I always appreciate when a reviewer will honestly say they didn't like a product from a popular franchise or one they typically quite enjoy. Even if I may disagree with the review (I can't speak to this book as I've not read it yet) it further cements why I follow that person and give weight to their opinions.
I was really excited about this adventure. The book came out today and i read it. Needless to say lots of it doesn't feel like good organic feeling role play. I'll take a couple of week to detail a lot more of "encounters" that will happen throughout the years, mostly roleplay encounters to really give personnality to each NPC and actually forge a relationship between the PCs and NPCs. Encounters such as classroom moments or RP encounter at their jobs / extra curriculars... I believe this book contains a good base, but only that: a Base. This campaign will need a lot of extra DM work and world/character building to make it what I want it to be. Although since players will be appart from eachothers a lot, since they each have differents jobs and activities, I don't think I will run it with more than four players. This honestly feels like a wierd crossover between a settings book and an adventure book... It's not quite either of those and it's both at the same time. I wouldn't say the book is bad, but i will say that it's not on the level of CoS or OotA in term of an adventure book.
I think an important thing people need to remember is WotC's pipeline, THAT'S what needs to be fixed, because the writers and designers on this book have made amazing products outside of WotC. What happened to this book was the "Strixhaven Subclasses UA" debacle. It is VERY obvious that they had already hinged this entire book around that concept, and then NOBODY liked the execution of the concept, even though a lot of people loved the idea. So when that got scrapped, they had to rush and pushed the book back a month to fit it back into their release pipeline. So most of this book was written in a matter of a few months, rather than the more extensive testing they usually do for a book like this. The fact that they marketed it as a Sourcebook for MONTHS, and then, at the 11th hour marketing push, they just started saying "This adventure book..." shows how rushed they were. So this book suffered by a HUGE mismanagement issue, NOT lazy writing and design. And it really fucking sucks.
You couldn’t pay me to pick this up. Thanks for taking one for the team. Drop out of Strixhaven and enroll at Miskatonic University 😎 WotC has been phoning it in for a long time. The last adventure i read that was on par was Curse of Strahd. Before they revised it.
I think the concept of a school as a backdrop for a campaign is interesting, even seeing that it wasn't a wizard only school (I was pitched it as 'Harry Potter but D&D'), and I think it was wise if them to make a stable of ready made classmates to help with the GM duties but it seems like the mechanics of the school system itself are too light. I think good mechanics CAN be a tool for roleplay, the game afterall is what we use, but since it's all reduced to a single die roll that puts a lot of pressure on the GM to do heavy lifting. I still think the concept is interesting though, and I think the book at least provides some boards to spring off of, but if I were to run it I would focus more on the "school" aspect, limit it to one campus, and tie the grading into leveling up. I think a lot of the fun drama can stem from players choosing between their personal advancement versus solving the grander mysteries and dramas throughout the school, like any good story that uses a school as it's backdrop.
Tell us how you really feel, Jeff! 🙂 My 5E group is ready for a new campaign. Skipping Strixhaven. Picked up Wild Beyond the Witchlight based on your review of it. Hopefully I can handle DMing the whimsy.
You mean D&D doesnt stand for Dances and Drama? I'm shocked. I'm disappointed this seems to have turned out so poorly. I was excited about a sourcebook that could add a magical university to your campaings. But to hear this is just several poorly written adventures is becoming familiar, beacuse thats what we got with Candlekeep - including the lackluster maps. This one sounds derivitive, and designed to attract new players. Like Van Richtens, this wasnt written for fans. They have brought in new talent that seems meant to cater to a new demographic - non D&D players.
Fair review. I got this book and Actually like it, The Adventure in it makes a bare bones Template to let a DM build upon. I do feel that Completely Non Magical Characters like Battle Master or Champion Fighter. kinda a rough fit. Tho it could be viewed that they are learning to fight against Magical foes. Each chapter of the Adventure is ment to happen over the course of a school year.
So its just a frame work, like here's a concept of school and possible side activities not classes though. Put this up against the new cults of cthulhu book from coc and stare at the chasm of differences.
I was worried about the increase in publications. It looks like I was right. Even the good material feels rushed. I will get Mordenkainen's new book for sure, but maybe that is all I am getting until I see how things evolve in 2024. Cheers!
Disappointing. Seems like we might refer to this as "Safe Space"-haven. I think I'll take what little I can of this and drop it into Eberron and the Arcane Congress.
