Thoughts on the published Wizards adventures

[MerricB]

At present, I'm running one of my groups through the H series of Wizards adventures; we're about half-way through H2 at present. To some extent, I think the adventures published for a game display the feel of that game far more than the core rulebooks do. When I think about AD&D, it's not really the rules that I concentrate on: it's the early adventures. T1-4, A1-4, GDQ, the early I series, and so forth. If you compare them to the Basic D&D adventures of the same period, there's a different feel to what is happening with the games.

H1 Keep on the Shadowfell was quite interesting as the first full-length adventure for the game. My feeling is that it's slightly underrated by the community; while it isn't one of the greatest adventures ever published, it does a number of things quite well. There's aid for some strong roleplaying in town, which was certainly not the case in The Sunless Citadel. Splug has been a delight to use in the Keep proper, although my version of him is far more heroic (as he had to be) than that originally presented.

H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth is extremely interesting; as with H1 you've got an excellent home base for the group, probably even better defined and with more conflicts and intrigues for the DM to play around with if so inclined. You've got a number of quests for the group to go on, and a storyline linking the four adventure areas if you want a storyline. Otherwise you can play this in true old-school fashion: it's very much a sandbox environment. Further encounter areas can be found in Dungeon magazine, and then the DM who likes dungeon building can have a ball with the labyrinth.

H3 Pyramid of Shadows I won't get to for another couple of months, but, as with H1 and H2, there's the possibility of a lot of intrigue and roleplaying in addition to combat. I'm getting the feeling more and more that these adventures are deceptive: if you look at the encounters looking only for combat, that's what you'll find. The orb you find early on is just too fun... I've got a feeling I'm going to enjoy running this one.

P1 King of the Trollshaw Warrens I've already written about; yes, I really, really enjoy this adventure. There's a few alignments with Against the Giants, and also a bunch of celtic-inspired themes.

So, what's the overall feeling I'm getting from these adventures?

Well, they emphasize the PCs being heroic. Not always in the "do-gooder" way, for you could very easily play these adventures with the PCs as cruel mercenaries. However, they're up against some pretty nasty foes. The PCs are definitely better than the regular folk of the world.

There is a history to the world. It's not a pretty one, and the current state of affairs leaves a lot to be desired. The old kings could be a pretty cruel and vicious bunch. Honestly, I'm enjoying reading about the setting a lot more than any setting since Greyhawk. Sure, more is implied than detailed, but it feels right to me.

Are they old-school adventures? Could be. Of course, old-school covers a multitude of sins. They don't feel as constrained as the Paizo Adventure Path modules, which occasionally took railroading and illogical PC actions to a new level. The multiple hooks and quests in each of the adventures really free up the DM to tailor them to their players. They're not an adventure path at all: The H series are three adventures that are mostly unconnected, although there are hooks that can plausibly take the group from one adventure to the next.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the way they've been coming out, and I really hope that Wizards continue to publish printed adventure modules after this initial run is over, because they've shown they do have the talent to pull it off in an impressive fashion.

Cheers!

 

[Shroomy]

I pretty much agree with everything that you wrote and I hope that WotC continues to produce printed adventures once E3 comes to a conclusion (and I'm not counting the setting specific adventure that will be released each year). IMO, they also show the promise of the tactical encounter format: split out supplementary material into another booklet so its easier to reference, don't split up encounter information like the 3.5e version (which also adds to readability), and use that extra space to flesh out your encounters. While it would be more expensive, it points to how WoTC could "fix" Dungeon, adapt the formatting so it mimics the printed adventures and add a couple hundred words to each encounter.

 

[Rechan]

I think that the modules themselves are decent. P1 is imho the best of the lot.

Several of the modules though suffer from one of the following:

1) Too much monotony. I'm looking at you, KotS. You slog through tons of battles, fighting the same mix of monsters. 4 consecutive battles against kobolds, rooms after rooms of goblins, then rooms after rooms of hobgoblins. Vary It Up or reduce the encounters overall, or put a more lively mix in there, why don't you!

