Just started streaming my new campaign. Please feel free to watch/list as we adventure through fantasy Greece AKA the lands of Thylea. I'm been DMing for over 26 years and this is the most exciting published adventure I have ever encountered. The game is played weekly, Mondays at 9pm EST using Roll20. Lots of roleplaying, bad jokes, and beautiful maps and minis.
The flavor An epic journey in a land where gods walk the earth.
Discover an epic campaign in the utterly unique lands and seas of Thylea. Inspired by Greek Mythology, Odyssey of the Dragonlords calls forth a band of heroes chosen by destiny to best the many challenges in their path, even the gods themselves. This immense adventure path comprises a 466-page campaign book created by James Ohlen and Jesse Sky, a team of ex-BioWare creative directors, and NYT best selling author Drew Karpyshyn.
Whose collective portfolio includes:
Baldur's Gate 1 & 2
Neverwinter Nights
Dragon Age: Origins
Mass Effect 1 & 2
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
When? Where?
The campaign will take heroes from level 3 all the way through 16. Watch it live on Twitch every Monday at 9 pm EST: https://www.twitch.tv/crashgem
Good to hear your campaign is going well, CrashGem.
I have a question you may be able to answer, as I've only just started reading through the campaign in (still a way off) preparation for eventually running it.
At the beginning, Kyrah approaches the PCs and directs them to Versi. Now, the text suggests that Kyrah is incognito, disguised as a poet. However...she is still openly using her name. Easy enough to change her name, obviously, if I want to - but I'm concerned about any knock-on effects this might have later. I mean, my players are going to raise their eyebrows and say "What's a goddess of magic doing in an inn?".
Good to hear your campaign is going well, CrashGem.
I have a question you may be able to answer, as I've only just started reading through the campaign in (still a way off) preparation for eventually running it.
At the beginning, Kyrah approaches the PCs and directs them to Versi. Now, the text suggests that Kyrah is incognito, disguised as a poet. However...she is still openly using her name. Easy enough to change her name, obviously, if I want to - but I'm concerned about any knock-on effects this might have later. I mean, my players are going to raise their eyebrows and say "What's a goddess of magic doing in an inn?".
Am I missing something?
Gah! Sorry, I didn't have alerts turned on for DNDBeyond. It just sort of... is what it is. This is a setting with very real "gods walk among us" stuff happening. You can watch our series and see how we handled it. Nowadays it's just... a thing. "Oh, that's so-and-so the God of Blank."
I'm currently running this campaign and find it to be quite horrible.
No index, monsters sorted in a bad way, inconsistent naming, bad encounter balancing, useless or broken maps, horribly written NPCs, errors with NPC stats, NPC behaviours make no sense... the list goes on.
I'm still running it and I try to keep my frustration hidden from my players as I don't want to ruin their fun (which they have !). What I really don't understand is how everywhere on the web I see people praising this adventure. Did anyone of those people ever really GM it ? It's a great book to grab ideas from. But running this campaign as it is, is just a very unpleasant experience as it seems you have redo everything in the book, for it to work and / or make sense.
I'm currently running this campaign and find it to be quite horrible.
No index, monsters sorted in a bad way, inconsistent naming, bad encounter balancing, useless or broken maps, horribly written NPCs, errors with NPC stats, NPC behaviours make no sense... the list goes on.
I'm still running it and I try to keep my frustration hidden from my players as I don't want to ruin their fun (which they have !). What I really don't understand is how everywhere on the web I see people praising this adventure. Did anyone of those people ever really GM it ? It's a great book to grab ideas from. But running this campaign as it is, is just a very unpleasant experience as it seems you have redo everything in the book, for it to work and / or make sense.
What are your experiences with the campaign ?
I'm currently running it and we're loving it. I've made a few changes - but I've never run a canned adventure or campaign where I haven't, so that's not a problem. If you can list out the exact issues, I can probably offer some suggestions.
