D&D 4E Good adventure that shows 4E's strengths?

[Melkor]

Hi folks,

I have a couple of players that are interested in having me DM for them, and I think I would like to use 4E. Years ago, they played through the initial parts of Keep on the Shadowfell when it first came out, and formed the opinion that 4E was fun, but nothing more than a 'glorified boardgame,' could not be played as an 'true' roleplaying game, and just did not 'fee'l like D&D to them. I was not the DM when they played 4E.

That said, I have offered to run them through a game (which could turn into a campaign), and I was wondering if there are any good 1st level adventures out there that showcase some of what D&D 4E can do - both in combat and out - without bogging down in fights that can take entire sessions.

Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

 

[Rune]

Reavers of Harkenwold and Madness at Gardmoor Abby are the only two I would recommend. But I highly recommend those two.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Courts of the Shadow Fey is a good adventure, though I'm not sure it really plays to the strengths of 4e. It works though.

What really, IMHO, plays the strengths of 4e is over-the-top action-adventure. Nobody really thinks of D&D in those terms and consequently there isn't a published 4e adventure that actually plays to the true strengths of the game IMHO.

 

[pemerton]

How much work are you prepared to do?

B10 Night's Dark Terror is the first adventure I used in my 4e campaign.

It starts with a boat trip that is interrupted by a cultist assault: I set it up with an island near where the boat was stopped (by a chain across the stream), with the enemy mage and a warrior or two on a barge approaching the boat from the shore, and other cultists swimming with daggers in their teeth. An enemy slinger was in the bushes on the shore.

This encounter had terrain, PCs jumping/teleporting from their boat to the island, taking control of the enemy barge, and making it to shore to shut down the enemy artillery. It worked pretty well.

The next encounter (as best I recall) is with a bear in a hut - the PC paladin tamed the bear and got a temporary friend. There is also investigation, to gain some backstory info.

Then the PCs had to make their way through a goblin assault to get to the farmstead before the pallisade gates were shut. This was a skill challenge, with failures resulting in PCs having to spend a round or two in combat with a goblin wolf-rider.

And then there is the goblin assault on the homestead. My players had their PCs set up various sorts of defences, especially to cover a bit of wall that was partially burned down by the goblins, and then ended up being lured out of the homestead by a trick but beating most of the goblins in a night-time showdown.

It's a very dynamic setup that I think works much better in 4e than it would have in its original B/X system!

 

[Will Doyle]

Dungeon mag had a load of good adventures that showcase 4e's strengths.

I recommend this: http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.aspx?x=dnd/dun/smileybob

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I'll be watching this thread for suggestions.

I'm currently DMing a Dungeon adventure -- a Perkins adventure, in fact! I like the plot and the details that I don't have to come up with myself; but I see what other 4e fans mean when they say that WotC never realized 4e's potential. There's an encounter with a single ghoul, for example, where the PCs have no reason not to take an extended rest afterward. I re-statted the ghoul as an N-level solo, because the adventure stats it as an N+3ish level (standard) monster, which would have been far less exciting for my players, who ended up fighting the ghoul. Next session, the players will be delving into the labyrinth of 5-foot corridors that is the adventure's classic-dungeon finale, and I suspect it'll be less than ideal.

 

[MoutonRustique]

For 1st level - Reavers of Harkenwold.

It is excellent.

For the long combat problems (which 4e does face), there are a few solutions on your end and a few on the players' :

1 - you can reduce the monster hp (1/3 off does the trick for me)
Why : 4e tends to have ~3-4 hit foes. Removing one of those greatly shortens the number of rounds.

2 - you can have foes flee or surrender when a good portion of their resources go down
Why : all of D&D adventures (IME) have very poor advice for retreat or surrender. Have foes behave in ways you can imagine such foes would act. Ex: a goblin party could very well run away after 2 rounds if one they've taken hits and no PCs are down. They don't need to wait until 4 fifths of their force is dead and the rest are bloodied...

2.5 - make sure that foes that surrender, surrender!.
Why : players learn quickly (really, really quickly) to kill over having a chance to be betrayed later. You can have them attempt to run away (I'd suggest to frame it as an SC). Only very, very rarely and only when it is essential to the story that this foe betray his word should you feign surrender.

