D&D 5E (2014) PotA Worth Buying?

[Jester David]

The problem with that argument is that PotA has entered a marketplace where Rise of the Runelords and Skull and Shackles already exist. So that is the competition that PotA is up against. If WotC want to be taken seriously for their adventures, they're going to have to be able to hang with the best of them.

As for how good PotA itself is: my impressions based on my partial read-through are that it's a distinct improvement on "Tyranny of Dragons", but still not all that good - I'd probably be inclined to give it the dreaded three-star review (except that I gave "Hoard..." three stars, and this one is better). And, in particular, I'm surprised at how little of this 256-page book is actually dedicated to the adventure - there's a lot of supporting material in there!

But, having said that, I am only about a quarter of the way through the book, so it's entirely possible that I might hit gold in a few more pages! So treat what I've just said with a pinch or more of salt.

But, of course, the same could be said about every adventure Paizo currently publishes. Their biggest hits were Rise of the Runelords, Skull and Shackles, and Kingmaker. With other okay selling APs being Carrion Crown, Jade Regent, and Curse of the Crimson Throne. But the majority they publish don't do as well. They've had hits and they've had misses, and they're not always what was expected. Shattered Star was expected to be a huge, popular AP and they even did a supporting mini set and Wayne Reynolds art, and it was so-so received.
They try but they don't always hit the high bar.
Even just for D&D there's a legacy for 40 years of adventures. There are some great works out there: Castle Ravenloft, Red Hand of Doom, the Giants/Drow series, Madness at Gardmore Abby, and more.

They just try and do their best and we have to judge the adventure as worthwhile or bad on its own merits and if it would be fun to play, or lots of work to fix.

 

[Corpsetaker]

But, of course, the same could be said about every adventure Paizo currently publishes. Their biggest hits were Rise of the Runelords, Skull and Shackles, and Kingmaker. With other okay selling APs being Carrion Crown, Jade Regent, and Curse of the Crimson Throne. But the majority they publish don't do as well. They've had hits and they've had misses, and they're not always what was expected. Shattered Star was expected to be a huge, popular AP and they even did a supporting mini set and Wayne Reynolds art, and it was so-so received.
They try but they don't always hit the high bar.
Even just for D&D there's a legacy for 40 years of adventures. There are some great works out there: Castle Ravenloft, Red Hand of Doom, the Giants/Drow series, Madness at Gardmore Abby, and more.

They just try and do their best and we have to judge the adventure as worthwhile or bad on its own merits and if it would be fun to play, or lots of work to fix.

Well when it comes to adventures I would rather see Paizo throw enough mud at the wall and eventually it stick than Wizards option and put out very very few adventures which leaves a really high chance of people being disappointed because they didn't do well. Look at Paizo and look at D&D when it comes to adventures. In Paizo's short life compared to D&D's, they have produced a good many memorable adventures while D&D has really only produced a few in 40 years!

Over all the current adventures for Wizards are just meh. While you can pull them apart and use something here and there, the story quality is dull, predictable, cliche, and sometimes just flat out silly. Seems like Chris Perkins MO all day long. I really think they should give full control to the 3rd party people they hire and go from there.

 

[Zardnaar]

If most people take it as a bad thing, then it's a bad thing. It really doesn't matter if some dictionary definition paints it in neutral tones, or if you feel neutral about it. All that matters is how it comes across to most people - and it comes across as a negative to most people. We've run a sufficiently large test right here at EnWorld and the Wizards boards, seen the reactions of a sizable number of D&D fans, and can draw at least some conclusions from that sample that it's being taken as a negative. So, it's a negative in this context - even if you disagree, even if a dictionary disagrees.



Missed the point by a mile. Not as good AS WHAT? It's a "WOTC" adventure when talking about a comparison to "Paizo adventures". But it's a Sasquatch Game Studio adventure when talking about the business end and outsourcing. It's a disingenuous moving standard. When Richard Baker, Stephen Schubert, and David Noonan write a Pathfinder adventure, there is none of this crap about outsourcing. And when that Pathfinder adventure is compared, it's compared based on reviews.



