BILLD91
“I think you're being a bit anal about the experience point issue, especially since the WLD recommends that you not use the standard XP award rules at all. Rather, they think you're better off letting the players play a while and then leveling them up when it seems appropriate.”
I think your being ignorant.
You have not read the book. The book recommends awarding ½ Xp by challenge rating or awarding XP by encounter level. The idea of letting the players play a while and then leveling them up came from the ENWORLD MESSAGE BOARD, not the book. Those Ideas from the board came when those players realized AEGs guidelines were flat wrong, my disgust comes from the fact that this is supposed to be a professional product. It is unprofessional to charge for a product and then for the product not to operate according the guidelines of the product. I would have had no problem if the XP had worked within their guidelines.
“As far as the other 'lazy' elements of the intro, I don't consider them lazy at all. Rather, I see them as realistic assessments of what the module isn't built to accommodate: druids, summoning, and wizards.”
It was lazy not too build the WLD to accommodate the core classes
You do not ban the use of abilities; you require their use. You design certain encounters so that certain encounters do not do well against a particular class, allowing that character to shine.
Lazy adventure design: We don’t like X about the d20 system so lets ban it, it’s too tough to make it balanced or even function in the world’s largest dungeon.
Industrious adventure design: We require encounters in the WLD that are easier or harder if you summon, have a druid, have a wizard, have teleport, have etherealness, have planeshift,
Example: we do not like summoning because it allows players to have a trap dummy
Solution 1: Ban summoning
Solution 2: the trap triggers when the fourth person passes through the door.
Solution 3: This trap takes control of any summoned creature in a 100’ radius and has them attack their master.
“At least they took the time to let the DM know this up front.”
Yes. They told how lazy they were and why they were lazy.
THE AULD GRUMP
“Ack! You mean he wasn't exaggerating?!! Gah!”
Yes but again that is just the introduction, the rest of the book is quite enjoyable, region A is the weakest I have read so far and that is only because it was limited to the specific monsters it uses.
This book has a number of amazing features, its encounters and the layouts of these encounters. The fact that not every encounter wants to kill you. Monsters function at the proper intelligence level, every room of this massive complex is detailed, the encounter conditions (situational modifiers for each encounter) are a fascinating and wonderful edition. Icould go on. Like I said I will buy the World's Largest City, that's how much I liked it, but the Xp flaw is just really frustrating.
“I lost interest when the book mentioned that Bardic Knowledge revealed nothing, but it sounds like very little was done in regards to a lot of other character classes as well.”
I had issue with this one as well, the intro states no one has been here in 5,000 years, but just sitting here I can think of three sources of knowledge, though the DCs would have been high,
All the prisoners of the dungeon that escaped certainly would brag about their escape.
Underdark creatures that moved in, who later moved out.
A rather insane wizard who seems to have left the dungeon would have told rather bizarre stories.
I think that you could have saved all the banning space and put in things you could discover with bardic knowledge.
I do not have a bard in my party; I have an akashic so he is slowly learning all the back-story of the dungeon, which is extremely good.