Monsters are theoretically sortet by alphabet. So the "Great Boar" is of course listed under M. Like Mythical Beast. Too bad that in the adventure part it is not mentioned that it is a Mythical Beast. The Ceberus is listed unter S. Like "Servant of Death". Again not mentioned in the adventure part. "Hands of Kentimane". Not to be found in the monster section. Since the guy is a titan I look up that chapter. Nothing. Maybe under magic items since they are more golem like ? Nope. You finally find them at the end of the monster-chapter where the "normal" NPC-troops are listed (like Soldiers etc.). In the end, searching for the monster stats you need is needlessly difficult. Having an index would have solved it. Having printet page numbers next to the mentions in the adventure part would have solved it. Having the monsters be REALLY sorted by alphabet would have solved it. But they did none of this. Oh, and some monsters like the stimfay are not even found in the monster section at all (you find it in the class description of the Amazon subclass).
Items are easier to find. Mostly because the chapter is much smaller. NOT because it is handled any better. Shield of Volkan ? Look under G for GOLDEN shield of Volkan (it's never mentioned in the adventure that it's called that of course).
Encounter balancing:
The great boar is at the same time the easiest and the hardest enemy. It is a beast with an attack bonus of +8 that deals 2D6 +5 damage. It also has legendary resistance and the first blow that would reduce it to 0 hp will only reduce it to 1 hp unless it deals above 15 points of damage. The heroes should at this time be level one (1). Yep. Sounds like a TPK to me. The designers "solved" this by giving the boar automatically one level of exhaustion at the end of each round. So this combat can go VERY badly for our heroes, or they just dodge and avoid it for 6 rounds until it just dies without any of our heroes ever doing anything offensive. And I'm not even talking about the logic of the heroes arriving at exactly the right moment. Just think if they would have arrived 6 rounds later...
Then there is the young ceberus later on. At this point the heroes are supposed to be level 4. The thing has three attacks each round with a +12 bonus that each deal 4D6 +8 damage and have a chance to poison the player (DC 15 con-save to avoid) which gives them disadvantage. Again, likely a TPK unless you tweak the monsters stats.
Useless maps:
The Mithral mines. This looks like it's supposed to be a dungeon that the heroes clear room by room. And played like that it works pretty well. Looking at the map however, you see that the whole cave system is maybe 80ft across. No doors. So realistically the first fight should alert ALL the monsters which would likely be the end of our group. Again.
The Ultros. This mighty ship has more oars in the map then it should have per it's text. After studying the map our players wanted to add some little boats to it and where surprised when I told them, that it is already equipped with 2 row boats. They are just not included in the map. Same goes for the 4 ballistae.
Currently my players are beginning to explore the islands. I prepared Themis and... oh boy. Did the designers forget what maps are for ? There is NOTHING on this map. It's an empty island. Per description the amazon base is on an island in an eastern bay. I can guess which one, but why even bother giving us a map when they put nothing on it ? And what is the scale of the map ? Since time is of great importance at that point of the adventure, it might be very useful to know how long it will take the party to explore the island. No information is given here. I can try to reason it's size. We know that several thousand amazones roam the island in partys of 10-20 persons. They live purely by hunting and also fight each other if they encounter another group... given that information the island should be pretty big indeed. Probably taking a couple of weeks to explore. Which can't be the designers intend as our heroes have only precious little time left.
Badly written NPCs:
So, the designers know that the encounters are badly balanced. Their solution: A pretty annoying NPC GOD (yes, god) accompanies the party and will immidiately resurrect any fallen members. WTF ? Seriously, that is just plain stupid and a good way to kill any feeling of the campaign being "epic".
Later on, at couple of gods will actually follow the players. But they will just protect the camp and the ship and leave all the exiting stuff to the heroes. Unless things go badly... then they will come to the rescue of course. Again... really ? How will the players feel about this ?
Oaths are VERY important in the campaign. Thats why the gods and the titans can't do anything directly until the oath of peace ends. Unless your Sydon. Then it's okay to personally appear in the clouds an throw lightning bolts at the party. Is the pact therefore broken ? Nope. Does this behaviour make any sense since the dude is maybe chaotic evil ? Nope, he is lawful evil. No real explanation given.
Commander Gaius is a clever tactician who (by the text) will NOT send his troops piecemeal against he party. First thing he does when a giant ship that can fit around 100 - 150 people lands on his island: He sends out a Captain on a Gorgon with 6 soldiers and one Gygan to kill the players. His garrison at this point consists of about 40-50 soldiers, 7 Gygans, 4 Captains, 3 Gorgons a Dragon, a Wizard and some staff. Am I the only one who thinks this is the complety opposite of NOT sending his troops out in piecemeal fashion ?
