Gort
Explorer
Good show. I kinda wish 4e had a general discussion forum sometimes.
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Pathfinder 1E WotC desperately needs to learn from Paizo and Privateer Press
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Good show. I kinda wish 4e had a general discussion forum sometimes.
Treebore
First Post
You don't consider the variety of rogues and magical orders to be adventuring material? I certainly do, I think they will provide tons and tons of adventuring material!
I already have a campaign fomenting in my mind over the Order of Set and their ritual magics in a big magical war.
Treebore
First Post
I agree these are at least one full "level" above the rest of the mods done by WOTC in the 3E days, with Red Hand of doom being the clearest winner.
One of the reasons I did not get hooked on 4E was because the modules, including Game Day modules, were rather boring. I kept thinking of all those awesome modules I had yet to run or play in for other iterations of D&D, plus 4E just continued to fail to grab me, game session after game session.
So if finally became clear to me one of the "lesser" RPG's were my thing. Well, many of them, in fact.
I can see why people like 4E, but I am simply not one of them, and I spent nearly 100 hours of my life being sure of it.
So I agree with the OP, if WOTC had done adventures more in line with several of Paizo's AP's, or Necromancer back in the 3E days, I may have gotten excited by 4E, but it didn't happen.
Personally I do not care what WOTC does, the boat has passed me by and I am not going to run and catch up. I do think if kick butt 4E adventures had grabbed me I would still be on the boat, though.
zoroaster100
First Post
I agree with the original poster. Overall so far I like 4e, for the most part. But I've been very disappointed with WOTC adventures and greatly miss the creativity in plot and story and the attention to detail of the Paizo Dungeon and Pathfinder adventures.
What I liked best about 3e was not the system, but the Paizo adventures that were available with that system. I would have loved to see Paizo create 4e adventures. I wish WOTC would pay Paizo, or some similarily adventure-capable designers, to create some quality adventures for 4e. Otherwise the lack of good adventures will unnecessarily undermine's 4e's ability to succeed further.
What I liked best about 3e was not the system, but the Paizo adventures that were available with that system. I would have loved to see Paizo create 4e adventures. I wish WOTC would pay Paizo, or some similarily adventure-capable designers, to create some quality adventures for 4e. Otherwise the lack of good adventures will unnecessarily undermine's 4e's ability to succeed further.
MichaelSomething
Legend
If only there was some website out there that decided to put out a series of adventures. Adventures so epic you could publish a serialized novel based of them on that very same website. Wouldn't it be awesome if they came bi-monthly too? And there would be an online forum where you could talk about them or other D&D related stuff! Man, if only a website like that existed; it'd be sweet.
Here's a different conclusion: Maybe 'other companies' should just stop publishing products for non-4e systems and support 4e instead? Imagine all the great stuff we would see then
More seriously, WotC adventures have been a mixed back since, well, forever. Luckily there _are_ alternatives for 4e. I'll just mention the Goodman Games modules and 'The War of the Burning Sky'. I also expect adventure modules from WotC to improve as we go along and the designers have become experienced with 4e.
There also quite a few 4e conversions of good adventures to be found online.
Regarding the MM criticism: A good MM is a MM that contains a large number of monsters. The more monsters the better. If you want fluff, look for the 'ecology' style or setting books: 'Open Grave', 'Draconomicon', 'Plane Below', etc. All provide exactly what you need if you want more background info on monsters.
So far, I've bought a higher percentage of 4e products than for any previous edition. And it's not because I feel they're doing everything wrong
SteveC
Doing the best imitation of myself
I want to thank the OP for making this thread, because it's something I've been thinking about for a long time. As someone who absolutely loves 4E, I agree with this assessment 100%.
The official D&D modules for 4E, with a couple of notable exceptions, have just been dreadful. When 4E first came out, I decided I was going to run the Heroic series to get everyone up to speed on the new rules and we just stopped midway through Thunderspire. I actually think that's one of the better adventures, since it has SOME backstory and over-arching plot, but my players just didn't agree.
Fortunately ENWorld stepped up with Burning Sky, or I honestly don't know what I'd be doing with my game at the moment, since I really don't have the time to create something of that detail with job + life. When we finally finish Burning Sky I may just move on to another game system unless something has changed.
Now Burning Sky is not perfect...it does have some rules issues, but the quality of the adventure is leaps and bounds better than anything I've seen from WotC to this point. I can fix the minor rules issues, but the fact that there is a plot and characters that my players care about and can meaningfully interact with is the win.
When we finished up with Scouring of Gate Pass, I sat down and talked to my players about what they thought about how things were going. They told me that the adventure was kind of strange, since it didn't feel like a typical 4E adventure. When I asked what they meant, they said it felt like something for another system where you had to think about what you were doing and pay attention to the details, since it seemed like the choices they were making were changing the outcome. The previous game had been moving from encounter to encounter, managing the combats, and that's about it.
