[UPDATED] Out of the Abyss Reviews Have Started Rolling In

I just found one of the first reviews of Out of the Abyss. I thought it could be nice to keep all links to reviews in one thread, so here is the first I found:

http://diehardgamefan.com/2015/09/0...he-abyss-dungeons-dragons-fifth-editiondd-5e/

The previews have been okay, but this review is what has me stoked. This kind of adventure is right up my alley. Can't wait for it to show up!

 

[Barantor]

I run a homebrew campaign, different enough from the Realms that I expect to have to do major reworking... but am I crazy that I think that's fun? I did it with Age of Worms and it was very rewarding.

I just hope it's good, and the situations aren't just side stories for famous Realms NPCs.

I do to, I just don't want the whole campaign to be one book I've had to convert.

 

[Jester David]

This isn't completely true. When the first series of adventures for 3E came out they were setting neutral (starting with Sunless Citadel) even though it is heavily thought to be in Greyhawk, they don't specifically state that fact anywhere at all. I found this refreshing as a DM at that time, because I could set these adventures up anywhere I liked in any setting in which the story worked, without a ton of effort. There were also the Thunder Rift series of adventures that were made to introduce new players to the game via some tabletop/board game style aspects.

Honestly, I never read the 3e series so I declined to comment. But, as you say, they are assumed to be in Greyhawk.
Whether or not they make use heavy of the lore is another matter. The Tome of Horror and Temple of Elemental Evil were also officially in Greyhawk but could effortlessly be moved elsewhere.
The biggest examples of setting neutral products were likely Castle Ravenloft (which wasn't in a firm setting originally) and Red Hand of Doom, although the latter does assume Tiamat.

WotC seems uninterested in making adventurers that are that generic: a location devoid of lore and dungeons with no ongoing plot. PotA was as story lite as they want to get. Which I can understand: it's far easier to ignore story and just use the encounters/maps/locations to tell your own story than it is to run an book of encounters/maps/locations. The campaign structure really seems to be enabling people to play actual campaigns and get hooked on the game rather than just running a one-shot and forgetting the story.

 

[turkeygiant]

My review will likely be in a few weeks. Money is a factor for me, so I'm having to go amazon rather than FLGS, getting it for $32 rather than the $64 the store will charge. Darn Canadian dollar.

I saw it at indigo and bought it on the spot for cover price...ouch my wallet, I think it is closer to $40 on amazon.ca and indigo.ca than $32 though

anyways here are my thoughts I posted in the enworld review section;

"I really like the campaign elements of this book. The NPCs are colourful and bizarre characters, they should work really well as allies or antagonists to the PCs, sometimes even both at the same time. The randomly generated encounters really make the Underdark feel alive, I don't think players will be saying "oh its just a random encounter", they feel like they really mesh well with the main story. I also like the degree of complexity in the dungeons, they feel like they skew a bit more naturalistic/simple than the previous 5e modules which will make them work better with the theater of the mind assumptions of 5e. You don't have that feeling that "nobody would ever build something this arbitrarily convoluted" you get in more gamified dungeons.

My only complaint is that the book is very light on added system content, no new spells, no new races, half of the six new magic items are re-skins of existing ones. The regular bestiary section is satisfactory, though they could have introduced a few more "new" underdark creature in addition to the variation on existing ones like duregar and myconids. The Demon Lords are all pretty impressive, any one of them being worthy of being the final boss of a campaign, but I feel like the 16 pages dedicated just to them could have been better utilized adding more variety to the regular bestiary and magic items."

 

[Coreyartus]

Another review in video form to add to the content of thread's topic:

https://youtu.be/7zTw86zY8jI

 

[Jester David]

I saw it at indigo and bought it on the spot for cover price...ouch my wallet, I think it is closer to $40 on amazon.ca and indigo.ca than $32 though

I pre-ordered just in case. Amazon reduces the price as it shifts but doesn't increase (to my knowledge). So if I had the cash I'd have a couple weeks to cancel but if I didn't I'd have the best price.

I imagine the lack of new crunch content comes from that stuff being in the November book.

 

[aramis erak]

Here's what they should do. Wizards, if you're listening, heed this advice:

These unwieldily campaign hardcover books are the worst format you could choose to put your adventures in. It's also too much information to drop at once for anyone seeking to run the adventure. They are cumbersome to read as 256 page books. For DMs who like to feel really prepared before running an adventure, slogging through these huge tomes and hoping all bases are covered before starting seems like a really impractical way to present the material. Also, when you're actually running it, flipping back and forth between the huge number of maps and plot details is a pain. We can scan, buy, print, or download the maps ourselves, but why not just present them properly in the first place?

Six months between releases seems to be universally disliked by the 5e player base. It's too short of time to run a 1-15 campaign and too long a time to wait if a particular campaign book doesn't interest you. As a game store owner, I can tell you that it also feels like a glacial release schedule that makes for little to discuss and talk about with customers. "What's new for D&D?" "Well, there's this campaign book that you saw last time you were in five months ago."

Speak for yourself. I like the hardcover adventures (but would prefer true stitched hardcover to the current bound-on-boards), and like them coming out only twice a year.

Further, I'm not really a fan of the folio format, because it's all too common to separate the folio from the booklet.

And, froma business standpoint, 1 hardcover is cheaper to print than three folios, and is easier to stock and sell.

 

[turkeygiant]

I imagine the lack of new crunch content comes from that stuff being in the November book.

I was kinda wondering about that, I'm not sure how much coverage the Underdark will get in the FR: Sword Coast book? At the very least I would like to see some Underdark themed spells come out somewhere down the line.

 

[arakar.gaiden]

Me too...I'm looking forward to it. I've been longing for an adventure like this for quite some time.

 

[Queer Venger]

One of the big negatives with the 256-page tome style of book is that the monsters are always conveniently located in the back of the book. So when you run a combat, you often have to save your previous spot and turn to the back of the hardcover, use the monster, and then flip back to your original spot. Literally the only space-saving thing they do (aside from, in the case of OOtA, repeatedly referring the reader to the DMG rules for poison) is to not have any stat blocks in the middle of the text. It's really a shame that 5e's monster format doesn't allow for a "quick view" so that we could have nice, compact monster listings along with the running text.

At the prices we're paying, if boxed sets could be done for $10 or even $20 more, I'd gladly pay it. For instance, with OOtA, I'd picture four booklets. You have one called "Into Darkness" covering chapters 1-7, and one called "Against the Demon Lords" covering chapters 8-17. Both could be sturdy perfect-bound softcovers. Then you'd have a big poster map of the Underdark hex map on page 19, and a separate booklet with all the other maps in the adventure. Then, one more booklet, this one saddle-stitched, with all of the appendices. You could even have cardstock sheets with all of the NPC stat blocks that get distributed to the players in chapter 8. WotC seemed willing to play with boxed sets in the 4e era, but has since retreated, which is a shame. An adventure this big deserves one.

You mean like Horror on the Orient Express??

 

[pukunui]

I personally don't mind the hardcover format. I just think it would be really helpful for DMs if they'd release, say, some web enhancements that help with running the thing. You know, like cheat sheets with summaries of all the important NPCs and locations or whatever. Little things that perhaps they couldn't fit into the book.

It's great that they're letting the cartographers sell the maps, so you can print those out and have them at the table. That's one less page to flip. But it's only a start. There's so much more they could do in terms of helping DMs run these massive adventures. Like giving us a pdf of the monster stat appendix, so we don't have to flip back and forth during a combat. Or selling pdfs of the adventures so we can print out that section or just have it up on a screen.