The evil amazon queens keep the rightful heir to their throne alive in their dungeon. Why not kill her ? Because they swore an oath to keep her alive until she comes of age. (The text doesn't really go into details why they swore that oath to her mother before they killed her... I can come up with reasons, but is that my job ?). Oaths are very important in this campaign. Oathbreakers will feel the wrath of the gods and might be cursed to transform into a medusa. Thing is: The evil amazon queens ARE already Medusas. But okay, makes sense. Probably the gods would be even more enraged. However, it becomes completey ludicrous after they heroes free her. From now on the evil guys CAN kill her, since they all know she turned 18 a few months ago. Er what ? So they just forgot to kill for serval months ?
NPC Stat errors:
So Chondrus is pretty smart, but not clever enough to wield his dagger with his high dexterity. Instead he uses his strenght of 10 to hit worse and deal less damage. No biggy since he more then likely will never use it, but still a bit sloppy.
Funny thing: The Amazon War party (page 172) is described as being transportet into battle by their stimfays. Cool thing. Until you look up the stimfay. It is a tiny creature. Nowhere is mentioned that this thing (with it's strength of 10) can carry someone. And since the Amazon Subclass can get it at level 3 I'm pretty sure that would not be balanced it they actually could.
Smaller errors:
Page 34 "...you slew the corrupted boar that plagued the lands west of Mytros."
Nope, looking at the map I'm pretty sure it was east of Mytros. That is at least where the "Sour Vintage" from which the party started is located. Of couse it's hard to tell since (again) we don't really get any scale for the map.
Don't get me wrong. A good DM should be able make everything work. And most of the issues would not matter on their own. But the sheer mass of all these issues together makes it really bad in my opinion. If I have to fix maps, NPC stats, NPC behaviour, re-balance encounters and create my own index, I'm better off designing my own adventure/setting completely myself.
Re: Index. Definitely an annoyance - however, I always use the PDF versions of canned adventures, so to be honest, it never reared its ugly head.
Re: Encounter balancing. I haven't found it an issue since the Great Boar. But you're right with that one. I had Kyrah lend a hand at the beginning of that fight, which did help a bit. I only have a small group (3), with no dedicated healer (Odyseean rogue, Amazon ranger, and Fates warlock), so I tend to run encounters by ear, trying to make them exciting while avoiding a TPK (that is, I make monster hit points flexible during the fight).
Re: Useless maps. Absolutely agree. The lack of scale bars is a glaring oversight - I was talking to the map author (can't remember his name, off-hand) on Reddit, and he said that the large squares on the maps are supposed to be 20 miles. I found that too small for my liking, and increased them to 60 miles, multiplying all the distances and travel times by 3, which seemed to help a lot. As far as the directions go, I think there must have been a disconnect between the writers and map artists because the descriptions often don't match. The most egregious one I found was where it described one of the rivers pouring into the Cerulean Gulf while that actual location was miles away. I ended up printing out the maps and marking the locations on them myself.
Re: Mithral Mines. Yep - I ended up adding doors to try to avoid what you're talking about. The other advantage I had was that my PCs managed to trick the Trog king into taking the rest of his people with him out of the mines, where they were ambushed by the centaurs, so they didn't have to contend with them.
Re: Ultros. I haven't noticed that - we aren't up to that part of the adventure yet, but I'll keep it in mind.
Re: Island Exploration. I'm going to be keeping the time remaining deliberately vague (I'm also getting rid of the 3-days between all islands idea), with increasing portents (eclipses, storms, etc) being the only indicator of time running out. That way I can drop the climax at the appropriate time, rather than risk it happening out f the blue or when the PCs haven't gain enough experience/information to be realistically able to handle it.
Re: Stat Errors. I haven't noticed most of these, to be honest, because I always rebuild NPCs anyway. It is frustrating, though, and I suspect Modiphius could use some extra editors.