2) Few, wink links between them, if you're running all the way through. Also, there's a real loose connection between the areas in H2. Not that this would be a bad thing (it's like the Caves of Chaos, for instance), but the PCs are on a mission and it turns out "Sorry Mario, the princess is in another castle." If you remove that, then it's less frustrating, imho.

 

[MerricB]

1) Too much monotony. I'm looking at you, KotS. You slog through tons of battles, fighting the same mix of monsters. 4 consecutive battles against kobolds, rooms after rooms of goblins, then rooms after rooms of hobgoblins. Vary It Up or reduce the encounters overall, or put a more lively mix in there, why don't you!

Hmm.

At 3-4 areas each, I think that it's not quite monotonous; let's face it: there are kobolds, but with 4e they're quite different kobolds each time. And it makes a little more sense than "random monsters in every room" which is how some adventures look.

I do think that the latter half of Keep needs a bit more spicing up, but trips back to town (and ambushes) keep things interesting.

2) Few, wink links between them, if you're running all the way through. Also, there's a real loose connection between the areas in H2. Not that this would be a bad thing (it's like the Caves of Chaos, for instance), but the PCs are on a mission and it turns out "Sorry Mario, the princess is in another castle." If you remove that, then it's less frustrating, imho.

The first section (where you defeat the slavers) is very short indeed, playable in one session. After that you know they've been sold, so it's not so bad. And there are other links to the next section anyway. It just depends on how you want to play it... it's not like it forces you to use that link, anyway.

Cheers!

 

[SlyFlourish]

Good review

Good review, Merric,

I'm just closing out Thunderspire with my group now. They have two more nights and then we dive into the Pyramid of Shadows.

I really enjoyed Keep on the Shadowfell but one of the things I did was to turn Kalarel into a perverted serial killer. The PCs found some of his nasty ritualistic areas on their way into the keep so they knew what a bad guy he was. This added a bit more Hannibal Lecter to the villian so he wasn't so generic.

In Thunderspire, the party took over the Duergar shop in the Seven Pillared Hall and now run it as a business. It's sort of like their own version of Deadwood. They have people coming to them with adventure seeds now instead of the proverbial tavern encounters. It's their own little side business on top of their normal adventuring. I'm going to keep that going and have some fun with it when the party goes to the Pyramid of Shadows.

The Pyramid of Shadows is a bit intimidating for a DM. It's very big and seems a little hard to manage. I just got all the minis for it, though, so I'm ready to go. I even have a plastic halloween skull that has a black wig and a black veil that I can give to the PCs for the head you get in the first room. I plan to roleplay that quite a bit.

Trollhaunt also looks great even if it did force me to buy four more troll minis at $4 a pop. Again the cavern looks sort of intimidating and makes me want to invest about $400 into more dwarven forge sets to build out the caverns. I must resist! The plot switch later on looks to be great fun.

Overall I am very happy with the quality of these adventures. My group is having a great time. I'm having an easy time DMing and I get to spend my extra energy filling out fun RP areas instead of worrying about building the whole thing out. The encounter layout is good and the extra maps are nice. I use them quite a bit for D&D mini scenarios and one-shot adventures as well.

I never played that many published adventures, I got into D&D in the middle of 2nd edition and always ended up writing my own adventures. These, however, are great fun and I plan to play it all the way through to E3.

Personally, I can't wait for E2. I am such a sucker for drow and demons!

Thanks again for the great post,

Mike Shea

 

[Rechan]

Hmm.

At 3-4 areas each, I think that it's not quite monotonous; let's face it: there are kobolds, but with 4e they're quite different kobolds each time. And it makes a little more sense than "random monsters in every room" which is how some adventures look.

Uh uh. Look at the 4 encounters with the kobolds. They consist of the same monsters: Minion, Dragonshield, Slinger, Skirmisher, Wyrmpriest.
Hell, the only difference between the first ambush and the second is that the second has skirmishers!

The only difference between inside and outside of the waterfall is the inclusion of Irontooth, and the number of minions vs. skirmishers.

