Others have already covered a lot of major changes that can be of great help. I have a some suggestions for a stylistic shift that would make me interested in buying modules again.
Don't Tell a story:
Present the situation, the background, the powers that are important and thier plans, resources and goals. Outline briefly a likely course of events assuming no PC interference. Get the PC's introduced to this situation and let THEM drive the ultimate story rather than ride along in the back seat.
Don't pre-define encounter types:
Provide details on who and what are where (and when) and that along with the previously mentioned plans and goals will determine the nature of the encounter in question. Not everything with combat stats has to be fought and players might get irritated with someone during a skill challenge and decide its time for an ass whuppin.
Pretty much let events flow naturally as the actions of the players dictate.
Tone down the use of combat soundstages:
Its bad enough to dictate combat scenes but having a large number of them in these far fetched American Gladiator arenas of death is just too much. The combats feel like what they end up becoming-fake exhibitions for the benefit of a studio audience. Dynamic combats are a 4E strength but adventures designed with that as a central concept end up looking like movie scripts.
The impact of a really cool and memorable exotic location for the action gets lost if this stuff gets overused.
[FONT="]As evidenced by the responses you’re getting, there is no “correct” answer. You’ll never please everyone with a published adventure. So I’m going to throw a radical idea out that I’ve yet to see anyone suggest: Scrap the published adventures altogether! I say this seriously. In lieu of these, what I suggest is a D&D Minis package. A handful of minis (for the sake of the argument with minions of common quality, brutes of uncommon quality, elites of rare quality and an additional large for a BBEG.) These would be in a non-randomized package (and I understand the issues of miniatures. I’ve often argued in WotC’s favor for the randomness, however, we’re talking about a product costing $25-$30 USD, so that removes the “cheap” from the cheap, non-random, pre-painted choose two argument.)[/FONT]
[FONT="]In addition to the minis, include either a small set of Dungeon Tiles specifically designed to use for encounters with the included minis, or a nice poster map. Lastly, include stat cards for the minis like those that currently come with the random packs.[/FONT]
[FONT="]When a DM pops open this package they should be able to simply look quickly through the cards to design a quick encounter, throw down some tiles or the map, and have everyone roll initiative. This product offers great reusability (especially if you include Dungeon Tiles.)[/FONT]
[FONT="]If the above isn't reasonable then I have two suggestions:[/FONT]
[FONT="]1) [/FONT][FONT="]If you’re really that committed to continuing them, follow the path laid a long time ago. Back in the old Red Box there was an adventure that sent the PCs after Bargle. After the initial encounters, once the PCs entered the castle, it was more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. The map’s rooms were numbered, and those numbers had a place in the book that the DM flipped to whenever the party entered the corresponding room. Adventures are far too linear these days. I don’t mind having a storyline, but I don’t want the players to be railroaded simply because I’m following the book.
[/FONT] [FONT="]2)[/FONT][FONT="] Instead of full adventures, just publish more Dungeon Delve books. Give us more encounters for each level of play that we DMs can simply plug into our own games. Some tiny background is more than enough to spark the imagination and get the DM’s wheels rolling. [/FONT]
Here's three suggestion that would make my group go back to Dnd 4th edition :
1) Bring back famous villains
I would buy any adventure that would feature one of the following villain on the cover : Lord Soth, Strahd, Vecna, Azalin Rex, Szass Tam, Cyric, etc. It's make the adventure fun to read and play. Plus, chances are the player's will love the story.
Adventure example : I6 Ravenloft, Die Vecna Die
2) Bring back famous character's
Why not create a story that revolves around the ressurection of Ellistrae, Elminster's death, Drizzt's dissaperance, release of Cyric, the people vs Szass Tam, etc. You don't need to flesh out the entire world the villain is set in, only a small part of it will do.
Adventure example : Bleak house, The Waukken rescue quest (I forgot the name),
3) Additionnal content available in DnD Insider is a must. It acts as a preview (or teaser) for those who haven't brought the quest and helps flesh out the adventure more.
Example : The additionnal content for Thunderspire labyrinth.
