Jacob Lewis
Ye Olde GM
I do want to mention a couple of Essentials-based supplements that often get overlooked.
Halls of Undermountain has a similar approach as a DM supplement like the Neverwinter Campaign Setting, though more localized with a focus on a singular (though massive and iconic) dungeon. It includes three adventures for characters of levels 1-5, which can be run individually or tied together. It can even be linked to The Elder Elemental Eye, a D&D Encounters module that was active at the time this was released. Beyond the adventures, it gives DMs advice and ideas for improvising as players explore the dungeon.
The adventure itself, however, actually does a good job of making an otherwise run-of-the-mill dungeon crawl into something more. On the surface, it might look like nothing more than a series of random rooms with random monsters and traps. (To be fair, most standard dungeons originating from the early days were just that.) So this adds a real story element with hooks and motivations for players (and their characters) to go romping around what essentially amounts to the world's (i.e. Faerun's) largest underground death trap.
At this point near the end of the edition's life cycle, however, a lot of the focus was on the heroic tier and the Essentials products. It was also trying to walk back a lot of its innovative and tradition-breaking concepts in order to "win back" its disillusioned fans. To that end, they got away from the full-page/spread Encounter format that made running 4e (and late 3.5e) adventures so easy for DMs in favor of a more traditional format. So instead of bullet points and easy to parse information at a glance (including full stats so you don't have to reference the entire library of books you have if you don't have internet and computer access with you everywhere), everything is presented with the wall-of-text descriptions that you should stop and read through carefully at every step of the way. (No, I'm not a fan. Never was and never will be, especially after having a better way to do it!)
The second product is Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium. This was basically the Essential's answer to the Adventurers' Vaults, the two previous products dedicated exclusively to magic items for the game. The Essentials line did not include more than a handful of magic items on its own, which is ironic considering how the company lauded that you could effectively run the game with just the 10 baseline products. This book actually makes their stated goal possible. However, it wasn't simply a third volume in that series.
The items had a different design approach by giving items background stories and character; something that was skipped in early products in order to provide more crunch with less fluff. These items were also designed with more passive traits instead of tacking on extra powers and uses for everyone to keep track at the table. In essence, it was more in-line with the Essentials new and improved design philosophy that were addressing a lot of the complaints and issues that didn't come up in the playtests. (There's more to that story, but that's another topic.)
Halls of Undermountain has a similar approach as a DM supplement like the Neverwinter Campaign Setting, though more localized with a focus on a singular (though massive and iconic) dungeon. It includes three adventures for characters of levels 1-5, which can be run individually or tied together. It can even be linked to The Elder Elemental Eye, a D&D Encounters module that was active at the time this was released. Beyond the adventures, it gives DMs advice and ideas for improvising as players explore the dungeon.
The adventure itself, however, actually does a good job of making an otherwise run-of-the-mill dungeon crawl into something more. On the surface, it might look like nothing more than a series of random rooms with random monsters and traps. (To be fair, most standard dungeons originating from the early days were just that.) So this adds a real story element with hooks and motivations for players (and their characters) to go romping around what essentially amounts to the world's (i.e. Faerun's) largest underground death trap.
At this point near the end of the edition's life cycle, however, a lot of the focus was on the heroic tier and the Essentials products. It was also trying to walk back a lot of its innovative and tradition-breaking concepts in order to "win back" its disillusioned fans. To that end, they got away from the full-page/spread Encounter format that made running 4e (and late 3.5e) adventures so easy for DMs in favor of a more traditional format. So instead of bullet points and easy to parse information at a glance (including full stats so you don't have to reference the entire library of books you have if you don't have internet and computer access with you everywhere), everything is presented with the wall-of-text descriptions that you should stop and read through carefully at every step of the way. (No, I'm not a fan. Never was and never will be, especially after having a better way to do it!)
The second product is Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium. This was basically the Essential's answer to the Adventurers' Vaults, the two previous products dedicated exclusively to magic items for the game. The Essentials line did not include more than a handful of magic items on its own, which is ironic considering how the company lauded that you could effectively run the game with just the 10 baseline products. This book actually makes their stated goal possible. However, it wasn't simply a third volume in that series.
The items had a different design approach by giving items background stories and character; something that was skipped in early products in order to provide more crunch with less fluff. These items were also designed with more passive traits instead of tacking on extra powers and uses for everyone to keep track at the table. In essence, it was more in-line with the Essentials new and improved design philosophy that were addressing a lot of the complaints and issues that didn't come up in the playtests. (There's more to that story, but that's another topic.)
