I'll preface my comments by saying my gaming group is pretty old school kick-the-door-and-kill-the-bad-guys, there is not a lot of roleplaying going on. We play similarly to the way RPG's were played in the late 70's (probably because we've all been playing since the late 70's). We use minis and battle maps, and I make the battle maps by using the actual encounter maps, editing out the bits the players aren't supposed to see, and posterizing them onto 13x19 paper. Please keep this colorization in mind when reading my comments.
I cannot comment much on Zeitgeist as we haven't started that yet (it will be next after we finish up WotBS). I can say the guides are
much better than the WotBS guides, and the first module from a quick read looks better than any of the WotBS modules. There is a ton of depth in there for a one level module. It's clear you guys have come a long way with the experience you've gained and I'm
really looking forward to running this.
Regarding WotBS; I'm about to start running WotBS
#12 this weekend (4e) so I've seen all of it.
I think the overall story arc was very good although the implementation of the arc was bit uneven. I'd say modules 1-4 are the best, 5-6 took a dip in quality, 7-8 were good but weren't as good as 1-4, and 9-12 have been disappointing. The first four have tight plots, are well executed, reasonably clear for the GM, and are (reasonably) free of continuity issues.
Modules 5 & 6 just didn't have the clarity the first 4 did, some things being confusing, some being bad in play. From memory module 5 just meandered a bit and felt muddy. I don't remember any one thing being particularly awful, just that I had more patching over to do. Module 6 had a great theme, all the makings of a classic dungeon fest, but the encounters were very poorly designed. The at-will multi-target stun powers on one of the undead was insane (that encounter against them in the archer bunkers would be an auto-TPK if ran as written); but most of the monsters throughout the rest of the module were very underpowered. As I recall most monsters were a few levels below the players, and with 4e's half level add to all the math it really trivialized a lot of the encounters. This module had a real chance to be one of the hilights of the series for old school D&D types, and the encounters let it down. The gnome "competition" was a great idea that didn't quite work in practice, although if I had time to spend on tweaks it could have. The politics of the monster factions was very well done although lost on my players that would much rather run them through than talk to them.
Modules 7 & 8 were solid but not exceptional. My party has two wood elves and they really got into the whole elves vs. eladrin thing in module 7 (suffice to say there were zero Shalahesti alive in the forest when they left). My party got very frustrated with the wild goose chase the elf leads them on through all the traps, they felt it got repetitive and I have to agree with them. Replacing a couple of traps with ambush encounters that he leads them into would have added a bit of variety. Part of the problem here was that my party had the ability to shut off a solo for 2-3 rounds at this point and given their huge DPR with 3 tuned strikers I was pretty sure he wouldn't survive an exploratory encounter with them, so he had to really hang back.
Module 8 was neat, it was the first chance for the PC's to feel really badass. The illusionary room encounter was a great idea but a PITA for the GM; with encounters like that please give both the "map" the players see and the real map in the module. I ended up making two maps by building the illusionary one in photoshop and running them side by side with the real map hidden from the players. Once that was done it was great stuff. The whole prison section was a bit of a letdown though; I felt like more could have been done with that area (although I'm not sure my players would have taken advantage of it).
Modules 9-12 all feel like they were really rushed, there just isn't a lot to them other than a bunch of related encounters. The theory of letting the players do the final three in any order totally falls apart in 4e, again because of the half-level add to all of the combat math. My party trivialized every encounter in module 10, and by design the encounters haven't really gotten harder in 11 or 12 so by the end of module 11 the monsters were dieing so fast they would all be dead before the low initiative player even got to go. With these modules being little more than combat grindfests trivializing the encounters leaves not much reason to play them except for tieing up all the plot threads. Now some of this is great at the end game, it gives me a chance to say "look how bad-ass you all are" to the players which is great at high levels. On the filpside 20 encounters in a row that can't make it to the end of round 2 starts to get dull. The giant mecha idea in module 9 was a neat idea that could have been executed a bit better. If the party doesn't use maps it would have worked fine but the whole thing was a big squishy to get put on a battle grid w/o forcing the gm to clarify things, but that's work the module should have done not the GM.
<rant>And I'd like to take a moment to rant and rave about the lack of maps. This really pushed my buttons and got me very wound up; the idea that I'm now an "experienced" GM and don't need maps is BS. I buy modules instead of making my own because the one thing I lack the most is
time, and forcing me to create or chase down maps for the final modules is hitting me where it hurts. Please, please please, PLEASE don't do this again in Zeitgeist.</rant>
I'm sorry if it reads like I've emphasized the negative because there is a ton of good in WotBS. The first three modules are right up there with the best modules I've read ever, great examples of high fantasy low level D&D (the burning forest will probably turn off the low fantasy types but we loved it). And overall the party has really enjoyed the path and I've really enjoyed running it.
We came into WotBS after abandoning Scales of War, and if you want an example of what NOT to do read SoW, it's horrible.
