My problem with variety didn’t solely come from the printed encounters, but the addition of the random encounters, and all the encounters you can go through from failing skill challenges. Then it gets redundant.

I’m also not seeing a lot of redundancy like I expected. There seems to be a good mix of varied encounters that don’t ALL use piles of rare miniatures. I don’t exactly know when I’ll run this but I like what I’m seeing.
.-= Mike Shea´s last blog ..Three Acting Tips for D&D =-.

That said, this was a good review. It gave me insight into the module and what it contains, and a good opinion of why some people aren’t going to like how everything is structured.

I just expect different things from an adventure… especially a mega-adventure.

All that said, I may lift one of the sections for my campaign this weekend. I guess my point is that even if there’s more story opportunities it doesn’t negate the ability to adapt it to your campaign or steal pieces of it (and often, helps it.)

I think read through reviews are useful, but I do think we miss things that won’t be apparent until later, sometimes months later. It took a while for us to realize that paragon+ minions were underpowered and solos had too many hitpoints. I don’t think any of
the original reviews of the first monster manual mentioned this. For that reason, I probably won’t know how good the DMG2 is until I’ve used it a little while. This isn’t to say that an initial review isn’t worth while, but for products like this, only time will tell.
.-= Mike´s last blog ..Three Acting Tips for D&D =-.

I guess all I would add is this: Dungeon Delve seems to be a popular book among the personal, game-store, and also RPGA gamers I’ve spoken with. Yet, I’ve never used one thing at all from it. Some people like the delve/combats format more than others. I think you and I like a little more story and plot and cool, “wow, amazing, awesome” crunch AND fluff in our D&D products, which is one of the things people use to tout PF/Paizo “over” WotC.

I also know you like 4e, and I do too. I don’t worry about the publishers or designers filling it with fluff. I like to add my own and used to re-write 90% of the 3.x fluff, so I like less fluff now in 4e. I like chocolate, someone else may like strawberry. It’s preference.

I guess that is what I mean by my comments to your review. The book/module may work for one person, to whom it gives exactly what they want, and some of us will just use a few crumbs. I scanned the maps today posted for free on WotC site [don't get me started on posted maps - I hate when they do that] and it looks like a great deal of material in the module, which I would use little bit by bit over years, and therefore, will probably be worth me buying.

imho

Just to address the Poll: I voted Other (my view can not be addressed in the options provided).

I think it’s fine to review the product without having ran or played it; so long as that disclaimer is made clearly. Which you did.

That puts the responsibility of filtering the reviewer’s perspective on the reader. However, that in no way excludes the review of having real value. The fact that there are a lot of combats and a large proportion of them are against one creature type (giants) is something very useful for me to know. Though not unexpected. But my point is; I’m prepared to take your word on that, and obvious or not, it’s something I did want to be confirmed before I shell out any money for the product.

And before you think I’m giving you a poke in the eye, I thought it was a fine review.

The flip side of this is, sometimes you’re not going to know all the issues with an adventure until you run it. There is one third party 4E adventure that has received stellar reviews that I have some issues with, and I never saw them until I actually ran it myself. Thus, there is a point to be made on either side.

In conclusion, with the appropriate disclaimer, a read-through review is acceptable. The reviewer can still offer some important insights. The play-through reviewer might carry more weight, but the value of either review is not mutually exclusive.

It is all well and good for people who happen to have played the adventure to review it, but it is not practical for us to go so far out of our way to play it.
.-= Nicholas´s last blog ..Nerd Watching: Dragons in Cyberspace! =-.

Time makes it impossible to play before review – a film reviewer only has to sacrifice a couple of hours of their own time but even for a small dungeon, you need 20 hours of play for four or more people. If Goodman games want to pay me + four other at least minimum wages for that time then yes, I will play before review. Until then, they need to get a sense of perspective.

The other reason why it is OK to read and not play for a review is that this is what most GMs do. We ran a poll a little while ago [ http://6d6fireball.com/rpg/poll-why-do-we-buy-this-stuff/ ] and only 25% of people brought adventures to play them. The rest brought them to get ideas, extract encounters or simply to read.
.-= Chris Tregenza´s last blog ..Steampunk Art =-.

Personally, I vote that reviewers need to actually play, preferably run, a module/adventure before they review it.

Not sure if you’re actively calling me an idiot here or not, but we discuss that very thing in the ongoing poll:

http://www.critical-hits.com/2009/09/14/inq-of-the-week-on-reviewing/

In short, at least a decent chunk of our audience thinks it’s OK for me to review without having played it as long as that it’s stated upfront, but it’s not ideal.

“Wondering why some game reviewers are idiots. Newspapers don’t review movies based on a script. Why review a module without playing it?”

That being said, Against the Giants suffered from many of the same issues you described in Revenge of the Giants, such as being too combat focused and having many, many repetitive combats.

This may be a case of the remake hewing too close to the source material. On the other hand, I will probably buy it regardless because of my love for the original.
.-= Rob a.k.a. “A Hero”´s last blog ..The treatment of women and minorities in D&D =-.

Don’t take this as a defensive response since your points are taken, but I do feel the need to respond.

Sometimes though, I feel like you review something based on a glance-over, like this module.