You've gotten a lot of responses, but I want to provide more specific examples. I DM'd the entire Scales of War heroic tier with my group. At the end, I was completely sick of it and switched to ENWorld's War of the Burning Sky. (Now I'm considering letting my DDI subscription lapse because I'm not getting enough from it.) We've played about half of the first WotBS adventure, The Scouring of Gate Pass, so that's what I'll use in my examples. SoGP has its flaws, but it's good enough that I can fill in the gaps myself.
Too much combat, not enough everything else
A lot of people have mentioned this, but I wanted to reinforce it. With the exception of The Temple Between, every adventure in SoW was just one combat encounter after another. There's minimal exploration, minimal dungeon dressing (except SoW 1, but even that was fairly meaningless), and minimal NPC interaction. Every night, like clockwork, my group fought through two combat encounters.
In contrast, with SoGP, our typical night is about half roleplay and half combat. There's just more to do. In our first session, we started with a fight, then spent the rest of the session with 4 non-combat mini-encounters that really kept the players' interest and evoked the atmosphere of a town under siege.
In SoW, my group leveled up about once a month. In SoGP, we're achieving about the same rate because of non-combat related experience. I'd like to see less combat in WoTC adventures, but keep the same leveling rate.
Lack of meaningful choices
SoW adventures lack meaningful consequences. The worst example of this was in The Temple Between. It uses a victory point system, and by the end of the adventure,
the town
can be completely destroyed, badly damaged, or unscathed. But in the next adventure, there's no mention of this at all! Although there was the illusion of consequences, there were no actual consequences. And The Temple Between is actually better than most. A lot of SoW adventures don't even provide an option. They're utterly linear.
In contrast, SoGP has been filled with meaningful choices. The players can choose to help or not help in the mini-quests in Scene 1-3; the MacGuffin in the adventure can be recovered or not--and later adventures account for that fact; the MacGuffin can be opened and its contents revealed; the middle of the adventure can be played in any number of ways; Scene 3-4 allows the party to make an ally or an enemy, and that has consequences in a later adventure; there are a full 8 options mentioned for escaping the city; Scene 4-1 allows the players to circumvent the entire encounter by
arriving early
. Option after option after option. It's why I love War of the Burning Sky.
The next adventure, Fire Forest of Innenotdar, is even better. The party
faces a major moral dilemma
--and both choices are fully fleshed out!
Dearth of NPCs
There are hardly any NPCs in Scales of War, and the ones that there are are one-dimensional. They're exposition, lacking personality or reason for existence beyond their pre-scripted lines. Take The Shadow Rift of Umbraforge, for example. There are perhaps six NPCs in that adventure, but there's never any reason for the PCs to interact with them, other than to hear their lines. There's no provision for the PCs to change their minds or actually interact. And there's no information about their personalities or why they're doing what they're doing and what they hope to accomplish.
In contrast, SoGP has 12 significant NPCs and several dozen more minor NPCs. I was able to take one of those minor NPCs and flesh him out into a major sub-plot, based on what the adventure provided me. Most of them are interesting characters with complex motivations.
Kathor Denava
is a good example, he's a "bad guy," but conflicted and someone that PCs could turn to their side.
Erdan Manash
is colorful and interesting, and fun to play.
Haddin Ja-Laffa
and
Crystin Ja-Nafeel
share a complex, dysfunctional relationship that gives the players reason to put up with someone they would normally kill in a moment.
Boring skill challenges
This is really a problem with skill challenges in general. They're generally written as a list of skills with the results of each skill described. This turns them into a game of "guess the skill and roll the dice." I want to describe a scenario for my players that they can respond to. I want them to focus on their actions, not which skills they're using. And I want the skill challenge to tell me how the scenario changes with each success or failure.
For example, in Siege of Bordrin's Watch, there's a skill challenge when the players are
traversing the vents
. I found that very difficult to narrate--it was clear that my exposition was meaningless, and all that mattered was the rolls. Instead, I want something like this, but dressed up and expanded: "the characters can choose a route that emphasizes narrow ledges (acrobatics DC 10, group check) or steep cliffs (athletics DC 10, group check). A passive dungeoneering DC 15 roll reveals a narrow crevice that opens up into an easier path (automatic success). If they fail, they fall and lose one healing surge for every five points that they fail a DC 20 Endurance check. Later, they hear strange chittering noises. Nature DC 15 allows them to identify the creatures as bats and avoid spooking them. Dungeoneering DC 15 discovers animal droppings and highlights a safe route. Failure leads to bats swarming ahead of the PCs and alerting the orcs in Encounter X that the PCs are coming..."