I have actually been running two games of Burning Sky, and the approach from the different parties has been radically different. In one case they largely allied with the Eladrin and turned a big portion of the adventure into a roleplaying/skill challenge. In the other case, they worked out an arrangement with the Black Horse bandits and helped them change leaders. The adventure did a great job of supporting multiple angles of play.
From my experience, the vast majority of 4E adventures out there are simply combat scenes interspersed with skill challenges and the occasional short roleplay scene. No matter what you do, the adventures basically take the same format and path. Sometimes, as in the case of Thunderspire, you can approach the different parts in different order, but you're basically going to see each encounter in the end. What you do in each scene, and the choices you make have little or no impact on the adventure as a whole.
When I look at adventures like Shackled City and Red Hand of Doom (which was written by Paizo folks for WotC) I see that same sort of attention to options and detail that WotC doesn't seem to care about. In seeing a "mega adventure" like Revenge of the Giants, I just have to shake my head.
Maybe that sort of thing doesn't matter to you (and if it doesn't that's cool, REALLY!), but it is important to me. I would definitely say "your mileage may vary." I don't know what there really is to do about it at this point, other than opening things up to freelancers and taking a chance with something different.
--Steve
The official D&D modules for 4E, with a couple of notable exceptions, have just been dreadful. When 4E first came out, I decided I was going to run the Heroic series to get everyone up to speed on the new rules and we just stopped midway through Thunderspire. I actually think that's one of the better adventures, since it has SOME backstory and over-arching plot, but my players just didn't agree.
Fortunately ENWorld stepped up with Burning Sky, or I honestly don't know what I'd be doing with my game at the moment, since I really don't have the time to create something of that detail with job + life. When we finally finish Burning Sky I may just move on to another game system unless something has changed.
Now Burning Sky is not perfect...it does have some rules issues, but the quality of the adventure is leaps and bounds better than anything I've seen from WotC to this point. I can fix the minor rules issues, but the fact that there is a plot and characters that my players care about and can meaningfully interact with is the win.
When we finished up with Scouring of Gate Pass, I sat down and talked to my players about what they thought about how things were going. They told me that the adventure was kind of strange, since it didn't feel like a typical 4E adventure. When I asked what they meant, they said it felt like something for another system where you had to think about what you were doing and pay attention to the details, since it seemed like the choices they were making were changing the outcome. The previous game had been moving from encounter to encounter, managing the combats, and that's about it.
I have actually been running two games of Burning Sky, and the approach from the different parties has been radically different. In one case they largely allied with the Eladrin and turned a big portion of the adventure into a roleplaying/skill challenge. In the other case, they worked out an arrangement with the Black Horse bandits and helped them change leaders. The adventure did a great job of supporting multiple angles of play.
From my experience, the vast majority of 4E adventures out there are simply combat scenes interspersed with skill challenges and the occasional short roleplay scene. No matter what you do, the adventures basically take the same format and path. Sometimes, as in the case of Thunderspire, you can approach the different parts in different order, but you're basically going to see each encounter in the end. What you do in each scene, and the choices you make have little or no impact on the adventure as a whole.
When I look at adventures like Shackled City and Red Hand of Doom (which was written by Paizo folks for WotC) I see that same sort of attention to options and detail that WotC doesn't seem to care about. In seeing a "mega adventure" like Revenge of the Giants, I just have to shake my head.
Maybe that sort of thing doesn't matter to you (and if it doesn't that's cool, REALLY!), but it is important to me. I would definitely say "your mileage may vary." I don't know what there really is to do about it at this point, other than opening things up to freelancers and taking a chance with something different.
--Steve
malraux
First Post
Regarding the MM criticism: A good MM is a MM that contains a large number of monsters. The more monsters the better. If you want fluff, look for the 'ecology' style or setting books: 'Open Grave', 'Draconomicon', 'Plane Below', etc. All provide exactly what you need if you want more background info on monsters.
So far, I've bought a higher percentage of 4e products than for any previous edition. And it's not because I feel they're doing everything wrong
I too want to say that I've found the 4e fluff for the monsters to be great; the trick is that it's not in the MMs any more. All the fluff books (MotP and Plane Below) I have purchased have been excellent. The monster and location descriptions are oozing with fluff. If what you want is a book with lots of monster descriptions, locations, and characters, you need to look somewhere outside the MM.
FATDRAGONGAMES
First Post
This pretty much sums it up for my experience. I still enjoy playing 4E for 1-shot games at cons and such, but so far none of my local group are willing to dive into it for campaign play after our test run of it (which is largely due to the 'meh' feeling from the first few WOTC modules we ran. I absolutely love Paizo's stuff and use a lot of it for my Castles & Crusades game.
Treebore
First Post
I totally agree, in fact I have found the Goodman 4E modules to be better, over all, than their 3E mods were. Far more evocative and interesting plot lines and simply funner adventures. So far. I have especially fallen in love with Punjar. However I don't use them for 4E, I use them for my "lesser" system of Castles and Crusades.
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