I personally ran the Kobold Keep, along with a few homebrewed adventures (I attached one below if you want to critique it). One DM I knew (whose a helluva improv/sandbox DM) tried both a conversion of Keep on the Borderlands AND Goodman Game's Forge of the Mountain King. Another DM tried Scepter Tower of Spellgard.
Three reasonably good DMs, using homebrewed, 4e-specific (both DCC and WotC) and converted adventures and all of them led to similar experiences.
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I had a long reply to this last night - and then the forums crashed. A lot of WotC adventures do suck, especially the early ones (I've never played a DCC module). And not to put too fine a point on it, I don't think I could design a module more effectively than Where the Wild Roses Grow to turn 4e into a snoozefest. It's not that the abstract design is bad - it's just that it's a complete mismatch for 4e.
I've mentioned one thing earlier that really makes 4e combats to be dynamic - terrain that encourages movement (pits, things to throw people onto/off/over/away from/towards). There is precisely none of that in the entire catacomb. And there's the one thing that kills any attempt at dynamic combat -
no space. Those corridors are all tiny.
There's also the monster selection. There's only one actual bad monster in there (the Wraith is one of the three suckiest monsters in the Monster Manual; the three are The Dracolich (stunning everything leads to pure frustration), the Purple Worm (what idiot thought that a solo with no interesting aspects that does only the damage of a standard monster was a good idea?) and the Wraith (insubstantial so it takes half damage, weakening touch so the damage is normally halved
again, and then regenerates). For the record Monster Vault Wraiths don't weaken and don't, I think, regenerate. Instead they turn invisible whenever someone hits them with an attack that doesn't bypass their insubstantiality - and they do extra damage when invisible (and the attack makes them visible again). Much,
much more interesting and incites paranoia especially when they can walk through walls.
But even beyond that with two exceptions (Deathlock Wight, Human Mage) I think every single monster wants to get into melee and stay there. The ones that get bonus damage for combat advantage aren't going to get flanking because of the incredibly cramped spaces. Which means that in five of the IIRC seven fights in the catacombs there are either four or five melee monsters who, because they have no room to move, are best off walking into melee with the enemy and trading blows until someone falls. (The two exceptions to the 4-5 monsters per fight are, naturally enough, the Dark Cabal and the Deathlock Wight). There's no room to maneuver and no incentive to maneuver. The combats are never going to be dynamic and interesting.
And then there's the skill challenges. WotC are entirely to blame here for their presentation of them (the biggest problem being that the example actions should be indicative rather than "choose your own adventure"). Unless you get them, it's better to pretend they don't exist.
I think if I were looking for an example of what not to do in 4e I don't think I could come up with a better adventure. No interactive terrain and no space anywhere, and almost every single monster being a melee fighter. Doesn't mean it would be a bad adventure in e.g. Swords and Wizardry or Dungeon World - but it completely misses any of the strengths of 4e and zeroes in with almost laser-like precision on the weaknesses right down to the final boss being a double hit point MM1 Wraith.
Thanks for that. If I've understood right, you earn plot points by penalising yourself in building the dice pool (d4 rather than d8) and can spend them on an asset by penalising yourself in the action economy (spending an action).
What determines the dice size for your asset?
When I said your result was the top two dice in your dice pool I was simplifying.
Three dice matter. The two for your total, and the size of the dice you use as an effect dice. (Its number doesn't, so if you roll low with a big dice you want to use that although you can't use a 1). The asset is generally the size of the effect dice you use against the Doom Pool assuming the Doom Pool doesn't win.
Also, how hard/easy is it to mathematically optimise the process of plot point earning and expenditure? One thing I like about Burning Wheel is it has features (both in resolution and advancement mechanics) that mean that players have an incentive not to always want their pool to be as big as possible.
I believe (and certainly play) they reset to 1 at the end of an act - and you get d10 rather than d8 if you use them in conjunction with an opportunity. There's always an incentive to spend them. Which means the only real incentive to save them is if you want a great big nova of the sort I showed above. Spending every time you win a defence roll so you get a counter-attack in is generally a good plan.
So the incentive to spend plot points is a double count of pacing.