Well Tyranny got a 75%, and Rise got an 85%. So, that's consistent with the reviews. Second Darkness got 50% by the way.



They hit and exceeded that standard with PotA (which is the thread topic). PotA is at 91.5%, with a lot of reviews in. In a comparison: Rise is at 85%, Second Darkness is at 50%, Skull & Shackles is at 79%, Kingmaker is at 70.5%. How is that not them being worthy of mention alongside those adventures? It got the best rating, it had a larger sample size for that rating, seems like it's fair to mention it along side those other fine adventures as also a fine adventure.



Agreed, and they do. They shouldn't however have a different standard. They should not be treated as "outsourcing" when other companies don't get treated that way for identical authorship of their adventures. They shouldn't get treated as "the Reviews section isn't good enough of a standard" when comparing reviews, when it was considered perfectly good for rating the adventures of other companies. It's the constant double standard that I don't like - the shifting of goals and criteria whenever focusing on a WOTC product in ways that are never done for the products of other companies.



When you read the reviews - which is obvious you have not done so - you will see it would be very difficult to post any of those reviews without having at least read it. They're written (obviously) by people who have read the adventures and put the time in to provide a review. They're not just pat "Oh wow this is awesome!".

The second part of your comment is my point about double standards. This isn't the WOTC board full of WOTC fans just posting automatic positive reviews. And for years WOTC wasn't even publishing anything for the game and this board was full of Pathfinder fans who were honestly and sincerely reviewing Pathfinder products - there is nothing about the reviews of those Pathfinder adventures that suggests anything was being skewed or unfairly reviewed or reviewed by people who never read the adventure. And nobody has ever complained (that I am aware of) that the reviews for those Pathfinder adventures were anything other than fair and rationale and well thought out honest reviews. That system was perfectly good for Pathfinder reviews.

But now comes WOTC products, a couple of their products got positive reviews (not even all of them - as I said, Tyranny isn't stacking up so well), and suddenly that entire Reviews section is being questioned with the implication it's flawed and shouldn't be trusted in any way.

It's a double standard. Obviously so, to anyone paying attention. It's unwarrented. The Reviews section is a good one. It's not going to be perfect, as no system is perfect. But it's pretty darn good, and it's not being unduly biased by over the top fans in any particular direction. It's not biased in favor of WOTC products and their fans, any more than the Pathfinder adventure reviews were being biased. It's a reasonable fair, thoughtful, thorough, and honest Reviews section. It is that for Paizo products, and it is that for WOTC products. And it's a double standard and disingenuous to pretend otherwise, but only suddenly when WOTC products are being reviewed.

HotDQ had high initial reviews and then people actually played it. and it has gone from 80% down to 51% in the reviews. I saw that PotA was reviewed well but on various boards I read to many mixed things about it. It doesn't attract the negativity of HotDQ though which I did buy along with RoT. 5E looks really good due to art work and positive reviews of HotDQ tended to mention that while negative reviews came from people who actually played it.

Thats why I mentioned Kingmaker, Skull and Shackles(good reviews) and RotRL (best Paizo AP). In theory PotA is rated better but others are saying its not as good which means for whatever reason the reviews of PotA are wrong. Is it actually better than Paizos "best" APs?

How bad is the megadungeon thing? I am not really into megadungeons. Some Paizo APs are not great and neither is HotDQ IMHO so its not like I expect everything by Paizo/WotC is going to be good.

 

[Jester David]

Well when it comes to adventures I would rather see Paizo throw enough mud at the wall and eventually it stick than Wizards option and put out very very few adventures which leaves a really high chance of people being disappointed because they didn't do well. Look at Paizo and look at D&D when it comes to adventures. In Paizo's short life compared to D&D's, they have produced a good many memorable adventures while D&D has really only produced a few in 40 years!

