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

[mamba]

I know there are other Dragon Age fans around here, so I’ll toss this out there: in my games, the Harpers are basically like the Friends of Red Jenny. A grassroots anti-establishment movement, with no centralized leadership structure, just common folk acting stochastically against oppressive nobles using a common title. Sometimes local “Harper cells” might arise organically as a result of people who frequently find themselves engaging in Harper-related activity together, but there’s no actual greater power structure. Though, most people who would call themselves Harpers are perfectly happy letting the nobles think there is.

that does not seem to mesh with the D&D movie

 

[Staffan]

Yeah, the pins have always seemed really silly to me, especially for the harpers, who are ostensibly supposed to be spies… I also never know what to make of the Zhentarim, as their behavior openly villainous to me, yet for some reason they’re just… allowed to operate unobstructed? Also, players can join them? Like, it’s one thing to have a designated morally-gray playable faction, but the Zhents just seem straight-up evil to me.

OG Zhentarim were basically the Hydra of the Realms: generic villains up to no good, and there's always more where they come from. 5e tried to make them more like Mafia propaganda: yes, they do some bad stuff, but they like things to go smooth and handle things with finesse, and they're folks you can make business arrangements with. The "I don't want the Cult of the Dragon to summon Tiamat because that would be bad for business" types. But I guess writers leaned more on the old school Zhentarim, particularly once they became less of an AL thing.

 

[Charlaquin]

that does not seem to mesh with the D&D movie

So?

 

[darjr]

you called it changing the subject. Changing the subject can only happen in context, if it is not part of the review but an addendum, then it was simply focusing on one point that sparked discussion since the review was posted.

If a newspaper has a different headline story tomorrow, is that changing the subject too?


I guess we will see

Should probably move this to another thread.

He can’t post here. His only option was to respond elsewhere. And then his response was linked here.

I dint think these things should always be limited to this single place. I did think this counted. Especially after it was brought up in the thread.

And he posted the blog. I didn’t think it as appropriate to point at who brought it up in thread. It was part of a wider conversation.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Should probably move this to another thread.

He can’t post here. His only option was to respond elsewhere. And then his response was linked here.

I dint think these things should always be limited to this single place. I did think this counted. Especially after it was brought up in the thread.

And he posted the blog. I didn’t think it as appropriate to point at who brought it up in thread. It was part of a wider conversation.

I posted it in the thread as additional point to add what was being discussed. I never believed or implied that it was the main thrust of the discussion of the product's flaws. For some reason you've become rather monomaniacally fixated on that single point?

 

[darjr]

I posted it in the thread as additional point to add what was being discussed. I never believed or implied that it was the main thrust of the discussion of the product's flaws. For some reason you've become rather monomaniacally fixated on that single point?

I…. Recently I’ve mostly only responded to folks in this thread.

Also I’ve never claimed it was a central focus of the review. I posted MYSELF that I thought it was weird he picked it for his response.

 

[mamba]

So?

just noticing

 

[pukunui]

just noticing

I would argue that the Harpers’ portrayal in the D&D movie isn’t all that consistent with their portrayal in the game (historically or current). It works fine in the context of the movie, but I wouldn’t hold up the movie and say, “This is how the Harpers are supposed to work.”

 

[mamba]

I would argue that the Harpers’ portrayal in the D&D movie isn’t all that consistent with their portrayal in the game (historically or current). It works fine in the context of the movie, but I wouldn’t hold up the movie and say, “This is how the Harpers are supposed to work.”

I am not arguing against it, haven't really been paying much attention to the FR setting, I prefer DL and Dark Sun, by a lot. FR always was too generic for me to care (yeah, DL is not much less generic). I just assumed the movie would pick up on the lore, they could just as well have used a different organization.

 

[FallenRX]

Remixing the Shattered Obelisk

In my review of The Shattered Obelisk, I said that buying the book in the hopes that you could remix it would be a bad idea: The book would actually have a negative value compared to just reading th

thealexandrian.net

He made a post about "remixing" the shattered obelisk.
Well kinda, its basically him saying their is nothing worth remixing your better off just taking the core concept and maps and making a actually good adventure taking the core ideas, and giving advice on how to do that.