You would have a point if there was little overlap with what monsters were in the fight, but that's not the case.

The first section (where you defeat the slavers) is very short indeed, playable in one session. After that you know they've been sold, so it's not so bad. And there are other links to the next section anyway. It just depends on how you want to play it... it's not like it forces you to use that link, anyway.

It doesn't force you to use anything in the adventure. But that's more work for the DM. It would be much easier if they were stronger linked.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

1) Too much monotony. I'm looking at you, KotS. You slog through tons of battles, fighting the same mix of monsters. 4 consecutive battles against kobolds, rooms after rooms of goblins, then rooms after rooms of hobgoblins. Vary It Up or reduce the encounters overall, or put a more lively mix in there, why don't you!

2) Few, wink links between them, if you're running all the way through. Also, there's a real loose connection between the areas in H2. Not that this would be a bad thing (it's like the Caves of Chaos, for instance), but the PCs are on a mission and it turns out "Sorry Mario, the princess is in another castle." If you remove that, then it's less frustrating, imho.

Yep, on both counts.

I know a first-time RPGer whose stated reason for leaving the nascent 4e KOTS campaign was, "I got sick of fighting kobolds."

 

[bert1000]

H1 was ok, but
1) suffered from the keep being too large and packed. I prefer more, smaller combat oriented encounter sites or if large not as similar as others have mentioned (kobold watchmen, kobold guards, kobold chief, undead, hobgoblin watchmen...)
2) lack of fleshed out non-combat encounters (skill challenges, npc motives)
3) not enough stuff going on around the PCs. Graveyard interlude is ok, but what about angry farmers outside the gates of Lord P.'s manor demanding he do something about the kobolds and the PCs having to mediate, etc. Much like H2 and P1 have random combat encounters, would be great to have some flexible non-combat set pieces to use
4) main villian's motivation never revealed to PCs and, without DM rewriting, I feel the climax is not what it could be

This said, I made the changes I needed and it is a nice little adventure post-DM work.

H2 seems pretty good, with an interesting skull port -like base and potential for some open ending exploring. Also like that it is not another "save the world" module which would have been too much, coming after H1

H3 is good for what it is, but I don't love the format (trapped in mega-dungeon).

P1 is starting to get a little more plot oriented which is nice. It's kind of a mini-Red Hand (save the village from invading horde with some cool extra-planar connections).

All in all, I agree that these modules are better than many folks are saying. However, I still think they have a ways to go in terms of story and non-combat color -- how many times can the party find a "note" that reveals the bad guys master plans or the hook for the next dungeon? It's like goldbox Pool of Radiance journal entries at times.

 

[Rechan]

Another thing that P1 has going for that the others do not is the skill challenges. It has at least what, 4? One of which is to negotiate with a monster to let them pass. I would like to see more of that.

 

[mac1504]

I've been enjoying running the series, especially after spending over two years writing my own series of adventures for a long running campaign. It's nice to have most of the work done for you ahead of time.

I wish the series had more of a consistent thread, or overarching plot that went with it, but I guess that is up to the individual DM to assemble.

I agree that H1 lacked more diverse battles, and should have had a skill challenge in it (besides the supplemental after-thought of the ritual at the end) to really show off 4e's chops. But overall, I think it was a hit with my players. I ended up throwing in a few of the Dragon and Dungeon sidetreks and supplemental material to spice up plots and battles, and writing a few skill challenges on my own to bring elements together.

We just started with H2, and (most of) the players love the Seven Pillared Hall. As Merric stated, lots of good intrigue and plot devices to explore in that cavern. The first section, going against the Bloodreavers, seemed more of the same of H1- but I threw in some Bloodghosts from Dragon 366 to spice up those battles (plus I've had to adjust most encounters since my group numbers six in size).

I'm not sure how I'm going to incorporate H3, but I think my players would really enjoy it, as it seems from an overview, to be an old school Tomb of Horrors romp.

I'll second the vote for WOTC to continue publishing modules; I certainly think that was one of the mistakes they made later on with 3rd edition.