Is Heart of Nightfang Spire a well-designed adventure module?

Is the D&D3 adventure module Heart of Nightfang Spire a well-designed adventure module?



I’m not asking if you like it or had fun with it. I’m not asking if it is a great piece of D&D history. Just, is it well designed as a published adventure for general D&D play?

If it is, what could current module designers/authors learn from it? What should current module designers/authors try to emulate about it?

Quasqueton

I have to vote NO on this one, despite it being the most memorable adventure of my 5+ year campaign.



do I need spoilers? do these threads assume we'll talk about the module's content?




- The dungeon itself is linear in the worst way. There is pretty much one path down which takes you through 75% of all encounter areas.
- The monsters are repetative to the point of madness. Mohrgs and Girallons, over and over and over again.
- Hook? Motivation? None to be found. The BBEG is hanging out, being evil. That's fabulous.
- Traps and enemies are just plain mean-spirited. Tons of save-or-die effects, effects that kill you when you think you've answered the riddle correctly, just some poor taste, not-fun stuff in there.
- if judging by the "give everyone something to do" standard, this is pretty miserable. Your rogue? 66.67% useless. Your druid? Guess who's the healer. Your ranger? Step into fighter mode or stay outside with the horses. Oh and it's 3.0 so you won't be getting any favored enemy bonus against foes in here.


however, I need to point out some elements that are brilliant and worthy of note.

- Bruce Cordell doesn't feel the need to limit what he can slap templates on to make a cool monster. Vampire Gibbering Mouther? Awesome. Half-Red-Dragon Flesh Golem? Beautiful.

- BBEG's resting place is a heart of a dragon demigod, suspended on chains. That's an evocative, cool setup.

- NPC undead with class levels, done very well and catering to the strengths of the base undead creature. They made memorable foes.

- Magic Scrying sensors scattered throughout gives the BBEG a way to follow the PC's around and react to what they are doing. Good feature.

- new monster, the Mooncalf. Sweet abilities and terrifying placement, stupid name.


That's all I can really say about this.

You know, I think that is the most informative, well-thought-out, and well expressed response to any of these threads. And it’s your first post on ENWorld. Impressive. Kudos.

Quasqueton

I played through part of it too long ago to remember. However, I did think of using it IMC. I'll be watching this very closely...

As much as I liked elements of it, I have to say "no." Bruce Cordell seems to specialize in weird necro-themed death traps. The challenges were far too often lopsided affairs: either the PCs danced right through them or got stomped on. Rogues were pretty much nothing more than glorified PMDs (Polish Mine Detectors) and spectators on this one.

Too. Much. Undead.

The girallons seemed little more than a tacked on patch to solve the above statement, which only made their presence seem more awkward.

It also had the problem of trying to come up with excuses to counter the PC's now-impressive array of utility spells (teleport, scry, etc.).

After running it once, I still use pieces of it in my homebrews: I like the flavor text and some of the ideas, but as a whole...yuck.

Quasqueton said:

You know, I think that is the most informative, well-thought-out, and well expressed response to any of these threads. And it’s your first post on ENWorld. Impressive. Kudos.

Quasqueton

Click to expand...

LOL. If not for the great DB crash of '06 I might have been up to, oh... 15 or so!!! But this is a fine thread to born-again post in. Thanks!

As much as I liked the adventure, I'll have to go with no. As mentioned above, the enemy mix gets old fairly quickly, and many classes won't have much to do. Bruce Cordel also seemed to find one of the more under CR'd monsters around to use in most of the encounters. A Vampire wizard could probably make early appearences and then escape, he has no reason to be completely passive.

But the deadiness of the module was a good thing in my opinion; it's a training ground for serious high level combat. At around 9th level, the party could drop a few Deathwards around and they'd last for more than hour.

I seem to recall our group making holes in walls and floors, so the linearity may be somewhat overstated.

A Mess

Lordy, NO.

I love Cordell's work, sometimess buying stuff unseen that he writes, but this thing was awful and downright painful when we playtested it and it was worse when we saw none of our suggestions used (like to throw something at the players besides the 13th room in a row with a handful of wights and wraiths in it). Boring as heck. It got a little better down under but ouch, this one was a real stinker.

-DM Jeff