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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rodrigo Istalindir" data-source="post: 6384609" data-attributes="member: 2810">Fair enough.I've run, as official Encounters at a game store with players ranging from 'What's an RPG?' to 'bah, back in my day it was save-*and*-die, and we liked it!'.Season 05: Dark Legacy of Evard (May - August 2011)Season 06: Lost Crown of Neverwinter (August - November 2011)Season 07: Beyond the Crystal Cave (November 2011 - February 2012)Season 08: The Elder Elemental Eye (February - May 2012)Season 09: Web of the Spider Queen (May - August 2012)Season 10: Council of Spiders (August - October 2012)Season 11: War of Everlasting Darkness (October 2012 - January 2013)Season 12: Against the Cult of Chaos (February - April 2013)Season 13: Storm over Neverwinter (April - June 2013)Season 14: Search for the Diamond Staff (June - August 2013)The store stopped running Encounters after that due to GM annoyance at the changes to the program and player indifference to playtesting 5e.  We've since restarted with HotDQ.Of those 10, only Beyond the Crystal Cave was what I consider 'good'.  It had a story that, while derivative, was familiar enough to give newbies something to grab onto while still keeping things interesting for experienced players.  It let the players make choices that had some impact on the story. It had clever and creative encounters with more than run of the mill monsters.  The rest ranged from merely 'ok' to 'what were they thinking'.  The two Neverwinter modules, especially, were riddled with inconsistencies, bad plotting, terrible writing, boring encounters, railroads that would have made the Orient Express jealous, increasingly crappy presentation (reusing maps that had no bearing on the encounter, and eventually no maps at all), and most egregiously, encounters designed to deprotagonize the PCs in the service of a ridiculous story.  The disgust on the players faces when they realized that they were expected to play second fiddle while an NPC saved the day.  As an intro to the game, that's one of the worst things you can do.And HotDQ seems to pick up right there -- bad presentation, bad writing, and what seems like a quick cut-and-paste without any regard for how to adapt the module to the idiosyncrasies of  Encounters.  And yet another 'unwinnable' combat whose purpose is...?  To make the PCs feel like cowards if they do the smart thing and run?I came back to running Encounters because I anticipated high demand, and for the first week or two we were turning people away, but it's arleady starting to taper off.   I'll finish out the current season, but I don't know if I'll continue after that or go back to an 'RPG night' of different rotating games and players.</blockquote>

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