.

Exactly.

I have never understood the nostalgia that attends ToEE as anyone I know who has enjoyed playing it has had a DM who basically rewrote it both to finish it and to make it actually feel elemental.

The bits that were finished were, in large part, designed by random dungeon generation (I kid you not) and involved simply encountering monsters in increasing order of hit dice difficulty. It was crap, and delayed/late crap at that. After ToEE, my group refused to play long dungeon-based adventures ever again... and I refused to DM them.

But it had a great cover.

Princes is very different, and I otherwise agree with the review. Princes is complete. Princes makes an effort to actual put the elemental into the adventure. Princes is written by a really good adventure designer.

 

[pukunui]

I am reading Princes now, and it has me really excited to run it. I love the sandbox nature of it, and I think my players will really enjoy it. However I don't think it's all the reviewer has made it out to be. The organization is pretty bad in the book, and you need to read it a few times to get a good handle on whats going on.

Lots of people aren't going to be into it either because it's a massive AP, despite the fact that it can be broken down into chunks, and actually has a lot of independent side quests.

I read another reviewer who slammed it for being hard to read, hard to run on the fly (due to the lack of chapters/milestones), etc. I don't agree with this assessment, but for the time poor DM (or one who can't be bothered reading it end to end before running it), it's not going to be their cup of tea.

I didn't find it hard to read at all. Nor did I find it poorly organized. What put me off it, though, is its extremely repetitive nature. Having to do essentially the same series of adventures four times - with slightly different window dressing each time - doesn't sound all that enjoyable to me. I would've been happier if the lairs and the cult's abilities were more noticeably different.

I actually think Lost Mines is D&D's 'Killer App'. You can run it with minimal prep, and it's a great introduction to the 'ecosystem'.

I agree. I hardly needed to do any prep - or review - to run Lost Mine, and my players - newbies all - had a blast! (As did I, of course.)

 

[wedgeski]

I agree. I hardly needed to do any prep - or review - to run Lost Mine, and my players - newbies all - had a blast! (As did I, of course.)

I don't necessarily agree with your criticism of PotA, but I certainly agree with this. Lost Mine is a superb adventure, one of the best that's ever come out of Wizards.

 

[pukunui]

Lost Mine is a superb adventure, one of the best that's ever come out of Wizards.

My one criticism of Lost Mine is it suffers from the same sort of main plot vs sidequests thing that games like Dragon Age have. That is, the main plot has this sense of urgency that makes you question why anyone would wander off on seemingly unrelated sidequests. I ended up solving that by having Gundren need several days to recover from his ordeal, so the PCs went and did some of the other quests while they waited for him to get better.