Amber Scott, writer for the new Baldur's Gate has written a D&D adventure before. I remember it for all the wrong reasons.(
self.KotakuInAction)
submitted 15 hours ago by
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She wrote an adventure for Paizo's Wrath of the Righteous adventure path, The Worldwound Incursion. I remembered her name immediately because it was one of the fucking worst written parts of the adventure path, by far. If this is how she plans to write Baldur's Gate, it's gonna be a must skip game.
For those not in the know about tabletop gaming, there is a term called 'railroading'. It's when you essentially remove the ability of players to choose different paths, and force them to stay on a very linear approach that meets your predefined plot line. It's considered to be very bad form. Even when you need to get the players to follow a predesigned path, you're supposed to present 'the illusion of choice'.
The adventure opens with all the players in a cave, and then gives you a long ass flashback about how they got there. Flashbacks in tabletop gaming are /bad/. Railroading to the nth degree. The adventure then goes down a series of linear caves, though it does get it's crap together for awhile after that.
What I remembered most, though, was the useless fluff and the SJW shoehorning. She wrote a ton of material that explains why rooms look like they do, but never provides any way for the players to get this information. The whole adventure reads like a novel rather than something thats supposed to be cooperative storytelling.
She shoehorned in a gay male couple, and also a transgender NPC and her lesbian wife. The thing that completely saves it was she is so mind meltingly bad at writing that she doesn't actually remember to get these plot elements involved in any way. She wrote a shit ton of back story for the NPCs, then never gives you any clue how your supposed to introduce it or why it even matters.
I was so goddamned angry, and not because of the forced diversity. It's because she introduced these characters exclusively because she want to force people to deal with them and get in their headspace, and then she gave /NO INFORMATION/ on how to play them. One of the most difficult aspects in DMing a game is understanding characters motivations and why they act the way they do. In the most charitable interpretation, she wrote these damned tokenist characters then expected me to know how they think because they're something she throws into all her adventures. In the least, she just wanted to make shitlords uncomfortable.
Amber, if you're reading this, I changed them hetero, because you gave me nothing to work with. Learn how to write cooperative fantasy if this is what you want to do.
FWIW, The rest of the adventures, written by other writers, in the line are pretty good. Loved the second and it's freeform stringing together of 'minisodes'.
. Really that's all you need to know about beamdog.
