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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Relthar" data-source="post: 5109380" data-attributes="member: 18432">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 bestexample 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.</blockquote>

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