Re: NPCs. My players actually came up with a theory that I'm implementing in my campaign which helps a bit. They thought that the drop-off in the worship of the gods has led to them weakening, and have taken it upon themselves to evangelise for the Five. I'm gradually building up the power of the gods as the campaign goes (towards their final draconic selves), but I'm also adding permanent levels of exhaustion (until they change) which deliberately weakens them. As a result of this, they won't be accompanying my players on the voyage.
I set up some of my own rules as to how the gods can effect stuff. Namely, they can't *directly* attack "representatives" of the gods. So they can't attack the PCs; my players are about to head to Mytros, and one thing I'll be doing is describing the lightning specifically NOT targeting them. It's also why the "good" gods can't just fry Gaius. Once the Oath of Peace ends, of course, all bets are off.
I moved the Amazon princess' birthday back a few months and used the excuse that she was destined by Fate to come of age at the end of the Oath of Peace.
I'd completely missed the one about Amazons being carried by their stimfays. That's just silly. I might have them riding giant eagles or something.
I hope that's helped a bit. All of us love Greek mythology, and OotD has captured the feel of that for us. But I agree completely that the editing is just...bleh.
I find your criticims to be quite fair, Runenstahl.
Other weirdness about Stimfay:
they are constructs, but there is a built-in random encounter where they are eating a centaur. Do they really eat!? I don't know. I can't find this detail.
The connection between the great boar hunt and the Oracle is also stretched/unclear.
The "core reveal" of the module, namely that the current gods were the former dragons is a bit underwhelming. I mean... why do the PCs care? Maybe there is something I haven't read yet; it certainly took a lot of reading to get up to speed, but I too find myself confused by the effusive praise for the adventure.
And then there are
the four winds; the fey bards that stole instruments from the temple:
Boreas
Zephyrus
Euria
What I do find cool is the obvious enthusiasm the authors have for the setting. Enthusiasm can go a long way! But unfortunately it's not enough to paper over narrative holes (or worse: inconsistencies).
Update to add: I wish the players guide had less about the mechanics of the epic paths. I would prefer to let the players choose a path based on the narrative content, and let the mechanical boons be a surprise. Because they are cool! And they are extra; since they all accrue above and beyond any skills you have from your background, class, race, etc it seems less critical for the decision to be mechanical in nature. At the very least I would have liked this option. Alas, the players read about them before I had, so that wasn't possible for my campaign.
Quick Info
Just started streaming my new campaign. Please feel free to watch/list as we adventure through fantasy Greece AKA the lands of Thylea. I'm been DMing for over 26 years and this is the most exciting published adventure I have ever encountered. The game is played weekly, Mondays at 9pm EST using Roll20. Lots of roleplaying, bad jokes, and beautiful maps and minis.
The flavor
An epic journey in a land where gods walk the earth.
Discover an epic campaign in the utterly unique lands and seas of Thylea. Inspired by Greek Mythology, Odyssey of the Dragonlords calls forth a band of heroes chosen by destiny to best the many challenges in their path, even the gods themselves. This immense adventure path comprises a 466-page campaign book created by James Ohlen and Jesse Sky, a team of ex-BioWare creative directors, and NYT best selling author Drew Karpyshyn.
Whose collective portfolio includes:
When? Where?
The campaign will take heroes from level 3 all the way through 16. Watch it live on Twitch every Monday at 9 pm EST: https://www.twitch.tv/crashgem
Or check out new VODs every Wednesday at 9 am EST, here on YouTube: http://bit.ly/OdysseyDragonlords
Episode 1: A Call for Heroes
Currently Running:
Odyssey of the Dragonlords | Skull & Shackles | Mythic Odyssey | West Marches of Paradise Vale
Currently Playing:
Rime of the Frostmaiden
Find out more.
Just following up to say we just finished session 7 and this campaign is an absolute blast to run.
You can get lots more info here: http://www.crashgem.com/odyssey
Currently Running:
Odyssey of the Dragonlords | Skull & Shackles | Mythic Odyssey | West Marches of Paradise Vale
Currently Playing:
Rime of the Frostmaiden
Find out more.
Good to hear your campaign is going well, CrashGem.
I have a question you may be able to answer, as I've only just started reading through the campaign in (still a way off) preparation for eventually running it.
