Storm King's Thunder module - summary review

Campaign 7/10 + Open structure makes it easy to add or adjust content + The premise / starting point is interesting and fresh + There are some really good / interesting NPCs + Quest / story structure is versatile + The campaign offers quite many hooks for why the PCs should be interested in risking their lives to meddle with the events happening in the campaign - Many places / towns felt underdeveloped / there should have been more info about the locations - The closer you get to the end the worse the campaign is in revealing the background story / plot to the players - Several locations and NPCs felt severely underused - At times it felt completely arbitrary for which locations the campaign had a map and for which it didn't - The campaign offers quite weak hooks for why the PCs should be interested in risking their lives to meddle with the events happening in the campaign Roll20 module implementation 9/10 + Linking the Handouts and how Roll20 handles Handouts all together made finding and following the content fairly easy + Almost everything was ready to be used the moment I created the campaign -> the only preparation the GM really needs is to read the campaign + Roll20 is a solid and robust VTT -> everything just worked and was easy to use + The 'world' map was hugely useful thanks to VTT features* - Sometimes I felt that there should have been a link to another content when there wasn't - Sometimes the maps were a bit confusing to use due to scale / size differences or visual cues being unclear * I know the campaign book has the same map but how useful it is in the Roll20 module versus the book is not even comparable. In a face to face session with the book, the GM can show the players the map every now and then to help the players to get some degree of understanding where they are / where they are going. And that's pretty much it. In the module it's there to be accessed whenever needed, it was easy to keep the party location updated at all times, it was easy to add other locations (such as important event locations) to the map, etc. I have used world / campaign maps in Roll20 before but I had not realised their importance before running this campaign and comparing it to a f2f campaign (Princes of the Apocalypse) I participated earlier, in which the GM had the physical book.

Thanks for the detailed and well thought out review Maetco :) This will be really useful for people deciding whether or not to purchase the module through Roll20. As for your VTT specific 'negatives', would you be able to provide any examples of: - Sometimes I felt that there should have been a link to another content when there wasn't - Sometimes the maps were a bit confusing to use due to scale / size differences or visual cues being unclear The team are always looking for ways to improve the products and genuine feedback like this is a great place to discover pain points or areas of improvement. Obviously they can only make changes to the Roll20 implementation given that they are limited to the information provided with the product itself but all constructive criticism is welcome. Thanks again for the time taken to provide this!

Ziechael said: Thanks for the detailed and well thought out review Maetco :) This will be really useful for people deciding whether or not to purchase the module through Roll20. As for your VTT specific 'negatives', would you be able to provide any examples of: - Sometimes I felt that there should have been a link to another content when there wasn't - Sometimes the maps were a bit confusing to use due to scale / size differences or visual cues being unclear The team are always looking for ways to improve the products and genuine feedback like this is a great place to discover pain points or areas of improvement. Obviously they can only make changes to the Roll20 implementation given that they are limited to the information provided with the product itself but all constructive criticism is welcome. Thanks again for the time taken to provide this! At the risk of elbowing in on @Maetco 's good review (but there isn't a review system, and it will get lost otherwise): I think Storm King's Thunder suffered from usability and speed on some of its maps because of the "giant" scale and that it was used at a scale other than 1sq=5ft in the VTT. Some maps, such as the oracle's temple, could have benefited from being broken up into separate sections. This would have allowed the map to run more efficiently by not needing to include all of the blank space in the corners. Breaking up the map into entrance, downstairs, upstairs, caves, and oracle would have likely not only made things faster, but allowed the map to be represented at 1sq=5ft rather than the 1sq=20ft or whatever was used. The tokens and their bars really start to suffer at the tiny scales.

Ziechael said: As for your VTT specific 'negatives', would you be able to provide any examples of: - Sometimes I felt that there should have been a link to another content when there wasn't I can't remember any specific examples. I ran the campaign in the course of about 7 months and these moments came here and there during that time. But they were simply cases where the text referred to a place or character or something similar to which there could have been a link but wasn't. Ziechael said: - Sometimes the maps were a bit confusing to use due to scale / size differences or visual cues being unclear Because the maps use different scale, it would be good to have a scale in the same place on each map (the spot the map always loads to) so it would immediately be clear what the scale is in that map. Tokens are created using the normal scale so if the map uses any other scale, you need to rescale any added tokens and there are maps in which the book assumes tokens that aren't on the map. Some of the maps are not large or detailed enough to be used in the "traditionally" way in a VTT so they become unclear / confusing / obscure.