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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Retreater" data-source="post: 8931878" data-attributes="member: 42040">I've always considered "bloat" a negative description - at least when I was in college that's how my writing professor would call stuff that was unnecessarily wordy. Like if a writer kept trying to explain the same thing, over and over, without giving new information. Using a lot of words to make a point. But those words didn't really mean anything, were without any real meaning. And they would keep doing this, word after word, paragraph after paragraph, page after page, chapter after chapter. As if getting up to a certain page count was virtuous, even if they had nothing really to say. They just kept writing. And the editors didn't cut out unnecessary descriptions. Because they thought the readers enjoyed thick books that really said nothing, but that those who read them preferred books with a lot of words (even if those words didn't really add anything to the readers' understanding of the content.)So we keep getting these products like this. Where writers can just write anything but they don't really tell us anything useful. I think it's because the company is desperate for more hardcover books to be released even though there's really nothing interesting left to write (and certainly they don't want to do it out of fear of alienating fans). So this kind of boring content keeps getting published, month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year. And it's not exciting. You don't want to read it. You don't feel inspired. There's this sheen of corporate gloss painted over everything - and every color is muted and every idea is diluted - until every page seems murky, like a baby-poop beige color. And people keep buying stuff that is not inspired, original, or useful.But it's the same thing you just read.<s> Radiant Citadel? Strixhaven? Keys of the Radiant Strixmaiden Dragon Queen Treasury Hoard?</s>[Edit: since I haven't purchased and read through Radiant Citadel, Strixhaven, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, Keys from the Golden Vault, or Shadow of the Dragon Queen, I'm removing the reference that they might suffer from bloat. However, I am standing by that Rime of the Frostmaiden and Hoard of the Dragon Queen are not great adventures, in my opinion - since I have DMed them. I will also continue to say that the language used in many official products is verbose, clunky, and not very great at conveying game mechanics.]</blockquote>

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