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

[FallenRX]

Yeah, that's the crazy thing: there is plenty of actual issues to critique in this book, and it is fairly pedestrian, which given the prenise us a shame. But "OMG, people will get lost in this room," "why are there Hydra's in underground water systems"...?

He criticized all of that too, this is the most minor thing he brings up, and its not about anyone getting lost in the room, its about how this book has multiple locations that are just...presented worse, for no reason, just none, you still are arguing for worse, like okay man you like eating out the trash bin, doesnt mean anyone has to like it.

 

[Parmandur]

HE criticized all of that too, this is the most minor thing he brings up, and its not about anyone getting lost in the room, its about how this book has multiple locations that are just...presented worse, for no reason, just none, you still are arguing for worse, like okay man you like eating out the trash bin, doesnt mean anyone has to like it.

"Worse" by some rando bloggers personal pet peeves...? Hardly universal or objective measute, there.

It's a battle map. For a single battle encounter. No exploration occurs, and he makes oit like it is a sign of the End of Days and massive incompetence at WotC, instead of probsvly just them following a strict style guide about battle maps instead of dungeons. See also, the "umkeyed dungeon" from Chapter 1 I posted upthread. Pretty confusing...?

But I'm bowing out: please nobody respond to me in this thread again, I am done.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Just because errors like this happen frequently doesn't make them acceptable.

Well, you could ban books! It's easier to fix digital only publications.

But when I say "frequently", I'm not just talking about WotC, or 3PP, or TSR. Physics textbooks are some of the worst offenders I've come across. One had all the the omega symbols replaced with W (the standard keyboard equivalent). If you know any physics you will realise that's a lot of Ws! Another had an example question that referred to an earlier question - which had been deleted in the new edition. I could go on (and on and on). And exam papers! There is hardly a year goes by when someone doesn't come running into an exam room with a last minute errata from the board.

Mistakes happen. You can't stop them happening by calling them unacceptable.

 

[Jahydin]

The only one of those things which has the slightest relation to his skill as a designer is Advantage/Disadvantage. Which, you may have noticed, is both massively over-used and rather a frustrating ceiling in a variety of ways, such that it is no longer the absolute darling of the community.

So...yeah. Not exactly a great showing, here

Being the senior manager of R&D and a lead designer of the most successful RPG ever made has no relation to his skill as a designer?

Unless you happen to be one of the people who finds it extremely exclusive of your interests, of course. Y'know, the people whose preferences got openly mocked with edition-war rhetoric in an actual, professional podcast. Or openly mocked in an actual, published post about the playtest.

The vehicle may be any color you want, as long as the color you want is black.

Not sure what you're talking about? Would be cool if you hyperlinked the podcast. Curious what he said to upset those dozens of gamers.

Anyway, not saying he made a game that everyone loves; that's impossible.

I'm saying he took "our" D&D and made it everyone else's D&D too. Specifically, the same people who would have made fun of us now want to play with us. And at the same time, managed to entice the OSR grogs back as well. That's quite the remarkable feat!

 

[Lanefan]

We can argue semantics about what counts as a room or not, but the point is, there are three distinct portions of this map, and placing their descriptions under separate numbered headers would objectively have been a more efficient way to present the relevant information.

Or - and I've seen this done in other modules - if they wanted to have the number apply to the whole room (which I can understand) they could have given the sub-areas 'a'-'b'-'c' designations. To do so would mean adding three one-letter text fields on the map and three bolded characters in the write-up; hardly a stupendous amount of work.

Is it that big of a deal? I don’t think so. But it definitely is slightly less efficient formatting than it could have had.

Agreed.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, you could ban books! It's easier to fix digital only publications.

I'd rather the books be proofread and-or edited properly before release.

But when I say "frequently", I'm not just talking about WotC, or 3PP, or TSR. Physics textbooks are some of the worst offenders I've come across. One had all the the omega symbols replaced with W (the standard keyboard equivalent). If you know any physics you will realise that's a lot of Ws! Another had an example question that referred to an earlier question - which had been deleted in the new edition. I could go on (and on and on). And exam papers! There is hardly a year goes by when someone doesn't come running into an exam room with a last minute errata from the board.

