Crothian
First Post
Dungeon Delve
There are times that a big adventure is not what is needed. I have found that as I run more and more of my own plots and story that large dungeons and adventures just are not fitting as well. I like the little adventures and encounters a few companies put out for third edition and that is why I really enjoy Dungeon Delve for 4th edition. It is not perfectly what I want as the adventures too often assume combat solutions and ignore anything else. But it does show creativity and while designed in some regards for the beginning DM I have found that breaking out of its confines is nice for experienced DMs as well.
Dungeon Delve is a collection of short adventures by Wizards of the Coast for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. It consists of 30 small adventures one for each level of play. The adventures are all about five pages long each consisting of three different encounters. Many of the dungeons are designed to be mapped out using various dungeon tiles and having them will add some nice detail to the adventures. But the dungeon tiles are not necessary to enjoy the product. One of the great advantages to these being small area with few encounters is that it is easier to use no minis and no maps and just verbally describe how everything is. It can be tougher for some people to play this way but for people looking for a little practice or to just see if they can d0o it this is the type of adventure that would be good for.
The book has a very simple set up. It briefly gives a history and why the Pcs are involved. These are not given a lot of detail and can easily be altered if there are particular motivation that will work better for your own group. There is advice and expanding the Delve. It just says how the DM can do it with some options but the DM will have to map out and stat up the appropriate challenges. I find it pretty easy to just reuse the monsters stats from the Delve when possible. Each Delve is fully mapped out to show how the areas fit together and then in each encounter description the rooms are shown larger and in greater detail. Each room is given a feature section so the DM knows exactly what is in the room and what significance and rules it might entail. The monsters are given full stat blocks like in every other Wizards’ book and a section on the monsters tactics is written up. Each room starts with the basic set up along with skill checks PCs can make to learn a little bit more or notice something in the room before any combat happens. It is a nice, familiar, and easy to follow descriptions. It really lessons the amount of work a DM has to do.
The book does supply plenty of new monsters so even if the players have memorized the Monster Manual at this point there will be plenty in here to surprise them. There are forty two new monsters in here that cover about twenty three of the thirty levels and a wide varied of roles. All the new monsters are indexed together on a nice table making them easy to find so DMs can use them elsewhere and locate them quickly.
My biggest complaint with the book is that it does not vary itself on the adventures enough. Each is small exploration and kill the bad things that lie inside. It is a little too black and white on the morality for me. Some of the adventures as I read the brief backgrounds could easily have been something else. There is plenty of them that the bad guy could be dealt with in other ways then just killing him. But the book does not take that option and so there are bad guys who will many times just be fighting to the death and not even allow the PCs a chance to accomplish a victory another way. It can be changed but I would have liked the book to have something on that. Just a little paragraph about alternative ways to succeed in the introduction section of the book would have worked. Many people play these games in different ways and making a book as versatile as possible I think will create a book that is more useful to more groups.
There are times that a big adventure is not what is needed. I have found that as I run more and more of my own plots and story that large dungeons and adventures just are not fitting as well. I like the little adventures and encounters a few companies put out for third edition and that is why I really enjoy Dungeon Delve for 4th edition. It is not perfectly what I want as the adventures too often assume combat solutions and ignore anything else. But it does show creativity and while designed in some regards for the beginning DM I have found that breaking out of its confines is nice for experienced DMs as well.
Dungeon Delve is a collection of short adventures by Wizards of the Coast for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. It consists of 30 small adventures one for each level of play. The adventures are all about five pages long each consisting of three different encounters. Many of the dungeons are designed to be mapped out using various dungeon tiles and having them will add some nice detail to the adventures. But the dungeon tiles are not necessary to enjoy the product. One of the great advantages to these being small area with few encounters is that it is easier to use no minis and no maps and just verbally describe how everything is. It can be tougher for some people to play this way but for people looking for a little practice or to just see if they can d0o it this is the type of adventure that would be good for.
The book has a very simple set up. It briefly gives a history and why the Pcs are involved. These are not given a lot of detail and can easily be altered if there are particular motivation that will work better for your own group. There is advice and expanding the Delve. It just says how the DM can do it with some options but the DM will have to map out and stat up the appropriate challenges. I find it pretty easy to just reuse the monsters stats from the Delve when possible. Each Delve is fully mapped out to show how the areas fit together and then in each encounter description the rooms are shown larger and in greater detail. Each room is given a feature section so the DM knows exactly what is in the room and what significance and rules it might entail. The monsters are given full stat blocks like in every other Wizards’ book and a section on the monsters tactics is written up. Each room starts with the basic set up along with skill checks PCs can make to learn a little bit more or notice something in the room before any combat happens. It is a nice, familiar, and easy to follow descriptions. It really lessons the amount of work a DM has to do.
The book does supply plenty of new monsters so even if the players have memorized the Monster Manual at this point there will be plenty in here to surprise them. There are forty two new monsters in here that cover about twenty three of the thirty levels and a wide varied of roles. All the new monsters are indexed together on a nice table making them easy to find so DMs can use them elsewhere and locate them quickly.
My biggest complaint with the book is that it does not vary itself on the adventures enough. Each is small exploration and kill the bad things that lie inside. It is a little too black and white on the morality for me. Some of the adventures as I read the brief backgrounds could easily have been something else. There is plenty of them that the bad guy could be dealt with in other ways then just killing him. But the book does not take that option and so there are bad guys who will many times just be fighting to the death and not even allow the PCs a chance to accomplish a victory another way. It can be changed but I would have liked the book to have something on that. Just a little paragraph about alternative ways to succeed in the introduction section of the book would have worked. Many people play these games in different ways and making a book as versatile as possible I think will create a book that is more useful to more groups.
