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Raiders of the Serpent Sea - Third Party 5E Review
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<blockquote data-quote="Sparky McDibben" data-source="post: 9202336" data-attributes="member: 7041430"><p>Glad to have you along for the ride!</p><p></p><p></p><p>Always happy to see you, my friend!</p><p></p><p></p><p>I remember thinking that, too. I was trying to setup a pointcrawl, and while it gave me plenty to populate the actual points, the mechanism of getting from point A to point B just wasn't coming together for me. </p><p></p><p>Alright, so, let's go over the Introduction, which is 25 (!) pages long (Remember when I said they were wordy? Apparently they're going for the Matt Colville Verbosity Award*). Now I've got my snark worked off, so we can dive in! The Introduction has a lot of work they're trying to do. They need to introduce the DM to the world, distinguish it from the baseline heroic fantasy, setup what is going on, what the characters are supposed to be doing. It does this...eventually.</p><p></p><p>We start off with the hilariously badly titled section: Story Overview. The reason it is badly titled is because it does not actually deal with the story of the adventure. It covers that there was a brief cataclysm in the Lost Lands, which resulted in the folks who live in this world fleeing to Grimnir (the world this adventure is set in, which is a flat plane nestling in the boughs of a world tree). Anyway, these folks got here, and then they split into a bunch of different clans and minor kingships. These groups are roughly split between the raiders (Vikings - they don't call them Vikings, but that's what Viking roughly translates to) and Baendur (non-Vikings? I guess? Schmucks-Who-Get-Raided was too wordy for them, I suppose). Anyway, it also covers the fact that the end of the world is this big fight called Ragnarök.</p><p></p><p>(Did you know that this adventure is Norse-inspired? The writers really want you to feel that Norse theming). And this leads into my first gripe: Can we get a pronunciation guide? Yeah, I know, I can Google a lot of this and cobble my own together, but if you're going to put a bunch of diacritical marks in my gaming material, could you please tell me how they are pronounced?</p><p></p><p>Next, we cover The Villains! There's four:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Matron - Secretly a Yotun (evil bunch who caused that cataclysm in the Lost Lands) but who has a disguise and some other crap going on. Littlefinger but with magic type.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Witchking - Tool of the Matron, and her puppet. Yay.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Mirgal - Superpowerful magic boi who kind of accidentally blew up the Lost Lands but sacrificed themselves to evac the not-Vikings and Vikings to Grimnir. Later it's explicitly called out that he never shows up, so...how is he a villain?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Hel - Goddess of the Dead. Daughter of the Matron and Mirgal, more of a villain by circumstance than a real bad guy.</li> </ul><p></p><p>And this brings me to my second complaint, which is really around layout. For me to really care about the characters, I need a context to place them in. And that means that I need to know what the hell is going on in the adventure. What are the villain's goals and intent? What is their plan? How do the heroes cross their path?</p><p></p><p>A list of names with a sidebar cautioning me to avoid spoiling the twist? Less than useful, y'all. I don't know what the twist is; Hel, I don't even know <em>that</em> there's a twist.</p><p></p><p>Next we get a quick description of the World of Grimnir (It's big! It's primal!), the History of Grimnir (read the <em>Player's Guide!</em> Not kidding - that's the advice), and the Primal Powers (three gods which are still sort-of-extant). And then we get a really beautiful map - and I mean <em>gorgeous</em>. It's annoyingly split between two pages, but here they are:</p><p></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/DQFTJqg.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/ECe9XkU.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Check out that freaking cartography. Absolutely gorgeous! And I love how they've worked in fjords everywhere on the main continent and surrounding islands. That's subtle, but the nature of the fjords dictates the nature of longships in our real world, and including it here is a really good call.</p><p></p><p>After that we get into the Stone Court - gods trapped as living statues. Why haven't the primal powers let them loose? Because the plot had to happen! Why are you asking such silly questions?</p><p></p><p>After that, we get into the afterlife for the various raiders (you want to go to the Halls of the Slain), go more into detail about the raider / Baendur dichotomy, and a brief coverage of a bunch of locations. Then we go over the various clans of the Grimnir, including a picture of their shield art, where they live and their view of Ragnarok (I'm not going to put the ö in every time; my apologies).</p><p></p><p>Why should I care about these folks? No idea. What role do they play in the story? No idea! Did I retain any of that information? No idea! Again, if I don't have a good idea about why they matter, I'm not going to care.