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<blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 893563" data-attributes="member: 151"><p>Wulf's is certainly one of the best story hours on the boards, and uses the modules well. However, you'll note that Wulf himself basically points out that they never really figured out the plot of 'Speaker in Dreams', just piled up the dead bad guys.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=99" target="_blank">My Story Hour (here)</a> uses the first two core modules, then the town map and a few things from 'Speaker', and I abruptly dropped 'Standing Stone', which is, IMHO, features the worst plot of any AP series (lots of logical fallacies to be compensated for, poor plot design, mcguffins placed in the module purely to irritate the players, and so forth). 'Speaker' has an adequate plot, but the players really have very little input into it, when all is said and done. It's really just a collection of set pieces, unless the DM puts a lot of work into it.</p><p></p><p>Sunless Citadel is a good module to cut a group's teeth on, and has lots of good hooks and design. It can accomadate a variety of play and design styles. Forge of Fury, IMHO, is even better, as it rewards clever play, allows different PC classes to showcase their abilities and makes sense as a dungeon.</p><p></p><p>"Heart of Nightfang Spire" is a meatgrinder that is just arbitrary and mean-spirited. It makes for a good read, and starts strong...but then it just gets foul. In Wulf's story hour, you'll see that essentially the PCs got twinked to win it, and in my story hour, the PCs abandoned it angrily, after the third PC insta-death. There are some good ideas here, but some things are just plain mean, and unlike many of the AP modules, this one virtually requires a specific class in the party, a major design no-no, in my opinion.</p><p></p><p>"Deep Horizon" is just a set of stuff that you can explore, with little motivation or interest in doing so. It's a little better than just randomly rolling up a dungeon out of the DMG, but it has little flavor.</p><p></p><p>"Lord of the Iron Fortress" is a good extraplanar romp, that considers players' abilities at that level, details how to handle them for novice DMs (and emphasizes not punishing them for having them), and offers an interesting plot and many good, challenging encounters. Like Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury, the Iron Fortress is an interesting place to go, and like those modules, it accomadates being dropped into a campaign with little fuss.</p><p></p><p>"Bastion of Broken Souls" is the only module I ever started using, and then actually terminated after two sessions. It makes "heart of Nightfang Spire" look like a wet kiss to the players. The very first encounter to start the module is basically a way to overwhelm the PCs with a CR 23 creature, then use a CR 21 NPC to pull their fat from the fire. The module is dedicated to shutting down half of the players abilities, such as high-level divination magic and the like. Like HoNS, the only way to get a party through the module is to play the monsters/NPCs as stupid, pull your punches, or alter it to be survivable. A battle in which players are essentially goaded into fighting a creature who can, unhasted, take 26 attacks per round doing 2d6+12? Yeah, sure.</p><p></p><p>They can be strung together using purely material in the modules themselves, as many contain little clues you could build upon to make a cohesive whole...but it's very threadbare in that respect. A nice touch in the NWN adaption of the modules is that while in "Forge of Fury' you find that the Duergar are, in fact, working for Imperagon, who is the afore-mentioned "Lord of the Iron Fortress."</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="WizarDru, post: 893563, member: 151"] Wulf's is certainly one of the best story hours on the boards, and uses the modules well. However, you'll note that Wulf himself basically points out that they never really figured out the plot of 'Speaker in Dreams', just piled up the dead bad guys. [URL=http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=99]My Story Hour (here)[/URL] uses the first two core modules, then the town map and a few things from 'Speaker', and I abruptly dropped 'Standing Stone', which is, IMHO, features the worst plot of any AP series (lots of logical fallacies to be compensated for, poor plot design, mcguffins placed in the module purely to irritate the players, and so forth). 'Speaker' has an adequate plot, but the players really have very little input into it, when all is said and done. It's really just a collection of set pieces, unless the DM puts a lot of work into it. Sunless Citadel is a good module to cut a group's teeth on, and has lots of good hooks and design. It can accomadate a variety of play and design styles. Forge of Fury, IMHO, is even better, as it rewards clever play, allows different PC classes to showcase their abilities and makes sense as a dungeon. "Heart of Nightfang Spire" is a meatgrinder that is just arbitrary and mean-spirited. It makes for a good read, and starts strong...but then it just gets foul. In Wulf's story hour, you'll see that essentially the PCs got twinked to win it, and in my story hour, the PCs abandoned it angrily, after the third PC insta-death. There are some good ideas here, but some things are just plain mean, and unlike many of the AP modules, this one virtually requires a specific class in the party, a major design no-no, in my opinion. "Deep Horizon" is just a set of stuff that you can explore, with little motivation or interest in doing so. It's a little better than just randomly rolling up a dungeon out of the DMG, but it has little flavor. "Lord of the Iron Fortress" is a good extraplanar romp, that considers players' abilities at that level, details how to handle them for novice DMs (and emphasizes not punishing them for having them), and offers an interesting plot and many good, challenging encounters. Like Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury, the Iron Fortress is an interesting place to go, and like those modules, it accomadates being dropped into a campaign with little fuss. "Bastion of Broken Souls" is the only module I ever started using, and then actually terminated after two sessions. It makes "heart of Nightfang Spire" look like a wet kiss to the players. The very first encounter to start the module is basically a way to overwhelm the PCs with a CR 23 creature, then use a CR 21 NPC to pull their fat from the fire. The module is dedicated to shutting down half of the players abilities, such as high-level divination magic and the like. Like HoNS, the only way to get a party through the module is to play the monsters/NPCs as stupid, pull your punches, or alter it to be survivable. A battle in which players are essentially goaded into fighting a creature who can, unhasted, take 26 attacks per round doing 2d6+12? Yeah, sure. They can be strung together using purely material in the modules themselves, as many contain little clues you could build upon to make a cohesive whole...but it's very threadbare in that respect. A nice touch in the NWN adaption of the modules is that while in "Forge of Fury' you find that the Duergar are, in fact, working for Imperagon, who is the afore-mentioned "Lord of the Iron Fortress." [/QUOTE]
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