Thunderspire: Ex[eriences?

[legiondevil]

Now that my group has finished running through the Keep on the Shadowfell (with some minor portions they have missed pushed back and scheduled to make appearances later on), I was curious if anyone has finished with Thunderspire, and had any issues/thoughts/suggestions on how things played out.

I think I'll keep this one updated with each game session, giving my thoughts on the encounters as my group goes through them, just to help out other DM's running the same module.

 

[functionciccio]

I think I'll keep this one updated with each game session, giving my thoughts on the encounters as my group goes through them, just to help out other DM's running the same module.

Since I'm planning to run Thunderspire in the near future, I think this is a great idea. I'm waiting for your posts!

 

[joganrosh]

Currently running thunderspire now. We ran through the first encounters on saturday and managed to finish the chamber of eyes. Things i found were:

The Seven Pillared Hall: An awesome little polder, my players really liked it the npcs and locations; the half-orc tap room brought much interest, and i'm going to run a bar fight in there next session.

The Chamber of eyes began brilliantly with first encounter with the bugbear guards and goblins.

The next encounter the guys ran into was the duegar; but for us this quickly became a staid encounter. If the PCs go this way, they fight in a cramped room (which was interesting) but Krand is nigh on useless here; they had heard of him and were nervous when i let slip the big huge hobgoblin was him, but when it came down to it they polished him off without much worry.

Following this, they went to the "main room" with the chamber of eyes, with the direwolf and archers. I can see how this would've been an awesome encounter if the pcs had come in through the western entrance, but via the north door it was pretty impotent.

After this, the final encounter we had was the most southern room with the "left over" humanoids. I actualy thought this was a fairly boring encounter, so i took away the human bandits and threw in a werewolf (their guide to the chamber was terren darkseeker, who's mentioned as an npc. he basically gets hit with an arrow by goblins and turns into one).

Opinions so far:
We played for 5 hours, and by the end we were exhausted and as a dm i was a little bored (and i think my players were too; "more hobgoblins?" i could imagine them thinking). the werewolf, the bit i added, was my favourite bit, just to see the look on the guys faces when they contracted moon fever (although we played 3.5 and they think they've contracted lycanthropy )

I've tinkered with the horned hold adventure for next session to reduce the number of encounters so we could finish it in a session. I'm looking forward to it as one of my players has a dwarf character and he and the duegar had got off to a bad start last session, so i think he's looking forwad to kicking some ass next sunday

 

[WalterKovacs]

So far I've been running a group through the various modules. After KotS, they were able to 'upgrade' the party, swapping out some powers, and we even had the second fighter get replaced by a Rogue.

The Chamber of Eyes was fun as the party got to both have an "easy" encounter by sneaking in one way, followed by a "hard" encounter because they were caught in the hallway.

The Horned Hold was fun, as when the opponent's had information ahead of time, they were able to set up some ambushes [the dining hall had tables flipped over to act as impromptu cover/10 ft ramps.]

The end of Horned Hold is where things started really getting interesting. The party is getting a bit excited about all the Minotaur stuff that is popping up. The Elite monsters that are popping up are making for some interesting battles ... the wizard even cracked out the Sleep spell [once they figured out the fire resistance, the wizard swapped out the fire daily's] and put an Elite to sleep just long enough for all the melee fighters to get a coup de gras crit and ultimately kill him before it came back to his turn after he saved against the unconciousness.

I'm looking forward to running them through the third "dungeon" because it has some cool tricks to it. So far, they just finished the "grabbing room" ... lots of fun.

 

[zaxzilla]

I'm disappointed with the unimaginative nature of Thunderspire and Kots. Find an army of bad guys and destroy their quarters, then repeat. KIll end monster find some scroll for hints for the next part. So unimaginative. DMing's so easy in 4e this will be the last purchased adventure I run. I can come with a lot more creative stuff in a little bit of time, and build dungeons with tiles instead of trying to recreate the maps in the books., I think I spend more time adapting the adventure than if I were to make one from scratch.

 

[f.e.n]

Woooo, thunderspire thread! I also just recently finished kots, or will have the wrap up kots session next week. Thunderspire is just around the corner and i'm busy prepping my npc encounters/conversations. I see the seven pillared hall as almost dizzying for a dm. I know my pc's will check every nook and cranny and expect to meet all kinds of weird folk. It could be multiple sessions before they get going with the storyline.

The best bit is, my p.c's are finally finding their characters. It took a long time but they are all developing strong identities and roles for themselves. It ought to make H2 even more fun with the roleplaying being increased.

Just from a quick read through of the adventure book, it looks a bit easier than kots. That's my first impression. Which, when you really think about it, the party deserves a break after kots final encounters!

One thing though, my party is now extremely paranoid about tag-along npc's due to their awful betrayal by slug in KotS. And the first official story bits in thunderspire is an npc rescue and possible helping hand! Playing to their paranoia might end in their abrupt refusal of the npc's help. hee hee!

 

[Ander00]

I'm disappointed with the unimaginative nature of Thunderspire and Kots. Find an army of bad guys and destroy their quarters, then repeat. KIll end monster find some scroll for hints for the next part. So unimaginative.

As a player, this bugged me. Thanks to this and other predictable elements (the ambush, as well as the other tieflings), I found myself less than impressed by Thunderspire. Also, the next time some undead wants me to impress him so I can proceed with the adventure, I'm gonna scream. Way to showcase the skill challenge rules.


cheers

 

[Nebulous]

Since I'm planning to run Thunderspire in the near future, I think this is a great idea. I'm waiting for your posts!

I'm waiting too. Our group will get through the hobgoblin lair soon, and then it's on to the final boss fight in Keep. I've already seeded Thunderspire a good bit as the next stop on the railro-uh, i mean adventure.