</p><p></p><p>So it's a good thing that the very next section is the Adventure Overview! And it actually overviews the adventure! Hallelujah (or Norse equivalent)!</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="BioWare Trope Alert!"]</p><p>BioWare games have an interesting structural model called the "Lakes and Rivers" model. The idea is that each lake is an area in the story the PCs are able to explore and mess around in until they're ready to progress the plot. Then they go in a river that funnels their choices into a fairly tight decision set. Once you've completed a river, you get dumped into the next lake.</p><p></p><p>This product does you the favor of calling this structure out, showing what lakes get unlocked by what rivers.</p><p>[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER="BioWare Trope Alert!"]</p><p>BioWare games are also famous for their variable endings, based on the decisions of the characters. In Raiders of the Serpent Sea, they helpfully flag meaningful decisions that will affect the outcome with a little red raven symbol. There's also a little tracker sheet in Appendix B that helpfully lets you keep track of all of those decision points.</p><p>[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>Next up we have a quick section on starting the campaign, including exactly two hooks: 1) A bunch of seers sent you on an expedition to a tower, and 2) Hey! Y'all wanna go check out that tower? I really would have wanted more options, but I suppose as long as have more than one, it works?</p><p></p><p>After that, we have a bunch of "floating" encounters. Except, they're not really floating encounters - most of these are situated firmly in various other chapters. So why are they in the introduction, and not in the chapters they go in?</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://media1.giphy.com/media/ihAUjbSzmsqDDKckUP/200.gif" alt="I Dont Know Tim And Eric GIF by Adult Swim" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Also... Jesus, does it feel like this is starting to drag? I feel like this is starting to drag. Time for something completely different:</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://media0.giphy.com/media/CLrEXbY34xfPi/200.gif" alt="spanish time GIF" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Ah, Monty Python. Never change, you mad wankers.</p><p></p><p>Now, where was I? Oh yes, I'm STILL ON THE FREAKING INTRODUCTION. Moving on:</p><p></p><p>We get a quick plug in for the epic backgrounds. There are more details in the Players' Guide, but this section details how each background weaves into the story. This isn't innovative (they did the same thing in <em>Odyssey of the Dragonlords</em>), but it's well done and DMs are encouraged to expand on the backgrounds and their impact. There are only a couple that are poorly written, most notably the Royal Heir and the Cursed One. Both of which have some plot holes in them so big I feel they need a visual reference:</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><img src="https://verysimpl.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Sarlacc-you-don-t-have-to-go-to-a-galaxy-far-far-away-to-see-these-5-real-life-star-wars-aliens-755938-300x222.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>After that we get a quick guide to the adventure's chapters by level:</p><p><img src="https://i.imgur.com/DyG9Fjz.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p></p><p>Finally, to close this beast out, we get a quick discussion of how to adjust party level, party size, inspirational media, content warnings, etc. Except all of that is mostly "Go look at the GM's Reference, ya nerd." So...not a great use of page space here.</p><p></p><p>And that, blessedly, is the end of the Introduction. As an aside, I was curious, so I checked the 5E PHB, and the entire equipment section is only 80% of this book's introduction (20 pages, vs 25). Truly, these are the times that try men's souls**.</p><p></p><p>My general verdict is that the Introduction accomplished its goals, but did so in the most meandering way possible. I'm going to harp on this a bunch during this review, but <em>layout matters.</em> My eyes glazed over the third time they started talking about some random god without giving me any context for how many f**cks I should give. This is partially a stylistic thing, but I think it's more than possible to have a tightly woven story without wasting your reader's time. And if you're going to meander, the trip had better be worth the view. Fortunately, there was some good material here, once we have the context to appreciate it. My gripe, to be clear, is the organization and presentation of the material, not necessarily the material itself. This world sounds amazing! Primal Vikings, raiding across the Serpent Sea! Hell yeah! I'm definitely grabbing a bunch of monsters from <em>Planegea</em> to throw in here, because frankly, these two settings sound like peanut butter and chocolate! The gods have (mostly) turned to stone! Kickass! Now my cleric player has a built in reason to adventure! It sounds amazing!</p><p></p><p>It just sucks that I had to dig that hard to get to the good stuff.</p><p></p><p>Alright, friends! I've got to go handle a bunch of not-chinchillas who broke out of a not-ranch, but in the meantime I would love to see your criticisms, thoughts, and feedback! Let me know if I'm wrong, or if you just have questions!