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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Olgar Shiverstone" data-source="post: 1784748" data-attributes="member: 5868">Since WOTC has been publishing adventures lately, I'd decided to pick some up and see what they were doing -- so I got the two Eberron adventures.Shadows of the Last War was a bit linear, but it at least gives the PCs multiple options for overland travel, plus has a bit of dungeon in which the players can make choices about where to go.  As an introductory "travelogue" adventure, you can forgive it a little bit of linearity.  Merely average, over all -- 3 out of 5 stars at best.Whispers of the Vampire's Blade, though, is such a railroad it puts the original Dragonlance series to shame.  It tries for a cinematic, story-based experience and probably achieves it, at the expense of PC free will.  It's an event-based adventure, but the only thing the DM can vary is the timing of the events.  Unlike Speaker in Dreams, which used a flowchart to allow the DM to arrange events in a variety of orders depending on what lines of investigation the players pursue, the events in Whispers happen one after the other.  The events of many are even preordained -- [spoiler]the target of the chase is encountered multiple times, but must escape at the end of each scene.[/spoiler]  In one encounter, [spoiler] the PCs are supposed to get on an airship -- but if they don't, another airship arrives, practivally shanghais them, and takes them to the first airship![/spoiler].  Encounter events are predetermined: [spoiler]"On round five, the warforged kills the driver", or "After two rounds, the airships ram and both fall out of the sky."[/spoiler]  Well, what if the PC's do something about it?  The most original event of the adventure [spoiler] is the masked ball, but the PCs won't do much to influence the adventure until the ball is ended by a mandatory fight from which the BBEG absolutely must escape![/spoiler]  Even the dungeon at the end of the adventure is a railroad -- [spoiler] it's one room after another with only one entrance and one exit, and the BBEG is in the last room![/spoiler]Sheesh!  Give the PCs some choices why don't you!  Cinematic is one thing; predetermined is entirely another.  Blech.  One star out of five.  Don't count on me purchasing further products authored by David Noonan.I hope this isn't the shape of things to come -- between the two adventures, it feels like a slide into the predetermined story-based adventures of Dragonlance or 2E.  Or is that what DMs/players are looking for these days?</blockquote>

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