I don't agree that they were quite on the right track with the Red Box 4E.
That product had too many shortcomings for my tastes: not enough levels, you could only create a character by running through the same adventure again, not enough options, and limited replayability. How many people actually played that Red Box adventure more than a week or a month?
As I said elsewhere, it is my opinion that the 4e Red Box is a pretty awful product, for many of the reasons you give. However, it had a specific purpose: to get new people trying the game. And, according to Mearls' comments on the topic, by all accounts it was actually successful in that aim. Bad product or not, it did what it was supposed to do.
(And, as I
also said elsewhere, I'm far from convinced the 4e Red Box is actually any worse at converting people who try the game into full-blown gamers than the 80's Red Box I started with - I expect that even in the days of the full-blown D&D fan, many if not most people tried it a couple of times and then threw the box into a closet, never to be looked at again.)
Certainly, they don't have any more or less validity than forum polls. OTOH, in the aggregate they can show general reaction to a work, and from a wider sample than forum polls or posts.
Sure, but you'd need a far larger number of posts to convince me, especially in light of the Edition Wars surrounding 4e. As noted, far too many people had an agenda (for or against 4e) for me not to question those reviews.
I have to disagree with this. Adventures, like games and playstyles, aren't generally by design good or bad, only good or bad for a particular group. Of course an adventure can be written badly, as in the case of the The Forest Oracle, but I don't think KotS falls under that rubric. It may be too linear for some folks, it may be too combat heavy for some folks. But I think there's an audience for that kind of adventure.
And, in turn, I disagree. I believe there is such a thing as good and bad design, in adventures as anything else, and that that is independent of whether a particular group happens to have a good time with a particular adventure. If a group happens not to see any of the flaws in a given adventure, does that mean those flaws aren't there? Surely not!
This post, by Mercurius, says it far better than I - see his comparison of "Pliny the Elder" vs Budweiser - as he says, there's nothing wrong with liking Bud, nor even of preferring Bud to the alternative. But that doesn't mean that Bud is the better beer.
The adventure provides an overwhelmingly good reason to clear out the dungeon --evil cultists threatening the town along with a number of plot hooks both personal and general, and the game is set-up around XP for clearing Encounters and Quests. It's classic Paladins & Princesses play, and I think it's appealing to a lot of folks.
It's a whole lot of words, around what boils down to: here's a dungeon; go kill everything.
Suppose the PCs decide that, instead of killing everything, they'll instead go up there and convert the cultists back to Good. What support does KotS provide for that?
Suppose they decide to sneak in, find the cult leaders, kill them, and thus disperse the cult. What support does KotS provide for that?
Suppose they decide to disguise themselves as cultists, infiltrate the cult, and deal with them that way. What support does KotS provide for that?
In fact, what support does it provide for
any approach that doesn't, ultimately, involve killing the bad guys?
Now, in fairness, KotS is very far from being the only offender in this regard. In fact, it's probably the norm amongst adventures. And that's okay - it makes for a competent, functional adventure. But I believe there can be better - if we're talking about
good adventures, then I want more than competent and functional.