A further problem is that the overall penalty for failure in a skill challenge is generally, "you succeed, but lose a healing surge." or "You succeed, but have another combat." That's hardly a penalty. Let's see some real consequences!
Unfortunately, I can't point to a skill challenge that I've liked. The skill challenges in SoGP are just as bad. Kevin Kulp had some interesting stuff in Haven of the Bitter Glass, but my group never made it that far, and even those suffered from the "lack of consequences" problem. You can influence the political make-up of
the council
, but absolutely nothing changes as a result.
Too balanced
Every single combat in Scales of War ranges from character level (N) + 0 to N+3. Sometimes slightly higher. Each one is designed to be defeated. Each level has 10 treasure parcels, and the PCs are expected to find every one. Each adventure follows a fairly predictable pacing model, starting with N+0 and N+1 encounters and gradually ramping up to the big N+3 fight.
It made my players complacent. They just hacked their way through everything. In SoGP, things aren't as safe. There are combats that the PCs aren't supposed to be able to win. They have to pay attention to what's going on. For example, Scene 2-7 features an elite opponent who is N+8! In fairness, this would have been a boring combat and I'm glad my players didn't get into that fight, but the principle is still there.
A related problem is that every combat encounter is designed to be a fight. There's no provision for diplomacy or clever solutions in SoW. In contrast, take a look at Scene 3-3 of SoGP. My players defeated that encounter without raising a finger or rolling initiative, just by being verbally aggressive and figuring out that the enemies
wouldn't attack as long as the PCs stayed out in the crowd
.
Good things
SoW's big strength is its set-piece battles. The conclusion of Siege of Bordrin's Watch was excellent. I loved the maps in The Temple Between, even though I hated drawing them. I've heard that Beyond the Mottled Tower is excellent. I hope you'll keep this.
Also, I'm a big fan of the delve format. More connecting tissue would be nice, but I like being able to run an entire combat with the two-page spread open in front of me. There just needs to be more non-combat stuff ahead of it.
Oh, one more thing. SoGP provides me with lots of background and context. Check out the sidebars scattered liberally through the adventure. I've found this invaluable because it allows me to create new plot elements based on the PC's actions. This makes them feel like they're driving the story, not just following the plot.
In contrast, Scales of War is very light on context. The best example is The Lost Mines of Karak. They encountered
an old man with canaries
during that adventure. It was clear that he had some sort of special meaning, but nothing in the adventure alluded to who he was, what he was doing there, or what his goals were. He was mysterious, which naturally aroused my players' interest, but I didn't have any ability to roleplay him. I just did 'generally kooky' because I didn't know any better.
It wasn't until
the final epic tier adventure
was published that I learned the old man was
Bahamut
. My characterization was completely off-base, and if I knew then what I knew now, I would have played him completely differently.
Lots of solid advice in this thread. Villains
This is a big 'un.
Without compelling threats, there is no compelling adventure.
Compare: That dude in Keep on the Shadowfell, with Kazyk in WOTBS2.
[sblock]
Your villain has a history, a personality and goals. It works towards it's goals, doing bad things along the way according to its personality. Its history helps inform the PC's, and perhaps helps them take it down.
Your villain has desires, and it is active in pursuing them. If the PC's fail, the villain accomplishes these desires. Death is not the only way to hurt the party, and, as you get closer to the climax, more should be at stake. The villain should not sit in one place and wait for people to come and kill it. It should act.
: Your villain needs to cast a shadow. More than just name-dropping, it should actually and actively shape the world around it. It should link to themes, and it should employ these themes effectively, though not homogeneously.
[/sblock] Sensible Combat
Also a big one.
When using combats, keep logic in mind.
Compare: ...almost any Scales of War adventure with, let's say, the fights that happen in a typical action movie. There is no conflict that does not have an origin, and a purpose.
[sblock]
Some fights should be too hard to win. These should be telegraphed, and PC's should avoid them.
Some fights should be too weak to bother with. Again, this should be telegraphed, and PC's should want to avoid them (they're just a distraction from the Real Problem).