Having read the adventure and run the first few encounters - and probably being a bit closer to school than you, no offense meant - I actually think that your review is a bit inconsistent. While I agree that it is kind of on rails, this IS school. In school, unless you really mess up, you advance at certain points and you have training wheels protecting you - in my profession, those training wheels only come completely off when we begin practicing independently under our own licenses. Orientation in real life is by its very nature an information dump and relationships are not too much more complex than being nice to people, or not. It's easy to break all these things down to "just rolling dice," but most games don't include even that - it falls on the players and DM to create stakes and motivation for themselves. I admire that they added some minor mechanical incentive when they could have just as easily said, "these NPCs are present and maybe you can RP something with them if you want." I feel like the alternatives are all worse, although that could be mostly a failure of imagination. That'd be a much longer comment though. I feel about this the way I did about the Wild Beyond the Witchlight (which I'm currently running for two different groups) - it's a game that is Not classic D&D being run with the 5e engine. There are plenty of other points I disagree with - I was absolutely blown away by the campus map, it just suggested all sorts of adventures to me, even if it didn't to you. And there are plenty I agree with you about. For example, the game could be so much cooler, and some of the aspects of class etc could be more immersive. By the same token, I don't know how to make it feel TOO much like school without it actually BECOMING school. Ultimately I feel like this is a setting with a sample adventure and examples of different concepts one could incorporate into their own magic-school campaign if they wanted.
This is decidedly NOT college. It may be elementary or high school, but it bears no resemblance to college. I, too, come from a profession that involves training wheels (externships, internships, and fellowships), but these training wheels bear no resemblance to the high school musical tone and feel of this poorly considered offering. The tone (all the gleeful, sing-a-long, forced positivity of the printed NPC dialogue) is at odds with the stressful, often lonely, "freshman 15," sometimes scary feel of going off to college. The mismatch between the tone of this book and the alleged idea that these are young "adults" with hero level skills is too much to swallow. The rest of the book....OK. The tonal catastrophe is a big NOPE! The author in charge of writing the dialogue bits should be fired and send on their way to write tween literature.
Thank for giving yours opinions and preview. This 4e all over again (no bad, is for teens), but with the new system of rulers. Nothing that good house ruling & gore can fix.
I've detailed why I don't think it's amazing so why not share what makes you feel it is amazing? Especially since it wasn't on sale yet when you made your comment and if you were a reviewer you'd have given some details. ~ Jeff
I always appreciate when a reviewer will honestly say they didn't like a product from a popular franchise or one they typically quite enjoy. Even if I may disagree with the review (I can't speak to this book as I've not read it yet) it further cements why I follow that person and give weight to their opinions.
Thanks Bane!
I was really excited about this adventure. The book came out today and i read it. Needless to say lots of it doesn't feel like good organic feeling role play.
I'll take a couple of week to detail a lot more of "encounters" that will happen throughout the years, mostly roleplay encounters to really give personnality to each NPC and actually forge a relationship between the PCs and NPCs. Encounters such as classroom moments or RP encounter at their jobs / extra curriculars...
I believe this book contains a good base, but only that: a Base. This campaign will need a lot of extra DM work and world/character building to make it what I want it to be.
Although since players will be appart from eachothers a lot, since they each have differents jobs and activities, I don't think I will run it with more than four players.
This honestly feels like a wierd crossover between a settings book and an adventure book... It's not quite either of those and it's both at the same time.
I wouldn't say the book is bad, but i will say that it's not on the level of CoS or OotA in term of an adventure book.
I think an important thing people need to remember is WotC's pipeline, THAT'S what needs to be fixed, because the writers and designers on this book have made amazing products outside of WotC. What happened to this book was the "Strixhaven Subclasses UA" debacle. It is VERY obvious that they had already hinged this entire book around that concept, and then NOBODY liked the execution of the concept, even though a lot of people loved the idea. So when that got scrapped, they had to rush and pushed the book back a month to fit it back into their release pipeline. So most of this book was written in a matter of a few months, rather than the more extensive testing they usually do for a book like this. The fact that they marketed it as a Sourcebook for MONTHS, and then, at the 11th hour marketing push, they just started saying "This adventure book..." shows how rushed they were. So this book suffered by a HUGE mismanagement issue, NOT lazy writing and design. And it really fucking sucks.
I think WoTC may need to clear out a lot of the current writers and get some new folks in to put 5E back on track.
Everything I've been reading about this, I had really low hopes. You answered all my fears are true.
You couldn’t pay me to pick this up. Thanks for taking one for the team. Drop out of Strixhaven and enroll at Miskatonic University 😎 WotC has been phoning it in for a long time. The last adventure i read that was on par was Curse of Strahd. Before they revised it.
I actually think that Rime of the Frostmaiden and the Wild Beyond the Witchlight are two of the best adventures they've ever released
I think the concept of a school as a backdrop for a campaign is interesting, even seeing that it wasn't a wizard only school (I was pitched it as 'Harry Potter but D&D'), and I think it was wise if them to make a stable of ready made classmates to help with the GM duties but it seems like the mechanics of the school system itself are too light. I think good mechanics CAN be a tool for roleplay, the game afterall is what we use, but since it's all reduced to a single die roll that puts a lot of pressure on the GM to do heavy lifting.
