Throw me a bone, WOTC! [Twilight Tomb]

[WizarDru]

Erm. Really?
Editing-wise.... they're much worse.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. Have you been reading John Cooper's reviews lately?

 

[darthkilmor]

Here's what bugs me: it makes a lot of use of supplemental material, including (IIRC) Libris Mortis, Unapproachable East, Lost Empires of Faerun, MM3, and others. Which is actually good to a point: it puts the other material to work, and of course the stats for the non-core stuff is included ... sort of. That's the real problem. Using a creature or class from a supplement, they include a stat block ... but there's no description of what the creature is! All stats, no context!

It couldn't be to try and get ppl to buy those supplemental books just to make the published adventure make sense could it ? Probably not though, stupidity before malice and all that.

 

[eris404]

I think monster descriptions are probably the least necessary thing in an adventure. Either the DM has the book the creature is from and can look it up or he can just make up what the thing looks like. My guess is that if an editor needs to trim the word count of an adventure product that would be the first thing to go.

 

[Voadam]

I'm glad the stat blocks are at least sufficient to run the fight. No physical descriptions at all though? Not in boxed text or a picture? D&D is more than dice rolling and a module should provide the DM with everything needed to run the adventure. At least with a complete stat block you can swap it out for a similar CR creature from a source you have that you do have a description for.

 

[Arnwyn]

Erm. Really?

Yes, really.

I do agree with WotC's decision to not include Unapproachable East and Lost Empires of Faerun stuff - those are FR books, and FR DMs should have FR books (especially UE, in this case, as the adventure itself takes place there). But non-core, non-FR material? Bad, WotC. Bad. (And this is a rather disgraceful trend for a bunch of more recent FR books - especially those written by Boyd. Big problems, there.)

 

[Pants]

I wouldn't be so sure of that.

I would.
Dragon Compendium was utterly terrible, terrible.

They've gotten quite a bit better but there was a spree where they were doing a pretty shoddy job.

Have you been reading John Cooper's reviews lately?

And yes I have. Aside from one or two, his latest reactions seem to be 'much better.'

 

[teitan]

Hey, sounds like the good old days of TSR!!!

 

[ssampier]

Hey, sounds like the good old days of TSR!!!

I'd say, "Please refer to Book XYZ for a description of WJFKEDJFKJ class and Book ZYX for Wjkfjdkjfkdj spells." You'd need half a library to get the full value out of any book. I am sad to see this trend reoccuring.