: The fights that are "just right" shouldn't be repetitive. Each combat should directly accomplish some goal.
[/sblock] Hire Me to Write Them
Seriously. I'm kind of a genius.
[sblock]
The first adventure I ever wrote won me an adventure writing contest
I went on to participate in the brilliant War of the Burning Sky CS. Most of those adventures are dynamite.
I will do it on the cheap, because I like you guys.
[/sblock]
Er, but generally,
More Drama. Things are at stake. PC's can fail. Towns can burn to the ground. Families can get killed. Evil can win (and is always just about to do so). More Variety. Things don't have the same solution every time. Combat is great maybe 60-75% of the time, not ALL THE TIME. More Flow. 3-act structure. It applies to sandboxes as easily as narrative games. Know it, learn it, use it. Know what it means to actually finish an act (and how that changes the ongoing events), and how to effectively increase tension in Act 2.
But if you just hire me, I'll do all that for you.
For 4th edition I have only run Keep on the Shadowfell and most of Thunderspire Labyrinth. I am planning on running the Scales of War Adventure Path very soon.
First I must say, please ditch the delve format. I prefer the older, pre-delve style of adventure presentation. I know many are fans for the format, but it has caused me a number of headaches as I flip back and forth between the encounter information and the overall dungeon information (sometimes in different books). I understand and appreciate the idea behind the delve format (have all the relevant information for the encounter in one place), but in practice it has not lived up to that ideal. The best
example I have is the encounter with Murkelmor in Thunderspire Labyrinth.
[sblock] Of the enemies in that encounter, he is the only one who knows about the secret door on one side of the room. This information is only listed in the dungeon overview 12 pages before the encounter information. It should have been included in the tactics section of the encounter as well. The fact that he uses the door is in that tactics listing, just not that he's the only one who knows about it. As DM I considered this a fairly key piece of information, and in practice the lack of said information where it should have been nearly caused a TPK.[/sblock]
There are a few others I've come across, but the above sticks out in my mind the most. Going along with the above about information begin split up, I also dislike having the adventure information split between two books. Revenge of the Giants was a welcome return to a one book format.
I think more story needs to be added to the adventures. As others here have stated, the WotC modules seem to be very combat heavy. More story and/or background information to help flesh out the setting of the module would be a great addition. I found the FR conversions for H1 and H2 to help in that regard, but the baseline adventures could have been better. To go along with this, I would love to see more descriptive text. Too often the sparse information presented in each encounter does not paint a very interesting picture.
Going back to the idea of campaign setting conversions for WotC adventures, I'd love to see more of these for the published settings. I especially think such conversions would be immensely useful for Adventure Paths, but as noted above, ones for the published adventures are also welcome. DDI is the perfect vehicle for presenting such conversions (such as the aforementioned H1 and H2 conversions in Dungeon).
Another thing the adventures suffer from is a lack of internal consistency. I agree with others here in that very often the encounters seem to be placed simply because something in them is "really cool" with no thought to how they should fit into the overall feel or theme of the adventure. My primary example here is the temple/shrine of Bahamut before meeting Sir Keegan in H1.
[sblock]What is the temple of a good aligned deity doing with undead guardians? I ran the module, like many others, as the first introduction to the 4E rules, and left it as is. This particular room seriously broke the immersion of my players as it did not make any sense to any of them. And when all was said and done I agreed with them: it lacked some serious consistency. To my group, undead guardians do not mesh with shrine of Bahamut.[/sblock]
A secondary example comes from H2.
[sblock]In Interlude 2, Paldemar sends the PCs an anonymous note to get them to come to a meeting which is ultimately a trap. The idea of it is fine, but the following text I could not in good conscience read to my players: "I am in a position of power in the evil organization behind the duergar's actions..." That part of the sentence is, to my mind, exceedingly cheesy and an example of poor writing. Primarily I don't consider it consistent with something a very smart villain (Paldemar) would write in an attempt to lure the PCs into a trap, unless he's trying to communicate "It's a trap!"[/sblock]
Skill Challenges. I get the idea behind them, and I like that idea, but the ones in H1 and H2 are far too forced. They seem to have been shoe-horned in just to have a skill challenge for a non-combat encounter. The one in H1 was just poor design overall, and in my mind should not even have been a skill challenge. The one in H2 suffered from not having enough information about the three NPCs in their description to role-play them properly. Some of that information was moved to the skill checks area.[sblock]The elf wizard, for example, lies to the PCs via false boasts, but you only find this out under the Insight skill. This should have been with the NPC description.[/sblock]
Overall a good adventure, to me, has a balance of combat and non-combat interaction, needs to be internally consistent, and have enough story/background to draw the players and their characters in and keep their interest until the end.
