If the PCs descended on an inn with a large entourage of retainers, men-at-arms, barbers etc., took every room available, drank all of the ale, and proceeded to agitate the local nobility by their very presence, I could see this working. That's what seems to be missing: I have no problem with higher level PCs using rented accommodation per se.
Fully agreed with this. But that's definitely
not how this scenario's starting point is presented.
I don't have a problem with the idea that players may enjoy having their players travel rather incognito. Humility is a virtue, essentially, and it can be a romantic one.
Nothing wrong with this. I'm not sure it should be the default assumption, but even if it is, it's
not the feeling that I get from the scenario in question.
Just a point though - a lot of the classic modules had some really nasty hooks. Against the Giants starts out with the party accepting the quest or dying. Isle of the Ape has a two or three PAGE boxed text intro. IIRC, most of the early modules started, more or less, in medias res - even Keep on the Borderlands starts out with you on the road outside the Keep. The Lost City presumes you are caravan guards, lost in the desert and nearly dying of starvation and dehydration by the time the adventure starts.
Not that they're all bad mind you. Isle of Dread has some really cool hooks - that letter and map from Rory Barbarosa are fantastic.
But, I'm thinking that a lot of the early modules were pretty horrid when it comes to hooks. Great modules, but, if you were to start off modules this way now, I think the reaction would be pretty strongly negative.
I think the Against the Giants and Isle of the Ape starting points suffer from being such ludicrous railroads. (Is the Against the Giants intro a legacy of its tournament origins?)
Keep on the Borderlands and the Lost City, on the other hand, I don't have a negative reaction to. At least they give the GM a sense of the sort of situation the scenario author has envisaged as the prelude to the adventure - a situation that is easily conceivable for fantasy PCs, and from which the module scenario follows farily sensibly.
Every adventure has a default start or possible starting points. The assumption with the classic adventures is that the DM would alter anything that didn't work for the campaign and go from there.
IMHO the same applies to more current offerings. The main difference as I see it, is one of clashing expectations. The newer rulesets don't inspire the same urge to tinker, change and create custom material as the older ones do.
In my view the last sentence is a red herring. Of course a published scenario might require altering. My complaint is about an introductory framework that (i) contributes nothing to the framing of the adventure - unlike some of the intros that Hussar has mentioned - and (ii) that is in very obvious tension (in my view, contradiction) with the ruleset's default characterisation of paragon-tier PCs.
The Lost City intro tells me straight away what the module is about - PCs are swords-and-sorcery types who are about to get caught up in a swords-and-sorcery adventure - a Lost City! The intro that I'm complaining about doesn't do anything like that. On the contrary, in my view it contributes to the already somewhat widespread view that 4e is deviod of significant fictional or thematic content that actually contributes to the play of the game.
He's having a negative reaction to a very simple hook, when that had been the norm and, I think, had contributed to the wide usability of those old modules.
The scenario I refer to would be just as playable with no hook at all. So what does the hook do? It doesn't do the job of a Lost City-style intro - of setting the scene and kicking off the scenario. It doesn't do the job of an Against the Giants-style intro - of railroading the PCs into the evening's game. It's wasted ink.
If the module writer isn't prepared to follow Moldvay's lead and actually present a framing for the scenario that kicks it off in the right way, they would be better off to give a bit more introductory advice about what the main points of the scenario are, and therefore what sorts of themes or hooks the GM might use to bring the PCs into it. I think one reason the author doesn't do this is because there seems to be an approach to D&D module writing which is too much of the "write a story" school and not enough of the "present the GM with a tool" school. So rather than a frank metagame discussion by the author of how the module might be framed and introduced, the author writes a completely lame and anodyne introductory story. (And at least Moldvay's introductory story
shows the GM how the module's author envisages it being used to make a compelling game. I can imagine someone picking up the Lost City and thinking "That's pretty cool, maybe I should find out more about this D&D thing!" Did the author in Open Grave really think anyone would have the same response to the intro I'm criticising?)
