Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde.....

Sunderstone · Nov 9, 2007

My AoW group has shrunk to a point that its going to be on hold for abit (scheduling problems). My remaining players are going to take a break from the AoW for abit and get into another side campaign. Im thinking about kicking it off with Shatterd Gates of Slaughtergarde so........

Anyone here ever run this?
What did you think about it?
Anything in particular that I should look out for?

Thanks in advance.

DM_Jeff · Nov 9, 2007

I read it over and liked it. My full comments and discussion on it are at this link:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=183870

-DM Jeff

Sunderstone · Nov 10, 2007

Thanks a ton Jeff for the link.
I came to the same conclusions myself. A solid dungeon romp and a good start for my side campaign. I think ill run with it with a few modifications to the story to fit PC backgrounds more.

trollwad · Nov 11, 2007

I disagree. It is generally a bad module imho. There is one cool encounter with a spoiler below

blind troll but I found the module be poorly written, painfully obvious, painfully linear, and not creative at all. I recommend any of the Paizo modules instead. Why dont you start the age of Worms with Erik Mona's module, the Whispering Cairn, from Dungeon for only $7 or so? Seriously, lay down Whispering Cairn against Slaughtergarde some time and compare the level at which the text is written (college level vs. 8th grade), the potential lethality, the quality of the villains, the creative newness factor. Its really one-sided.

trollwad · Nov 11, 2007

Oops I meant why dont you start Savage Tide while you put Age of Worms on hold? Seriously, though, compare the level at which The Whispering Cairn is written to the level at which Slaughtergarde is written.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Nov 11, 2007

If his group is too small to run AoW, I'm not sure STAP is going to fly.

trollwad · Nov 11, 2007

You could just ramp their levels up by one. Thus, youd be a 2 man party of third level characters with a L1 npc in a L1 module, etc.

delericho · Nov 11, 2007

I found "Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde" to be a solid but not hugely inspired dungeon crawl adventure. It looked like fun, provided you know what to expect going in.

In retrospect, it looks like a bit of a testing ground for the Delve Format in adventures, with WotC not sure how best to use the format. That being the case, perhaps the "Barrow of the Forgotten King"/"The Sinister Spire"/"Fortress of the Yaun-ti" trilogy are worth considering - they're each solid adventures using the Delve format, for characters starting at 3rd level, and perhaps being a bit less formulaic than SGoS. The middle part of the trilogy, in particular, is really quite good.

Sunderstone · Nov 12, 2007

I really didnt want to start a new AP till we get the other player back on a normal basis. When that happens we will either return to the AoW or start the Savage Tide (depending on how long we stay away from it). As for APs in general, I prefer four PCs and one NPC to fill out any missing roles. At the moment we have 3 PCs and one NPC so Im downshifting to something a little less epic.

After reading more of Shattered Gates, it's just a little lacking in backstory but still seems solid enough to build on. These kinds of "spartan" modules are a breeze to customize too.
Im working in my players backgrounds a little deeper into it and adding more sub-plots. My group tends to develop some rather memorable character personalities and can turn a hard core mindless crawl into some excellent role-playing situations. I think this will do for now.

Thanks again for the opinions and experiences.