wotc intro adventures conflict with their own advice

[Obryn]

Actually, I think WotC's made at least one pretty great sandbox module recently, with interesting NPCs, rival factions, a complex background, and open-ended options.

Vor Rukoth.

While it's presented as a "setting," it's clearly a descendant of 1e/BECMI site-based adventures.

-O

 

[ourchair]

Actually, I think WotC's made at least one pretty great sandbox module recently, with interesting NPCs, rival factions, a complex background, and open-ended options.

Vor Rukoth.

While it's presented as a "setting," it's clearly a descendant of 1e/BECMI site-based adventures.

-O

Actually, Vor Rukoth is my favorite DM product of this year.

I really wanted to like Hammerfast, since the idea of 4th Edition having its own "This is not an adventure, but a wealth of material to build a place for adventures to happen," was very exciting.

But I was tremendously disappointed and Vor Rukoth totally redeemed the idea. I hope they make more of these.

 

[TikkchikFenTikktikk]

The same issue arises with every pre-4Ed edition of the game.

...which didn't stop me from running an adventure called "Quest for Firepower," in which the main plot is a red herring, and the REAL adventure is to find the mighty mage's spellbook, stolen from him in combat.

Let me take a tangent off of this:

4E powers with the weapon or implement keyword should not work if you don't have a weapon or implement equipped.

The blanket ruling to the contrary closes design space.

How I wish D&D R&D were learning more lessons from Magic R&D.

 

[Jhaelen]

Actually, Vor Rukoth is my favorite DM product of this year.

I really wanted to like Hammerfast, since the idea of 4th Edition having its own "This is not an adventure, but a wealth of material to build a place for adventures to happen," was very exciting.

But I was tremendously disappointed and Vor Rukoth totally redeemed the idea. I hope they make more of these.

Funny, for me it was the other way around: Hammerfast was simply perfect and a great reminder what had been missing from all of the not-so-great WotC adventure modules.

Imho, in Vor Rukoth the scale wasn't right. For such an incredibly large place the space wasn't suffiicent. Picking a handful of sites in a large city district and attaching a generic plot hook to them didn't do much for me.

In contrast to Hammerfast, developing any of these hooks into an adventure would require too much effort for my taste. In Hammerfast the level of detail was exactly right to provide a bunch of adventures that are practically writing themselves. It also had an example campaign arc which I appreciated (although I probably wouldn't use it).