Evard's shadow

[TerraDave]

A shadowfell based adventure featuring the manse of a name wizard...of course its for levels 3-5.

Other then that, uses the new format, but in a more straightforward way. (Evard's old place has a real undead problem). A few skill challenges, interesting set up at the end.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Evard's Shadow)

ALSO, the design and development column mentioned making more use of "standard" monsters, which I didn't realize was a policy. (stat blocks are included).

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Designing Evard's Shadow)

 

[renau1g]

YEah, I thought at first they missed a 1 in front of the 3-5. On first glance seemed more appropriate for Paragon tier, but this must've been Evard's starter home, like right out of mage academy and had all his student loans to pay for or something...

 

[Scribble]

I remember when I watched the Miami Vice movie it seemed like an average 80s style Florida cop/drug action flick that someone decided to slap the name Miami Vice on to boost viewers.

This feels similar.

 

[Zaran]

I remember when I watched the Miami Vice movie it seemed like an average 80s style Florida cop/drug action flick that someone decided to slap the name Miami Vice on to boost viewers.

This feels similar.

Much like the Daggerdale video game?

 

[Vael]

I haven't read it, but does it spoil any of the current Encounters season? I thought it was supposed to be a sequel to the Encounters campaign.

 

[Nullzone]

It's a sequel only insofar as it mentions Evard and the suggested plot hooks are NPCs in the season. There's almost nothing to tie it to Encounters.

It's a pretty bland adventure really; the skill challenge at the start is delivered horribly and the rest is non stop combat without even the slightest inkling of a story.

 

[Zaran]

I like that it's actually a full adventure in scope. It is still very railroady and also seems cramped. Having all those encounters in rooms adjacent makes for 5 minute rests a problem. I can see the adventurers resting between the two acts though. I wonder what happened to having Encounter areas instead of Room X has these monsters.?

If I were to GM this adventure i would have multiple floors or sections of a much larger house with the same combatants but with more room for them to logically co-exist.

 

[Mengu]

I can't quite tell what the short/extended rest intentions are here. It looks like 8 combat encounters, 2 skill challenges, with no extended rest. Basically a one adventuring day level, if you survive it. And the first 3 encounters might just be soft enough to do it, for a level 4 or level 5 party that paid attention to building for a long adventuring day.

It's basically an old style hack and slash dungeon crawl, and I think I could squeeze the whole thing into an 8 hour session, if there came a day when we just wanted to play a delve style game to maybe test out some characters.

I don't like the general direction of no new/tweaked monsters. For my home games, there probably isn't a single monster I don't tweak. Encounter design is always first on my mind. I ask myself, what do I want to accomplish in this encounter. And then the monsters and environment are designed around that. Stepping away from that philosophy in an artificial effort to use monsters as is, seems like a waste of energy, as well as a disservice to encounter design.

 

[Subtlepanic]

I don't like the general direction of no new/tweaked monsters. For my home games, there probably isn't a single monster I don't tweak. Encounter design is always first on my mind. I ask myself, what do I want to accomplish in this encounter. And then the monsters and environment are designed around that. Stepping away from that philosophy in an artificial effort to use monsters as is, seems like a waste of energy, as well as a disservice to encounter design.

Absolutely. I really don't get this policy at all.

 

[Daern]

I'd expand it too

I think it would be fun to expand the map and make this a kind of dark funhouse adventure. I'm thinking lots of living paintings on the walls, experiment rooms, an imprisoned imp or genie, a bedroom featuring the sad ghost of Evards lover who maybe also loved Vontairin who maybe was caught in the shadowfell who maybe inspired Evards descent into madness, clues to the wherabouts of nethermancer etc....