Mistakes happen. You can't stop them happening by calling them unacceptable.

Mistakes happen, sure. Catching and fixing those mistakes before they hit the public eye is what editors and proofreaders are for, and WotC are a big enough outfit to be able to employ such. And yes, I'll cut far more slack to something done by an amateur or a one-person company than I will to something that's supposed to be professional.

The same goes for your (in this case literally!) textbook examples: the proofreader(s) and-or editor(s) flat-out failed at the job, because not catching mistakes like that - when catching them is your only job - really is unacceptable.

 

[DEFCON 1]

This is definitely one of the things I plan to address in what I’m thinking of calling “Building a Phandbox.” If it seems like there’s interest maybe I’ll just get myself a PDF copy now so I can get started instead of waiting for Christmas.

If you are going to Phandbox the Triboar Trail area... grab the Essentials Kit and the Neverwinter Campaign Setting and incorporate all those locations as well. Sure, the NCS is from 4E and thus probably a certain number of years prior to LMoP, but the locations they go on about are most likely still there in some form or fashion so you might as well add them to everything else. The Tower of Twilight and Szass Tam's Dread Ring being two locations that definitely should be incorporated into the Phandbox, as they lend themselves to the craziness that is coming about due to Far Realm incusion.

 

[Mannahnin]

Man, A's an B's are doing a LOT of heavy lifting there.

I actively loathe a scoring system like that. What's wrong with A) It's great. B) It's good. C) It's good, but has some problems. C-) It's not totally without merit, but almost. D) It's actively terrible. F) It is incomplete/awful/offensive.

I know. It wasn't an entirely serious post.

You're right that it seems to look like that's the method. Having a store, I always laugh at Google Out-of-Five Reviews, too. Most of the time, we get 5-star reviews: "Great Selection well organized!" or we get 1-star reviews, "The guy at the counter was eating his LUNCH! AIIEEEE!!" (True story).

But, I mean, c'mon - we probably deserve 3's and 4's, really don't we? To me, 3 oughta be "perfectly fine" and 4 oughta be "better organized than most places, staff helped me out". 5 really oughta be "Above and Beyond". But that's not how the world works these days! If it's not 10/10, IT'S CRAP.

Yes, I've been trying to push against this trend for around twenty years, but it's definitely entrenched. Look at the Net Promoter Score used as a KPI by so many businesses today. The typical question is "How likely are you to recommend us to your friends and family?"And the only scores which count for the metrics are normally an 8+. Anything below an 8 is undesirable.

 

[doctorhook]

Yeah, the obvious move would have seemed to have been to combine it with the Essentials Set box (and put out a replacement Essentials Set to make Target happy) and maybe follow the dangling threads from the original adventures to higher level. (Seriously, what is the Spellforge for?)

Fully agreed. Dragon of Icespire Peak was definitely a less cohesive, less complete adventure than Lost Mine of Phandelver, but it did flesh out the same area to an extent.

But when I previously suggested that this new product should integrate both and make a thorough mini-setting of the Phandalin region, I got a lot of flak comments to the tune of “This book is already going to be 50% reprint and you want it to be even more redundant?!?!?” No, I want it to integrate and synthesize the existing materials. Big missed opportunity here by WotC.

 

[Ibrandul]

The same goes for your (in this case literally!) textbook examples: the proofreader(s) and-or editor(s) flat-out failed at the job, because not catching mistakes like that - when catching them is your only job - really is unacceptable.

While this is certainly true, it’s also true that editing and proofing are very difficult tasks, and mistakes are bound to slip past even the most careful of us every once in a while. That’s why you build in redundancy—the editor, the copy editor, and the proofreader ideally will be three different sets of eyes.

The most egregious error I’ve seen in a professional publication was in the first American edition of the Elric novel The White Wolf’s Son from Warner Books (or possibly one of the other books in that trilogy—it’s been about twenty years since I read that library copy): there were two instances of sentences like (I’m fabricating the example because I don’t remember the actual sentences, but the key word is accurate) “The statue began to meLieutenant Soon it was a pool of gold.”

Find-replace is no one’s friend!