I still think the concept is interesting though, and I think the book at least provides some boards to spring off of, but if I were to run it I would focus more on the "school" aspect, limit it to one campus, and tie the grading into leveling up. I think a lot of the fun drama can stem from players choosing between their personal advancement versus solving the grander mysteries and dramas throughout the school, like any good story that uses a school as it's backdrop.
Tell us how you really feel, Jeff! 🙂 My 5E group is ready for a new campaign. Skipping Strixhaven. Picked up Wild Beyond the Witchlight based on your review of it. Hopefully I can handle DMing the whimsy.
You mean D&D doesnt stand for Dances and Drama? I'm shocked.
I'm disappointed this seems to have turned out so poorly. I was excited about a sourcebook that could add a magical university to your campaings. But to hear this is just several poorly written adventures is becoming familiar, beacuse thats what we got with Candlekeep - including the lackluster maps. This one sounds derivitive, and designed to attract new players. Like Van Richtens, this wasnt written for fans. They have brought in new talent that seems meant to cater to a new demographic - non D&D players.
Fair review. I got this book and Actually like it, The Adventure in it makes a bare bones Template to let a DM build upon. I do feel that Completely Non Magical Characters like Battle Master or Champion Fighter. kinda a rough fit. Tho it could be viewed that they are learning to fight against Magical foes. Each chapter of the Adventure is ment to happen over the course of a school year.
Seems like playing this adventure is the D&D equivalent of the participation trophy.
So its just a frame work, like here's a concept of school and possible side activities not classes though. Put this up against the new cults of cthulhu book from coc and stare at the chasm of differences.
I was worried about the increase in publications. It looks like I was right. Even the good material feels rushed.
I will get Mordenkainen's new book for sure, but maybe that is all I am getting until I see how things evolve in 2024.
Cheers!
thanks for sharing. so trueeee
Disappointing. Seems like we might refer to this as "Safe Space"-haven. I think I'll take what little I can of this and drop it into Eberron and the Arcane Congress.
Having read the adventure and run the first few encounters - and probably being a bit closer to school than you, no offense meant - I actually think that your review is a bit inconsistent.
While I agree that it is kind of on rails, this IS school. In school, unless you really mess up, you advance at certain points and you have training wheels protecting you - in my profession, those training wheels only come completely off when we begin practicing independently under our own licenses.
Orientation in real life is by its very nature an information dump and relationships are not too much more complex than being nice to people, or not.
It's easy to break all these things down to "just rolling dice," but most games don't include even that - it falls on the players and DM to create stakes and motivation for themselves. I admire that they added some minor mechanical incentive when they could have just as easily said, "these NPCs are present and maybe you can RP something with them if you want."
I feel like the alternatives are all worse, although that could be mostly a failure of imagination. That'd be a much longer comment though.
I feel about this the way I did about the Wild Beyond the Witchlight (which I'm currently running for two different groups) - it's a game that is Not classic D&D being run with the 5e engine.
There are plenty of other points I disagree with - I was absolutely blown away by the campus map, it just suggested all sorts of adventures to me, even if it didn't to you. And there are plenty I agree with you about. For example, the game could be so much cooler, and some of the aspects of class etc could be more immersive. By the same token, I don't know how to make it feel TOO much like school without it actually BECOMING school.
Ultimately I feel like this is a setting with a sample adventure and examples of different concepts one could incorporate into their own magic-school campaign if they wanted.
By the game I mean the tournament.
This is decidedly NOT college. It may be elementary or high school, but it bears no resemblance to college. I, too, come from a profession that involves training wheels (externships, internships, and fellowships), but these training wheels bear no resemblance to the high school musical tone and feel of this poorly considered offering. The tone (all the gleeful, sing-a-long, forced positivity of the printed NPC dialogue) is at odds with the stressful, often lonely, "freshman 15," sometimes scary feel of going off to college. The mismatch between the tone of this book and the alleged idea that these are young "adults" with hero level skills is too much to swallow. The rest of the book....OK. The tonal catastrophe is a big NOPE! The author in charge of writing the dialogue bits should be fired and send on their way to write tween literature.
Thank for giving yours opinions and preview.
This 4e all over again (no bad, is for teens), but with the new system of rulers.
Nothing that good house ruling & gore can fix.
Gotta completely disagree. This book is amazing
I've detailed why I don't think it's amazing so why not share what makes you feel it is amazing? Especially since it wasn't on sale yet when you made your comment and if you were a reviewer you'd have given some details. ~ Jeff
whiney old man is whiney...