</p><p></p><p>* Yeah, I know Colville isn't that bad, but I took three weeks off the forums, so I have an excess of snark to work through. If you wanted zero snark, let me know in the thread. No guarantees.</p><p></p><p>** Look, I'm sure that if Mr. Paine had to endure either a) the horrors of Valley Forge, or b) a pack of ex-Bioware devs info-dumping on him for 25 pages, he would have probably chosen Valley Forge. I don't feel like that's a controversial statement, but I invite spirited debate.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Sparky McDibben, post: 9202336, member: 7041430"] Glad to have you along for the ride! Always happy to see you, my friend! I remember thinking that, too. I was trying to setup a pointcrawl, and while it gave me plenty to populate the actual points, the mechanism of getting from point A to point B just wasn't coming together for me. Alright, so, let's go over the Introduction, which is 25 (!) pages long (Remember when I said they were wordy? Apparently they're going for the Matt Colville Verbosity Award*). Now I've got my snark worked off, so we can dive in! The Introduction has a lot of work they're trying to do. They need to introduce the DM to the world, distinguish it from the baseline heroic fantasy, setup what is going on, what the characters are supposed to be doing. It does this...eventually. We start off with the hilariously badly titled section: Story Overview. The reason it is badly titled is because it does not actually deal with the story of the adventure. It covers that there was a brief cataclysm in the Lost Lands, which resulted in the folks who live in this world fleeing to Grimnir (the world this adventure is set in, which is a flat plane nestling in the boughs of a world tree). Anyway, these folks got here, and then they split into a bunch of different clans and minor kingships. These groups are roughly split between the raiders (Vikings - they don't call them Vikings, but that's what Viking roughly translates to) and Baendur (non-Vikings? I guess? Schmucks-Who-Get-Raided was too wordy for them, I suppose). Anyway, it also covers the fact that the end of the world is this big fight called Ragnarök. (Did you know that this adventure is Norse-inspired? The writers really want you to feel that Norse theming). And this leads into my first gripe: Can we get a pronunciation guide? Yeah, I know, I can Google a lot of this and cobble my own together, but if you're going to put a bunch of diacritical marks in my gaming material, could you please tell me how they are pronounced? Next, we cover The Villains! There's four: [LIST] [*]The Matron - Secretly a Yotun (evil bunch who caused that cataclysm in the Lost Lands) but who has a disguise and some other crap going on. Littlefinger but with magic type. [*]Witchking - Tool of the Matron, and her puppet. Yay. [*]Mirgal - Superpowerful magic boi who kind of accidentally blew up the Lost Lands but sacrificed themselves to evac the not-Vikings and Vikings to Grimnir. Later it's explicitly called out that he never shows up, so...how is he a villain? [*]Hel - Goddess of the Dead. Daughter of the Matron and Mirgal, more of a villain by circumstance than a real bad guy. [/LIST] And this brings me to my second complaint, which is really around layout. For me to really care about the characters, I need a context to place them in. And that means that I need to know what the hell is going on in the adventure. What are the villain's goals and intent? What is their plan? How do the heroes cross their path? A list of names with a sidebar cautioning me to avoid spoiling the twist? Less than useful, y'all. I don't know what the twist is; Hel, I don't even know [I]that[/I] there's a twist. Next we get a quick description of the World of Grimnir (It's big! It's primal!), the History of Grimnir (read the [I]Player's Guide![/I] Not kidding - that's the advice), and the Primal Powers (three gods which are still sort-of-extant). And then we get a really beautiful map - and I mean [I]gorgeous[/I]. It's annoyingly split between two pages, but here they are: [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/DQFTJqg.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/ECe9XkU.jpg[/IMG] Check out that freaking cartography. Absolutely gorgeous! And I love how they've worked in fjords everywhere on the main continent and surrounding islands. That's subtle, but the nature of the fjords dictates the nature of longships in our real world, and including it here is a really good call. After that we get into the Stone Court - gods trapped as living statues. Why haven't the primal powers let them loose? Because the plot had to happen! Why are you asking such silly questions? After that, we get into the afterlife for the various raiders (you want to go to the Halls of the Slain), go more into detail about the raider / Baendur dichotomy, and a brief coverage of a bunch of locations. Then we go over the various clans of the Grimnir, including a picture of their shield art, where they live and their view of Ragnarok (I'm not going to put the ö in every time; my apologies). Why should I care about these folks? No idea. What role do they play in the story? No idea! Did I retain any of that information? No idea! Again, if I don't have a good idea about why they matter, I'm not going to care. So it's a good thing that the very