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

[QuentinGeorge]

You know, if you are giving B- to the worst adventure WotC has produced in 5e... you may be more generous/forgiving than many others. I've only seen a portion of the WotC's released adventures (a campaign takes me 1-2 years to run, what's the point of buying all of them?), and from that subset, B- would not by my floor... but perhaps that's just me?

"A work of stunning mediocrity that might be useful if you can find nothing else." "4 out of 5 stars!"

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, I don't know about an F. The first part of the adventure is a stone classic, and his criticisms of the changes are pretty nit-picky - I've hardly noticed them. The presentation is top tier, as always. Can't comment on the remainder of the story, which is not likely to be to my taste, but there's no way this is an F.

I'm a teacher. An F is without redeeming features.

The first part is obviously excellent, but I’m not sure this book deserves credit for it, since it’s 99% just a reprint. It should be evaluated on the new content, and on the changes it made to the old content, which it sounds like are very minor, but mostly either neutral or for the worse.

F is probably still much too harsh from what I’m hearing, but just saying, the reprinted material shouldn’t really be a factor in the assessment.

 

[mamba]

It expands on it in that it's story continues in the same area. Plot wise it doesn't need to be the same as the original which was wrapped up pretty well.

eh, in that case I can just run Icespire Peak or Princes of the Apocalypse instead, the first is in the exact same area, the other is a few miles over.

I certainly expected a better integration than this, and to add insult to injury, most of the LMoP changes just made that worse without integrating it any better

 

[mamba]

Compare him to someone like Dungeons & Discourse

didn’t recognize the name, but yeah, it is that woman that always gets a thumbs down when YT recommends her. Worst D&D youtuber I have come across

 

[LordEntrails]

I'm a teacher. An F is without redeeming features.

F+?

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

I know what MST3K is, but what do you mean be the "MST3K mantra?"

That Gamera is full of turtle meat?

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

What about a genius mindflayer not being able to solve a fairly simple puzzle?

Hand-wavy of me, but I could easily ascribe that to... they're alien intelligences. How many decades of science fiction movies do we have where we absolutely can't understand aliens. And that's before you even get into the weirdness of TNG and Darmok

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Yes, I watched the whole thing. The mid-stream player replacement thing was weird in itself, given that it was essentially a single game session split into 30-minute chunks. Nevertheless, that doesn't change my opinion of Matt Mercer as a DM. He's a great role model if you want to run a live streamed D&D show, but I wouldn't look to him as a great role model for a private home game.

I don't feel there's a huge difference between his being a role model for a streamed game vs a home DM. Is he a lot smoother now? Yes, he's had a ton of time to practice. But if you've ever seen Ashley Johnson's video of the original home game before the SHITs were forced to become Vox Machina, it still seems what he was doing at home, offline, tracks with what he runs now.


EDIT: Also including the video Liam recorded where Matt pitches bringing the game to streaming.

 

[mamba]

What is more.irritstijg is thst I think this might be WotC weakest Adventure product of the 20's so far...I'd give it a B-

wow, the worst adventure of the last 3 or 4 years, and it gets a B-, very charitable... I am starting to feel like you and Justin agree, you just express it very differently

 

[Leatherhead]

I’m actually not sure they exist anymore, but I was thinking specifically of his old “Happy Fun Hour” streams.

Well, they still exist, for now!

https://www.twitch.tv/search?term=mike%20mearls%20happy%20fun%20hour&type=videos

You are going to have to manually copy/paste that link, the auto-imbed is breaking it.