Ape for Going Ape?

[Stoat]

1. Much, much better than the old layout. I hate flipping back and forth from the module outline/ story to the combat encounters.

2. Yay for the overland map! Showing me where things are makes it easier to avoid the railroad.

3. Boo for not including some kind of area map for the lost city. I'd like to have the relative locations of the different landmarks and a send of how far they are from one another.

4. Yay for pseudo-Mesoamerica! It's nice to get out of the Nentir Vale.

 

[On Puget Sound]

This looks promising for my game. We're set in the Caribbean, and level 2, so with a bit of modification (making the villagers lizardfolk instead of humans), I can use this a few levels from now, assuming the players have not completely poisoned relations with the lizardfolk by then.

 

[Riastlin]

It's true, but they are still putting all the stat blocks onto a single page.

In my mind, the key advantage to the delve block is having all the monsters in a single place so I can run the combat without flipping around to find stat blocks. If I need to read four pages to set the encounter up, well, maybe that's because there is four pages of material that is relevant to the encounter. I'd rather have all the info related to the encounter in one place - even if it takes four pages - than half the setup info in the body of the adventure and half the setup info with the stat blocks.

And, of course, I'd like adventures to be complicated and interesting enough that (sometime at least) there are four pages of material that are relevant to an encounter. That's much better than dumbing down a module so that no encounter needs more than a paragraph or two of set-up.

-KS

Good points. I particularly agree on the complexity aspect. It is nice to have some variety thrown in there from time to time.

 

[the Jester]

Damn, this sounds like a HUGE step up (at least, as far as what I like in an adventure).

It's almost enough to lure me back to DDI, though I swore I would wait until the Monster Builder could actually build a monster. But that's something that they said "summer" on, and I'm actually starting to think it will happen.

 

[TerraDave]

In many ways, its a more traditional approach, but we still get monster stat blocks.

It would be perfect...if it was about twice as long, including random/wandering jungle encounters.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's solid.

It's still pretty linear, and the monster locations are a little , but the new format wins me over well, and the smaller size of the adventure (at about 20 pages) means that linearity is more of a consequence of the size than anything else.

Not earth-shaking, but not seeing the old format IS cause for celebration, and the new one seems to work pretty smoothly.

 

[Scribble]

In many ways, its a more traditional approach, but we still get monster stat blocks.

It would be perfect...if it was about twice as long, including random/wandering jungle encounters.

I think they should start doing a "random encounters" series.

Kind of like the side treks, but focus on terrain types, and keep a list updating with the encounters to use randomly.

Then other adventures could call out the already published lists as their random encounter charts.

 

[TerraDave]

In many ways, its a more traditional approach, ...

To caveat my previous post, its not like a dense 1E dungeon cralw, or 3E products that adopted that style. The events come with a fair amount of descriptive text and each is meant to be, well, an event.

Actually, it reminds me more of some 2E adventures, or adventures for other games.

 

[Dedekind]

I think they should start doing a "random encounters" series.

Kind of like the side treks, but focus on terrain types, and keep a list updating with the encounters to use randomly.

Then other adventures could call out the already published lists as their random encounter charts.

Heck, a random encounter tool would be awesome. Have terrain, level range, rarity, XP budget, etc., then it generates random encounters. Basically, it could just be the suggested encounter groups like in MM 1.

 

[Dedekind]

It's solid.

It's still pretty linear, and the monster locations are a little , but the new format wins me over well, and the smaller size of the adventure (at about 20 pages) means that linearity is more of a consequence of the size than anything else. .

I thought there was plenty of space to make it non-linear if you wanted, too. Of course, it was a wilderness adventure, so I would like to see the same format on a dungeon adventure before I judge it a total success.