Iosue
Legend
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.I'm afraid I tend to give Amazon reviews of D&D material about the same weight as the photons used to display them on my screen. That is, almost none.
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.The problem is that describing at as "a largely linear string of battles" is pretty accurate, and it's also an example of bad adventure design.
But I do not think that is a fair characterization of the style of play that KotS is designed for. KotS sets up a Good vs. Evil story. It provides PCs with motivations to progress through the dungeon that of are a higher order than "murder hobos going door to door peddling a swift death". If you had a Keep on the Borderlands set-up -- here's a keep, here are caves of monsters, go out and be somebody -- and you had the Keep on the Shadowfell dungeon, that'd be what you are describing. But 4e does not provide XP for GP, and the KotS set-up is not nearly so sandboxy. 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.This is true, and it's also a weakness in adventure design - that too often we have a whole lot of dressing around an adventure that is really "murder hobos go door-to-door peddling a swift death".
I'm personally with you in that I like adventures to provide lots of options for players so that they can make their own story, and by that standard, KotS is not written for that sort of play. But I do think there is a sizable audience out there for the kind of play it does offer: clear goals, clear villains, and the opportunity for heroic action.