Over all the current adventures for Wizards are just meh. While you can pull them apart and use something here and there, the story quality is dull, predictable, cliche, and sometimes just flat out silly. Seems like Chris Perkins MO all day long. I really think they should give full control to the 3rd party people they hire and go from there.

In theory, Paizo and WotC are producing comparable numbers of adventures: one AP a year. Paizo also does the modules, but those are more niche and likely still exist as much to support RPG Superstar as anything else. They don't do that much more.

I'm not saying the adventures don't have room to improve. The size of the adventures is certainly a factor. They're trying to cram fifteen levels of adventuring into a 256-page book. But only 120 is actual adventure. That's 8 pages per level. Even going to 195-pages means only 13-pages per level. There's simply no room to breathe in the adventure.
(It took Paizo 400-pages for Rise of the Runelords, and that was removing as much of the supplemental content as possible.)

It seems unlikely that WotC will allow their adventures to end earlier than 13th or 14th level, since the end of each adventure has to highlight some godlike being (Tiamat, the elemental princes, the demon lords). So having them start at 4th or 5th level would be preferable. But, then that conflicts with Encounters, which plays through the start of the big storyline books.
There's no idea solution that isn't going to cost more, and WotC is dead set at keeping costs dirt low.

In a perfect world though, the Encounter adventures would be a separate prequel that was a downloadable PDF. That way it could be designed for short Encounters play. It would set-up the later storyline but have its own end for people uninterested in continuing. Homegame players could start with the prequel or experienced players can skip that and jump right into the main adventure at level 5.

 

[Gradine]

Because there is a difference with regards to Pathfinder fans and D&D fans.

If you go and spend a significant amount of time on the Paizo boards and the Wizards boards, you will see a difference in the fans. Paizo fans do not hold back and will just as easily talk negative about Paizo products as they will praise them. Wizards fans are not the same, well those that frequent the Wizards boards anyway.

I mean let's use you for an example. Anytime anyone has a criticism of Wizards products you are all over them. "Did you actually play it?" You come off as very aggressive and as a defender. This type of attitude is why I don't go to the Wizards boards.

"My side is obviously more rational and objective than yours," is an irrational and subjective argument. It's not even an argument at all, really, it's a straw man edition war nerdfight thinly veiled insult directed against fans of a company and/or system on a message board forum dedicated to that company's system.

As for Princes of the Apocalypse; from just reading it it feels like a solidly put together sandbox adventure. I will probably never run it myself as I'm not a fan of sandbox adventures, but there's a lot of good stuff to steal. Overall a solid adventure, if you're in to that sort of thing. But then you could say the same of Rise, just replace "sandbox" with whatever you want to call whatever genre Rise occupies. Princes is more ripe for wholesale thievery, I feel.

 

[Jester David]

HotDQ had high initial reviews and then people actually played it. and it has gone from 80% down to 51% in the reviews. I saw that PotA was reviewed well but on various boards I read to many mixed things about it. It doesn't attract the negativity of HotDQ though which I did buy along with RoT. 5E looks really good due to art work and positive reviews of HotDQ tended to mention that while negative reviews came from people who actually played it.

Sorry, you're in error here.
The review section of ENWorld wasn't up when HotDQ launched. It was released in November, three months after HotDQ had been released. The reviews had read and many had likely played through a lot of the book.
The issue is the number of reviews. The initial few reviews just happened to be good, which gave it a high rating despite the message board response being tepid from the start. But as more people reviewed and rated the book the rating dropped as the fewer high ratings were offset by larger numbers of lower ratings to give a more accurate number. Which is the point of an aggregate review system.

PotA has been read. It has been played. Enough time has passed that if people were going to suddenly change their mind the score would have shifted already. But it hasn't. Yes, the score of HotDQ changed. But that's not relevant to the quality of PotA. Tyranny of Dragons shouldn't really enter into the discussion of evaluating if PotA is good or not.

Thats why I mentioned Kingmaker, Skull and Shackles(good reviews) and RotRL (best Paizo AP). In theory PotA is rated better but others are saying its not as good which means for whatever reason the reviews of PotA are wrong. Is it actually better than Paizos "best" APs?

