D&D 4E What is today the best way to start D&D 4E (paid and free)?

[Eyes of Nine]

Most 4E stuff goes for a steal these days.

This has not been my experience, I must be shopping at the wrong venues, or my definition of "goes for a steal" is different...
I should have searched EBAY first. wth, I may have to double up on my PHBs rn so I can run a game!

 

[cavalier973]

Interestingly enough, I'm not sure why everyone says Keep on the Shadowfell is a bad adventure.

I ran it (admittedly, long ago when it came out) and we had a blast with the module.

I've had quite a few 5e adventures that were a LOT worse than it (the original Rise of Tiamat and Hoard of the Dragon Queen come to mind for starters).

It's not the greatest adventure I've ever run by far, but I think people criticize it far more than it deserves.

It's an easy module to run (far easier than some, such as some of the Ruins series where a DM has to start creating their own portions of the Ruins to run the game), and for a beginner DM, probably one of the easier ones to start with in 4e.

I can't seem to pull up DMsguild this instant, but one item I'd probably say was a better starter than the module was the Quickstart set (which I think was also free on DMsguild). It had more introductory stuff, written for beginners, and also had a short adventure.

Ah, here we go...

D&D 4e Quickstart

It is also free

Well, I was wrong, it appears. The quickstart that's free on DMsguild only offers the same quickstart rules found in Keep on the Shadowfell and nothing else (so no starter adventure, etc.). Which is a shame.

That isn't the full "Starter Set", unfortunately. It's just the information on how to play, plus pregenerated characters.. The starter set has a three room dungeon, set in Harkenwold. I think it came with a map and tokens. I'm going to check right now.

It actually came with tiles and tokens. It was really the 4e equivalent of the Moldvay set, excepting that there were no rules for creating new characters. Pregens was all that was available for players; they could go up to level 3, but the choices were already made for what powers the characters got at the new levels. For the DM, however, there was a bestiary and guidelines for creating your own dungeons and adventures. Similar stuff to what was in the Essentials Red Box. (in the ERB, characters could only advance to 2nd level).

The pregen characters in the set included a human cleric (instead of a half-elf cleric) and an eladrin wizard (instead of a human wizard. The eladrin wizard had a longsword and a wand). The dwarf fighter, halfling rogue, and dragonborn paladin were the same as in that product at the link. The tielfling warlord wasn't in the set.

 

[overgeeked]

This has not been my experience, I must be shopping at the wrong venues, or my definition of "goes for a steal" is different...
I should have searched EBAY first. wth, I may have to double up on my PHBs rn so I can run a game!

Right? One of the few benefits of liking an unpopular edition of the most popular RPG. Lots of product out there and not a lot of people actively wanting it.

 

[sabrinathecat]

Right? One of the few benefits of liking an unpopular edition of the most popular RPG. Lots of product out there and not a lot of people actively wanting it.

Which is how I got a whole bunch of my WEG D6 StarWars books.
I also picked up a bunch of PH1s and a second set of most of the character-creator books last year when I tried to start a new local gaming group. (25 people signed up to play, 1 actually showed up)

For a starter adventure, how about "Revenge of the Kobolds!" It's a 1-shot, and you can learn the basic rules quickly and easily.

 

[hojulation]

It’s not worth putting so much work into such a bad adventure. Your time is surely worth more than the… (checks eBay)… twenty bucks it would cost to buy a print copy of Cairn of the Winter King, or the $28 for Reavers of Harkenwold, or from DriveThru the $7.19 for the PDF of Madness at Gardmore Abbey.

I have to agree with the suggestion to run Madness at Gardmore Abbey it's amazing.

I came to 4E late in it's life and as we played a 2 year campaign we went through Keep on the Shadowfell and felt it was a long, combat heavy affair. We pivoted to the Orcs of Stonefang Pass, and while it was incredibly linear (literally and metaphorically) we felt it was a fun little story.

But then we capped it off with Madness and the free form method of exploration and NPC/faction engagement just felt light-years away from the design philosophy of KotS. It was easily the most fun we had with the system and our last outing with it, as we transitioned to playtesting DND Next when we finished Madness.

I have been thinking lately that I would like to try running Reavers of Harkenwold using 13th Age. I think that could be really fun.

 

[Joshua Randall]

The faction play in Madness and Reavers is the right kind of throwback. Proof that you can hearken(wold?) back to the past without the knee-jerk anti-4e-isms of certain people on the D&D team.