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I'm about halfway through the book right now. Reading through the adventure to see if it's worth running with my group as a short campaign. I honestly think this is a phenomenal book and expands on the game incredibly well. Even if you don't like the tone of Aq Inc. this book gives you:

Simplified rules for a base of operations and the hirlings that keep it running
Some expanded downtime activities that could be easily be modified to running any kind of business
A new race that's basically evolved/civilized goblins

and my personal favorite: A way to gamify the normal player bookkeeping through the Cartographer, Hoardsperson, Documancer, and other jobs. Have an issue with your players losing track of quests? Well, the documancer now gets bonuses for keeping meticulous care of each plot thread, the hoardsperson can get items for cheap if they do a good job tracking party funds, and so on. Some jobs are more defined then others, but all seemed geared towards helping keep the players involved and invested in things that many players ignore or forget to do.

So has anyone else picked this up? What are your thoughts?

I play dungeons and dragons to get away from the corporate dystopia of modern life, so I really have no interest in this book, sad to say.

Really terrible. This takes a niche product down to a niche of niche of a niche. (D&D players who are also Penny Arcade fans who also watch their stream live plays).

Given how few books WotC produces for 5e, I can't see it as anything other than terrible for the health of the game. Just a gimmick filler product with no lasting value, and taking up actual design and production time for something that could have brought actual D&D options that are still missing from 5e.

I dont own it and probably wont.

But good rules for running a buisness and/or base and hirlings is useful for more than how they present it. Good rules for base/hirelings can help the players organize mercenarys, run a keep or castle, start an army. All kinds of stuff. If the rules are easy for players then they are probably super usful for the dm too.

The race seems a waste. If you want goblins to be civilized take a goblin stat block and give them a city. Done.

The gamification of jobs i think is also bad. Like most dnd products/mechanics what good can come from any mechanic that makes the players feel even less like they are people in a world and even more like they are stat blocks killing monsters for loot? Nothing says dnd should be a video game and not a pnp rpg like gak like this.

I bought a digital version on D&D Beyond and can't see myself using any of it. The race is neat, but beyond that I can't see anything in the book that would fit into any of my games. It expands next to nothing, imo.

Voss wrote:
Really terrible. This takes a niche product down to a niche of niche of a niche. (D&D players who are also Penny Arcade fans who also watch their stream live plays).

Given how few books WotC produces for 5e, I can't see it as anything other than terrible for the health of the game. Just a gimmick filler product with no lasting value, and taking up actual design and production time for something that could have brought actual D&D options that are still missing from 5e.

I noticed this too, in 3rd edition I had a great library of 20+ books, settings and such. I wish they would put out more content for 5th edition.