Numbers matter. Only 6 people have reviews Skull & Shackles (it's not "certified") so the one average and one poor review disproportionately affect it's rating. Kingmaker is popular but also has a lot of flaws, and is divisive. People who love it, love it a lot. People who hate it, really hate it. And the new subsystem for the game is so-so.

RotRL vs PotA... that is a bit odd as I liked the former so much better. But they're totally different stories. RotRL really has a tight story, which can put people off. People really enjoy rating down story-based adventures for being "on the rails", which they don't do for sandbox adventures being open ended.

How bad is the megadungeon thing? I am not really into megadungeons. Some Paizo APs are not great and neither is HotDQ IMHO so its not like I expect everything by Paizo/WotC is going to be good.

Not into heavy dungeon crawls. Okay then. Question answered: PotA is probably not for you. Anything more is beating a dead horse.

 

[Zardnaar]

Sorry, you're in error here.
The review section of ENWorld wasn't up when HotDQ launched. It was released in November, three months after HotDQ had been released. The reviews had read and many had likely played through a lot of the book.
The issue is the number of reviews. The initial few reviews just happened to be good, which gave it a high rating despite the message board response being tepid from the start. But as more people reviewed and rated the book the rating dropped as the fewer high ratings were offset by larger numbers of lower ratings to give a more accurate number. Which is the point of an aggregate review system.

PotA has been read. It has been played. Enough time has passed that if people were going to suddenly change their mind the score would have shifted already. But it hasn't. Yes, the score of HotDQ changed. But that's not relevant to the quality of PotA. Tyranny of Dragons shouldn't really enter into the discussion of evaluating if PotA is good or not.


Numbers matter. Only 6 people have reviews Skull & Shackles (it's not "certified") so the one average and one poor review disproportionately affect it's rating. Kingmaker is popular but also has a lot of flaws, and is divisive. People who love it, love it a lot. People who hate it, really hate it. And the new subsystem for the game is so-so.

RotRL vs PotA... that is a bit odd as I liked the former so much better. But they're totally different stories. RotRL really has a tight story, which can put people off. People really enjoy rating down story-based adventures for being "on the rails", which they don't do for sandbox adventures being open ended.


Not into heavy dungeon crawls. Okay then. Question answered: PotA is probably not for you. Anything more is beating a dead horse.

Well I was thinking of getting it for one of the players as well. He is thinking of DMing.

I don't mind playing megadungeons over the years though I have run a few of them.

 

[Mistwell]

Because there is a difference with regards to Pathfinder fans and D&D fans.

If you go and spend a significant amount of time on the Paizo boards and the Wizards boards, you will see a difference in the fans. Paizo fans do not hold back and will just as easily talk negative about Paizo products as they will praise them. Wizards fans are not the same, well those that frequent the Wizards boards anyway.

I mean let's use you for an example. Anytime anyone has a criticism of Wizards products you are all over them. "Did you actually play it?" You come off as very aggressive and as a defender. This type of attitude is why I don't go to the Wizards boards.

Look, there is no reason to get personal with me. If you have an issue with me, send me a PM and we can talk about it. If you think a post of mine is out of line, report it (though I am telling you now, asking you if you played something isn't generally considered aggressive or out of line). But your view that fans are different - I disagree. Fans are pretty much fans. Fans of WOTC defend WOTC, fans of Paizo defend Paizo. I happen to like both companies (and I happen to be running adventures from both companies right now for 5e), but if I say something nice about WOTC I am labelled a fan boy of WOTC, and if I say something nice about Paizo I am labelled a fan boy of Paizo. What yah gonna do?

 

[Mistwell]

HotDQ had high initial reviews and then people actually played it. and it has gone from 80% down to 51% in the reviews.

