D&D 4E Recommend to me a beginner DM's 4e adventure

[Merkuri]

My group is currently trying a lot of new things, and the regular DM wants a break so we've bounced around the idea of trying out different systems and having different people DM them. Until now our group hasn't played any 4e (though one of the players has), and I have all of the core books and like what I've read about the system so far, so I volunteered to run a game.

What I'm looking for is a good starter 4e adventure. "Starter" in the sense that our group has not only never played 4e before (well, most of them) but that I've never DMed before in any system at all (unless you count the time I DMed AD&D for my sister when I was fourteen and neither of us had played an RPG before). I'd rather start out with an adventure I don't need to tweak very much, obviously, since my ideas of what works and what doesn't are based on only theory and no experience.

An adventure gets bonus points for me if it's available online so that I can easily work with it in MapTool, since we play online. Also bonus points for being free, though I am willing to buy an adventure if it's good and not outrageously expensive.

Our current DM has suggested Keep on the Shadowfell, but I was hoping for something a little more obscure, especially since one of our players has already played it.

Oh, and we currently have five people in our group (so, one DM and four players), so adventures keyed for that number of people also get bonus points.

So, suggestions?

(I wasn't sure if this should go in here or in General. I figured this forum would get a higher concentration of people who have DMed 4e before. )

 

[Blackbrrd]

Subscribe to Enworld and get the War of the Burning Sky campaign. The first module is currently available.

I haven't played it yet, but the bits I have read looks nice. Maps and so on are available for download.

It only costs 3$, so nearly free.

 

[Merkuri]

Subscribe to Enworld and get the War of the Burning Sky campaign.

I am a subscriber, but this is probably going to be a one-shot campaign so I'd rather not start an adventure path when I know I probably won't finish it.

 

[Ryujin]

If you have access to the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, you'll find a nice short adventure in the beginning of it.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If you have access to the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, you'll find a nice short adventure in the beginning of it.

The DMG itself and the Eberron Campaign Guide also come with short, introductory adventures. The DMG (1 and 2, but the first will suffice, I think) should be very useful to yourself if you have never DMed before. I am not sure if you already own it or have otherwise access to it (maybe through the player that already played 4E).

I think there was also an EN World community project, "Raiders of Oakhurst" available here that was developed during the pre-launch phase. You might want to search for that. (I did find a link to the thread.)

 

[fba827]

*IF* you and your group are okay with Eberron flavor there is Khyber's Harvest available for free download at Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Try DnD (scroll about halfway down the page). It could also be used as 'non-Eberron' but lots of the stuff in there is a lot cooler with an understanding of the background as it ties to eberron specifically.

Also, a couple of last year's Dungeon Magazines are still available for free download as 'trials' (i think it's around issues 156 or something like that, and a couple after it). However, I don't have much experience with Dungeon Magazine so I can't speak as to whether or not you'll find much interest of low level for your specific game group.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The Kobold Hall adventure in DMG really is a fairly solid little mini-adventure. You may need to scale things a bit in the last couple of encounters to 4 PCs, but its easy enough to do, just either remove one of the weaker monsters in the second-to-last encounter or declare 1 or 2 of them to be minions (just give them 1 hit point and they ignore damage on a miss).

The dragon encounter at the end might be a little tough for 4 PCs. You could knock 50 hit points off the dragon or you could just make up an NPC to help the party (for example a cleric that just heals people, you can even just make up a power for him that he doesn't need to hit with, NPCs don't have to follow PC rules exactly).

http://i26.tinypic.com/51disl.jpg is a link to one image you could use in maptool. I'd suggest Googling for "Kobold Hall Maptool" as there were a LOT of other hits and you may even find a complete campaign file with tokens etc.