D&D 5E (2014) Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[Gorck]

Speaking of long term adventures, how do people feel about Call of the Netherdeep? I never seem to see it mentioned whenever adventures get brought up in threads. Has anybody here ever run it, or played it? Is it any good? I was thinking of running it for my daughter and her cousins if I can ever wrangle them up and convince them to play D&D.

 

[pukunui]

Speaking of long term adventures, how do people feel about Call of the Netherdeep? I never seem to see it mentioned whenever adventures get brought up in threads. Has anybody here ever run it, or played it? Is it any good? I was thinking of running it for my daughter and her cousins if I can ever wrangle them up and convince them to play D&D.

It’s one of the few 5e books I’ve haven’t bought, largely based on both JA’s review and the reviews of people here at EN World. To whit: it’s railroady, messy, and the whole rivals thing is implemented poorly.

EDIT: @Paul Farquhar‘s playthrough thread: https://www.enworld.org/threads/call-of-the-netherdeep-playthrough-commentary-spoilers.689875/

 

[darjr]

Witchlight was excellent? WITCHLIGHT?

But yeah I generally like a lot of the adventures that have been put out.

Longer term adventures are hard. While they often have some issues that need to be addressed (NEED in some cases) they are still some of the best quality campaign length adventures you can get.

I love Whitchlight. I've run it several times now. People have cried a the end and cheered. One game we had to clean up spilled food and drink cause the table jumped to their feet cheering when the

Spoiler

Jabberwocky was beheaded with Snicker Snak at the last second with only one player standing

.

Anecdotal I know. While I do think I'm OK at gming, to get so many great responses out of one adventure is pretty great.

 

[Remathilis]

It’s one of the few 5e books I’ve haven’t bought, largely based on both JA’s review and the reviews of people here at EN World. To whit: it’s railroady, messy, and the whole rivals thing is implemented poorly.

If I had a dollar for every D&D adventure where that wasn't accused of at least one of those things, I could retire and write my own railroady, messy, and implemented poorly modules.

 

[This Effin’ GM]

I love Whitchlight. I've run it several times now. People have cried a the end and cheered. One game we had to clean up spilled food and drink cause the table jumped to their feet cheering when the

Spoiler

Jabberwocky was beheaded with Snicker Snak at the last second with only one player standing

.

Anecdotal I know. While I do think I'm OK at gming, to get so many great responses out of one adventure is pretty great.

I was being hyperbolic, but now that I know YOU like it DarJr, I hate it. I HATE IT NOW.

;-) That sounds like a lot of fun

 

[DEFCON 1]

If I had a dollar for every D&D adventure where that wasn't accused of at least one of those things, I could retire and write my own railroady, messy, and implemented poorly modules.

Being "railroady" was always a complaint regarding adventure paths that struck me as kinda silly. It's a storyline that is meant to carry players through 10 full levels (and probably 6 to 12 months of adventure)... of course there's going to be a central throughline and a routing of the players through it. That's why it's called a path.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Being "railroady" was always a complaint regarding adventure paths that struck me as kinda silly. It's a storyline that is meant to carry players through 10 full levels (and probably 6 to 12 months of adventure)... of course there's going to be a central throughline and a routing of the players through it. That's why it's called a path.

I don't think anything with a central throughline could ever avoid the criticism of being a railroad, but I think what people are usually talking about (or at least, ought to be) is when an adventure doesn't have enough meaningful choice-points for the PCs. If every choice leads to the same place, unchanged, it's quite a bit of a letdown.

Otherwise, I think that what a lot of people call a "railroad" is fine. Good in fact, when you have a group that will just dither if you give them too many choices (as I do).

 

[Staffan]

Being "railroady" was always a complaint regarding adventure paths that struck me as kinda silly. It's a storyline that is meant to carry players through 10 full levels (and probably 6 to 12 months of adventure)... of course there's going to be a central throughline and a routing of the players through it. That's why it's called a path.

I would go so far as to say that it's impossible to make a large-scale adventure that doesn't have a significant element of railroading in it. Those are more properly termed sourcebooks. Or, I guess, dungeons.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Being "railroady" was always a complaint regarding adventure paths that struck me as kinda silly. It's a storyline that is meant to carry players through 10 full levels (and probably 6 to 12 months of adventure)... of course there's going to be a central throughline and a routing of the players through it. That's why it's called a path.

Yeah. Honestly, you get what you pay for here.

 

[Staffan]

I don't think anything with a central throughline could ever avoid the criticism of being a railroad, but I think what people are usually talking about (or at least, ought to be) is when an adventure doesn't have enough meaningful choice-points for the PCs. If every choice leads to the same place, unchanged, it's quite a bit of a letdown.

Otherwise, I think that what a lot of people call a "railroad" is fine. Good in fact, when you have a group that will just dither if you give them too many choices (as I do).

I don't think you can have a big adventure without having the plot go through several choke points. What you can do is have parts of it being more or less sandboxy. For example, the second adventure in the PF2 Age of Ashes adventure path is a hexcrawl where you are exploring the Mwangi jungle in order to find both the villain's base of operations and destroy various magical doohickeys that protect said base. So there's a lot of freedom within that particular part, but at the end you'll have beaten the villain and stopped their part of the overall plot at which point you'll be ready for part 3 after some downtime.