I read it through once to get a feel for it as a whole, then skimmed back through parts that were unclear, and went through it again as I wrote the review (which I made purposely short.) I gave it enough of a read that I felt comfortable giving my review and that additional readings wouldn’t help. The only thing that would help is to run it, which clearly isn’t an option in a timely manner, especially for a mega-adventure.

A published module does a LOT of legwork for the DM, and I have, for all my 26+ years of DMing, pulled pieces from published modules.

I agree, but clearly some published modules are more useful for this than others.

Your bias seems negative, although I am not trying to criticize you. Some people preordered, and now have it on the way but are expecting to be disappointed, before even opening the thing.

I try to be as unbiased as I can, presenting a review from all sides to better tell potential consumers whether to buy or not. It’s not aimed at the people who pre-ordered (their minds are already made up) but the people who are deciding to buy today or not.

Was the classic versions of this adventure/theme the best story or most complicated, intricate epic of all time? Or was it a collection of fights against giant-kind? Were those sourcebooks “Ecology of Giants” which was 90% pure fluff, or were those classic modules a mix of fluff and hearty crunch? If you were a younger game just getting exposed to “giant-kind” adventures for the first time… isn’t this a decent product, all under 1 cover, to do it?

I’m honestly not sure what all you’re asking for… and as I point out in the review, I’m not the best one to make comparisons to Against the Giants because I haven’t played that either. What I can tell you is that if this adventure (in whatever system) were run by a younger, more inexperienced me, I’m sure I would get complaints about how many times you fight the same set of giants, and in similar fashion.

I had high hopes that there would be out and out “here’s an encounter where your characters can have interesting interactions with giants” that I could lift for my game even if I didn’t want to run the module, but it was much more sparse than I hoped. I’ve certainly seen other published adventures (Hook Mountain Massacre and its followup come to mind) that run with that idea. There’s also been other adventures they’ve put out that handle this better IMO… H2 and P2 (and according to Danny, E1) all handle this quite well. I have a lot of adventures from other WotC sources I like for this kind of thing too.

But geez, give the WotC guys a little of a break, especially if you are writing a withering review on something you haven’t completely read [from the PoV of a DM preparing for his campaign and drawing inspiration] or haven’t played through yet.

I could be surprised were I to actually play it, that’s for certain. As you know as a longtime reader of the blog, I have a lot of praise for the WotC guys, even when others do not (come on, did you read my DMG2 review? It’s one of the best RPG books I’ve ever read!) There just happened to be two books recently I was disappointed in after reading, and I’ve got to say so.

Hope that helps you understand where I’m coming from. I encourage you to vote in our poll if you’d like to see more reviews where we play the game/module in question.

Sometimes though, I feel like you review something based on a glance-over, like this module. No, I haven’t played it and I certainly don’t get advance copies like some of you bloggers do, but I also think Mike made very, very good points. A published module does a LOT of legwork for the DM, and I have, for all my 26+ years of DMing, pulled pieces from published modules.

Your bias seems negative, although I am not trying to criticize you. Some people preordered, and now have it on the way but are expecting to be disappointed, before even opening the thing. Hopefully, they have a Mike around to show them a cup half full, instead of a cup half empty.

Was the classic versions of this adventure/theme the best story or most complicated, intricate epic of all time? Or was it a collection of fights against giant-kind? Were those sourcebooks “Ecology of Giants” which was 90% pure fluff, or were those classic modules a mix of fluff and hearty crunch? If you were a younger game just getting exposed to “giant-kind” adventures for the first time… isn’t this a decent product, all under 1 cover, to do it?

I haven’t ordered it yet, and I won’t for a while…because my campaign isn’t out of Heroic yet. But geez, give the WotC guys a little of a break, especially if you are writing a withering review on something you haven’t completely read [from the PoV of a DM preparing for his campaign and drawing inspiration] or haven’t played through yet.
.-= GrecoG´s last blog ..Controversial Trek =-.

THE SMITING SHALL BE SWIFT AND SEVERE PUNY WEBSITE

SO SPEAKETH THE WIZARD OF THE COST

The DDM issue is complex to say the least, but I share in your frustration.

I kid of course.

While a lot of wotc modules lack thick stories, I almost prefer this. It gives me the room to tailor it for my own ongoing campaign. I’m just about three nights into “Nightwyrm Fortress” an I plan to play through all of the published adventures in that series ending with “Prince of Undeath”. Though published, I’ve woven them together into a single story that deeply involves the players. It means a couple of modifications here and there but it’s pretty easy to do.

A combat heavy module does the heavy lifting for me, giving me the harder parts (good encounter design) with room to tailor the story to fit my players.

However, multiple battles against the same type of foes can get grindy fast. That sounds line the case here.

One other major problem I have is when wotc publishes encounters with lots of monsters represented by rare d&d miniatures (like fire giants and titans). Granted I don’t NEED them, but I use minis for all our battles and it can cost me up to $30 a battle to have the right ones. I don’t have a problem with one or two rares, but fire giant minions? Come in!

I had this problem with cyclops minions and lots of slaads in Nightwyrm. If wizards produces both DDM and the modules, they could do us a favor and keep rares rare.
.-= Mike´s last blog ..Three Acting Tips for D&D =-.