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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 6073348" data-attributes="member: 463">I think Wyatt has a lot to answer for. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />There is definitely a problem with what Justin Alexander calls the "My Precious Encounter" model of 4e adventure design. It's noticeable running Dungeon Delve, some of the Delves like #11 (demon attack in city then sewers) have a fairly naturalistic design that works great; the players were using the logically-there terrain to great effect. Eg the flaming exploding zombies crawled out of a storm drain into the town square, a PC pushed one back into the drain so that it hit the ground in the sewer system where it exploded harmlessly. Conversely the Temple of the Dawn in Dungeon Delve #12 has an overwrought assembly of too many magic circles, altars, statues, flaming icons, magic walls of fire or corpses etc - it kinda makes sense in context since it was built by a mad dragon with delusions of godhood, but in play it feels overwrought and stagey. When the PCs had actuallly fought Emerald Dawn earlier IMC it had been on and around an old watch tower with no 'film set' stuff, that worked much better.More importantly - many of the best and most intense episodes in my 4e campaigns have been where combat did NOT occur. The scene where the deva Paladin Shawna Carter talked Ice Fang the white dragon down from attacking the battered party was quite breathtaking. I've learned that when running 4e published adventures you need to treat the 'delve format' fights as only one possible outcome, no matter how many pages are dedicated to them. I've been on the lookout for published adventures that support this - P2 Demon Queen's Enclave is good this way; Thunderspire Labyrinth also has some potential. It's a shame the terrible Delve Format gives the impression YOU MUST FIGHT 30 ENCOUNTERS TO COMPLETE MODULE - it's terrible design, and completely unnecessary. The typical 4e adventure works best IME if the PCs avoid or non-violently resolve 1/3-1/2 of the encounters. Ignoring any 'attacks immediately' text about half the time, and have 1/4-1/3 of monster groups initially elsewhere (so available for later use, as wandering monsters, etc), seems to help a lot.Learning all that was a fairly tough experience, though. I don't blame people who gave up with Keep on the Shadowfell.</blockquote>

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