3olum is much better than kid storyline. I like it.

The difference between Solum and Swan Song I see is that Solum feels really controlled. Encounters are balanced to party level, mission payout (eg. goblin ears) are balanced etc. This sets this whole premise where the party can usually YOLO without much consideration. And if something is harder than "it should", that's when the lawyering happens.

Contrast it with Swan Song, where in the pirates episode the party was outnumbered and outgunned. And then they got like hundreds of thousands of credits for salvage job. And an AI. Completely imbalanced encounter, completely imbalanced payout. It's exciting and there's no much rules lawyering because from the very beggining, Adam set the premise of "I'm gonna portray the world as realistically as I can, fuck balance".

Whereas all encounters in Solum are kinda "beatable". But I don't think it's Neal's fault. Neal tried to throw some imbalanced stuff at the party. The whole castle infiltration for example was almost exactly like pirate ambush in Swan Song. There's a tough problem, party needs to work out a solution. Except that in Solum, the party kinda went straight in without much consideration, wearing mismatched armour and hoping that DM hax will save them. And it did. Solum really feels like DM-controlled environment.

I still enjoy it though. As I said 3olum is pretty cool. But it would be much cooler if for example, the party found a huge treasure in the goblin main camp. Goblins probably stole a lot of stuff, maybe even some magical items. I hope they're not just +1 swords, and instead are something awesome.

Actually, this brings me to a good example - the Bloodthirster sword from the first campaign. It was completely imbalanced but it was awesome. Neal admitted that it was probably a mistake and it fucked up balance - but IMO that's actually great. More imbalanced stuff, more imbalanced encounters. It really makes the party play in a creative way.