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

[mamba]

There are likely very reasonable complaints to be made about any WotC adventure. The designers behind them are a) human, b) have preferences, and c) working under time constraints. Nothing is going to be perfect. But your complaint is "the adventure does not delve deeply enough into the ecology of this series of rooms full of monsters"? In 2023. I'm sorry, but no.

why not, I did not like it in the Caves of Chaos, I like it no better now, I thought we improved since then

 

[darjr]

I used to quite like him then I asked him if he would like a review copy of Level Up and he responded with a level of anger I found extreme.

Apparently he backed a Kickstarter to keep EnWorld running and then managed to get himself a ban for his behaviour.

No offence but that must have been quite some behaviour.

I'll just add this part.

I don't have details but he I think he was abusive levels of angry over the whole thing. In my view Russ banned him because from where I sat I don't think he had any other real choice.

 

[Divine2021]

Eh, I enjoyed running it. I don’t know this reviewer is, and he doesn’t seem like the kind of person I’d welcome at my table, just based off of his written tone. Just play the game and don’t think too hard about it.

 

[Reynard]

why not, I did not like it in the Caves of Chaos, I like it no better now, I thought we improved since then

What do you mean "improved"? Dungeons are inherently silly constructions and no distribution of orcs and pies in rooms in going to stand up to any sort of scrutiny. We all know we are playing a game, especially when that game involves dungeon delving. What do you actually gain by stripping out all of the fun in favor of realism?

 

[Reynard]

Eh, I enjoyed running it. I don’t know this reviewer is, and he doesn’t seem like the kind of person I’d welcome at my table, just based off of his written tone. Just play the game and don’t think too hard about it.

You have already finished the whole module?

 

[Divine2021]

You have already finished the whole module?

We just did the second half as we did the first half a while ago. Wasn’t too much to handle, just followed the book pretty closely.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I like his whimsy actually. I just don't think he's as good a DM or adventure writer as some people make him out to be. He's not bad but he's not the god of D&D either.

I don't see any evidence that Perkins is even an above-average adventure writer for the "pro" RPG scene, i.e. people who attempt to make a career out of RPGs. I mean, if I look through all the things his name is attached to, the only one that sticks out as a particularly good adventure is the modern version of Curse of Strahd, and it's unclear how much of that he wrote, because it was a four-person effort. I haven't been through the adventures he wrote for Dungeon though - that would probably be the clearest possible evidence. But before that, my feeling is that he's pretty mid at best, and in the position he's in not because he's a great adventure writer or even good at getting others to write great adventures, but rather probably because he's good at managing people and getting products out on time, which, y'know is a pretty important skill in a corporate business like WotC. Probably more important than writing good/great adventures.

Just play the game and don’t think too hard about it.

You're just demonstrating exactly why people like the Alexandrian, harsh as he may be, are valuable. This sort of uninformative casual dismissal helps absolutely no-one, and tells us nothing except that you don't think people thinking about an adventure is a good thing. It's purely unhelpful. Whereas his scathing criticism may annoy you, but it shines a light where this attitude provides only darkness.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But "bode ill for the health of the hobby" is hyperbolic, don't ya think? Kinda like the rest of the review? Maybe?

To be real, it's one of those things we'll either forget as just another bit of snark, or which will seem extremely smart and prescient a few years from now when we've had several bum adventures from WotC! Probably the former, but you never know.

 

[darjr]

To be real, it's one of those things we'll either forget as just another bit of snark, or which will seem extremely smart and prescient a few years from now when we've had several bum adventures from WotC! Probably the former, but you never know.

Yup. Dead hobby any second now......

 

[mamba]

What do you mean "improved"? Dungeons are inherently silly constructions and no distribution of orcs and pies in rooms in going to stand up to any sort of scrutiny. We all know we are playing a game, especially when that game involves dungeon delving. What do you actually gain by stripping out all of the fun in favor of realism?

I still prefer some logic to the whole thing instead of just randomly rolling monsters into rooms, game or not.

How is having better reasons for the same monsters, or having different monsters with a better explanation, stripping out the fun? To me that is part of what makes it fun, just having random rooms with random monsters in them is the opposite of fun to me.