What I would like to see in modules is better use of maps. Currently, what we generally get is a single, static picture of the adventure location - the delve format places the monsters in a given room at a given point in time. I think you could have a few maps - small ones only for the DM - that show how the adventure location reacts to invasion.
You'd need three maps - the baseline "at rest" map, a "The alarm has just rung, where is everyone going " map and a "High alert" map. You can place all the monsters directly on these maps and draw routes for how they move.
There's a collect-the-pieces tangram puzzle in Sceptre Tower of Spellgard... which is pretty bad. (The mod essentially tells you to construct the puzzle yourself based on a verbal description and an rough artist's sketch, although based on the sizes, I gather you were supposed to use the backs of Dungeon Tiles or something. The parts list itself is slightly off. Finally, the puzzle itself is pretty trivial due to one of the pieces having a "unique shape"...)
Unfortunately, I can't point to a skill challenge that I've liked. The skill challenges in SoGP are just as bad. Kevin Kulp had some interesting stuff in Haven of the Bitter Glass, but my group never made it that far, and even those suffered from the "lack of consequences" problem. You can influence the political make-up of
In response to these comments, I will point out that Monument to the Ancients in Dragon 170 had a pretty good skill challenge/puzzle thing that you two might appreciate. I haven't run it, but it looks pretty well thought out.
[sblock]The PCs have a MacGuffin that consists of 9 glyphs and an object with unlabeled slots for each. They can determine where a particular glyph should go via a skill challenge played out over the course of days, with some general use skills and some that will only work for particular glyphs, and can also get auto-successes by obtaining information elsewhere in the module. Each success also earns them a journal entry of flavor text, which helps shift the focus away from "Roll a skill check to not eat dirt."
Anywho, in the final battle, they need to have all 9 glyphs in the right place to send the big bad packing for good. Whatever they didn't figure out in advance can be done during battle via what is basically a game of Mastermind, so a party that performed well and planted 7 of the glyphs in advance will have an easier time of things than the party that has 1 glyph figured out and has to futz with the last 8 at random.
Admittedly I haven't read up enough to know if there's a reasonable justification as to why "guess and check" wouldn't work in the days leading up to the combat.[/sblock]
And Rodney, on the off chance that anyone around the office says "Why do they want less combat after we went and put so much effort into making an awesome combat engine?" I would remind them that one of the big steps forward for 4E was getting us away from needing 4 encounters per day to keep things on an even keel. Please let us use the wonderful innovation of not needing to pad our adventures with 3 more fights than we actually intended to use!
Well I've read the thread and I agree with the less combat but I want mapped empty space with interesting description of those places.
So my tuppence worth: I have run Keep on the Shadowfell, Thunderspire and Rescue at Rivenroar.
In my opinon, Rescue at Rivenroar is the weakest, and it has kind of put me off the Scales of War adventure path. I though that a lot of the encounter were filler and not relevant.
The whole place is a stupid spot for a putative army to hang out in. Its indefensible. There should be an army encamped nearby, use a skill challenge to bypass. Some reason to search the ruin and a reason for the alliance with the Undead.
I would reinforce the idea that there should be non combat ways to bypass encounters. Also I would like to see rituals incorporated into the adventures.
Thunderspire had a good example of a ritual use in the evil side where the gnoll (was it? I do not have the adventure handy right now) was trying to sustain a ritual while the party was trying to stop him. He succeeded in my case with his dying breath. However, also use custom rituals as the NcGuffin that the pcs have to complete to stop Bad Things Happening.
Maybe even duelling rituals.
On the format, I like the delve format, however pulling all the stat blocks for a combat in a separate booklet from the enounter flavour text and map would work as well. Pull out overview maps would be really nice.
