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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5565445" data-attributes="member: 42582">Fully agreed with this. But that's definitely not how this scenario's starting point is presented.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.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.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.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?)</blockquote>

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