Keep on the Shadowfell Review

I ran KotS yesterday. Take my review for what it's worth.

First, I only had two players. I was so excited about playing we played anyway. Each ran two characters. That would be mistake number one.

My wife played the half-elf cleric and dwarven fighter. My buddy played the tiefling warlord (downloaded from the wizards site) and the human wizard.

Let me say that my expectations were high. I thought it would be a B+ and after reading through it I knew it would be an A. It just looked so awesome. The new rules seemed to rock.

Then we played.

In my opinion, I don't think anyone should play this module with the quick start rules. It is only going to frustrate you. There aren't enough rules there to fill in the gaps and so you end up with over simplistic rules that make it seem like nothing other than (as my buddy kept saying) a miniatures game. "I'm playing a miniature, not roleplaying."

Now, take it with a grain of salt. He was playing two characters and that tends to happen. I never should have done that in the first place.

First problem, the rules are far too incomplete.

Second problem, they put the characters up against monsters that can shift all over the place for the first three fights. Bad idea. Make it simple and short to start with. We were learning the rules as we went, but a fight should not take 3 hours. Each one was nearly to the death.

First problem, the rules are were too incomplete.
Second problem, the starting fights were too long.
Third problem. Kobold awesomeness.

My players had a definite problem with little scrawny kobolds having more hit points and a better attack then the party fighter and paladin. I don't care how you justify it. The kobold dragonshields (granted they are 2nd level) were tough. The extra shifting they get made them a slaughter machine in the second fight.

In order to save the party in the second fight I had to have the dragonborn paladin suddenly jump out of the bushes to save the day. (The fighter and warlord had already gone down).

We only got through two fights. My players are willing to give it a second chance for sure, but I'd have to give it a C- at best right now. Big disappointment.

As for what was good. Tons of little stuff.

• Saving throws changes. Perfect
• More tactical movement on the battlefield. Great.
• The wizard being able to fire a magic missile every round. Screw the crossbow. Perfect.
• Distinctness of characters. Awesome.

My players also missed the first level characters that were quick and easy to play. You either lived and leveled quickly or died and made a new character. The first four levels were trial by fire. Darwinian survival of the fittest. Now it's like running a 5th level party right off the bat.

Keeping track of who's marked who, who had combat advantage... it didn't make anything any more easy.

My advice. Don't run this with quickstart rules. Wait til the full 4E comes out. Fill in the roleplaying gaps in the module. (It's way too vanilla - too many pages wasted on the quickstart rules) Get creative.

In all, I'm hoping with a full group and after having learned the 4E rules better things will be smooth and we'll be loving it.

I ran 3E the day it came out with the same players + more and it went a lot better than this. Thus why I thought this would be an A, and it turned out a C-.

It is seeming to me, reading the KotS reviews, that they are either mostly positive, or slightly more positive than negative. The common factors differentiating these two seems to be:

1)Familiarity with new rules (read the forum threads a lot or die!)
2)The fact that KotS is NOT designed to work with the entirety of the D&D demographic

I see 3 major subsets of those who are trying to play KotS before the core books come out:

a)experienced DM's and players who are already sold on 4e
b)new players/less experienced DM's who are interested in 4e
c)those who liked 3.5 (or 2e or 1e), and are hoping that 4e will be something they can use and like

IMO KotS is only a good fit for the first group...they will find gaps and errors but have the experience and goodwill to work around them.

The second group will either not notice the gaps and will be basing their experience (good or bad ) on an incomplete understanding/portrayal of the rules, or get bogged down in the gaps and errors.

The third group will see the problems and may be hard-pressed to overlook them. While still seeing the positives, the overall first experience might be tainted.

I am in no way judging the merits of the module as a whole, but I do agree with others who have opined that KotS, released at this point, as it is, wasn't the best idea.

That being said, I do own the module, but from reading through it, and reading about others experiences, I am definitely waiting until my Core Gift Set arrives before trying it with my group... the concealment/cover/invisibility concepts alone have me confused.

BTW I consider myself Group A

Also note I didn't mention d) those that hate the changes, as I do not consider them part of the D&D demographic, as many have stated they won't buy anything 4e.

Thanks for the review. It seems fair. From what I've read, KotS needs a full group and a DM who knows the flaws of the module going in (and has fixed them) in order to be fun. It's completely unfair to any dm to expect them to be able to just pick it up and play. I don't own KotS, I just read these forums far too much. It's just... not very good for raising the morale for WotC's new game, ne?

If you can get the group to give it another shot, I'd say use some of the PrRC stuff (or the compilation of that material here) to try and let the players tweak or make their own characters. Get a few more people in on the fun. Try to focus more on filling it in with your own fluff and story stuff. KotS is not built fun, but I've read reviews by people in which it was made fun. Good luck if you try the endeavor again, but just waiting for 4e is an entirely understandable course of action.

I am group A, but without the trying KotS thing.

Also, don't forget to scale encounters. Even though you gave every player 2 characters, the reason things probably took so long is that all those fights were scaled for a party of 5 PCs. Your party was also missing the Rogue, the only available Striker, although I'm not sure how much that could have affected play.

Having run KotS I would definitely echo the problems with multi characters. We started with 4 players, 1 playing the Wizard and Paladin and he did struggle with the options involved with both until we dragged a 5th player in to run the Paladin.

Surprised it took 3 hours to run a combat though, we played for 2.5 hours and got through the two kobold encounters and enough roleplaying in Winterhaven for the guys to almost start a bar fight. In the 2nd fight, I did manage to knock unconscious the Rogue and later the Wizard, but there was never a danger of a TPK.

I would give the module a B+ so far, losing points for quality of production and the fact that you can't learn how to play 4th edition from it, compared to the Adventure Box for 3rd edition or the Black Box OD&D.

samursus said:

Stuff.

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This is very insightful, and I think it's true.

As a side note I find it amazing how many people are willing to play multiple characters just to get their first 4E play experience. (And how it unfortunately never turns out as satisfying as it could be).

SDOgre said:

The first four levels were trial by fire. Darwinian survival of the fittest.

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No, it wasn't. It was survival of the LUCKIEST.

That 1st level wizard with 4 hitpoints could go down just like that *snaps fingers*. That's not survival of the fittest, unless by "fittest" you mean "has the most hitpoints".

Contents May Vary said:

No, it wasn't. It was survival of the LUCKIEST.

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This.

I played multiple characters on a few occasions. It is harder, but can be done. It taught me a great deal about how the classes interact.

You really, really, really need to stack those bonuses!!!