3 - have the players know their main powers.
Why : The default presentation of the character builders don't really showcase this, but it's usually pretty simple - the "little card" presentation is not my favorite and, I believe, over-exaggerates the amount of significant information per power. Taking a turn in 4e doesn't really require more than ~30 seconds for a prepared player (if that!)

4 - have the players w/o built-in options for their minor action forget it exists - do a full exorcism if required.
Why : players that "look for something to do with their action" can slow things to a crrraaawwwwllll. Kill them - the others will learn the lesson

... that's it form me. Others have, and will have, better advice shortly.


Last advice :
Use the SC structure as an aid, not a straight-jacket. My preferred method is to have ~4 outcomes per situation presented (2 kinds of successes and 2 kinds of failures) and then I can more easily provide a satisfying narrative that applies to what my players did/attempted to do.

Last, last advice :
When you have a situation (often from a failed SC) that leads to combat with penalties imposed to the PCs, I've found it more fun to have the players loose hp instead of healing surges - starting the battle at bloodied really re-enforces the idea of hp as a global resource including fatigue and moral. But with 4e's healing mechanisms, it isn't overly punishing.

Last, last, last advice (this is getting ridiculous!) :
If you're going with Reavers of Harkenwold, you should build yourself ~2 or 3 "regular" Skill Chanlenges (that's what "SC" stands for, btw... maybe should have said that earlier in the thread... naw, you're smart, you'll figure it out!) such as :
- moving from A to B w/o being seen
- escaping from a patrol/situation
- convince someone to help

You'll get a lot of mileage out of those and they open up situations that will really help that adventure come alive as a mini-campaign.

Suggestions (not advice per se, so I'm not being ridiculous right now) :
- have the Church of X in Fallcrest have an available stockpile of weapons very useful against the devils (I used crates of holy water) to help the people defend themselves
- deal with the river halflings to ferry those weapons into occupied territory
- you can use the crypt to plant an old religious text of church X - to "buy" that water
- offer to players an option to learn some of the foes' spells (some are very, very cool)
- build around the adventure, it is excellent, but it is also rife with possibilities!

... ok, I'm done now. For real.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

While I would also simply point @MoutonRustique's posts and simply agree, may I also mention Shards of Selûne which was a DDi adventure published to complement the Neverwinter Campaign Setting. I managed to turn that into a major campaign arc that spanned levels 3-7 and then inspired another arc covering levels 7-9. It's about collecting three MacGuffins but that also allows a tremendous amount of variety as you explore the rebuilding city. Good stuff. And definitely a great way to start a Neverwinter campaign. It also ties in nicely with the Neverwinter character themes if you are using those.

(Coincidentally, that campaign is about to finish and it looks like the next one with the same players will be based in Daggerdale using Reavers as Harkenwold as the basis for a Daggerdale-focussed campaign. I'm really looking forward to it.)

 

[pemerton]

ake sure that foes that surrender, surrender!.
Why : players learn quickly (really, really quickly) to kill over having a chance to be betrayed later.

Absolutely.

One of my players had never played D&D before (only Rolemaster, with my existing group) and so had no predisposition to kill everything that moves!

He instigated a general tendency to mercy against many (by no means all!) foes. Goblins were allowed to live, hobgoblins obliged to renounce their martial ways in the name of Corellon and Pelor, a defeated hag was pointed to a new forest to haunt, etc. I find the game is much more fun when it contains compromises and moral as well as military victories.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

4 - have the players w/o built-in options for their minor action forget it exists - do a full exorcism if required.
Why : players that "look for something to do with their action" can slow things to a crrraaawwwwllll. Kill them - the others will learn the lesson

This is a phenomenon that I've never encountered; but I thought about it when introducing a friend to 4e recently. He always plays gnomish rangers, so exorcising his minor actions wasn't an option. He did ask me to choose his powers, so I chose all standard-action attacks, and then gave him a run-down of 4e's action types and his character's actions:

"The first round of a fight, you're going to use your minor to quarry an enemy, attack it, and maybe move. Then you're just going to attack and maybe move on following rounds. When that enemy dies or you want to switch enemies, you'll use your minor to quarry a new one; but other than that, you're not going to use your minors."