At the beginning, Kyrah approaches the PCs and directs them to Versi. Now, the text suggests that Kyrah is incognito, disguised as a poet. However...she is still openly using her name. Easy enough to change her name, obviously, if I want to - but I'm concerned about any knock-on effects this might have later. I mean, my players are going to raise their eyebrows and say "What's a goddess of magic doing in an inn?".
Am I missing something?
Gah! Sorry, I didn't have alerts turned on for DNDBeyond. It just sort of... is what it is. This is a setting with very real "gods walk among us" stuff happening. You can watch our series and see how we handled it. Nowadays it's just... a thing. "Oh, that's so-and-so the God of Blank."
Currently Running:
Odyssey of the Dragonlords | Skull & Shackles | Mythic Odyssey | West Marches of Paradise Vale
Currently Playing:
Rime of the Frostmaiden
Find out more.
I'm currently running this campaign and find it to be quite horrible.
No index, monsters sorted in a bad way, inconsistent naming, bad encounter balancing, useless or broken maps, horribly written NPCs, errors with NPC stats, NPC behaviours make no sense... the list goes on.
I'm still running it and I try to keep my frustration hidden from my players as I don't want to ruin their fun (which they have !). What I really don't understand is how everywhere on the web I see people praising this adventure. Did anyone of those people ever really GM it ? It's a great book to grab ideas from. But running this campaign as it is, is just a very unpleasant experience as it seems you have redo everything in the book, for it to work and / or make sense.
What are your experiences with the campaign ?
I'm currently running it and we're loving it. I've made a few changes - but I've never run a canned adventure or campaign where I haven't, so that's not a problem. If you can list out the exact issues, I can probably offer some suggestions.
Hmmm let's see:
No Index - explains itself
Monsters are theoretically sortet by alphabet. So the "Great Boar" is of course listed under M. Like Mythical Beast. Too bad that in the adventure part it is not mentioned that it is a Mythical Beast. The Ceberus is listed unter S. Like "Servant of Death". Again not mentioned in the adventure part. "Hands of Kentimane". Not to be found in the monster section. Since the guy is a titan I look up that chapter. Nothing. Maybe under magic items since they are more golem like ? Nope. You finally find them at the end of the monster-chapter where the "normal" NPC-troops are listed (like Soldiers etc.). In the end, searching for the monster stats you need is needlessly difficult. Having an index would have solved it. Having printet page numbers next to the mentions in the adventure part would have solved it. Having the monsters be REALLY sorted by alphabet would have solved it. But they did none of this. Oh, and some monsters like the stimfay are not even found in the monster section at all (you find it in the class description of the Amazon subclass).
Items are easier to find. Mostly because the chapter is much smaller. NOT because it is handled any better. Shield of Volkan ? Look under G for GOLDEN shield of Volkan (it's never mentioned in the adventure that it's called that of course).
Encounter balancing:
The great boar is at the same time the easiest and the hardest enemy. It is a beast with an attack bonus of +8 that deals 2D6 +5 damage. It also has legendary resistance and the first blow that would reduce it to 0 hp will only reduce it to 1 hp unless it deals above 15 points of damage. The heroes should at this time be level one (1). Yep. Sounds like a TPK to me. The designers "solved" this by giving the boar automatically one level of exhaustion at the end of each round. So this combat can go VERY badly for our heroes, or they just dodge and avoid it for 6 rounds until it just dies without any of our heroes ever doing anything offensive. And I'm not even talking about the logic of the heroes arriving at exactly the right moment. Just think if they would have arrived 6 rounds later...
Then there is the young ceberus later on. At this point the heroes are supposed to be level 4. The thing has three attacks each round with a +12 bonus that each deal 4D6 +8 damage and have a chance to poison the player (DC 15 con-save to avoid) which gives them disadvantage. Again, likely a TPK unless you tweak the monsters stats.
Useless maps:
The Mithral mines. This looks like it's supposed to be a dungeon that the heroes clear room by room. And played like that it works pretty well. Looking at the map however, you see that the whole cave system is maybe 80ft across. No doors. So realistically the first fight should alert ALL the monsters which would likely be the end of our group. Again.
The Ultros. This mighty ship has more oars in the map then it should have per it's text. After studying the map our players wanted to add some little boats to it and where surprised when I told them, that it is already equipped with 2 row boats. They are just not included in the map. Same goes for the 4 ballistae.
