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

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It is eaaily conceivable that PMoP understood the difficulty

Every time over the past five years that I've praised Lost Mines, people here on this forum have asked "wait, didn't you have a TPK in the goblin hideout?"

It is not "easily conceivable" that folks at WotC nodded sagely and said "yes, this was too easy as an introductory dungeon."

 

[Lanefan]

Honestly, they could have juat dropped the maps amd kept the paragraphs as is and it would work fine.

As a picture (or a map) is worth a thousand words, dropping the maps would seem counterproductive, hm?

All the examples in this book that the clickbaiter references are small areas that do not require any actual exploration and are handled in brief in clear writing. That is perfectly cromulant.

Curious why you seem so hell-bent on defending sub-standard professional adventure writing?

I mean, if I made basic elementary mistakes like these in anything I wrote and published* I'd expect to quite justifiably get flayed by any reviewers who bothered to give those products their time.

* - I've written several to near-publishable (if not necessarily professional) standards but haven't released anything. Yet.

 

[Lanefan]

When you stop seeing it as "an excuse" and recognize it as "a valid perspective you don't happen to share", then you will have perpetrated some wisdom.

That's a bit high-handed, isn't it?

And Micah's right: it nearly always is just a lame excuse.

 

[Lanefan]

Get it from the library. I would recommend that for any D&D book. Way better to read for yourself than trusting clickbaiters.

Libraries carry D&D books? (and if they do, can keep them from getting stolen?)

 

[Parmandur]

Every time over the past five years that I've praised Lost Mines, people here on this forum have asked "wait, didn't you have a TPK in the goblin hideout?"

It is not "easily conceivable" that folks at WotC nodded sagely and said "yes, this was too easy as an introductory dungeon."

Would have to run the numbers.

 

[Gradine]

Libraries carry D&D books? (and if they do, can keep them from getting stolen?)

My local libraries do, and I'm trying my hardest to get the university library I work at to start a gaming collection. It's one of the Big New Things in the field

 

[Parmandur]

As a picture (or a map) is worth a thousand words, dropping the maps would seem counterproductive, hm?

In this case? No. It's a single room with a combat encounter. The maps primary value is to the VTT crowd. The words get the point across better (to my brain)

Curious why you seem so hell-bent on defending sub-standard professional adventure writing?

As I posted upthread, it is a fairly middle of the road Adventure. What I object to is the disingenuous and toxic rhetoric of the original review.

Libraries carry D&D books? (and if they do, can keep them from getting stolen?)

Yes, and people fairly rarely steal library books, and what loss there is can be accounted for with planning. That's why libraries still exist.

 

[Clint_L]

No one wants to take a crack at defending making the first goblin hideout adventure harder?

The 2024 revision generally buffs PCs, so I wonder if they had that in mind.

 

[MerricB]

The 2024 revision generally buffs PCs, so I wonder if they had that in mind.

Not that much. First level characters don't suddenly gain lots of AC and hp.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[occam]

He missed a big one. Chapter 2 and 5 have towns people. Some of chapter 5 people are not mentioned at all in Chapter 2 but they should have been. Like the owner of the Sleeping Giant.

The proprietor of the Sleeping Giant is mentioned in both locations. It's just that... they aren't the same. In Chapter 2 the proprietor has been changed to an orc named Greska. But the added material from Chapter 5 onwards was apparently using the Starter Set as a reference, and mentions LMoP's original proprietor -- a dwarf named Grista. The new material wasn't synced up to the changes made to LMoP.