D&D 3E/3.5 the worst thing about 4e is the best thing about 3e...

[Jeff Carlsen]

Remember, a major part of the effort for D&D Next is about establishing the overall nature of the D&D brand. This is explicitly intended to create a unified brand across product categories, including board games and video games.

The Tabletop RPG, in this case, is a reference product. It doesn't even have to be the most profitable part of the D&D brand, and likely won't be much of the time.

 

[pemerton]

Sunless Citadel is a very good 1st level dungeon crawl.

<snip>

the soul (so to speak) of Dungeons and Dragons is the dungeon crawl and Sunless Citadel helped capture the classic feel of that experience.

Well that would help explain it. I'm not really into dungeon crawls.

 

[Storminator]

Well that would help explain it. I'm not really into dungeon crawls.

My group quite enjoyed it. I had them use a portal into the middle of the dungeon, which added an interesting twist in that they didn't know how to get out.

Also, it was very early in my "say yes" days, and when the halforc barbarian asked to marry the kobold sorceress I said yes, and it got pretty strange and fun. "Shopping" for the wedding feast was quite the adventure!

PS

 

[JeffB]

TSC was adecent module. One of very few Cordell modules I like. Some nice homage to B1 at the beginning, but I found the whole backstory of the module pretty silly..as well a sthe possible NPC ally,.so I changed things up. But the dungeon itself, the layouts, the puzzles/challenges, hetc are fun in a 1st level intro adventure way.

Far better than Endless Combat Grind on the Shadowfell for 4e.

In fact, combine winterhaven and the KOTS backstory, villian,plot and select encounters with TSCs Dungeon design, and you would probably have a much better module than either were on their own.

Hmmmmm

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

(snip) In fact, combine winterhaven and the KOTS backstory, villain,plot and select encounters with TSCs Dungeon design, and you would probably have a much better module than either were on their own.

Hmmmmm

Yeah, I find that mash-ups are the best way to get some use out of published adventures.

For example, the opening adventure of my next campaign is a mash-up of The Forest of Doom from Dragon 73, The Sunless Citadel, LFR's Illsydra, LFR's Blades for Daggerdale, When the Sun is Black from Dungeon 216 and Keep on the Shadowfell. Despite that long list of source material, it's about 15 encounters in size.

 

[Valetudo]

I wasnt that impressed with 3rd edition adventures, and 4th edition where even worse. !st and 2nd had some good adventures, but they are from TSR not wizards. I think the problem is that wizards uses game designers to make their adventures where as A better method is to team up a designer with a story writer.

 

[delericho]

I wasnt that impressed with 3rd edition adventures, and 4th edition where even worse.

WotC have made damn few good adventures for any edition. However, the big advantage that 3e had, and that 4e mostly lacked, was that the OGL meant it had a huge amount of third-party support. Between Green Ronin, Goodman, Necromancer, and latterly Paizo (after they lost the Dragon license, and so were no longer 'official') there were plenty of good adventures being published.

(I don't think the percentage of good adventures was necessarily any better for 3e than any other edition, or even, necessarily, for adventures from WotC vs some other company. But if it is indeed the case that 90% of everything is crap, then the edition with the most adventures will also have the most good adventures... and hence 3e's perceived advantage.)

 

[D'karr]

But if it is indeed the case that 90% of everything is crap, then the edition with the most adventures will also have the most good adventures... and hence 3e's perceived advantage.)

If 90% of everything is crap it also means that it has the highest number of crap adventures - simply by volume. I still think that 3e's perceived advantage lies squarely on Paizo's corner. They ran Dungeon magazine very effectively, and provided at least one "good" adventure a month, every month.

 

[delericho]

If 90% of everything is crap it also means that it has the highest number of crap adventures - simply by volume.

Yes. I'd be surprised if that were not the case, too - it's just that we mentally filter out a lot of that dross immediately, and tend not to remember much of the rest. Only the very good, and the hilariously bad, tends to get remembered for long.

I still think that 3e's perceived advantage lies squarely on Paizo's corner. They ran Dungeon magazine very effectively, and provided at least one "good" adventure a month, every month.

Paizo's running of Dungeon was absolutely outstanding, I agree. Failing to renew that license was probably the single worst mistake WotC made in the whole of their time running D&D.

 

[Herschel]

For me, the biggest problem I ran into with adapting older adventurers to 4e was the small rooms and corridors. 4e powers assume a lot more room to maneuver than older editions, and I found many old adventures and modules simply didn't work great with those powers. Which is OK, but it also meant that newer good adventures were more in demand. And, that was rare. I mean this site right here made some great adventures for 4e, but aside from EnWorld, third party support was not strong, and WOTC's own published adventures were not particularly strong on average either.

For old edition modules I found combining "rooms" makes the most sense. The first mook to roll high initiative raises the alarm and the forces band together at various points to actually mount a good defense. Fewer, more interesting combats and a more spacious battleground.