Currently my players are beginning to explore the islands. I prepared Themis and... oh boy. Did the designers forget what maps are for ? There is NOTHING on this map. It's an empty island. Per description the amazon base is on an island in an eastern bay. I can guess which one, but why even bother giving us a map when they put nothing on it ? And what is the scale of the map ? Since time is of great importance at that point of the adventure, it might be very useful to know how long it will take the party to explore the island. No information is given here. I can try to reason it's size. We know that several thousand amazones roam the island in partys of 10-20 persons. They live purely by hunting and also fight each other if they encounter another group... given that information the island should be pretty big indeed. Probably taking a couple of weeks to explore. Which can't be the designers intend as our heroes have only precious little time left.
Badly written NPCs:
So, the designers know that the encounters are badly balanced. Their solution: A pretty annoying NPC GOD (yes, god) accompanies the party and will immidiately resurrect any fallen members. WTF ? Seriously, that is just plain stupid and a good way to kill any feeling of the campaign being "epic".
Later on, at couple of gods will actually follow the players. But they will just protect the camp and the ship and leave all the exiting stuff to the heroes. Unless things go badly... then they will come to the rescue of course. Again... really ? How will the players feel about this ?
Oaths are VERY important in the campaign. Thats why the gods and the titans can't do anything directly until the oath of peace ends. Unless your Sydon. Then it's okay to personally appear in the clouds an throw lightning bolts at the party. Is the pact therefore broken ? Nope. Does this behaviour make any sense since the dude is maybe chaotic evil ? Nope, he is lawful evil. No real explanation given.
Commander Gaius is a clever tactician who (by the text) will NOT send his troops piecemeal against he party. First thing he does when a giant ship that can fit around 100 - 150 people lands on his island: He sends out a Captain on a Gorgon with 6 soldiers and one Gygan to kill the players. His garrison at this point consists of about 40-50 soldiers, 7 Gygans, 4 Captains, 3 Gorgons a Dragon, a Wizard and some staff. Am I the only one who thinks this is the complety opposite of NOT sending his troops out in piecemeal fashion ?
The evil amazon queens keep the rightful heir to their throne alive in their dungeon. Why not kill her ? Because they swore an oath to keep her alive until she comes of age. (The text doesn't really go into details why they swore that oath to her mother before they killed her... I can come up with reasons, but is that my job ?). Oaths are very important in this campaign. Oathbreakers will feel the wrath of the gods and might be cursed to transform into a medusa. Thing is: The evil amazon queens ARE already Medusas. But okay, makes sense. Probably the gods would be even more enraged. However, it becomes completey ludicrous after they heroes free her. From now on the evil guys CAN kill her, since they all know she turned 18 a few months ago. Er what ? So they just forgot to kill for serval months ?
NPC Stat errors:
So Chondrus is pretty smart, but not clever enough to wield his dagger with his high dexterity. Instead he uses his strenght of 10 to hit worse and deal less damage. No biggy since he more then likely will never use it, but still a bit sloppy.
Funny thing: The Amazon War party (page 172) is described as being transportet into battle by their stimfays. Cool thing. Until you look up the stimfay. It is a tiny creature. Nowhere is mentioned that this thing (with it's strength of 10) can carry someone. And since the Amazon Subclass can get it at level 3 I'm pretty sure that would not be balanced it they actually could.
Smaller errors:
Page 34 "...you slew the corrupted boar that plagued the lands west of Mytros."
Nope, looking at the map I'm pretty sure it was east of Mytros. That is at least where the "Sour Vintage" from which the party started is located. Of couse it's hard to tell since (again) we don't really get any scale for the map.
Don't get me wrong. A good DM should be able make everything work. And most of the issues would not matter on their own. But the sheer mass of all these issues together makes it really bad in my opinion. If I have to fix maps, NPC stats, NPC behaviour, re-balance encounters and create my own index, I'm better off designing my own adventure/setting completely myself.
Edit: added spoiler tags
Re: Index. Definitely an annoyance - however, I always use the PDF versions of canned adventures, so to be honest, it never reared its ugly head.