It's not 51% but yes, your point is well taken. But we already got to that point on PotA. Enough time has passed - the same time that passed for HotDQ to drop, and it has not dropped. In fact as Jester points out, it was really pretty quick that HotDQ dropped as the review section wasn't even here for the initial part. So how long are you planning to wait for it to drop? I suggest you're going to wait forever. I don't think it's going to appreciably drop if you gave it another month or two. It's already had the initial positive spin wear off I think. That initial positive spin only lasts around a half-dozen reviews, often with no critics. It has 32 reviews, 8 of which are critics. I think you're safe.

Thats why I mentioned Kingmaker, Skull and Shackles(good reviews) and RotRL (best Paizo AP). In theory PotA is rated better but others are saying its not as good which means for whatever reason the reviews of PotA are wrong. Is it actually better than Paizos "best" APs?

It seems to be roughly equivalent to those apparently. I don't think you can ever get as fine a level of detail to really rank one "better". But I think you can fairly say it's "right around there". The "others are saying" is a much smaller sample size than the reviews themselves, which is why I'd trust (and society in general trusts) reviews more than "a couple guys on the internet who didn't bother to write a review" level.

I think you're doing the right thing in asking those who have played it what's in it, and what their experiences are like, so you can see if they match your tastes. I am just warning - I think a lot of guys instinctively respond "it's awesome" or "it sucks" based on their company preferences without ever actually reading or playing the adventure. So, I would trust those who give details about their play experience more than those who do not. And you will note I've never commented on it one way or the other (I am sure people assume I like it - but I have not said that, and I have not reviewed it).

If you care about my opinion, I can say I've recently run the first part of Savage Tides, and I've also been playing in the first part of PotA. I would say I like the first part of Savage Tides more than the first part of PotA, but both are very good adventures. Savage Tides is much more of a railroad than I like, but it's a good rail road so far. PotA is much more sandbox, but I am finding the NPCs a tad less memorable, the settings and set pieces a bit less detailed and interesting, than Savage Tides. I have heard the second part of Savage Tides isn't to some people's tastes - but until I get there I won't know if that is the case for me or not. I've also heard PotA gets better, but again until I get there I won't know if that is the case for my preferences or not. And so far I'd say both are worth buying and playing, for sure, and are light years better than most of the adventures out there.

 

[Nebulous]

Something I'm noticing in the sandbox-y LMoP is that there's a bit of an issue with the Orcus On His Throne style villains, where they just sort of sit in their lairs being ambiguously evil until the party is yanked into their dungeon and start shakin' up the joint. I'm finding it not the most fun in play - it seems like there's no real consideration given to the possible failure state, which means that the adventure as a whole is rather frustratingly un-fail-able. Oh, sure, you could have a TPK, but then nothing changes and the next group doesn't, STORY OVER.

Sad to see that PotA has that issue, too! I was hoping it was growing pains.

Active villains don't seem to be a major issue with the Tyranny of Dragons adventures. Seems like from the first episode, they're pretty pro-active in their goals, based on my small experience.

That is true, and it is something I addressed early on in LMoP and once they reached the final lair I addressed it again by giving the Black Spider minions that spoke in his voice so that the PCs got to interact with him for a few sessions first. Glad I did because they killed him in 1 round!!!

Anyway, this reminds me, does Princes actually HAVE a main villain or is that shared equally among the 4 Prophets and ultimately the Elemental Lords themselves? I'm suspecting that the Fire Prophet is the worst of them all.

Anyway, I do not plan to run Princes past 10th or 12th level, and the PCs are nearly 6th. I'm going to find ways to trim it. I suspect that the "wash rinse repeat" nature of clearing out a Keep, then a Temple, then a sub-Temple might get old. Maybe not. And yeah, they can get into harder than they can handle situations, but ultimately that is up to the DM to decide. And i think that once my players realize how tough the opposition is, they're not going to try it alone, they're going to recruit help from SOMEWHERE. I can see them spearheading a strike squad of 50 soldiers into a Temple, and maybe that's the kind of assault it needs.

But that's also what makes the sandbox nature of PotA fun to me, I don't know what's going to happen next and I try to run with the player's ideas.