Woem: Thanks for the feedback! In reply to your specific comments:
Woem said:
I read through the adventure a couple of times and it still leaves me confused. First of all it reads more like a HeroQuest adventure than a full-fledged role-playing adventure ("no treasure in this room", "wandering monster").
This is not a story-based adventure, with a start and an end pre-designed for the characters. It's a location-based adventure, the goings on of which are basically independent of the characters. It's really up to the GM, as I mentioned in "The Hook," to determine how the characters will get involved. Their interaction with the location from that point on is entirely up to them - there's no story arc for them to follow. It is what it is, as they say.
Woem said:
Overall it feels weird that mechanics such as monster level, the scrying technique or the "you need 5 or 6 on a d6 to hit the monster" are used without actually referring to any rule system, and without adding up to a stand-alone system.
In terms of game system details, I was asked to contribute system-independent resources to the Days of High Adventure column, so the dungeons I'm contributing will be necessarily vague in those terms. (Even if I were told to add stats for D&D, that's such a moving target that there's no way I could do so in a way that would encompass all of the editions.)
Woem said:
Even so, I was expecting more information to be used from what we already know about the Dungeon World setting. All that we learn is that Califrax' favorite color is red, and perhaps that the Dead Gods aren't listening to the prayers of the common folk (or that they are actually dead, e.g. Dragonlance).
I think there's a clarification on what these articles are supposed to be about in the comments of the first Dungeon World article. That clarification would probably answer some of these concerns. To recap: the Dungeon World setting really evolved as a means to connect the resources (dungeons, magic items, spells, etc.) that I was engaged by The Escapist to contribute to this column. It wasn't intended to be the feature, but rather a means of adding cohesion to the feature, if that makes sense. As such, these articles are going to contribute varying levels of detail to the setting (since they weren't ever originally intended to be anything more than stand-alone elements). In the case of this week's feature, that level of detail is, as you noted, extremely low.
Woem said:
I hope to see a new short story like that of the Clan of the White Bear, or some more history or background information, or the description of a complete town. The maps in the adventure are amazing and I think that style would serve great for this.
I will certainly bear this in mind for future installments.
Woem said:
As a small side-note: the Dungeon World tag is missing from the article.
Hmmm... maybe, if the Powers That Be are reading this, they'll see that this is corrected.
Thanks again for the great feedback!
Chris