Re: Encounter balancing. I haven't found it an issue since the Great Boar. But you're right with that one. I had Kyrah lend a hand at the beginning of that fight, which did help a bit. I only have a small group (3), with no dedicated healer (Odyseean rogue, Amazon ranger, and Fates warlock), so I tend to run encounters by ear, trying to make them exciting while avoiding a TPK (that is, I make monster hit points flexible during the fight).
Re: Useless maps. Absolutely agree. The lack of scale bars is a glaring oversight - I was talking to the map author (can't remember his name, off-hand) on Reddit, and he said that the large squares on the maps are supposed to be 20 miles. I found that too small for my liking, and increased them to 60 miles, multiplying all the distances and travel times by 3, which seemed to help a lot. As far as the directions go, I think there must have been a disconnect between the writers and map artists because the descriptions often don't match. The most egregious one I found was where it described one of the rivers pouring into the Cerulean Gulf while that actual location was miles away. I ended up printing out the maps and marking the locations on them myself.
Re: Mithral Mines. Yep - I ended up adding doors to try to avoid what you're talking about. The other advantage I had was that my PCs managed to trick the Trog king into taking the rest of his people with him out of the mines, where they were ambushed by the centaurs, so they didn't have to contend with them.
Re: Ultros. I haven't noticed that - we aren't up to that part of the adventure yet, but I'll keep it in mind.
Re: Island Exploration. I'm going to be keeping the time remaining deliberately vague (I'm also getting rid of the 3-days between all islands idea), with increasing portents (eclipses, storms, etc) being the only indicator of time running out. That way I can drop the climax at the appropriate time, rather than risk it happening out f the blue or when the PCs haven't gain enough experience/information to be realistically able to handle it.
Re: Stat Errors. I haven't noticed most of these, to be honest, because I always rebuild NPCs anyway. It is frustrating, though, and I suspect Modiphius could use some extra editors.
Re: NPCs. My players actually came up with a theory that I'm implementing in my campaign which helps a bit. They thought that the drop-off in the worship of the gods has led to them weakening, and have taken it upon themselves to evangelise for the Five. I'm gradually building up the power of the gods as the campaign goes (towards their final draconic selves), but I'm also adding permanent levels of exhaustion (until they change) which deliberately weakens them. As a result of this, they won't be accompanying my players on the voyage.
I set up some of my own rules as to how the gods can effect stuff. Namely, they can't *directly* attack "representatives" of the gods. So they can't attack the PCs; my players are about to head to Mytros, and one thing I'll be doing is describing the lightning specifically NOT targeting them. It's also why the "good" gods can't just fry Gaius. Once the Oath of Peace ends, of course, all bets are off.
I moved the Amazon princess' birthday back a few months and used the excuse that she was destined by Fate to come of age at the end of the Oath of Peace.
I'd completely missed the one about Amazons being carried by their stimfays. That's just silly. I might have them riding giant eagles or something.
I hope that's helped a bit. All of us love Greek mythology, and OotD has captured the feel of that for us. But I agree completely that the editing is just...bleh.
I find your criticims to be quite fair, Runenstahl.
Other weirdness about Stimfay:
they are constructs, but there is a built-in random encounter where they are eating a centaur. Do they really eat!? I don't know. I can't find this detail.
The connection between the great boar hunt and the Oracle is also stretched/unclear.
The "core reveal" of the module, namely that the current gods were the former dragons is a bit underwhelming. I mean... why do the PCs care? Maybe there is something I haven't read yet; it certainly took a lot of reading to get up to speed, but I too find myself confused by the effusive praise for the adventure.
And then there are
the four winds; the fey bards that stole instruments from the temple:
What I do find cool is the obvious enthusiasm the authors have for the setting. Enthusiasm can go a long way! But unfortunately it's not enough to paper over narrative holes (or worse: inconsistencies).
Update to add: I wish the players guide had less about the mechanics of the epic paths. I would prefer to let the players choose a path based on the narrative content, and let the mechanical boons be a surprise. Because they are cool! And they are extra; since they all accrue above and beyond any skills you have from your background, class, race, etc it seems less critical for the decision to be mechanical in nature. At the very least I would have liked this option. Alas, the players read about them before I had, so that wasn't possible for my campaign.