next section is the Adventure Overview! And it actually overviews the adventure! Hallelujah (or Norse equivalent)! [SPOILER="BioWare Trope Alert!"] BioWare games have an interesting structural model called the "Lakes and Rivers" model. The idea is that each lake is an area in the story the PCs are able to explore and mess around in until they're ready to progress the plot. Then they go in a river that funnels their choices into a fairly tight decision set. Once you've completed a river, you get dumped into the next lake. This product does you the favor of calling this structure out, showing what lakes get unlocked by what rivers. [/SPOILER] [SPOILER="BioWare Trope Alert!"] BioWare games are also famous for their variable endings, based on the decisions of the characters. In Raiders of the Serpent Sea, they helpfully flag meaningful decisions that will affect the outcome with a little red raven symbol. There's also a little tracker sheet in Appendix B that helpfully lets you keep track of all of those decision points. [/SPOILER] Next up we have a quick section on starting the campaign, including exactly two hooks: 1) A bunch of seers sent you on an expedition to a tower, and 2) Hey! Y'all wanna go check out that tower? I really would have wanted more options, but I suppose as long as have more than one, it works? After that, we have a bunch of "floating" encounters. Except, they're not really floating encounters - most of these are situated firmly in various other chapters. So why are they in the introduction, and not in the chapters they go in? [CENTER][IMG alt="I Dont Know Tim And Eric GIF by Adult Swim"]https://media1.giphy.com/media/ihAUjbSzmsqDDKckUP/200.gif[/IMG][/CENTER] Also... Jesus, does it feel like this is starting to drag? I feel like this is starting to drag. Time for something completely different: [CENTER][IMG alt="spanish time GIF"]https://media0.giphy.com/media/CLrEXbY34xfPi/200.gif[/IMG][/CENTER] Ah, Monty Python. Never change, you mad wankers. Now, where was I? Oh yes, I'm STILL ON THE FREAKING INTRODUCTION. Moving on: We get a quick plug in for the epic backgrounds. There are more details in the Players' Guide, but this section details how each background weaves into the story. This isn't innovative (they did the same thing in [I]Odyssey of the Dragonlords[/I]), but it's well done and DMs are encouraged to expand on the backgrounds and their impact. There are only a couple that are poorly written, most notably the Royal Heir and the Cursed One. Both of which have some plot holes in them so big I feel they need a visual reference: [CENTER][IMG]https://verysimpl.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Sarlacc-you-don-t-have-to-go-to-a-galaxy-far-far-away-to-see-these-5-real-life-star-wars-aliens-755938-300x222.jpg[/IMG][/CENTER] After that we get a quick guide to the adventure's chapters by level: [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/DyG9Fjz.png[/IMG] Finally, to close this beast out, we get a quick discussion of how to adjust party level, party size, inspirational media, content warnings, etc. Except all of that is mostly "Go look at the GM's Reference, ya nerd." So...not a great use of page space here. And that, blessedly, is the end of the Introduction. As an aside, I was curious, so I checked the 5E PHB, and the entire equipment section is only 80% of this book's introduction (20 pages, vs 25). Truly, these are the times that try men's souls**. My general verdict is that the Introduction accomplished its goals, but did so in the most meandering way possible. I'm going to harp on this a bunch during this review, but [I]layout matters.[/I] My eyes glazed over the third time they started talking about some random god without giving me any context for how many f**cks I should give. This is partially a stylistic thing, but I think it's more than possible to have a tightly woven story without wasting your reader's time. And if you're going to meander, the trip had better be worth the view. Fortunately, there was some good material here, once we have the context to appreciate it. My gripe, to be clear, is the organization and presentation of the material, not necessarily the material itself. This world sounds amazing! Primal Vikings, raiding across the Serpent Sea! Hell yeah! I'm definitely grabbing a bunch of monsters from [I]Planegea[/I] to throw in here, because frankly, these two settings sound like peanut butter and chocolate! The gods have (mostly) turned to stone! Kickass! Now my cleric player has a built in reason to adventure! It sounds amazing! It just sucks that I had to dig that hard to get to the good stuff. Alright, friends! I've got to go handle a bunch of not-chinchillas who broke out of a not-ranch, but in the meantime I would love to see your criticisms, thoughts, and feedback! Let me know if I'm wrong, or if you just have questions! * Yeah, I know Colville isn't that bad, but I took three weeks off the forums, so I have an excess of snark to work through. If you wanted zero snark, let me know in the thread. No guarantees. ** Look, I'm sure that if Mr. Paine had to endure either a) the horrors of Valley Forge, or b) a pack of ex-Bioware devs info-dumping on him for 25 pages, he would have probably chosen Valley Forge. I don't feel like that's a controversial statement, but I invite spirited debate. [/QUOTE]
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