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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nebulous" data-source="post: 5109675" data-attributes="member: 31465">Rodney, in 4e i've run Shadowfell Keep, Thunderspire Labyrinth, Pyramid of Shadows, and a large number of one-offs and homebrew adventures added to the mix.I have to say that the quality of the overall stories is...Average, puncutated by some really, really awesome set pieces. In my opinion here are some things you need to change (and this is not exhaustive):1) Encounter Format.  Why does it have to be only two pages? What if there is enough material for only 1 page or 4 pages?  Also, scrap the two book thing and meld plot and mechanics so that the book is actually more fun to READ. 2) Monster stat blocks: while it can be handy to have the block right there (and it is) i've seen cases where the SAME monster is printed throughout a book and it wastes too much space.  What about an electronic download for DDI customers (or for free) that bundles all stats for a module into one place? 3) INCOMPLETE VILLAINS!     This happened with Kalarel, Paldemar and Karavakos. All three were sketchy outlines with little motivation, or a complex motivation in the case of Karavakos (the whole trapped in the Pyramid of Shadows as punishment but with full powers and a nice life just didn't make sense).  I had to add so much to all three adventures to make the villains more compelling, including elevating Paldemar to the BBEG at the end of Thunderspire, have him live, be the villain through all of Pyramid of Shadows, live at the end, and he's now an ongoing villain in the paragon tier. 4) more as i muse about it....AH!  Skill Challenges!  I really hate to say that after all the effort WotC has put into skill challenges, i think the whole system is overshadowed by Obsidian that a clever Enworlder made up.  Wotc SC's, for me, require a big laundry list of memorization and referencing the book. The bigger the challenge, the more complex. Obsidian scraps that with a 3-round process that forces players to create the situation and what happens with simple accumulation of success, no failures (or rather failures just don't count). I have found that it creates great tension and roleplaying and there is nothing for me to reference as it all unfolds in real time.5) Too much friggin combat.  I cut out 50% of the encounters in Pyramid of Shadows and finished it in 9 sessions. Even then i got some moans of "when the hell are we getting out of this horrible place?"6) Monster and Encounter TacticsSo many, many times the descriptive text will say something like "The troglodyte waits until an enemy is near and uses Stench. Other troglodytes then advance and attack with spears.  There is a bed that can flipped over to offer cover and counts as difficult terrain."Now this isn't bad exactly, but it is really just rehashing the basics of a monster attack that every single DM is going to use anyway! Unless the monster is going to specifically use terrain or powers or items in abnormal fashion, i'd leave that part out.  But i'm just complaining, that's not a as big a deal as some of my other points.</blockquote>

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