D&D 5E (2024) Heroes of the Borderlands

[tombowings]

Also, the more interesting encounters, NPCs, etc., the more likely it can be spun and altered to taste. If I read a bland module, I'm very unlikely to be inspired to make it my own.

I'm the opposite. I prefer to take something bland and add to it than take something I only like 60% of, remove the 40% I don't care for, and rewrite it.

Adding is easy. Identifying, removing, and rewriting is hard.

 

[wicked cool]

I’d love that hear what the naysayers would include as an adventure. Lots of bashing but I have yet to hear I’d rather

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Every adventure is hypothetical

An adventure is words on a page. It is text and images used to convey information from author to reader. The only frame of reference that is the same between groups is the actual printed product.

 

[tombowings]

The only frame of reference that is the same between groups is the actual printed product.

Edit: I think the post I was replying to got deleted. Original quote: "The only frame of reference that is the same between groups is the actual printed product."


...Which is irrelevant until it's being played at the game table.

The game table is the experience: the excitement, the laughs, the exploits, the stories, the adventure. The text is dried ink on a dead page.

Novels are the same. They physical book is irrelevant until the reader engages with it. It's the reading experience, not the text, that people (or people I know) care about.

 

[Cadence]

Reviewing a module based on what a DM could hypothetically add to it doesn't make any sense. Yes, a DM can change anything and run things differently than they're written, certainly. That's not really saying anything.

What I am criticizing about kotb is what is in the text.

Is this the same way the games themselves should be judged? Is ease of houseruling/expanding something that affects the rating? I wonder how the ratings of some change of one has to use RAW and only RAW as explained in their text without additional interpretation.

One of the big complaints about B2 here seems to be the "random nature" of the different tribes being all in this one place. I think that can be fixed by putting in a sentence or two (something about the altar in the temple attracting all the humanoids?).

On the other hand, if there was an objective perfect way to rate/rank gaming products, these boards would be a lot less interesting.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

One of the big complaints about B2 here seems to be the "random nature" of the different tribes being all in this one place. I think that can be fixed by putting in a sentence or two (something about the altar in the temple attracting all the humanoids?).

I definitely think that B2 can be improved pretty easily, especially with almost 50 years of adventures since it was published to see how it could have been done better. And it wouldn't take a lot to make it significantly better. (As opposed to X1, which I'd say needs either a lot more content or a fundamental rethink.)

 

[Cadence]

I definitely think that B2 can be improved pretty easily, especially with almost 50 years of adventures since it was published to see how it could have been done better. And it wouldn't take a lot to make it significantly better. (As opposed to X1, which I'd say needs either a lot more content or a fundamental rethink.)

And I am certainly open to grading it differently based on any specific criteria. (Kind of like MVP in sports that is ill defined).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And I am certainly open to grading it differently based on any specific criteria. (Kind of like MVP in sports that is ill defined).

I look forward to us having judges from multiple nations holding up scores from 0 through 10.

 

[pemerton]

I am ok with beating a dungeon as the mission, but the dungeon still needs to be plausible and not just a pile of random monsters and traps.

I don't think the design of the Caves of Chaos is random (despite the name!). But obviously it's not naturalistic.

I also don't see why a dungeon needs to be plausible. White Plume Mountain isn't plausible. Not all RPGing has to be about imagining some plausible or naturalistic setting. And if that's what someone wants, they can just skip KotB, WPM, etc.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't think the design of the Caves of Chaos is random (despite the name!). But obviously it's not naturalistic.

I also don't see why a dungeon needs to be plausible. White Plume Mountain isn't plausible. Not all RPGing has to be about imagining some plausible or naturalistic setting. And if that's what someone wants, they can just skip KotB, WPM, etc.

I think Gygax liked to pretend that he was realistic, outside Castle Greyhawk (the original "a wizard did it" dungeon).

White Plume Mountain is a fun house dungeon (since it wasn't supposed to be a published dungeon at all, just a bunch of room designs as an audition).

White Plume Mountain probably gets graded less harshly than the Caves of Chaos since it's not even pretending that any of it makes sense.

I do think if Gygax ever came back to Keep on the Borderlands, or made a later attempt to do something similar again, it would look much more like T1, which doesn't have the same issues. (The moathouse has some implausible bits of monsters living next to each other, but it's less egregious than most dungeons of the era.)