D&D 4E Trying to Decide on Module Order for a 4e Campaign

[AbdulAlhazred]

Actually, they did a write up of the home base; I believe it's called, ugh, Restin Keep or some such ridiculous name. But, to be honest, name aside, the keep and its history/plot hooks are among the highlights of the Chaos Scar material. I don't remember in which issue it can be found, but it's there among the Chaos Scar material, some of which is quite good, delve-style material. A lot of it, though, is uninspiring.

Ah, I probably just missed it. TBH I was so into my own stuff that I didn't spend a LOT of time reading through all the Dungeon adventures. No doubt the Chaos Scar stuff is a mixed bag, as is anything very extensive. Some of it seemed to have at least germs of interesting fun though.

 

[MoutonRustique]

I have another person interested in joining the 4e game I'm starting soon so we're tentatively starting on the 13th. Since I'm reigning in my tendency of planning big for a campaign, biting off more than I can chew skill and energy wise in the pre-campaign stages, getting anxious and stressed out, and then eventually stopping/cancelling, I decided that I'm going to run modules for AT LEAST all of Heroic Tier. I was wondering what would be the best order/choice for running the adventures? Here is what I have/will have soon:

Dungeon Delve (1-30)
Keep on the Shadowfell(1-3)
Marauders of the Dune Sea (2)
Madness at Gardmore Abbey (6-8)
Orcs of Stonefang Pass (4-5)
Prince of Undeath (27-30)
Pyramid of Shadows (7-10)
Revenge of the Giants (12-17)
Scepter Tower of Spellgard (2-5)
Seekers of the Ashen Crown (2-5)
Slaying Stone (1-2)
Thunderspire Labyrinth (4-6)
Tomb of Horrors (10-22)

From what I understand so far, all of my players will be new to 4e with one who is still relatively new-ish to D&D and one an experienced player of non-4e editions. I can pick up adventures to fill out that list if I can find a good deal on a hard copy(I love having all those maps and tiles and whatnot). What would be a good order to go in? Campaign setting-wise I'm leaning more towards Eberron because I like the concept although I don't know hardly anything about it.

My advice would be thus :

• Have a look through the adventures to get a feel for the kind of stories they tell.
• Then, I suggest you get a rough idea of a situation you'd like to engage or a story you'd like to tell.
• After this is done, you can look at which adventures would suit what you're going for.
• Don't be afraid to set a hard cap on your campaign.
• It is quite fine to use the same characters in another (second) campaign.

As to using Eberron, I say go for it! - it's an awesome setting, and it can work as a "regular setting" as well as anything else. Not using it to it's fullest is not going to hurt it's feelings.

Plus, some of the adventures for it are pretty good!

My list suggestion:

1. Some Assembly Required (Dungeon 208)
2. The Slaying Stone
3. Seekers of the Ashen Crown
4. Kybher's Harvest (up-leveled to 4-5, which is very easy to do in 4e)
5. Madness at Gardmore Abbey (since you really want to run it)

You have a few good themes of madness, intrigue and "archeology" going on. Plus, I like all of these. It hurts me to cut Forbidden Forge from the list... it's very cool.

This provides you with a good long time of game time. Once you're underway, it'll be easier to figure out where you want to go from there. No need to bite off the whole buffet at once.

My 2cp.

 

[darkbard]

The Keep write up is called "The Keep on the Chaos Scar": Dungeon 176, March 2010.

 

[The Human Target]

Yeah I'd run Guardmore Abbey for sure.

Thunderspire is doable.

Definitely not Keep on Shadowfell or Pyramid of Shadows unless you want to do the work to make them better.

Reavers of Harkenwold is a high quality adventure.

I'd set it in Falkcrest (in the back of the DMG), do some small adventures around there, go Harkenwald, Cairn of theWinter King, some more side adventures for a few levels, then Guardmore.

I love Eberron and support using it, but there is a lot to learn about it.

 

[Jessica]

I love Eberron and support using it, but there is a lot to learn about it.

What are some of the biggest things to focus on? I think I have a general gist of the overview.

 

[The Human Target]

The magical pseudo technology, the political intrigue left over from the Last War, the dragon marked houses and other unique organizations, the original races/different takes on standard races (who doesn't love dinosaur riding halflings, the high adventure aspect (which 4e embraced anyway.)

If you're going to run it, you might as well lean into it.

It isn't hard to run by any means, but if your goal is a low stress game learning new stuff/teaching it to the players/adapting material to Eberron is going to add to your workload.

 

[Jessica]

The magical pseudo technology, the political intrigue left over from the Last War, the dragon marked houses and other unique organizations, the original races/different takes on standard races (who doesn't love dinosaur riding halflings, the high adventure aspect (which 4e embraced anyway.)

If you're going to run it, you might as well lean into it.

It isn't hard to run by any means, but if your goal is a low stress game learning new stuff/teaching it to the players/adapting material to Eberron is going to add to your workload.

I'm going to make sure to read up on it a fair bit between now and then. However when it comes to campaign setting it's pretty much a choice of:

1) Do a homebrew campaign which would require me to spend time making my own world from scratch including naming things which is the bane of my existence.

2) Run Forgotten Realms which would require me to catch up on a campaign world which I haven't paid serious attention to since 2e.

3) Run Dark Sun which, while a freakin' amazing campaign setting that I will most likely run in the future, likewise requires either lots of reading and may even require me to adapt a lot of my published adventure to it.

4) Eberron which as you said requires me to learn a bit about the setting.

I'm going to have to put some effort in before the first game regardless, but going with Eberron seems like the best choice since from what I know it sounds like the setting that would fit my idea of fantasy best(more so the magi-tech and the similarities in a lot of ways to the real world and less on the political intrigue) while also being a good introduction to 4e/D&D.

 

[muppetmuppet]

If you run KOTS the world is sorted for the first 3 levels, that's part of the reason I suggested it.

 

[amerigoV]

If you are considering KOTS, I suggest running it both as the beginning and possibly the end of the campaign. How?

Well, I would split it in two. I cannot comment on any system flaws (4e is not my gig), but the model suffers from an identity crisis - is it a kick in the door dungeon crawl or is it a horror adventure? It tried to do both and it falls flat.

So do a L1 adventure as merely clearing out the "regular" dungeon. The PCs get to know the area and maybe use it as a home base for awhile. Then they come back later in the campaign and see all the changes to the town and the keep as the Temple in the basement has been uncovered. The horror effects can then be fully implemented in the second adventure - it will be both familiar and alien to the players, which is great for horror.

I have some suggestions in the attached link if you are interested.

https://lab.obsidianportal.com/wikis/h1-shadowfell

 

[darkbard]

Don't disregard the possibility of setting your campaign in the "default" setting of the WotC adventures: the Nentir Vale. There's enough material presented in the DMG and MV: Threats to the Nentir Vale to run an entire heroic campaign there, and one can easily expand beyond that, especially using some of the expansion material (on Sarthel, etc.) that's available with your DDI subscription.

To be honest, doing so makes the DM's job that much easier, limiting the scope to a handful of locations and backgrounds that might see use in play without overwhelming him or her with hundreds of pages of canonical history to survey.