Any good adventures to start with?

[Feeroper]

Hey everyone,

I run a game for a group of friends that has started to fall apart a little bit. The reason being that 2 of the players are very unreliable and rarely show up. Our last game was set and confirmed by everyone, but at the last minute - literally less than an hour before game time, they called to cancel.

I understand, they have stuff they would rather be doing and that is fine, so the remainder of the group and I have decided to start a new game from scratch and play that one regularily, and if those other players decide they want to play again, we can go back to the original game and pick up where we left off, but since they play so infrequently, we will have this new game to play inbetween.

Anyways, to get to the point of my post - I was looking for a good pre-published adventure (4e) that I can run or use as a starting point. Ive previously used Keep on the Shadowfell and the Kobold Hall dungeon located in the DMG, so I wanted somthing else. Preferably something lengthier like KotS, and it would be nice to have a mix of combat and social stuff as well, but i know the pre published ones lean much more combat heavy. This way it will afford me time to come up with a continuation after the pre published adventure is done. My players are pretty antsy to start this new game, so I thought Id ask for suggestions for pre published stuff to start. They are all level 1 characters btw. Thanks!

 

[renau1g]

There's a really cool adventure path published by En-publishing

EN World D&D / RPG News: The world's premier fan community for Dungeons & Dragons news and more!

Another good suggestion is the Chaos Scar adventures being published currently in Dragon

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (The Chaos Scar)

 

[Truename]

Second the recommendation for EN Publishing's War of the Burning Sky. It's very, very good.

 

[S'mon]

You could always run Scales of War from Dungeon magazine, the first 2 adventures are free.

 

[caudor]

Other than Scales or War or the adventure path in Dungeon Magazine, I can't think of any 'long' adventures that you have not played.

I wish WotC would release a hardcover super adventure (i.e. Revenge of the Giants) for heroic tier play. I don't think they will since the Choas Scar pretty much addresses the need for starting adventures.

 

[Rechan]

Goodman games has a few 1st level adventures that could be combined. There's supposed to be a trilogy revolving around Punjar, isn't there?

 

[S'mon]

I have Sellswords of Punjar, it's quite good and Stroh's obsession with filth and corruption works well in the urban context.

 

[delericho]

The reason being that 2 of the players are very unreliable and rarely show up. Our last game was set and confirmed by everyone, but at the last minute - literally less than an hour before game time, they called to cancel.

I understand, they have stuff they would rather be doing and that is fine,

Are you sure? It seems very poor behaviour to me. Sure, sometimes a game has to be cancelled, but cancelling just before the starting time?

If they decide they want to come back, I'd be inclined to continue with your new game, and allow them to "guest star" for a few sessions. Only if they prove to have changed their ways would I consider going back to the original campaign.

Anyways, to get to the point of my post - I was looking for a good pre-published adventure (4e) that I can run or use as a starting point.

As others have said, "War of the Burning Sky" is very well regarded.

However, I would instead recommend that you don't use a pregenerated adventure at all. For the most part, the pregen adventures for 4e have a poor reputation (and, from what little I've seen, it is a deserved reputation).

Given that one of the relative advantages of 4e is that it makes generating encounters that much easier (especially with the tools in the DDI), I would recommend creating your own adventures, if you are at all able to do so.

 

[Feeroper]

Wow, thanks for all the great replies everyone. I have not checked out any of the War of the Burning Sky stuff, but it sounds rather intruiging!

 

[Blackbrrd]

I have gotten to my third War of the Burning Sky session and will finish the first module in a session or two. We have had a great time, the NPC's are very good, the plot interesting, the scenery is good and it's NOT a dungeon crawl!

I think it takes some planning to run the WotBS modules well, but when you take the time, they come out better than basically any other module I have run. (I have run Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, Red hand of Doom and some assorted homebrew stuff and smaller modules. Red hand of Doom was very good btw).

You can't go wrong becoming a Enworld subscriber and getting access to the first modules for 3$, the rest will be available bi-monthly, so basically you get the first 3 modules for 3$ and the rest for 6$ each. It's nearly extremely good value for money.